2. Personality Perspectives
Psychoanalytic—importance of unconscious processes and childhood experiences
Humanistic—importance of self and fulfillment of potential
Trait—description and measurement of personality differences
Social cognitive—importance of beliefs about self

3. Freud Couch

4. Dream Analysis
Another method to analyze the unconscious mind is through interpreting manifest and latent contents of dreams.
The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli (1791)

5. Personality Structure
Personality develops as a result of our efforts to resolve conflicts between our biological impulses (id) and social restraints (superego).
OBJECTIVE 4| Describe Freud’s view of personality structure, and discuss the interactions of the id, ego and the superego.

6. Personality Development
Freud believed that personality formed during the first few years of life divided into psychosexual stages. During these stages the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on pleasure sensitive body areas called erogenous zones.
OBJECTIVE 5| Identify Freud’s psychosexual stages of development, and describe the effects of fixation on behavior.

7. Psychosexual Stages
Freud divided the development of personality into five psychosexual stages.

8. Oral Stage
Pleasure centers on the mouth– sucking, biting, chewing.

9. Personality Development
Oedipus Complex
a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father
Electra Complex
a girl’s sexual desires toward her father and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival mother

10. Personality Development
Castration Anxiety
boys feel guilt and fear that their father would punish them (castration) for sexual desires for their mother & jealousy of their father.
Penis Envy
women fixated in this stage symbolically
castrate men through embarrassment,
deception, and derogation.

11. Identification
Children cope with threatening feelings by repressing them and by identifying with the rival parent. Through this process of identification, their superego gains strength that incorporates their parents’ values.
From the K. Vandervelde private collection

12. Personality Development
Fixation
a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved

13. Personality Development
Oral fixation
possibly because of overindulging or depriving (abrupt, early weaning). They exhibit either passive dependence (like that of a nursing infant) or an exaggerated denial of this dependence--perhaps by acting tough and uttering biting sarcasm. They might also continue to seek oral gratification through excessive smoking or eating.

14. Personality Development
Anal fixation
never resolve anal conflict (Toilet training)
Anal expulsive– messy & disorganized.
Anal retentive– highly controlled and compulsively neat.

15. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Developed by Henry Murray, the TAT is a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.
Lew Merrim/ Photo Researcher, Inc.

16. Comer, Abnormal Psychology 4e Clinical Assessment, Diagnosis, and Treatment Figure 4.02

17. Assessing the Unconscious
Rorschach Inkblot Test
the most widely used projective test
a set of 10 inkblots designed by Hermann Rorschach
seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

18. Comer, Abnormal Psychology 4e Clinical Assessment, Diagnosis, and Treatment Figure An inkblot similar to those used in the Rorschach test

19. Projective Tests: Criticisms
Critics argue that projective tests lack both reliability (consistency of results) and validity (predicting what it is supposed to).
1. When evaluating the same patient, even trained raters come up with different interpretations (reliability).
2. Projective tests may misdiagnose a normal individual as pathological (validity).

20. Carl Jung
Universality of themes- archetypes are inherited universal human concepts–“Mother”
Archetypes are primordial images inherited from our ancestors and include mother, father, God, death, snakes, animus/anima, the persona, the shadow, and the self.
The animus is the masculine side of the female.
The anima is the feminine side of the male.

21. The Neo-Freudians
Like Freud, Adler believed in childhood tensions. However, these tensions were social in nature and not sexual A child struggles with an inferiority complex during growth and strives for superiority and power.
National Library of Medicine
Alfred Adler ( )

22. Alfred Adler Alfred Adler strove throughout his life
to overcome a sense of inferiority.
1911: Left Freud’s analytic society
Individual Psychology
We all begin life with a sense of inferiority.
Striving for superiority is the motivating force in life.
If unsuccessful: inferiority complex
Well-adjusted people express their striving for superiority through concern for the social interest.

23. Alfred Adler Birth Order The order in which you are born to a
family inherently affects your personality:
First born children who later have
younger siblings have it the worst.
Middle born children have it the easiest.
The youngest child, like the first born, is more likely to experience personality problems during adulthood.
Research examining birth order effects does not often support Adler’s predictions. The impact of birth order on personality is far more complex than Adler suggests.

24. The Neo-Freudians
Like Adler, Horney believed in the social aspects of childhood growth and development. She countered Freud’s assumption that women have weak superegos and suffer from
“penis envy.”
The Bettmann Archive/ Corbis
Karen Horney ( )

25. Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective
Modern Research
Personality develops throughout life and is not fixed in childhood.
Freud underemphasized peer influence on the individual, which may be as powerful as parental influence.
Gender identity may develop before 5-6 years of age.
OBJECTIVE 9| Summarize psychology’s current assessment of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis.

26. Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective
Modern Research
There may be other reasons for dreams besides wish fulfillment.
Verbal slips can be explained on the basis of cognitive processing of verbal choices.
Suppressed sexuality leads to psychological disorders. Sexual inhibition has decreased, but psychological disorders have not.

27. Is Repression a Myth?
Many researchers now believe that repression rarely, if ever, occurs.

28. Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective
Freud's psychoanalytic theory rests on the repression of painful experiences into the unconscious mind.
The majority of children, death camp survivors, and battle-scarred veterans are unable to repress painful experiences into their unconscious mind.

29. Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective
The scientific merits of Freud’s theory have been criticized. Psychoanalysis is meagerly testable. Most of its concepts arise out of clinical practice, which are the after-the-fact explanation.

30. Humanistic Perspective
By the 1960s, psychologists became discontent with Freud’s negativity and the mechanistic psychology of the behaviorists.
Carl Rogers
( )
Abraham Maslow
( )

31. Humanistic Perspective
Carl Rogers– “Father of Humanism”
Abraham Maslow
Free will
Self-awareness
Psychological growth

32. Humanistic Perspective
Unconditional Positive Regard
an attitude of total acceptance toward another person
Self-Concept
all our thoughts and feelings
about ourselves, in an answer
to the question, “Who am I?”

33. Fig. 12-9, p. 488 Figure 12.9: Rogers’s view of personality structure.
In Rogers’s model, the self-concept is the only important structural construct. However, Rogers acknowledged that one’s self-concept may not be consistent with the realities of one’s actual experience—a condition called incongruence.
Fig. 12-9, p. 488

34. Assessing the Self
In an effort to assess personality, Rogers asked people to describe themselves as they would like to be (ideal) and as they actually are (real). If the two descriptions were close the individual had a positive self-concept.
OBJECTIVE 12| Explain how humanistic psychologists assessed personality.

35. Existentialism
Existence
Lack of Certainty
Authenticity
Rollo May

36. Evaluating Humanism Difficult to test or validate scientifically
Tends to be too optimistic, minimizing some of the more destructive aspects of human nature

37. Trait Theories A. Gordon Allport B. Cattell C. Eysenck
Cardinal- strong personality traits that affect us the most
Central Traits- highly characteristic of a person
B. Cattell
Surface Traits- easily observed by others
Source Traits- underlie surface behavior
C. Eysenck
Extraversion- outgoing, sociable
Intraversion- shy

38. Contemporary Research– The Trait Perspective
a characteristic pattern of behavior
a disposition to feel and act,
as assessed by self-report inventories
and peer reports
Gordon
Allport

39. Exploring Traits
Factor analysis is a statistical approach used to describe and relate personality traits.
Cattell used this approach to develop a 16 Personality Factor (16PF) inventory.
OBJECTIVE 15| Describe some of the ways psychologists have attempted to compile a list of basic personality traits.
Raymond Cattell
( )

40. Factor Analysis
Cattell found that large groups of traits could be reduced down to 16 core personality traits based on statistical correlations.
Excitement
Impatient
Irritable
Boisterous
Basic
trait
Superficial
traits
Impulsive

41. Raymond Cattell

42. Personality Dimensions
Hans and Sybil Eysenck suggested that personality could be reduced down to two polar dimensions, extraversion-introversion and emotional stability-instability.

43. Assessing Traits
Personality inventories are questionnaires (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors assessing several traits at once. The answers are then compared to established norms
OBJECTIVE 16| Explain how psychologists use personality inventories to assess traits, and discuss the most widely used of these inventories.

44. Self-Report Inventory
Psychological test in which an individual answers standardized questions about their behavior and feelings
The answers are then compared to established norms

45. Strengths of Self-Reports
Standardized—each person receives same instructions and responds to the same questions
Use of established norms: results are compared to previously established norms and are not subjectively evaluated

46. Weaknesses of Self-Reports
Evidence that people can “fake” responses to look better (or worse)
Tests contain hundreds of items and become tedious
People may not be good judges of their own behavior

47. The Trait Perspective
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests
originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use)
now used for many other screening purposes

48. MMPI
Originally designed to assess mental health and detect psychological symptoms
Has over 500 questions to which person must reply “True” or “False”
Includes “lying scales”

49. The Trait Perspective
Hysteria
(uses symptoms to solve problems)
Masculinity/femininity
(interests like those of other sex)
T-score 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Hypochondriasis
(concern with body symptoms)
Depression
(pessimism, hopelessness)
Psychopathic deviancy
(disregard for social standards)
Paranoia
(delusions, suspiciousness)
Psychasthenia
(anxious, guilt feelings)
Schizophrenia
(withdrawn, bizarre thoughts)
Hypomania
(overactive, excited, impulsive)
Social introversion
(shy, inhibited)
Clinically
significant
range
After
treatment
(no scores
in the clinically
significant range)
Before
(anxious,
depressed,
and
displaying
deviant
behaviors)
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) test profile

50. The Trait Perspective Empirically Derived Test
a test developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups
such as the MMPI

51. Endpoints

52. Evaluating the Trait Perspective
The Person-Situation Controversy
Walter Mischel (1968, 1984, 2004) points out that traits may be enduring, but the resulting behavior in various situations is different. Therefore, traits are not good predictors of behavior.
We look for genuine personality traits that persist over time and across situations.
If you consider friendliness a trait,
friendly people must act friendly
at different times and places.
OBJECTIVE 18| Summarize the person-situation controversy, and explain its importance as a commentary on the trait perspective.

53. Evaluation of Trait Perspective
Doesn’t really explain personality, simply describe the behaviors
Doesn’t describe the development of the behaviors
Trait approaches generally fail to address how issues such as motives, unconscious, or beliefs about self affect personality development

54. Social-Cognitive Perspective
Bandura believes that personality is the result of an interaction that takes place between a person and their social context.
Albert Bandura

55. Social Cognitive Perspective
Social cognitive theory— the importance of observational learning, conscious cognitive processes, social experience, self-efficacy and reciprocal determinism in personality
Reciprocal determinism--model that explains personality as the result of behavioral, cognitive, and environmental interactions
Self-efficacy—belief that people have about their ability to meet demands of a specific situation

56. Martin Seligman: Methodology and Results
Thought dogs would learn to avoid shock
Dogs placed in harness and given shocks
Martin Seligman’s research in the late 1960s addressed the question of how we react to repeated and unavoidable shocks or torture. In particular, Seligman studied the ability of dogs to learn avoidance behaviors when given an electric shock. He placed dogs into harnesses (much as Pavlov had done) then gave them a series of shocks paired with a conditioned stimulus (also similar to Pavlov’s experiment). He gave the dogs no opportunity to escape the shock.

57. Seligman: Methodology and Results
Seligman next placed the same dogs into boxes that allowed them to escape the shock by jumping over a hurdle. Despite the tenets of operant conditioning, which would predict that the dogs would learn how to avoid the shock, the dogs did not learn to jump over the hurdle but rather sat down and cowered in the box.
When able to avoid the shocks, the dogs cowered in the box
Hypothesis not confirmed

58. Learned Helplessness
Seligman named his discovery learned helplessness, because the dogs had apparently learned that they had no control over their situation. Even when they did gain control and had access to a method by which they could avoid the shock, they had internalized their sense of helplessness to such a degree that they did not learn how to escape being shocked.
Dogs learned that they couldn’t control or avoid the shocks, so didn’t even try to avoid them
Significant in the study of depression in humans

59. Learned Helplessness: Implications
Learned helplessness is related to depression
The concept of learned helplessness has played an important role in the study of depression. This experiment showed the importance of having a sense of control over the situations in which we find ourselves. People who have a sense of learned helplessness are more likely than others to feel depressed because they do not feel that they can control what happens to them.
Subsequent studies on humans included research into the role of control in nursing homes. Residents who received control over such decisions as what time to perform various activities and where to sit when guests arrive, or who were given plants to take care of (rather than having the staff take care of the plants), exhibited a greater sense of control and were less depressed than residents who did not receive these options.
Think about what learned helplessness might mean for people in totalitarian governments, prisons, concentration camps, or abusive relationships.
Totalitarian governments
Nursing home studies

60. Learned Helplessness
When unable to avoid repeated adverse events an animal or human learns helplessness.