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Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic Theories
Trait Theories
Humanistic Theories
Social-cognitive Theories
Biological Theories
Personality Assessment
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Things You’ll Learn in Chapter 11
Are some people with highly negative attitudes toward gay people repressing their own sexual desires? Q1 Q2
Can personality traits predict the type of music we like? Q3
What parenting skills are also associated with increased marital satisfaction? Q4
Does helping parents prepare a meal increase a child’s preference for healthy foods?
Can our genes predict how much we will give to charity? Q5 Q6
Why do people from different states vary in their entrepreneurial spirit?
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Personality
Personality = a unique and relatively stable pattern of thoughts, feelings, and actions
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4. Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic theories
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5. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud said the mind (the “psyche”) contains three levels of consciousness or awareness:
Conscious = thoughts or motives that a person in currently aware of or is remembering
Preconscious = Freud’s term for thoughts, motives, or memories that exist just beneath the surface of awareness and can be called to consciousness when necessary
Unconscious = Freud’s term for part of the psyche that stores repressed urges and primitive impulses
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Freud’s unconscious
The unconscious contains our most primitive, instinctual motives and anxieties
These are blocked from normal awareness but still have extraordinary impact on our behavior
Because these thoughts and motives are unacceptable and threatening, they are repressed (held out of awareness) unless they are unintentionally revealed in dreams and slips of the tongue
Most psychological disorders come from repressed memories and sexual/aggressive instincts; psychoanalysis was created to treat these disorders
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7. Personality structure
Id = according to Freud, the primitive, unconscious component of personality that operates irrationally and acts on the pleasure principle
Pleasure principle = seeking immediate gratification
Ego = the rational, decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle (“ego” = “I”)
Reality principle = seeks to delay gratification of the id’s impulses until appropriate outlets can be found
Superego = represents internalization of society’s values, standards, and morals; the conscience or moral personality component that incorporates parental and societal standards
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8. Personality structure
The ego is faced with satisfying both the id (biological drives) and the superego (society’s expectations). When it fails, anxiety slips into conscious awareness
To diminish anxiety, we use defense mechanisms = the ego’s protective method of reducing anxiety by self-deception and distorting reality
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9. Freud’s theory, continued
Much of Freud’s theory is controversial
Freud believed strong biological urges push children through five psychosexual stages = five developmental periods (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital) during which particular kinds of pleasures must be gratified if personality development is to proceed normally
If child’s needs aren’t met, he or she could become fixated, or stuck, at that stage
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10. Psychodynamic/Neo-Freudian Theories
Adler – theory of individual psychology: that we are motived by our goals in life, especially goals to achieve security and overcome feelings of inferiority
Inferiority complex = Adler’s idea that feelings of inferiority develop from early childhood experiences of helplessness and incompetence
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11. Psychodynamic/Neo-Freudian Theories
Jung – developed analytic psychology, believing the unconscious contains positive and spiritual motives as well as sexual and aggressive forces. Two forms of the unconscious mind:
Personal unconscious = created from our individual experiences
Collective unconscious = the part of the individual’s unconscious that is inherited, evolutionarily developed, and common to all members of the species
Archetypes = universal, inherited, primitive, and symbolic representations of a particular experience or object that reside in the collective unconscious
Archetypes cause us to react in certain predictable ways, such as gender roles: anima (feminine) and animus (masculine) aspects of personality
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12. Psychodynamic/Neo-Freudian Theories
Horney – said Freud’s theory was based on male bias and misunderstanding of women
Women’s everyday experience with inferiority led to power envy, not penis envy
Believed adult personality is shaped by childhood relationship with parents and how people respond to basic anxiety
Basic anxiety – feelings of helplessness and insecurity that adults experience because as children they felt alone and isolated in a hostile environment
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13. Evaluating Psychoanalytic Theories
Major criticisms of psychoanalytic theories
Inadequate empirical support
Overemphasis on sexuality, biology, and unconscious forces
Sexism
Are some people with highly negative attitudes toward gay people repressing their own sexual desires? Q1
People who identify as heterosexual but show a strong attraction to same-sex people in psychological tests also report more homophobic attitudes and greater hostility toward gay people (Weinstein et al., 2012)
How does Freud’s theory suggest these negative attitudes spring from unconscious repression of same-sex desires?
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Trait theories
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Early Trait Theorists
Trait = a relatively stable personality characteristic that can be used to describe someone
Allport was the first to attempt to arrange a person’s unique traits into a hierarchy
Cattell used factor analysis to condense a large list of traits into 16 source traits
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Modern Trait Theory
Five-factor model (FFM) = a comprehensive descriptive personality system; informally called the Big Five
These five traits emerge, even when different tests are used
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17. Evaluating Trait Theories
Big Five is the first to successfully achieve the goal of trait theories: to describe and organize personality traits using the smallest number of traits
Cross-cultural support for the Big Five Q2
Can personality traits predict the type of music we like?
Extroverts prefer upbeat music like rap and hip-hop, while people open to experience prefer complex, rebellious music like classical and rock
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Humanistic theories
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Humanistic Theories
Humanistic theories emphasize each person’s internal feelings, thoughts, and sense of basic worth
Self-actualization = the humanistic term for the inborn drive to realize one’s full potential and to develop all one’s inherent talents and capabilities
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Rogers’s Theory
Self-concept = a person’s relatively stable self-perception, or mental model, based on life experiences, particularly the feedback and perception of others Q3
What parenting skills are also associated with increased marital satisfaction?
To help children develop their fullest potential and life potential, adults must create atmosphere of unconditional positive regard = Roger’s term for love and acceptance with no contingencies attached
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Maslow’s Theory
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22. Evaluating Humanistic Theories
Humanistic theories play a major role in modern counseling and psychotherapy
Humanistic theories have been criticized for:
Naïve assumptions – unduly optimistic and overlook negative aspects of human nature
Poor testability and inadequate evidence – primary terms difficult to operationalize and test
Narrowness – describes personality but doesn’t explain it
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23. Social-cognitive theories
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24. Bandura’s and Rotter’s Approaches
Self-efficacy = Bandura’s term for a person’s learned expectations of success in a given situation; also, another term for self-confidence Q4
Does helping parents prepare a meal increase a child’s preference for healthy foods?
Children who helped parents with meal preparation reported higher self-efficacy for selecting and eating healthy foods (Chu et al., 2013)
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25. Bandura’s and Rotter’s Approaches
Reciprocal determinism = Bandura’s belief that a complex reciprocal interaction exists among the individual, his or her behavior, and the environmental stimuli, and that each of these components affects the others
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26. Bandura’s and Rotter’s Approaches
Rotter’s theory says learning experiences create cognitive expectancies that guide behavior and influence the environment
Your behavior or personality is determined by
what you expect to happen following a specific action and
the reinforcement value attached to specific outcomes
Locus of control (Chapter 3) helps explain your personality
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27. Evaluating Social-Cognitive Theories
Benefits of social-cognitive theories
Testable, objective hypotheses and operationally defined terms, rely on empirical data
Emphasize how the environment affects and is affected by individuals
Mischel says personalities change according to situation
Critics say ….
social-cognitive theorists focus too much on the situation and don’t adequately address the stability of the personality
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Biological theories
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29. Three Contributors to Personality
Eysenck: personality traits are biologically based
Brain imaging shows specific areas of the brain correlate with trait impulsiveness, risk-aversion, risk-seeking personalities, shyness, and sociability
Neurochemistry also influences personality, specifically MAO and dopamine
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Behavioral Genetics
Behavioral genetic is a relatively new field that determines the extent to which behavioral differences are due to genetics as opposed to the environment
Can our genes predict how much we will give to charity? Q5
Participants with the “niceness gene” reported higher levels of prosocial behavior like giving blood or engaging in volunteer work
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31. Evaluating Biological Theories
Personality traits are never the result of a single biological process
There is a strong inherited basis for personality, but the environment cannot be discounted
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32. Personality assessment
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33. Interviews and Observation
Psychologists use interviews to evaluate personality:
Unstructured interviews allow greater free exploration of personality
Structured interviews use specific questions to objectively evaluate responses and compare to others
Psychologists directly and methodically observe behavior
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Objective Tests
Objective tests are preferred method of assessment because they can be administered to many people and can be evaluated in standardized way
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) = the most widely researched and clinically used self-report personality test
Primarily designed to diagnose psychological disorders
NEO Personality Inventory-Revised assesses the Five- Factor model
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Projective Tests
Projective tests = a method of personality assessment in which an individual is presented with a standardized set of ambiguous stimuli, such as inkblots or abstract drawings, that allow the test taker to project his or her unconscious unto the test material; the individual’s responses are assumed to reveal inner feelings, motives, and conflicts
Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
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36. Are Personality Measurements Accurate?
Interviews and observations are time consuming and expensive; little agreement between raters
Objective tests incur three major criticisms:
Deliberate deception and social desirability bias
Diagnostic difficulties
Cultural bias and inappropriate use
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37. Are Personality Measurements Accurate?Q6
Why do people from different states vary in their entrepreneurial spirit?
A study of over 500,000 people in the U.S. found greater entrepreneurial spirit in western states, perhaps reflecting America’s historical migration patterns of people moving from east to west (Obschonka et al., 2013)
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38. Are Personality Measurements Accurate?
Projective tests have weak reliability and validity, but proponents say their open nature allow subjects to discuss sensitive topics
Because each method has its limits, psychologists often combine methods
Beware of pop-culture personality quizzes or horoscopes – they may be entertaining, but they aren’t based on science and shouldn’t be used to make important decisions
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