1. Chapter 12
Personality: Theory, Research, and Assessment

2. Defining Personality: Consistency and Distinctiveness
Personality Traits
Dispositions and dimensions
The Five-Factor Model
Extraversion
Neuroticism
Openness to experience
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness

3. Psychodynamic Perspectives
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory
Structure of personality
Id - Pleasure principle
Ego - Reality principle
Superego - Morality
Levels of awareness
Conscious
Unconscious
Preconscious
Conflict
Sex and Aggression
Anxiety
Defense Mechanisms

4. Fig 12. 3 – Freud’s model of personality dynamics
Fig 12.3 – Freud’s model of personality dynamics. According to Freud, unconscious conflicts between the id, ego, and superego sometimes lead to anxiety. This discomfort may lead to the use of defense mechanisms, which may temporarily relieve anxiety.

6. Freud on Development: Psychosexual Stages
Sexual = physical pleasure
Psychosexual stages
Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital
Fixation = Excessive gratification or frustration
Overemphasis on psychosexual needs during fixated stage

8. Other Psychodynamic Theorists
Carl Jung
Analytical Psychology
Personal and collective unconscious
Archetypes
Introversion/Extroversion
Alfred Adler
Individual Psychology
Striving for superiority
Compensation
Inferiority complex/overcompensation
Birth order

9. Fig 12. 4 – Jung’s vision of the collective unconscious
Fig 12.4 – Jung’s vision of the collective unconscious. Much like Freud, Jung theorized that each person has conscious and unconscious levels of awareness. However, he also proposed that the entire human race shares a collective unconscious, which exists in the deepest reaches of everyone’s awareness. He saw the collective unconscious as a storehouse of hidden ancestral memories, called archetypes. Jung believed that important cultural symbols emerge from these universal archetypes. Thus, he argued that remarkable resemblances among
symbols from disparate cultures (such as the mandalas shown here) are
evidence of the existence of the collective unconscious.

10. Evaluating Psychodynamic Perspectives
Pros
Insights regarding
The unconscious
The role of internal conflict
The importance of early childhood experiences
Cons
Poor testability
Inadequate empirical base
Sexist views

11. Behavioral Perspectives
Skinner’s views
Conditioning and response tendencies
Environmental determinism
Bandura’s views
Social leaning theory
Cognitive processes and reciprocal determinism
Observational learning
Models
Self-efficacy
Mischel’s views
The person-situation controversy

12. Fig 12. 5 – A behavioral view of personality
Fig 12.5 – A behavioral view of personality. Staunch behaviorists devote little attention to the structure of personality because it is unobservable, but they implicitly view personality as an individual’s collection of response tendencies. A possible hierarchy of response tendencies for a specific stimulus situation is shown here.

13. Fig 12. 6 – Personality development and operant conditioning
Fig 12.6 – Personality development and operant conditioning. According to Skinner, people’s characteristic response tendencies are shaped by reinforcers and other consequences that follow behavior. Thus, if your joking at a party leads to attention and compliments, your tendency to be witty and humorous will be strengthened.

14. Fig 12. 7 – Bandura’s reciprocal determinism
Fig 12.7 – Bandura’s reciprocal determinism. Bandura rejects Skinner’s highly deterministic view that freedom is an illusion and argues that internal mental events, external environmental contingencies, and overt behavior all influence one another.

15. Evaluating Behavioral Perspectives
Pros
Based on rigorous research
Insights into effects of learning and environmental factors
Cons
Over-dependence on animal research
Fragmented view of personality
Dehumanizing views

16. Humanistic Perspectives
Carl Rogers
Person Centered Theory
Self-concept
Conditional/unconditional positive regard
Incongruence and anxiety
Abraham Maslow
Self-actualization theory
Hierarchy of needs
The healthy personality

17. Fig 12. 9 – Rogers’s view of personality structure
Fig 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.

18. Fig 12. 10 – Rogers’s view of personality development and dynamics
Fig – Rogers’s view of personality development and dynamics. Rogers’s theory of development posits that conditional love leads to a need to distort experiences, which fosters an incongruent self-concept. Incongruence makes one prone to recurrent anxiety, which triggers defensive behavior, which fuels more incongruence.

19. Fig 12. 11 – Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Fig – Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. According to Maslow, human needs are arranged in a hierarchy, and people must satisfy their basic needs before they can satisfy higher needs. In the diagram, higher levels in the pyramid represent progressively less basic needs. Individuals progress upward in the hierarchy when lower needs are satisfied reasonably well, but they may regress back to lower levels if basic needs are no longer satisfied

20. Fig 12. 12 – Maslow’s view of the healthy personality
Fig – Maslow’s view of the healthy personality. Humanistic theorists emphasize psychological health instead of maladjustment. Maslow’s description of characteristics of self-actualizing people evokes a picture of the healthy personality.

21. Evaluating Humanistic Perspectives
Humanistic theories are credited with highlighting the importance of a person’s subjective view of reality. They are also applauded for focusing attention on the issue of what constitutes a healthy personality.
They are criticized for lacking a strong research base, poor testability, and what may be an overly optimistic view of human nature (Maslow had a hard time finding live people who had self-actualized).

22. Biological Perspectives
Eysenk’s theory
3 higher order traits
Extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism
Determined by genes
Twin studies
Novelty seeking and genetics
The evolutionary approach
Traits conducive to reproductive fitness

23. Fig 12. 13 – Eysenck’s model of personality structure
Fig – Eysenck’s model of personality structure. Eysenck described personality structure as a hierarchy of traits. In this scheme, a few higher-order traits, such as extraversion, determine a host of lower-order traits, which determine a person’s habitual responses.

24. Fig 12. 14 – Twin studies of personality
Fig – Twin studies of personality. Loehlin (1992) has summarized, the results of twin studies that have examined the Big Five personality traits. The N under each trait indicates the number of twin studies that have examined that trait. The chart plots the average correlations obtained for identical and fraternal twins in these studies. As you can see, identical twins have shown greater resemblance in personality than fraternal twins have, suggesting that personality is partly inherited.

25. Fig – Heritability and environmental variance for the Big Five traits. Based on the twin study data of Riemann et al. (1997), Plomin and Caspi (1999) estimated the heritability of each of the Big Five traits. The data also allowed them to estimate the amount of variance on each trait attributable to shared environment and nonshared environment. As you can see, the heritability estimates hovered in the vicinity of 40%, with two exceeding 50%.
As in other studies, the influence of shared environment was very modest.
(Based on Plomin and Caspi, 1999)

26. Evaluating Biological Perspectives
Pros
Convincing evidence for genetic influence
Cons
Conceptual problems with heritability estimates
Artificial carving apart of nature and nurture
No comprehensive biological theory

27. Contemporary Empirical Approaches to Personality Traits
Marvin Zuckerman
Sensation Seeking
Mark Snyder
Self-monitoring
Markus and Kitayama
Independence vs. interdependence and culture