Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE: PERSONALITY

Learning Objectives

LO 12.1: Define personality and summarize the psychodynamic perspectives.

LO 12.2:Describe humanistic perspectives.

LO 12.3:Describe the trait perspectives.

LO 12.4:Describe the personological and life story perspectives.

LO 12.5:Describe the social cognitive perspectives.

LO 12.6:Describe the biological perspectives.

LO 12.7:Characterize the main methods of personality assessment

LO 12.8:Summarize how personality relates to health and wellness.

  1. Chapter Overview
  2. Chapter Features
  3. Connections
  4. Teaching the Chapter
  5. Lecture Outlines by Section
  6. Suggested Activities
  7. Critical Thinking Questions
  8. Polling Questions
  9. Apply Your Knowledge
  10. Suggested Readings and Media
  11. Activity Handouts
  12. Answer Key to Activity Handouts

I.Chapter Overview

Experiencing Psychology:Picking up right where they left off, 76 years ago

  • The chapter begins with a discussion on how our social networking has helped us stay in contact with longlost friends and family.
  • After not seeing someone for such a long time, have you ever felt as if “ we’re picking up from where we left off, “ or “ nothing has changed.”
  • King goes on to explain the idea behind personality psychology in that it explains the psychological attributes that make people who they are. And even though age and life experiences can change us, some things simply remain the same.
  1. Psychodynamic Perspectives
  • Personality is explained as the enduring pattern of distinctive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize the way an individual adapts to the world.
  • Psychodynamic perspectives see personality as being primarily unconscious and as developing in stages. This perspective emphasizes how early experiences with parents are important in sculpting an individual’spersonality.
  1. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
  • Freud believed that anything pleasurable involves sex.
  • Freud developed what is known as psychoanalysis, which was his approach to personality. He developed this approach through his work with patients dealing with hysteria, which is described as physical symptoms without any physical cause. Freud believed hysterical symptoms were overdetermined or had many causes in the unconscious.
  • Structures of Personality
  • Freud believed that personality had three structures: the id, the ego, and the superego.
  • The id is instincts and an individual’s reservoir of psychic energy. The id is unconscious. It works on the pleasure principle, which works on immediate gratification and states that individuals seek pleasure and avoid pain.
  • The ego deals with the demands of reality. It tries to bring an individual pleasure within the norms of reality. This is known as the reality principle. It is partially conscious.
  • The superego is the moral part of personality. It is what people refer to as their conscience. It considers whether the id’s impulses can be satisfied in normal terms. It does not consider reality.
  1. Defense mechanisms
  1. Defense mechanisms are strategies used to resolve conflicts among the demands for reality, the wishes of the id, and the constraints of the superego. They reduce anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
  2. Displacement means directing unacceptable impulses at a less threatening target.
  3. Repression is one of the most powerful defense mechanisms because it pushes unacceptable id impulses out of awareness and back into the unconscious mind.
  4. Defense mechanisms are unconscious and when used in moderation they are not necessarily unhealthy.
  5. Defense mechanisms have been used to explain prejudice; projection involves seeing in others the impulses a person fears in him- or herself.
  6. Psychosexual Stages of Personality Development
  7. The oral stage occurs from birth until 18 months of age.The infants’ pleasure center is around the mouth. Chewing, sucking, and biting are sources of pleasure.
  8. The anal stage occurs from 18 to 36 months of age. The child’s pleasure is centered on the anus and urethra and the eliminative functions that are associated with these areas.
  9. The phallic stage occurs between 3 and 6 years of age. Pleasure in this stage focuses on the genitals as the child discovers self-stimulation. The Oedipus complex occurs during this stage. It is the intense desire for a boy to replace his father and enjoy the affections of his mother.Castration anxiety also occurs during this stage and is the intense fear in a boy of being mutilated by his father.
  10. In Freud’s view, girls were considered inferior to men because girls did not have a penis. According to Freud, girls experience penis envy.
  11. The latency period occurs between 6 years of age and puberty. After the stressful time of the phallic stage, the child represses all interest in sexuality.
  12. The genital stage occurs between adolescence and adulthood. It is the time of sexual reawakening. The source of sexual pleasure comes from outside the family.
  13. Freud believed that an individual could become fixated at any one of these stages if they under- or overindulged during that time.
  1. Psychodynamic Critics and Revisionists
  2. Freud had many critics that believed his thoughts on sexuality, early experiences, social factors, and the unconscious mind were misguided.
  3. Some criticism was: sexuality is not the pervasive force behind personality. The first five years of life are not as powerful in shaping adult personality. The ego and conscious thought processes play dominant roles in personality. Sociocultural factors are more important than Freud believed.
  1. Horney’s Sociocultural Approach
  1. Horney argued that previous research about how women function was limited by the fact that those that described women were men.
  2. She argued against penis envy and said that both sexes envy the attributes of the other.
  3. She argued that there was a need for security, not sex, and that this need was the prime motive in human existence.
  1. Jung’s Analytical Theory
  1. The collective unconscious is the impersonal, deepest layer of the unconscious mind. In this theory, impersonal means that it is the same across each person.
  2. Archetypes are emotionally laden ideas and images that have a rich and symbolic meaning for people. Two of the main archetypes are the anima, which is a woman, and the animus, which is a man.
  3. Adler’s Individual Psychology
  4. According to Adler, individual psychology is when people are motivated by purposes and goals. It is perfection, not pleasure,that is the key motivator.
  5. He believed that social factors were more important than sexual motivation in shaping personality.
  1. Evaluating the Psychodynamic Perspectives
  1. Some of the psychodynamic theories in place today still share some of the same principles of Freud. Personality is determined both by current experiences and those experienced earlier in life. Personality can be better understood by looking at it developmentally. People mentally transform their experiences. The mind is not all consciousness. An individual’s inner world conflicts with the outer demands of reality. Personality and judgment are rightful and important topics of psychological inquiry.
  2. Some researchers have criticized the psychodynamic perspective because they claim its view of people is too negative and pessimistic.
  1. Critics have also claimed that psychoanalysis is not a theory that can be tested through empirical research.
  1. Humanistic Perspectives
  2. The humanistic perspective stresses that people have the capacity for personal growth, freedom to choose their own destiny, and positive human qualities.
  3. The humanistic psychologist believes that we all have the ability to cope with stress, control our lives, and achieve what we desire.
  1. Maslow’s Approach
  1. Abraham Maslow believed that humanistic psychology neither dealt with Freudian drives nor with the stimulus-response principles of behaviorism.
  2. Maslow believed that motivation was set up in a hierarchy of needs and at the top of those needs was the need for self-actualization. Self-actualization is the motivation to develop one’s full potential as a human being.
  3. According to Maslow, people who have achieved self-actualization would be tolerant of others, have a gentle sense of humor, and be likely to pursue the greater good.
  4. Rogers’s Approach
  5. Rogers’s studies led the way for contemporary studies of self-esteem, personal growth, and self-determination.
  6. He believed that most people have difficulty accepting their own true positive feelings. He believed that all people are born with goodness in them, but as they grow up, the people around them condition them to move away from their genuine feelings.
  7. Explaining Unhappiness
  8. Unconditional positive regard is what Rogers referred to as the term for accepting, valuing, and being positive toward another person regardless of the person’s behavior.
  9. Oftentimes, others value us only when we behave in particular ways, called conditions of worth.
  10. Conditions of worth can become part of our self-concept, our conscious representation of who we are and who we wish to become.
  11. A central theme in Rogers’s view was that of a self-concept, which is an individual’s overall perceptions and assessments of his or her abilities, behavior, and personality.
  12. Rogers stated that there is a difference between the real self, who is the self resulting from experiences and the ideal self, who is the self we would like to be.
  1. Promoting Optimal Functioning
  2. Having empathy means being a sensitive listener and understanding another person’s true feelings.
  3. Research supports the notion that an enduring, stable sense of self-esteem is more likely to emerge if we feel good about ourselves without having to live up to external standards.
  4. Being genuine means being open with our feelings and dropping any pretenses and facades.
  1. Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective
  1. The humanistic psychologists brought awareness to the way individuals perceive themselves and the world around them, and that is the key element in personality.
  2. Some psychologists believe that the humanistic perspective is too optimistic about human nature and overestimates the freedom and rationality of humans.
  1. Trait Theories
  2. A trait is an enduring personality characteristic that tends to lead to certain behaviors.
  1. Trait Theories
  2. Trait theories state that personality consists of broad and enduring dispositions that tend to lead to characteristic responses.
  3. People can be described in the way that they behave.
  4. Gordon Allport believed that to understand healthy people, the focus must be on their lives in the present, not on their childhood experiences.
  5. He believed that the study of personality should focus on healthy, well-adjusted individuals.
  6. In defining personality, Allport believed that it should stress the uniqueness of all individuals and their capacity to adapt to the environment.
  7. He used a lexical approach, which was based on the idea that if a trait was important to an individual in real life, then it ought to be represented in the natural language individuals use to talk about each other.
  8. Factor analysisis a statistical procedure that allows researchers to identify which traits go together.
  9. The Five-Factor Model of Personality
  10. The big five factors of personality that are used to describe individuals are: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
  11. Neuroticism is feeling negative emotion more often than positive emotion.
  12. Extraverts are more likely to engage in social activities.
  13. Openness is related to higher IQs, liberal values, interest in art and culture, and creative pursuits. This is often the most difficult trait to understand. Most recently, it has been linked to living longer.
  14. Agreeableness is related to generosity. In online dating profiles, it is negatively related to lying about oneself.
  15. Conscientiousness is related to healthy behaviors and longevity. It is a key factor in various life domains. Performance in school and work, higher quality friendships, and higher levels of religious faith have all been associated with conscientiousness.
  16. Traits and Personality Development
  17. Although it is an assumption that the trait approach to personality is relatively stable, studies have shown meaningful personality change continues throughout life.
  18. Changes in personality traits across adulthood occur in a direction suggesting that people become more socially mature with time.
  19. Cross-Cultural Studies on the Big Five
  20. Some research suggests that the Big Five factors show up in the assessment of personality in various cultures around the world. Factors most likely to be seen in other countries include: extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
  21. Animal Studies on the Big Five
  22. Evidence was found that animals exhibit some of the Big Five traits, including domesticated dogs.
  23. Evaluating the Trait Perspectives
  1. Studying an individual according to his or her traits allows us to know a person better. Also, the traits individuals have influence their health, the way they think, their career choices, and their relations with others. The trait perspective has become the dominate perspective on personality psychology today.
  2. Critics argue that the trait approach is missing the importance of the situation in personality and behavior.
  1. Personological and Life Story Perspectives
  2. The personological and life story perspective stresses that the way to understand an individual is to focus on his or her life story; that is, the aspects that distinguish that person from others.
  1. Murray’s Personological Approach
  2. Murray came up with the term personology to refer to the study of the whole person. He believed that in order to understand an individual, the individual’s history had to be understood.
  3. During World War II, Murray was asked to develop a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler.This began what is currently used as criminal profiling.
  4. Murray believed that an individual’s motives are largely unknown to them.
  5. Three unconscious needs have been the focus of current research: the need for achievement, the need for affiliation, and the need for power.
  6. The Life Story Approach to Identity
  7. Dan McAdams developed what is known as the life story approach, which says that all individuals have their own life story that is full of ups and downs. The stories represent memories that make individuals who they are.
  1. Evaluating the Life Story Approach and Similar Perspectives
  2. Life stories provide an excellent opportunity for the researcher. However, they are very time consuming and difficult. Also, in order for the life story study to be worthwhile, it must tell something more than what could be found in a much easier way.
  1. Social Cognitive Perspectives
  2. The social cognitive perspective emphasizes conscious awareness, beliefs, expectations, and goals.
  3. Social cognitive theorists are not interested in traits, but they investigate how more specific factors such as beliefs relate to behavior and performance.
  1. Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory
  2. Where Skinner saw behavior as being caused by a situation, Albert Bandura saw the individual causing situations. He postulated that sometimes the definition of the situation itself depends on the individual’s belief about it.
  3. Bandura believed that behavior, environment, and both personal and cognitive factors are all important in understanding personality. He came up with the term reciprocal determinism to describe the way all of these interact to create personality.
  1. Observational Learning
  2. Through observational learning, individuals form ideas about the behavior of others and then possibly adopt this behavior themselves.
  1. Personal Control
  2. Individuals can regulate and control their own behavior despite the changing environment.
  3. Self-Efficacy
  4. Self-efficacy is the belief thatindividuals can master a situation and produce positive outcomes. It determines whether people can even try to develop healthy habits, how much effort they expend in coping with stress, how long they persist in the face of obstacles, and how much pain and stress they experience.
  1. Mischel’s Contributions
  2. Mischel’s Critique of Consistency
  1. Mischel examined the research on trait prediction of behavior and found something missing. He concluded that there was no evidence for cross-situational consistency in behavior.
  2. He believed that personality often changes according to a given situation. His view is often called situationism, which means that personality and behavior often vary considerably from one context to another.
  3. The question is not whether personality predicts behavior, but how and when it does so, often in a combination with situational factors. Individuals select which situations they are in.
  4. Research findings suggest that the more limited a trait is, the more likely it will predict behavior; some people are consistent on some traits, while others are consistent on different traits, and personality traits exert stronger influences when situational factors are less powerful.
  5. CAPS Theory
  1. The cognitive-affective processing system (CAPS) theory states that individuals’ thoughts and emotions about themselves and the world affect their interactions with the environment and become linked together in ways that matter to behavior.
  2. CAPS understands personality in terms of information processing and emotional experiences interacting to systematically determine behavior, as a person encounters different situations.
  3. It is considered a bottom-up approach, meaning it is consistent with how personality works, not what it is.
  4. It focuses on the way people behave in different situations and uniquely interprets situational features.
  5. Evaluating the Social Cognitive Perspectives
  6. Critics of this approach argue that the social cognitive approach is too concerned with change and situational influences on personality. They argue that the approach ignores the role that biology plays in personality. They also argue its attempts to incorporate both the situation and the person in its view of personality. It tends to lead to a very specific prediction for each individual in any given situation.
  1. Biological Perspectives
  • Physiological processes that influence personality have been around since the ancient times.
  • The advances of method and theory of the biological perspectives on personality have become more prominent.
  • Personality and the Brain
  • There has been a clear association between the brain and personality, noted since the story of Phineas Gage.
  • New research is focusing on which brain activity is associated with which personality traits.
  • Eysenck’s reticular activation system theory (RAS)
  • Recall that the RAS plays a role in wakefulness or arousal.
  • Extraverts and introverts show a different baseline level of arousal in this system.
  • Extroverts wake up in the morning underaroused, which requires them to behave in ways that demonstrate extraversion in order to bring their arousal up to its optimal level.
  • Introverts wake up in the morning overaroused, which requires them to behave in ways that demonstrate introversion in order to decrease their arousal level to its optimal baseline.
  • Dopamine levels have been linked with the experience of reward. Due to considerations learned about the blood flow in the striatum, extraverts are motivated to bring those dopamine levels up as they are more likely to seek out pleasurable experiences (and thus behave in extraverted ways).
  • Gray’s Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory
  • Gray posited that two neurological systems, thebehavioral activation system (BAS) andthe behavioral inhibition system (BIS) underlie personality.
  • Organisms sensitive to rewards are more likely to learn associations between the behavior and the reward and demonstrate sensation-seeking behaviors.
  • In contrast, organisms sensitive to punishers in the environment will learn such associations and be more likely to avoid such consequences.
  • The BAS underlies the extraversion trait.
  • The BIS is involved in avoidance learning and associated with the trait of neuroticism.
  • The Role of Neurotransmitters
  • Neurotransmitters have been implicated in the role of personality that fits Gray’s model.
  • Dopamine is a factor in the BAS or extraversion trait. The dopaminergic system in extraverts is well prepared to learn associations between environmental cues and rewards.
  • Serotonin has a strong link with neuroticism and is implicated in aggressive behavior.

B.Personality and Behavioral Genetics