Personality

She felt that those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.
E.M. Forster Howards End

Personality
Unique, relatively consistent pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving

Preferences for how you handle situations, your sense of humor, or your expectations of others

You have a strong need for other people to like & admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity, which you have not turned to your advantagedisciplined & controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome & insecure insideat times, youre extraverted, affable, & sociable; at other times, youre introverted, wary, & reserved

Psychoanalytic Approach

Sigmund Freud (1856 1939)

Josef Breuers talking cure

Catharsis

Product of the Victorian era

Repressed sexuality Rationality & self-control distinguish us from the animals Inhibited sexuality & inhibited aggression

Eros and Thanatos

The Iceberg Metaphor

Freuds Structure of Personality

ConsciousAcute

Superego

Ego

awareness PreconsciousJust under awareness; easily known

Id

UnconsciousWell

below awareness; Difficult to know but very influential

How the iceberg works

Id

Functions on pleasure principle Immediate gratification of needs to reduce tension & discomfort regardless of consequences
Functions on idealistic principle Our moral guide/conscience Influenced by internalizing our parents values & the voice of society Works against the Id by inflicting guilt

Superego

How the iceberg works (cont.)

Ego

Functions on reality principle Serves to balance the demands the Id and the Superego Assesses what is realistically possible in satisfying the Id and/or Superego (i.e., what society will deem acceptable) Ego uses defense mechanisms to protect itself

Personality is result of the battle for control between id, ego & superego

Defense Mechanisms

Denial

Denying the anxiety outright

Repression

Rationalization

Defense Mechanisms (cont.)

Projection

Seeing in others unacceptable feelings that reside in ones own unconscious

Displacement

Acting out your anxiety on an innocent party Scapegoating

Defense Mechanisms (cont.)

Reaction formation

Reversing the nature of the anxiety so that it feels like its opposite nature Exaggerated love for someone you unconsciously hate
Channeling anxiety into socially-acceptable activities Focusing sexual energy into art, music, etc.

Sublimation

Freuds Psychosexual Stages

Periods of development

Sexual focus Implications for adult personality Fixation

Oral (Birth to 1 yrs)

Gratification is centered around the mouth (e.g., breast-feeding, sucking, biting) Gratification is centered around the pleasure of defecation; toilet-training is issue for resolution and development

Anal (1 to 3 yrs)

Freuds Psychoanalytic Stages

Phallic (3 to 6)

Gratification manifests itself through masturbation; resolution for development lies in identification w/ same-sex parent Oedipus Complex

Boys have unconscious jealous love for mother and desire to kill the father; fear of castration by father leads to resolution with acceptance of/identification with father and internalization of fathers values Strong superego results in this resolution
Girls discover that they do not have a penis and desire one (penis envy); they direct their anger toward the mother for not providing a penis; jealous of mother forefather Gradual realization that these desires are self-defeating; identification with mother results

Electra Complex

Freuds Psychoanalytic Stages

Latency (6 to puberty)

Sexual urges are repressed and transformed into socially acceptable activities, such as schoolwork and peer activities
Successful resolution and development into a mature sexual relationship

Genital (puberty adulthood)

Criticisms of Freud

Sexist

Freuds theory was thought to be sexist against women (e.g., penis envy, underdeveloped superego)
Subjective description, solely by Freud, and after the fact on a relatively small sample of patients, including himself! His patients were mostly females from upper classes How the heck can you directly confirm, disconfirm, or even observe the Oedipus Complex?! Feels more mythical than scientific

Description rather than prediction

Unverifiable concepts

Too many hypotheses for reactions to anxiety

But

Freuds theory.

Was rich and comprehensive in description st comprehensive theory of personality: every personality 1 theory since can be seen as a reaction to Freud Sparked psychoanalysis

Many still believe that psychoanalysis is the best treatment for mental illness

Was controversial and stretched the boundaries for creativity Freud: I am actually not a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistadoran adventurerwith all the curiosity, daring, and tenacity characteristic of a man of this sort. Why do you think his theory is still popular today? What do you like about it and why?

Beyond FreudDispositional Approaches

Principles of dispositional approaches

Personality is stable over time Personality is consistent across situations

Consequences of these principles

We must have enduring personal characteristics

Traits Types

Allports Trait Theory

Trait

Relatively enduring, consistent personality characteristics - inferred from behavior

3 types of traits

Affect every area of the individuals life Mother Theresa altruistic Influence many aspects of our lives, but not quite as pervasive Someone you think of as kind or funny Affect narrower aspects of our lives Preference for cowboy hats or always wearing perfume

Central traits

Secondary traits

Type Theories

5-factor model of personality

Where we fall on 5 different dimensions determines personality type Dimensions

Openness to experience

Curiosity, flexibility, imagination, artistic sensibility

Conscientiousness

Extraversion

Agreeableness

Neuroticsm

Behavioral Perspectives

Bandura

Self Efficacy

Take his ideas of observational learning and add cognition

Knowing we can actually perform behaviors successfully, in the way we wish to behave, leads to self-praise Situational specificity Our behavior is mostly a function of a given situation, not of stable, internal traits Interactionism: both traits and situations interact to produce behavior, thoughts

Mischels controversy

Banduras reciprocal determinism: behavior also influences traits and situations all 3 factors influence each other

Humanistic Psychology

Focuses on the positive aspects of being human (e.g., goodness, creativity, free will)

Rejection of the scientific goal of predicting and controlling human behavior

The major aim should be to discover things that expand and enrich human experience
Should strive to seek info that will help solve human problems Description of what it means to be a human being in terms of meaningful experience, such as values, language, and emotions

Humanistic perspectives

Rogers

Person-centered therapy

Congruence vs. incongruence

Lots of overlap between self and experience

Little overlap between self and experience

Evolutionary perspective

Evolutionary perspective

Disregards both conscious & unconscious determinants of personality Personality is a function of your unique combination of genes

Good at:

Explaining the Big Five

Bad at:

Explaining individual differences

Assessing Personality
Provide a story here: What does this look like? What features make you think this? What does this remind you of?

Projective Tests

Ask about meaningless, ambiguous stimuli

Theory behind it that we will give an answer consistent with the inner workings of our minds Best used to measure how people process information Creativity, coping resources, emotional processing, relationships with others, thought disorders, psychoses

Rorschach Inkblots

TAT-like Card
Provide a story here:

What is happening in this picture? What led up to it? What are the people here thinking and feeling? What will happen to these people here?

Thematic Apperception Test

Black & white pictures of people in vague/ambiguous situations

Asked to make up a dramatic story about the picture Best used to learn the motivation behind peoples behavior

Believed that person will identify with one of the characters on each card In their stories, people are thought to express their own circumstances, needs, environmental demands, emotions, and perceptions of reality