1. Raymond Walters College
PowerPoint Presentations for Passer/Smith Psychology: Frontiers and Applications by
David K. Jones
Westminster College
and
Diane Feibel, Ed. D.
Raymond Walters College

2. PowerPoint Presentations for:
Passer/Smith Psychology: Frontiers and Applications
Chapter 13
Personality

3. What is Personality? People differ from each other in meaningful ways
People seem to show some consistency in behavior
Personality is defined as distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling, and acting

5. Freudian Theory Structures of Personality Levels of consciousness Id
Operates according to the “pleasure principle”
Ego
Operates according to the “reality” principle
Superego
Contains values and ideals
Levels of consciousness
Conscious
What we’re aware of
Preconscious
Memories etc. that can be recalled
Unconscious
Wishes, feelings, impulses that lies beyond awareness

6. Freudian Model

7. Freudian Model

8. Freudian Theory Anxiety occurs when:
Impulses from the id threaten to get out of control
The ego perceives danger from the environment
The ego deals with the problem through:
coping strategies
defense mechanisms

9. Freudian Theory

10. Freudian Model: Psychosexual stages
Oral
Primary satisfaction from chewing and sucking
Anal
Pleasure focused on elimination
Phallic
Pleasure derived from sexual organs
Experience Oedipal or Electra conflict
Latency
Genital

11. Problems with psychoanalytic theory
Concepts are ambiguous and difficult to operationally define
Theory doesn’t allow clear-cut predictions
Much research does not support the theory’s basic suppositions

12. Neoanalytic and Object Relations Perspectives
Alfred Adler
Humans are motivated by social interest
Carl Jung
A collective unconscious is represented by universal archetypes
Object relations theory
Focuses on mental representations people form on the basis of early experience

13. Motivation: Humanistic Theory (Maslow, 1954, 1970)

14. Humanistic Perspectives
Carl Rogers
We have needs for:
Self-consistency (absence of conflict between self-perceptions
Congruence (consistency between self-perceptions and experience)
Inconsistency evokes anxiety and threat

15. Humanistic Perspectives: Rogers
We develop a need for positive self-regard
However, people usually place conditions of worth on us
Unconditional positive regard is important

16. Self-esteem

17. The Self Self-verification Self-enhancement
People are motivated to maintain self-consistency and congruence
Self-enhancement
A tendency to gain and preserve a positive self-image

18. The Self-Concept

19. Personality Factors The Big Five Factors (McCrae & Costa, 1999)
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism

20. Eysenck’s Model of Personality

21. Biological Foundations of Personality Traits
The brains of extreme introverts are overaroused, and the brains of extreme extroverts are underaroused (Eysenck, 1967)
On a great number of characteristics, MZ twins are more similar than are DZ twins

23. Evolutionary Theory Where did the traits come from?
Traits have been selected for:
Physical survival
Reproduction of the species

24. Stability of Personality Traits
Little stability of behavior across situations
This makes it difficult to predict behavior from personality traits
Stability over time
There is good evidence for both stability of some traits and change in some traits over time

25. Predicting Behavior from Personality Traits
Personality traits interact with other traits as well as with characteristics of situations
Situational consistency is influenced by the importance of a trait for the person
High self-monitors act differently in different situations, while low self-monitors do not

27. Personality and Health
Type A personality
Demanding, have time urgency, high levels of competitiveness, ambition, aggressiveness, and hostility
The hostility component is related to coronary heart disease
Type B personality
More relaxed, agreeable, less time urgency

28. Personality and Health
Type C personality
Tend to bottle up negative emotions
May be related to cancer proneness
the Type C personality

29. Personality and Health
Optimism
Pessimists are at greater risk for depression and are more vulnerable to physical disease
Conscientiousness
Conscientious is positively correlated with physical health and longetivity

30. Locus of Control (Rotter)
Internal locus of control
Life outcomes are under personal control
Positively correlated with self-esteem
Internals use more problem-focused coping
External locus of control
Luck, chance, and powerful others control behavior

31. Self-efficacy
Beliefs concerning ability to perform behaviors needed to achieve a desired outcome
Four important determinants:
Previous performance attainments
Observational learning
Verbal persuasion
Controlling negative arousal

33. Cognitive-Affective Personality System (Mischel & Shoda, 1999)
People exhibit behavioral signatures, consistent ways of responding
Person variables responsible:
Encoding strategies
Expectancies and beliefs
Goals and values
Affect
Personal competencies and self-regulatory processes

34. Personality Assessment
Structured interviews
Behavioral assessment
Remote behavior sampling

35. Personality Assessment
Projective Tests
Person is presented with an ambiguous stimulus
Interpretation of the stimulus will be a “projection” of inner needs and feelings

36. Personality Assessment
Rorschach ink-blot test
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Draw-a-person test

37. Personality Assessment
Objective personality tests
Include standard sets of questions that are scored using a specific scoring key
e.g. NEO-PIR, MMPI-II