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PERSONALITY
THEORY
- Introduction
-
Personality
= " an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling,
and acting."
- Historical Perspectives of
Personality
- "Personality" comes from
the Greek word persona and Latin word per sonare, meaning to
speak through.
- By the Renaissance the
word meant the person behind the mask.
- The earliest record of
personality is with Greek's Hippocrates who distinguished
people and types from each other using the dominance of the
humors (4) in the body. (Blood, black bile, phlegm, and
yellow bile)
- Gall - Used phrenology to
describe personality traits. He did this by feeling the
shape of the skull looking for the bumps that were
interpreted to represent personality characteristics!
- Sheldon - Believed your
body type and shape determined your personality.
- Astrology - use of the
heavenly bodies to predict personal traits.
- Psychodynamic or
Psychoanalytic
Theory,
Freud
(1856-1939)
-
Driven by
unconscious
drives or instincts (divided into Life and Death
Instincts)
-
Conscious
- Those things we are aware of, constantly changing.
- Preconscious
- Things in long term memory that affect behavior but not
yet in our consciousness.
- Unconscious -
Consists of
those things (drives, needs, instincts) we are not aware of
but that influence our behavior.
-
Freud divided the mind's structure into three components that
affected personality and behavior
-
Id
- the source of all mental energy. Born with at birth.
Instinctual seeks immediate satisfaction,
The
Pleasure Principle
means the Id seeks pleasure and avoids pain.
-
Ego
- Attempts to find safe and acceptable ways to satisfy the
Id's desires. Seems to begin to develop around age 6 months.
By age 5 Freud believed we become socialized and have
developed our personality.
-
Superego
- The place in the mind which contains the moral standards
of parents and society. This is might be thought of as your
conscience.
-
Sources of energy
-
Libido-
Is the life force that runs throughout the Id, Ego, and
Superego.
- Eros
- Is the specific sex drive, one's way of expressing the
libido, other outlandish behaviors are other attempts to
release pent up energy.
- Infantile
Sexuality
-
Oral Stage:
(0-18 mo.) 1st year of life, mouth is point of need
satisfaction and pleasure seeking.
-
Anal Stage:
(18 mo.- 3.5 years), toilet training dominates, point of
expression of needs and soon learns pleasurable.
-
Phallic Stage:
3 - 5 years, Stage where the
Oedipal Complex
develops. It is a lust for parent for the parent of opposite
sex. The
Electra Complex
is the similar developmental challenge for girls
-
Freud believes these cause an increase in anxiety for
the child and that in order to deal with the anxiety the
child must
identify
with same sex parent to reduce this anxiety. This he
believed is the key to gender identity development in
children.
-
Latency Stage:
5 - 13 years, little interest in opposite sex. Not much else
happening here according to Freud.
-
Genital Stage:
Puberty, Sexual maturity.
-
Freud believed there can be a fixation of libido at any age or
stage, this results in pathology, this energy needs to be
released for healthy personality.
-
Ego Defense Mechanisms
- Their purpose is to
guard against anxiety. This anxiety may also result from conflict
between id, ego or superego. The inability to reduce anxiety results
in Neurosis, a mal-adaptive lifestyle or personality.
-
Repression
- repression of impulses from id. Banishes such thoughts and
feelings from consciousness.
- Denial
- failure to acknowledge anxiety is present at all or that event
even happened.
- Regression-
reverting to earlier stage to deal with anxiety, avoid
responsibility which is what is causing the anxiety.
- Projection
- projecting on to others those undesirable feelings and
behaviors which cause anxiety in yourself and you cannot
effective deal with.
- Rationalization -
Lets the unconscious generate self-justifying explanations to
protect us from anxiety.
- Reaction Formation
- Hiding unacceptable impulses by having them manifest
themselves as opposite behaviors.
- Displacement
- Turning ones unacceptable impulses that cannot be carried out
toward an object or person that they can be directed toward.
- Sublimation
- The transformation of socially unacceptable impulses into
behaviors that are socially acceptable.
- Changes
in Psychoanalytical Theory after Freud
-
Jung and Horney put less emphasis on Sexuality and on Biological
drives and additional emphasis on social and cultural forces on
personality development.
- Trait
Approach
-
Traits
are a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to
feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer
reports
-
Allport - Traits innate to nervous system, 18000 words refer to
traits, only 200 unique. Emphasized the describing these traits.
-
Cattell - Used factor analysis to analyze the traits and
discovered they clustered in groups. The list is shortened to 16
traits (later increased it to 23)
- Is behavior always consistent?
- Research suggests it is not,
but tends to be consistent in the same situation, but different
across different situations.
- Study effect with twin studies
and adoption studies.
- Identical twins and
children of their biological parents resemble the traits of
their siblings and parents more than fraternal twins and
adopted children.
- Effect appears to be part
heredity and part environment.
- How stable are traits over
time?
- Cultural traits such
as friendliness, sociability are stable.
- Roles and fundamental
traits will show less stability, such as political
orientation, and attitudes.
- Bandura
-
Reciprocal
Determinism
- The
interaction of influences between personality and environmental
factors.
-
Interaction between person, situation and the feedback received
from that behavior
- Feedback shapes future
behavior and expectancies for the future.
- Self Efficacy - One of
Bandura's personal/cognitive factors that influence personality,
and outcome. How beliefs about ourselves reflect our effort and
persistence toward goals.
- Rotter's
Locus of Control
- An expectancy and an
evaluation of situations.
- Internal Locus of
Control -
perception that one controls one's own fate.
- External Locus Of
Control -
perception that one does not control one's own fate.
- Carl
Jung
-
Emphasized role of unconscious as ego's source of strength.
- Two
levels of unconscious influence
- Personal Unconscious -
repressed thoughts, forgotten experiences may rise to
consciousness if triggered
-
Collective Unconscious- Memories and behavior patterns from
past generations
-
Thought forms called Archetypes, (symbols)
-
Persona - Means mask, part of personality which is known to
others. (a facade)
- Anima - Female side of
male personality, nurturing behavior in males
- Animus - Male side of
female personality, aggressiveness
- Attitude Types
- Extroverts - joiners,
interested in others
- Introverts - Unsociable,
interested in self
- Rational/Irrational Types
- Rational - Thinking -
guided by thought
- Feeling - guided by
emotions, irrational
- Senses - guided by
sensation, perceptions
- Intuition - guided by
unconscious process
- Adler's
" Individual Psychology"
-
Deviated from Freud's view of sex as basis of behavior, felt man
was a social being.
- Man
was motivated by social interest, a need to be involved and to
help his fellow man.
- Neurosis was from not meeting
these needs.
- The emphasis was on present
and conscious behavior, the center of personality.
- Man was motivated by feelings
of striving for power, to overcome feelings of inferiority -
Striving for Superiority or Compensation
- Each of us develop unique
"lifestyle", By age 5, has own goals called "Final Fictionalism",
or goals that guide behavior.
- Neurosis was developed from
poor compensation when dealing with inferiorities, or lack of
successfully reaching goals, often we reach for unrealistic
goals.
- Adler focuses much more in
present, stresses responsibility, ordinal position (Birth
Order), interaction of environment and family, dreams, and
goals.
- Ordinal Position:
- Birth order important,
especially first born because of precarious position of
being dethroned by successive siblings.
- This could condition
people to hate others, become defensive, and feeling
insecure. Adler observed criminals, drunkards, etc to be 1st
born.
- Research currently
supports differences in birth order, 1st born are
represented as more successful. Tend to be conscientious,
responsible, and high achievers, also, more shy, conforming
and anxious.
- Later born children are
more social, at east with others, may learn these skills to
deal with more powerful older siblings.
- Karen
Horney
-
Environment and social factors stressed
- The
relationship a child grows up with is most important
- Anxiety is a motivating force
for real or imaged threats, stronger drive than sex
- Neurotic Trends
- Submission-Moving toward
people
- Compliant-Gives in to
others. Safe only when getting their protection
- Aggression-Moving against
people. Hostile and domineering.
- Detachment-Moving away
from people
- Withdrawing
-
Humanistic Theories - Rogers
-
Goal is to self actualize. These with innate abilities and
capabilities
-
Self
Concept
essential to theory
-
Fully
Functioning Person
- one who has achieved an openness to feelings and experiences
and has learned to trust inner urges and intuitions. Self
concept matches inner abilities. Experiences, thoughts, and
feelings result in self concept. Their phenomenal field is their
total subjective experience of reality.
- Positive regard
- need for love,
understanding, and acceptance
- Unconditional positive
regard - Total
acceptance regardless of person or situation.
- Congruency
between real & ideal self is important for health personality
- The individual strives to
reach their potential called "Self
Actualization"
-
Personality Assessment
- Projective Techniques-
Unstructured task, focus on global personality, try to assess
what is going on in the unconscious
- Based on psychoanalytical
beliefs in unconscious drives or unawareness of roots of our
behavior.
- Assumption that you are
not aware of or do not know
- Rorshach Inkblots
Test - series
of ink blots patient that patient describes for therapist.
- TAT-
Plates of vague pictures or scenes that patient creates a
story about for therapist. 20 cards, 2 sessions of 10 cards
each. tell a story, look for themes, content, hero
identification etc.
-
Free Association
- Word association test,
used by Wundt, Galton 1879.
Words with analytic value are used,
60,
associated with psychosocial conflicts.
Adaptations of this use 100 words of neutral value to test
normal cognitive associations.
- Rotter Incomplete Sentence
Blank - Attempt to get at real feelings by asking clients to
complete sentences that are not finished.
- Draw a Person: Draw first
a person, then told to draw one of opposite sex. Look at
procedural details, notes verbalizations, sequencing. Then
asked to make up a story about the figure. Scoring includes,
size, relative position, centering, view drawn, clothing,
grounding, parts, background, etc.
- Kinetic Family Drawing-
Patient draws family doing something together.
- Self Report Measures
- Measure of characteristics
such as emotions as emotional states, interpersonal
relations, motivations, interests, and attitudes.
- Easy to give and score,
and often reliable, they are subject to attitudes, faking or
lying.
- MMPI-2
- 567 true or false items and scored on series of scales.
The scores are plotted (normal distribution or normal curve)
and the actual raw scores converted to achieve a normal
score of 50 with the range being from 40-60 as the normal
range. Above or below is considered a critical score.
- Other tests often used are
the 16PF, CPI, EPPS.
|
Key
Terms |
|
Anal Stage |
The anal stage, lasting from
18 months to 3 years, shifts the source of gratification to
bladder and bowel retention, elimination, and control. |
| Defense Mechanisms |
In Freud's theory, defense
mechanisms are the Ego's methods of unconsciously protecting
itself against anxiety by distorting or denying reality. |
| Displacement |
Displacement is the defense
mechanism in which a sexual or aggressive impulse is shifted to
a less threatening or powerless object or person. |
| Ego |
In psychoanalytic theory, the
Ego is the conscious division of personality that attempts to
mediate between the demands of the Id, the Superego, and
reality. |
| External Locus of Control |
External locus of control is
the belief that one's fate is determined by forces not under
personal control. |
| Fixation |
In Freud's theory, fixation
occurs when development becomes arrested in an immature
psychosexual stage. |
|
Free Association |
Free association is the
Freudian technique in which the person is encouraged to say
whatever comes to mind as a means of exploring the unconscious. |
| Gender Identity |
Gender identity is a person's
sense of being male or female. |
|
Genital Stage |
At puberty the repressed
sexual feelings of the latency stage give way to the genital
stage and the maturation of sexual interests. |
| Id |
In Freud's theory, the Id is
the system of personality consisting of basic sexual and
aggressive drives that supplies psychic energy to personality. |
| Identification |
In Freud's theory,
identification is the process by which the child's superego
develops and incorporates the parents' values. Freud saw
identification as crucial, not only to resolution of the Oedipus
complex, but also to the development of gender identity. |
| Internal Locus of Control |
Internal locus of control is
the belief that to a great extent one controls one's own
destiny. |
|
Latency Stage |
At puberty the repressed
sexual feelings of the latency stage give way to the genital
stage and the maturation of sexual interests. |
| Learned Helplessness |
Learned helplessness is the
passive resignation and perceived lack of control that a person
or animal develops from repeated exposure to inescapable
aversive events. |
Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory
(MMPI-2) |
Consisting of ten clinical
scales, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2)
is the most widely used personality inventory. |
|
Oedipus Complex |
According to Freud, boys in
the phallic stage develop sexual feelings, known as the Oedipus
complex, that center on sexual attraction to the mother and
resentment of the father. Some psychoanalysts believe that girls
have a parallel Electra complex. |
|
Oral Stage |
During the oral stage, which
lasts throughout the first 18 months of life, pleasure centers
on activities of the mouth. |
| Personality Inventories |
Personality inventories,
associated with the trait perspective, are questionnaires used
to assess personality traits. (MMPI-2, 16PF, CPI) |
| Personality |
Personality is an individual's
relatively consistent pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. |
|
Phallic Stage |
During the phallic stage, from
3 to 6 years, the genitals become the pleasure zone. |
| Pleasure Principle |
In Freud's theory, the
pleasure principle refers to the Id's demands for immediate
gratification. |
| Projection |
In psychoanalytic theory,
projection is the unconscious attribution of one's own
threatening impulses to others. |
| Projective Tests |
Projective tests, such as the
TAT and Rorschach, present ambiguous stimuli onto which people
supposedly project their own inner feelings. Often used as a
tool to assess unconscious factors not conscious to the client. |
|
Psychoanalysis |
In Freud's theory,
psychoanalysis refers to the treatment of psychological
disorders by seeking to provide insight about the clients
unconscious, using methods such as free association. |
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Psychosexual Stages |
Freud's psychosexual stages
are developmental periods children pass through during which the
Id's pleasure-seeking energies are focused on different
erogenous zones. |
| Rationalization |
Rationalization is the defense
mechanism in which one devises self-justifying but incorrect
reasons for one's behavior. |
| Reaction Formation |
Reaction formation is the
defense mechanism in which the ego converts unacceptable
impulses into their opposites. |
| Reality Principle |
The reality principle refers
to the ego's tendency to gratify the desires of the Id in ways
that are realistic. |
| Reciprocal Determinism |
According to the
social-cognitive perspective, personality is shaped through
reciprocal determinism, or the interaction between personality
and environmental factors. |
| Regression |
Regression is the defense
mechanism in which the person reverts to a less mature pattern
of behavior, often related to an earlier age or stage. |
|
Repression |
The basis of all defense
mechanisms, repression is the unconscious exclusion of painful
impulses from the conscious mind. Repression is an example of
motivated forgetting: One "forgets" what one really does not
wish to remember. |
| Rorschach Inkblot Test |
The Rorschach Inkblot Test,
the most widely used projective test, consists of ten inkblots
that people are asked to interpret. |
| Self-concept |
Self-concept refers to one's
personal awareness of "who I am." In the humanistic perspective,
self-concept is a central feature of personality; life happiness
is significantly affected by whether self-concept is positive or
negative. |
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Self-actualization |
In Maslow's theory,
self-actualization describes the process of fulfilling one's
potential and becoming spontaneous, loving, creative, and
self-accepting. Self-actualization is at the very top of
Maslow's need hierarchy and therefore becomes active only after
the more basic physical and psychological needs have been met. |
| Self-esteem |
In humanistic psychology,
self-esteem refers to an individual's sense of self-worth. |
| Social-cognitive Perspective |
Derived from principles of
learning, cognition, and social behavior, the social-cognitive
perspective focuses on how our schemas, memories, and
expectations interact with external events to shape our
personalities. |
| Sublimation |
Sublimation is the defense
mechanism in which an instinctual impulse is modified in a
socially acceptable manner. Sublimate and sublime derive from
the same Latin root, meaning "to raise, uplift, or ennoble; of
high spiritual, moral, or intellectual value." |
|
Superego |
In Freud's theory, the
superego is the division of personality that contains the
conscience and develops by incorporating the perceived moral
standards of society. |
| Thematic Apperception Test
(TAT) |
The Thematic Apperception Test
(TAT) is a projective test that consists of ambiguous pictures
about which people are asked to make up stories. |
| Traits |
Traits are people's
characteristic patterns of behavior. |
| Unconditional Positive Regard |
Unconditional positive regard
is, according to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance and one
of the three conditions essential to a "growth-promoting"
climate. |
|
Unconscious |
In Freud's theory, the
unconscious is the repository of unacceptable thoughts, wishes,
feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists,
it is a level of information processing of which we are unaware. |
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