PERSONALITY: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND

ASSESSMENT

Personality: refers to an individual’s unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits

Used to explain 1)consistency in behavior and 2)distinctiveness of behavior

DEFINING PERSONALITY

Personality trait: a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations

Cattell concluded that personality can be described completely by measuring just 16 traits

PERSONALITY TRAITS: DISPOSITIONS AND DIMENSIONS

McRae and Costa 1) Openness to

experience 2)

Conscientiousness 3) Extraversion 4) Agreeableness 5) Neuroticism

5-FACTOR MODEL OF PERSONALITY TRAITS

OTHER THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

Def: include all the diverse theories descended from the work of Sigmund Freud, which focus on unconscious mental forces

PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES

Attempts to explain personality, motivation, and psychological disorders by focusing on childhood experiences, on unconscious motives, and methods used to cope w/sexual and aggressive urges

FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

3 parts: 1) Id: primitive, instinctive component;

operates according to pleasure principle 2) Ego: decision-making component;

operates according to the reality principle 3) Superego: moral component;

incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong

FREUD’S STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY

FREUD’S ICEBERG

Conscious: whatever one is aware of at a particular point in time

Preconscious: material just beneath the surface of awareness that can be easily retrieved

Unconscious: thoughts, memories, and desires that are well beneath the surface of conscious awareness but that nonetheless exert great influence on behavior

FREUD’S LEVELS OF AWARENESS

Freud: people’s lives are dominated by conflicts that center on sexual and aggressive impulses

Sexual and aggressive desires are thwarted more often

CONFLICT AND TYRANNY OF SEX AND AGGRESSION

Lingering conflicts can produce anxiety

Worry about: 1) id going out of control and creating negative consequences or 2)superego out of control creating guilt about a real or imagined transgression

ANXIETY

Def: largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety or guilt

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Rationalization: creating false but plausible causes to justify unacceptable behavior

Repression: keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious

Projection: attributing one’s own thoughts, feelings, or motives to another

Displacement: diverting emotional feelings (anger) from original source to a substitute

Reaction Formation: behaving opposite of what you feel Regression: reverting to immature behavior Identification: bolstering self-esteem by forming an

imaginary or real alliance with some person or group

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Def: developmental periods w/a characteristic sexual focus that leave their mark on adult personality

Fixation: failure to move forward from one stage to another as expected

DEVELOPMENT: PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES

Oral stage: 1st year; erotic focus is the mouth

Anal stage: 2nd year; erotic pleasure from bowel movements

Phallic stage: c. age 4; erotic focus on the genital; self-stimulation

STAGES

Latency stage: expanding social contacts beyond the immediate family

Genital stage: refocus on genitals, channeled toward peers

STAGES

Unconscious has 2 layers

1) Personal unconscious: repressed or forgotten material

2) Collective unconscious: a storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from people’s ancestral past

JUNG’S ANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY

People share an unconscious

Archetypes: emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning

JUNG CONTINUED

1st to describe Introverts:

preoccupied w/the internal world of their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences

Extraverts: interested in external world of people and things

JUNG CONTINUED

Striving for superiority: a universal drive to adapt, improve oneself, and master life’s challenges

Compensation: involves efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one’s abilities

ADLER’S INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY

Excessive feelings of inferiority leads to an inferiority complex

People overcompensate and pursue status and power over others

ADLER CONTINUED

Unconscious forces can influence behavior Internal conflict often plays a key role in

generating psychological distress Early childhood experiences can have

powerful influences on adult personality People do use defense mechanisms to

reduce unpleasant emotions

EVALUATING PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVES

Criticisms: Poor testability—ideas too vague to test Inadequate evidence Sexism—a bias against women exists

EVALUATING CONTINUED