Personality Review Answers
What is personality? Personalityis defined by what is consistent in our behavior and preferences in a variety of situations. For example, an introvert is still an introvert even if her mother dies or wins the lottery. A person with a Type A personality still has a Type A personality even at a party or in a church.
Sigmund Freud was the father of psychoanalysis. His method of treatment of patients is calledpsychoanalysis. The psychoanalysts say our personality is based on unconscious drives and conflicts. “Unconscious” means that we are not aware and we cannot control it. Freud said that our personality has 3 parts: Id, ego, superego. Our id, called our “pleasure principle”, is made up of our unconscious biological, aggressive urges like food, aggression and sex. People who are dominated by their id-driven urges tend to end up in jail, unemployed, etc (Think Homer!). Our superego, our “moral principle”, is our conscience. It is that part of us that wants to do the right thing no matter what (Think Lisa Simpson!). Our egois based on the “reality principle.” It moderates our need to eat, fight and have fun with our need to be a good, moral citizen. So, our ego is the “go-between” between our devil (id) and our angel (superego) on our shoulders. Someone who decides to go to a party only after s/he studies for their test is listening to the ego.
Our ego protects us from uncomfortable feelings. It does so using defense mechanisms. These include denial, rationalization, displacement, projection, sublimation, reaction formation, regression. Alfred Adler later came up with another one: compensation.
Freud said our personality goes through psychosexual stages. Each stage is associated with libidinal energy (erotic energy) having a different location of focus. The stages are oral (0-1), anal (2-3), phallic (3-6), latent (6-12) and genital(12+). A person’s id impulses at each stage had to be satisfied or the person would become fixated at that stage. Fixation at the oral stage might result in an adult who bites her nails or eat compulsively. Harsh toilet training at the anal stage can result in an anally retentive (Type A) personality. During the phallic stage, boys have an Oedipal complex, meaning they compete with their fathers for their mother’s attention.
Another psychoanalyst named Carl Jung broke away from Freud. Like all psychoanalysts, he believed we are controlled by unconscious forces. His unique ideas were 1. archetypes: the common images we all have in all of our literatures and myths around the world. Examples of archetypes include the wise old man, the young hero, the fertile, nurturing mother. 2. He believed we all share a collective unconscious, meaning people from all over the world share an equal part of our minds.
Alfred Adler was another psychoanalyst that disagreed with Freud. He said we strive for superiority, meaning our personality is based on our desire to be superior to others in one way or another. He also coined the defense mechanism of compensation, our tendency to excel in one area to make up for a deficit in another area. Alfred Adler is also famous for his studies in birth order, the tendency for the first born to have a different personality than the middle child.
Criticisms of psychoanalysis: You are not the only one to think some of this is cooky! Freud’s ideas were impossible to test, they were biased against women (remember that penis envy idea?), and they lack scientific evidence. As an Austrian Jew, Freud didn’t travel much so his ideas were based only on his patients, rich Austrian Jew women and men.
Social Cognitivistsdon’t care anything about the unconscious mind. They say our personality is based on environmental factors (like rewards and punishments). For example, as a child I tried to make friends and talk to people. But I wasn’t any good at it. After many painful attempts to relate to other people, I’m more comfortable by myself or with my best and only friend (my wife). In other words, I was punished for extraversion but rewarded for introversion. Therefore, I am an introvert not because of nature (my genes) but nurture (my environment).
Humanists like Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers say the psychoanalysts and behaviorists were full of it. Unlike them, humanists believe we have free will and are unique. In other words, humanists are the least deterministic. We all can rise above our biological, id-driven driven desires, and we are largely conscious and rational beings. Carl Rogers focused on finding your self-concept. He says our personality is based on striving for congruence between our ideal self and our actual self. For example, let’s say that your ideal self is an extroverted person that is well-liked and respected by most people. But your actual self doesn’t match that. In that case (picture at right), you lack congruence, which is what you should strive for. Congruence is when your actual self matches (=) your ideal self; therefore, the circles would be on top of each other. Another humanist was Abraham Maslow who pushed his idea of self-actualization. He said we strive to self-actualize but we need to meet our other, more basic needs first.
How do we study personality? Through self-report tests like the Myers-Briggs test or the Big 5 personality test. Of course the reliability and validity are questionable since people might not tell the truth or don’t understand the question. For example, many teens don’t want to admit they are an introvert or might not understand the word cognitive. Psychoanalysts study personality by accessing. . .you guessed it. . . the unconscious. They do so via projective tests like the Rorschachink blot test.
The biological perspective says our personality is based on genes (nature), not by nurture (environment).