Personality A persons pattern of thinking feeling and

Personality A person’s pattern of thinking, feeling and acting.

Personality “Characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting. ” Involves enduring behavior patterns, and thus consistency, or predictability of character. “Involves the organization of individuality – internal coherence or unified organization

Answer these and define your image of human nature • • • Free will or determinism? Nature of nurture? Past, present, or future? Uniqueness of universality? Equilibrium or growth? Optimism or pessimism?

Four major perspectives on Personality Psychoanalytic - unconscious motivations Trait - specific dimensions of personality Humanistic - inner capacity for growth Social-Cognitive - influence of environment

The Self • Video – 27 m

Personality - Recap “Characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting. ” Involves enduring behavior patterns, and thus consistency, or predictability of character. “Involves the organization of individuality – internal coherence or unified organization

Psychoanalytic Perspective Of Personality

Freudian Classical Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality • Developed by Sigmund Freud in the late nineteenth century and continued until his death in 1939 – Freud received a medical degree and established a practice as a clinical neurologist treating patients with emotional disorders – Believed sex was a primary cause of emotional problems and was a critical component of his personality theory • Remains an important influence in Western culture

Freud’s Three Levels of Awareness 1. The conscious mind is what you are presently aware of, what you are thinking about right now 2. The preconscious mind is stored in your memory that you are not presently aware of but can gain access to 3. The unconscious mind is the part of our mind of which we cannot become aware – It contains, however, the primary motivations for all of our actions and feelings – our biological instinctual drives (such as for food and sex) and repressed unacceptable thoughts, memories, and feelings, especially unresolved conflicts from our early childhood experiences

Freud’s Three-Part Personality Structure Id Ego Superego

The Id • Is the original personality, the only part present at birth and the part out of which the other two parts of our personality emerge – Resides in the unconscious mind – Includes our biological instinctual drives, the primitive parts of our personality located in our unconscious • Life instincts for survival, reproduction, and pleasure • Death instincts, destructive and aggressive drives detrimental to survival – Operates on a pleasure principle; that is, it demands immediate gratification for these drives without the concern for the consequences of this gratification

The Ego • Starts developing during the first year or so of life to find realistic and socially-acceptable outlets for the id’s needs – Operates on the reality principle, finding gratification for instinctual drives within the constraints of reality (the norms and laws of society) – Part of the ego is unconscious (tied to the id) and part of the ego is conscious and preconscious (tied to the external world) – Serves as the executive manager of the personality

The Superego • Represents one’s conscience and idealized standards of behavior in their culture – Operates on a morality principle, threatening to overwhelm us with guilt and shame – The demands of the superego and the id will come into conflict and the ego will have to resolve this turmoil within the constraints of reality – To prevent being overcome with anxiety because of trying to satisfy the id and superego demands, the ego uses what Freud called defense mechanisms, processes that distort reality and protect us from anxiety

Freud's Early Exploration into the Unconscious • Used hypnosis and free association (relax and say it all) to delve into unconscious. • Mapped out the “mental dominoes” of the patients past in a process he called psychoanalysis.

Freud's Stages of Psychosexual Development • Freud believed that your personality developed in your childhood. • Mostly from unresolved problems in the early childhood. • Believed that children pass through a series of psychosexual stages. • The id focuses it’s libido (sexual energy) on a different erogenous zone.

Freud’s Psychosexual Stage Theory • Was developed chiefly from his own childhood memories and from his years of interactions with his patients and their case studies that included their childhood memories • An erogenous zone is the area of the body where the id’s pleasure-seeking psychic energy is focused during a particular stage of psychosexual development – A change in erogenous zones designates the beginning of a new stage • Fixation occurs when a portion of the id’s pleasure-seeking energy remains in a stage because of excessive gratification or frustration of our instinctual needs and continue throughout the person’s life and impact their behavior and personality traits

Five Psychosexual Stages Oral Stage (birth – 18 months) Anal Stage (18 months – 3 years) Phallic Stage (3 – 6 years) Latency Stage (6 years – puberty) Genital Stage (puberty – adulthood)

Oral Stage • 0 -18 months • Pleasure center is on the mouth. • Sucking, biting and chewing.

Anal Stage • 18 -36 months • Pleasure focuses on bladder and bowel control. • Controlling ones life and independence. • Anal retentive

Phallic Stage • 3 -6 years • Pleasure zone is the genitals. • Coping with incestuous feelings. • Oedipus and Electra complexes.

Latency Stage • 6 - puberty • Dormant sexual feeling. • Cooties stage.

Genital Stage • Puberty to death. • Maturation of sexual interests.

Freud’s Psychosocial States of Personality Development Stage (age range) Erogenous Zone Activity Focus Oral (birth - 1½ years) Mouth, lips, and Sucking, biting, and tongue chewing Anal (1½ - 3 years) Anus Bowel retention and elimination Phallic (3 - 6 years) Genitals Identifying with samesex parent to learn gender role and sense of morality Latency (6 years puberty) None Cognitive and social development Genital (puberty adulthood) Genitals Mature sexual orientation and

Fixation • A lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage. • Where conflicts were unresolved. Orally fixated people may need to chain smoke or chew gum. Or denying the dependence by acting tough or being very sarcastic. Anally fixated people can either be anal expulsive or anal retentive.

Potty Training • Parents try to get the child to have self-control during toilet training – If the child reacts to harsh toilet training by trying to get even with the parents by withholding bowel movements, an anal-retentive personality with the traits of orderliness, neatness, stinginess, and obstinacy develops – The anal-expulsive personality develops when the child rebels against the harsh training and has bowel movements whenever and wherever he desires

Phallic Stage Conflicts • In the Oedipus conflict, the little boy becomes sexually attracted to his mother and fears the father (his rival) will find out and castrate him • In the Electra conflict, the little girl is attracted to her father because he has a penis; she wants one and feels inferior without one (penis envy)

Identification • In the process of identification, the child adopts the characteristics of the same-sexed parents and learns their gender role (the set of behaviors expected of someone of a particular sex) • It is during identification that the superego begins to develop

Defense Mechanisms • The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by distorting reality. • Never aware they are occurring. • Seven major types.

Repression • The Mac Daddy defense mechanism. • Push or banish anxiety driven thought deep into unconscious. • Why we do not remember lusting after our parents.

Regression • When faced with anxiety the person retreats to a more infantile stage. • Thumb sucking on the first day of school.

Reaction Formation • Ego switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. • Being mean to someone you have a crush on.

Projection • Disguise your own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. • Thinking that your spouse wants to cheat on you when it is you that really want to cheat.

Rationalization • Offers selfadjusting explanations in place of real, more threatening reasons for your actions. • You don’t get into a college and say, “I really did not want to go there it was too far away!!”

Displacement • Shifts the unacceptable impulses towards a safer outlet. • Instead of yelling at a teacher, you will take anger out on a friend by peeing on his car).

Sublimation • Re-channel their unacceptable impulses towards more acceptable or socially approved activities. • Channel feeling of homosexuality into aggressive sports play.

• Test your knowledge out – Handout 41 -3

Evaluation of Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality • Freud’s notion of an “unconscious” level of awareness is not accessible to anyone and is impossible to examine scientifically – Indeed, unconscious information processing does impact our thinking and behavior – However, the unconscious is not a storehouse of instinctual drives, conflicts, and repressed memories and desires • Although early childhood experiences are indeed important, there is little evidence for his psychosexual stages impacting development

Evaluation of Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality • Contemporary researchers think repression, seldom, if ever, really occurs – We understand today how Freud’s questioning during therapy may have created such “repressed’ memories in his patients • There is evidence we fight hard to maintain self-esteem, but not necessarily through defense mechanisms as Freud described them

How do we assess the unconscious? We can use hypnosis or free association. But more often we use projective tests.

Projective Tests • A personality test. • Provides an ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics. Examples Are:

TAT Thematic Apperception Test • A projective test which people express their inner feelings through stories they make about ambiguous scenes

TAT

Rorschach Inkblot Test • The most widely used projective test • A set of ten inkblots designed to identify people’s feelings when they are asked to interpret what they see in the inkblots.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Neo-Freudians • Psychologists that took some premises from Freud and built upon them. Alfred Adler Karen Horney Carl Jung

Alfred Adler • Childhood is important to personality. • But focus should be on social factors- not sexual ones. • Our behavior is driven by our efforts to conquer inferiority and feel superior. • Inferiority Complex

Karen Horney • Childhood anxiety is caused by a dependent child’s feelings of helplessness. • This triggers our desire for love and security. • Fought against Freud’s “penis envy” concept.

Carl Jung • Less emphasis on social factors. • Focused on the unconscious. • We all have a collective unconscious: a shared/inherited well of memory traces from our species history.

End Psychoanalytic

The Humanistic Approach

Alternative Approaches • Humanistic theories developed in the 1960 s as a part of a response to the deterministic psychoanalytic and strict behavioral psychological approaches that then dominated psychology and the study of personality – The humanistic approach emphasizes conscious free will in one’s actions, the uniqueness of the individual person, and personal growth • During the 1960 s, social-cognitive theorists rebelled against the narrowness of the strict behavioral approach to the development of personality, emphasizing both social and cognitive factors along with conditioning to explain personality development

The Humanistic Approach to Personality • Abraham Maslow is considered the father of the humanistic movement – He studied the lives of very healthy and creative people to develop his theory of personality • Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is an arrangement of the innate needs that motivate our behavior, from the strongest needs at the bottom of the pyramid to the weakness needs at the top of the pyramid

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Self-Actualization Self. Esteem Social Safety Physiological

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Self-Actualization • Characteristics of self-actualized people include – Accepting themselves, others, and the nature of world for what they are – Having a need for privacy and only a few close, emotional relationships – Being autonomous and independent, democratic, and very creative – Having peak experiences, which are experiences of deep insight in which you experience whatever you are doing as fully as possible

Critique • Maslow hierarchy of needs is criticized for being based on nonempirical vague studies of a small number of people that he subjectively selected as self-actualized

Roger’s Self Theory • Carl Rogers was a clientcentered therapist who dealt with young, bright college students with adjustment problems – Emphasized self-actualization – Believe that people have a strong need for positive regard – to be accepted by and have the affection of others, especially the significant others in our life

Roger’s Self Theory • Our parents set up conditions of worth, the behaviors and attitudes for which they would give us positive regard – Meeting conditions of worth continues throughout life, and a person develops a self-concept of what others think he should be • Unconditional positive regard – acceptance and approval without conditions – Empathy from others, and having others be genuine with respect to their own feelings is necessary if we are to self-actualized • Note that neither Maslow nor Roger’s theories are research-based

The Trait Perspective

Trait Theories of Personality • Personality traits are internally based, relatively stable characteristics that define an individual’s personality – Each trait is a dimension, a continuum ranging from one extreme of the dimension to the other • Trait theorists use factor analysis and other statistical techniques to tell them how many basic personality factors (or traits) are needed to describe human personality, as well as what these factors are – Factor analysis identifies clusters of test items (e. g. , on a personality test) that measure the same factor/trait

Number and Kind of Personality Traits • Raymond B. Cattell, using factor analysis, found that 16 traits were necessary to describe human personality • Hans Eysenck, also using factor analysis, argued for three trait dimensions • Cattell and Eysenck differed because the number of traits depends on the level of categorization in the factor analysis

Eysenck’s Three-Factor Theory Extraversion. Introversion Neuroticism. Emotional stability Psychoticism. Impulse control Eysenck argued that these traits are determined by

Eysencks’ Personality Factors

Eysencks’ Personality Factors

Eysencks’ Personality Factors

Eysencks’ Personality Factors

Eysencks’ Personality Factors

Eysencks’ Personality Factors

Eysenck’s Three-Factor Theory • The biological basis for the extraversion-introversion trait is level of cortical arousal (neuronal activity) – Introverts have higher normal-levels of arousal than an extravert, so extraverts need to seek out external stimulation to raise the level of arousal in the brain to a more optimal level

Eysenck’s Three-Factor Theory • People who are high on the neuroticismemotional stability dimension tend to be overly anxious, emotionally unstable, and easily upset because of a more reactive sympathetic nervous system • The psychoticism-impulse control trait is concerned with aggressiveness, impulsiveness, and empathy – A high level of testosterone and a low level of MAO, a neurotransmitter inhibitor, lead to high levels of psychoticism

Five-Factor Model of Personality • These five factors appear to be universal and are consistent from about age 30 to late adulthood • These factors are measured using an assessment instrument called the NEO-PI

The “Big Five” Traits • • • Openness Extraversion Agreeableness Emotional Stability Conscientiousness

The “Big Five” Traits

The “Big Five” Traits

The “Big Five” Traits

The “Big Five” Traits

The “Big Five” Traits

Evaluating the Trait Perspective • Does not take into account how the situation influences a person’s behavior • Doesn’t explain why the person behaves as they do--just how they behave

End of Traits

Personality Assessment • The main uses of personality tests are to aid in diagnosing people with problems, counseling, and making personnel decisions Personality Inventories Projective Tests

Personality Inventories • Are designed to measure multiple traits of personality, and in some cases, disorders – Are a series of questions or statements for which the test taker must indicate whether they apply to him or not • The MMPI (the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) is the most widely used, translated into more than 100 languages

MMPI • Uses a “True/False/Cannot Say” format with 567 simple statements (e. g. , “I like to cook”) • Developed to be a measure of abnormal personality, with 10 clinical scales such as depression and schizophrenia • Items were developed and tested to differentiate different groups of people (a representative sample of people suffering a specific disorder versus a group of normal people) on certain dimensions; to be

MMPI • Contains three validity scales, which attempt to detect test takers who are trying to cover up problems and fake profiles or who were careless in their responding • Its test construction method leads to good predictive validity for its clinical scales and its objective scoring procedure leads to reliability in interpretation

The Big Five Once you take a test that measures your personality according to the Big Five Scale…. Your traits will be stable over time. They can be attributed to your genetics They apply across different cultures They predict other attributes.

Assessing Our Traits • Personality Inventories: a questionnaire where people respond to items attempting to gauge different aspects of their personality

MMPI Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory: • the most widely used personality test. • Originally used to identify emotional disorders. Now used for screening purposes.

MMPI put to the Test

The Person-Situation Controversy • Are traits really stable? Kind Of…. They change according to the situation

End • 3/4/2009 • Psychoanalytic, ppt