Personality WebQuest



Personality – Web Project

Introduction

For centuries, people have asked questions like - "who am I" and "what is personality". During this activity, you will have an opportunity to answer both questions. In this activity, you will answer the question "who am I" by completing 5 short exercises on your own. These exercises will be turned in to me when you are finished. Each exercise is designed to expose you to a particular perspective of personality that is discussed in your textbook. The perspectives are as follows: Trait, Psychoanalytic, Biological, Behaviorist, and Humanistic.

There are 5 components to this activity; each component involves your exploration of a personality perspective. For each component, you will review information about a perspective of personality by reading the information links included under that section. You will then complete an activity and/or answer a question. Each component will have complete instructions regarding what you need to do to complete the activity.

The objective of each component is to learn about each perspective and to answer a question about your self that is related to a personality perspective. Hopefully, you will have a better understanding of that perspective as well as yourself!

Trait Perspective

Thousands of years ago, human beings began describing one another using traits. The first systematic attempt to do so was made by Hippocrates in ancient Greece. He described various types of human temperaments based on what he called bodily humors. The predominance of a humor such as blood or bile resulted in a typical personality type. For example, it was supposed that a person with a dominance of blood would be sanguine (defined as hopeful and cheerful) while a person with more phlegm (yuck!) would tend to be slow and apathetic. The melancholic (black bile) was thought to be sad and depressive while the choleric (yellow bile) was angry and irascible.

The idea that people possess measurable and relatively enduring traits has continued to the present day. A number of theorists fall within this perspective. For example, Carl Jung (who is actually considered a Neoanalytic theorist), Hans Eysenck, Raymond Cattell and Gordon Allport have all contributed to the trait perspective. A contemporary trait approach referred to as the "big 5" asserts that most of the basic traits of personality can be captured within only 5 dimensions - extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness.

Activity:

Read about trait theory and one trait theorist, Raymond Cattell:

Go to the web site and take the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (). This is a personality inventory that is similar to the MBTI; it will give you information on your personality type.

Note: you will be asked if you want to spend money to obtain the full copy of your report; you do not need to do that for this assignment but you do need to print a copy of the short report you receive after completing the inventory. You will turn that copy in to me along with an answer to the following question:

What 5 traits do you possess in your personality?

Biological Perspective

We can thank Charles Darwin (1859) for ushering in the idea that genetics and evolution play a role in affecting many human qualities including personality. Theorists in the biological perspective who study behavioral genomics consider how genes affect behavior. Now that the human genome is mapped, perhaps, we will someday understand more precisely how behavior and personality is affected by the DNA we inherit.

There is much that could be said about the biological perspective as it covers a wide range of theories and theorists. One early theorist (Sheldon, 1942) argued that body type affects personality; this is where the idea of the 3 body types came from - the mesomorph (muscular, assertive type), the ectomorph (slender, book worm type) and the endomorph (roly-poly, good-natured type). More recently, a group of theorists called evolutionary psychologists have introduced ideas that are wrought with controversy. For example, one such psychologist, Randy Thornhill, utilizes Darwin's theory of natural selection to argue that rape is a natural instinct.

Most of us would agree that certain temperaments seem to be apparent in people even from birth and are sustained to some degree throughout the life span. The active baby becomes the over achieving adult (or at least that's what my Mom tells me!). I bet you aren't surprised to learn that researchers like Buss and Plomin (1984) have considered which temperaments have a genetic basis. The following 4 basic aspects of temperament have been described: activity level, emotionality, sociability, and impulsivity. Interesting studies conducted on identical twins would seem to suggest that there is a genetic basis for these temperaments.

Activity

Go online and use a search engine such as Google or Bing to locate information on biological temperaments and personality (i.e. how are the two related?). Find an article or a website that was published within the last 5 years and make a copy of the first page of the article to hand in to the instructor.

Print and complete the Biological Temperament Questionnaire (); hand this in to your instructor along with the article page described above and you have completed the Biological component.

Psychoanalytic Perspective

Who hasn't heard of Sigmund Freud? So many expressions from our daily life come from Freud's theories of psychoanalysis - oral fixation, projection, and anal personality to name only a few. Have you ever wondered what kind of person comes up with such a unique theory of personality? There are many interesting stories about Freud and the personal experiences that affected his theory development. It has always been my impression that personality theories often reflect the personal experiences of the theorist.

The psychoanalytic perspective suggests that there is a structure of the mind that includes the id, the superego and the ego. These structures struggle for control of the energy of the psyche. The id attempts to have basic pleasure-seeking instincts satisfied and ego works to prevent the id from expressing itself inappropriately. The superego which is similar to a conscience takes this job one step further by attempting to enforce societal, religious and/or parental values about right and wrong. Sometimes, the drives of the id slip out (the infamous Freudian slip) and are evidenced by slips of the tongue and dreams.

Psychoanalytic theory is sometimes criticized due to the difficulty in studying some of its premises scientifically. Yet many of the insights from psychoanalysis have aided in our understanding of personality. One powerful contribution of psychoanalysis is defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are our psyches way of assisting us in dealing with anxiety. Anna Freud, Sigi's daughter and an excellent psychoanalyst, greatly advanced Freud's theory of defense mechanisms in her book, in her 1936 book, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense.

Activity

Go to the Who is Sigmund Freud web page () and read through the description of his home and its furnishings so that you can answer the question below. Also, locate information online that describes the defense mechanisms and review them.

Answer the following questions:

1. After you review the Who is Sigmund Freud web, what role do you feel the collection of ancient antiquities played in his theory development?

2. Pick 3 defense mechanisms you feel you use in your daily life and give a brief example of how you believe you use them?

Behaviorist Perspective

Behaviorist approaches are different from most other perspectives because they view people as controlled by their environment and specifically that we are the result of what we have learned from our environment. The early philosophical base for this learning perspective of personality is English philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704) who viewed the new born baby as a blank slate - tabula rasa - on whom the experience of life would write a specific story.

It is interesting to realize that one of the earliest contributors to learning theory, Ivan Pavlov, was not even researching personality when he discovered something that later resulted in his receipt of the Noble prize. This Russian physiologist was studying the digestive processes in dogs. He had surgically implanted tubes in the checks of dogs to study the reflexive secretion of saliva during eating when he noticed a curious thing: after several feedings the dogs started salivating when they saw food being brought to them rather than when the food was placed in their mouths. He hypothesized that the dogs were responding to the sight of the food. To prove this, he presented food with the clicking of a metronome and discovered that the dogs soon began to salivate simply by hearing the metronome. This is how Pavlov discovered classical conditioning.

Pavlov's research was the impetus for the behaviorist perspective. Soon researchers such as John Watson (1878-1958) would formulate ideas that became known as behaviorism. Watson's theories are often described as extreme behaviorism as he felt that psychologists should only study behavior and not any other processes such as consciousness or feelings because these are not compatible with objective scientific experimentation. B. F. Skinner is the best known behaviorist and like Watson, is described as a radical behaviorist. Skinner believed that all of our behavior is the result of punishment and reward; this theory forms the principles of operant conditioning that he proposed.

Activity

Read more about operant conditioning () if you wish before you attempt the following activity.

Identify one habit or behavior in yourself that you would like to change. Develop a simple structure of rewards and punishments which will assist you to operationally condition yourself to change this behavior. For example, if you would like to eliminate a habit of snacking between meals, you might decide to "punish" yourself with 10 pushups every time you snack between meals. You might "reward" yourself by giving yourself a dollar before each meal when snacking before the meal did not occur. You would then need to use your "snack money reward" toward some fun activity or item for yourself. (Like a hot fudge sundae! Just kidding)

Once you have selected the habit and your system of reward, use the attached diary to track your behavior for one week. Turn a copy of this diary in to your instructor at the end of the week.

Humanistic Perspective

The Humanistic perspective offers a very positive viewpoint of human nature and potential. Emphasizing the personal worth of each individual, this perspective suggests that we are each responsible for our own happiness and well-being as humans. We have the innate capacity for self-actualization which is our unique desire to achieve our highest potential as people.

Where did such a positive perspective originate? One of the origins of the humanistic perspective is the philosophy of existentialism. In simple terms, existentialism is concerned with defining the meaning of human existence. Without getting too complicated, "existentialism is about life. Existentialists believe in living -- and in fighting for life. Camus, Sartre, and even Nietzsche were involved in various wars because they believed passionately in fighting for the survival of their nations and peoples. The politics of existentialists varies, but each seeks the most individual freedom for people within a society" ().

Humanistic theorists like Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow are likewise concerned with the striving of the human spirit to seek meaning and self-fulfillment. Your textbook describes how Carl Rogers believed that humans are largely positive creatures who during the course of their lives move toward becoming fully functioning people. Such a person lives life to the fullest, is rooted in the here and now and trusts his/her own feelings. Rogers felt that while people are innately driven to be fully functioning, there are obstacles preventing them from achieving this objective.

Activity

Read more about what Rogers meant when he used the term fully functioning person ().

Respond to the following questions:

1. What did Carl Rogers view as the obstacles preventing us from becoming fully functioning people?

2. On a more personal note, how can you tackle some of the obstacles in your own life so that you can achieve your full potential from a humanistic standpoint?

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