CHAPTER 15: PERSONALITY



CHAPTER 15: PERSONALITY

I. Do You Have Personality

A. Terminology

1. personality – a person’s unique and relatively stable behavior

patterns

2. character – personal characteristics that have been judged or evaluated;

a person’s desirable or undesirable qualities

3. temperament – the hereditary aspects of personality, including sensitivity, activity levels, prevailing mood, irritability, and adaptability

B. Psychology Looks at Personality

C. Traits: personality trait – a stable, enduring quality that a person shows in most situations; quite stable by 30

D. Types: personality type – a style of personality defined by a group of related traits

1. Carl Jung

a. introvert – a person whose attention is focused inward; a shy,

reserved, self-centered person

b. extrovert – a person whose attention is directed outward; a bold,

outgoing person

E. Self-Concept – a person’s perception of his/her own personality traits

1. Self-esteem – regarding oneself as a worthwhile person; a positive

evaluation of oneself

F. Personality Theories – a system of concepts, assumptions, ideas, and principles used to understand and explain personality

1. trait theories – attempt to learn what traits make up personality and how

they relate to actual behavior

2. psychodynamic theories – focus on the inner workings of personality,

especially internal conflicts and struggles

3. behavioristic theories – place importance on the external environment

and on the effects of conditioning and learning

4. humanistic theories – stress private, subjective experience and personal

growth

5. Millon’s Biopsychosocial Theory of Personality

II. Trait Approach

A. Predicting Behavior

B. Describing People

1. trait theorist – a psychologist interested in classifying, analyzing, and

interrelating traits to understand personality

C. Classifying Traits

1. Common traits – personality traits that are shared by most members of

a particular culture

2. Individual traits – personality traits that define a person’s unique individual qualities

3. Cardinal traits – personality trait so basic that all of a person’s activities

relate to it

4. Central Traits – the core traits that characterize an individual personality

5. Secondary traits – traits that are inconsistent or relatively superficial

6. Surface traits – visible or observable traits of one’s personality

7. Source Traits – basic underlying traits of personality; each source trait

is reflected in a number of surface traits

8. Factor analysis – statistical technique used to correlate multiple

measurements and identify general underlying factors

9. Trait profile – a graph of scores obtained on several personality traits

D. The Big Five

1. Five Key Dimensions: Five-factor model – proposes that there are five

universal dimensions of personality; p.486, Figure 15.4

]

E. Traits, Consistency, and Situations

1. Trait-situation interaction – influence that external settings or circumstances have on the expression of personality traits

F. Do We Inherit Personality

1. Behavioral genetics – study of inherited behavioral traits and tendencies

2. Twins and Traits

III. Psychoanalytic Theory – Freudian theory of personality that emphasizes unconscious forces and conflicts

A. The Structure of the Personality

1. The Id – primitive part of personality that remains unconscious, supplies energy, and demands pleasure

a. pleasure principle – a desire for immediate satisfaction of wishes, desires, or needs

b. psyche – mind, mental life, and personality as a whole

c. libido – the force, primarily pleasure oriented, that energizes

the personality

d. life instincts (Eros) – eg., survival and sexual drives

e. death instinct (Thanatos) – eg., aggressive and destructive urges

2. The Ego – executive part of personality that directs rational behavior

a. reality principle – delaying action (or pleasure) until it is appropriate

3. The Superego – judge/censor for thoughts and actions

a. conscience – region of the mind that includes guilt when its

standards are not met

b. ego ideal – part of the superego representing ideal behavior;

a source of pride when its standards are met

B. The Dynamics of Personality

1. Interaction of personality structure

a. neurotic anxiety – apprehension felt when the ego struggles to

control id impulses

b. moral anxiety – apprehension felt when thoughts, impulses,

conflict with the superego’s standards

2. Levels of Awareness

a. unconscious – region of the mind that is beyond awareness, especially impulses and desires not directly known to a person

b. conscious – region of the mind that includes all mental contents a person is aware of at any given moment

c. preconscious – area of the mind containing information that con be voluntarily brought to awareness

C. Personality Development

1. A Freudian Fable?

a. psychosexual stages – oral, anal, phallic, and genital stages, during which various personality traits are formed

2. The Oral Stage – period when infants are preoccupied with the mouth as a source of pleasure and means of expression

a. oral-dependent personality – person who wants to passively receive attention, gifts, love, and etc.; occur with fixation at early oral stage

b. oral-aggressive personality – person who uses the mouth to express hostility by shouting, cursing, biting, and etc.; also, one who actively exploits others; occur with fixation at later oral stage

3. The Anal Stage – psychosexual stage corresponding roughly to the period of toilet training (1 – 3 yrs)

a. anal-retentive – person who is obstinate, stingy, or compulsive, and who generally has difficulty “letting go”

b. anal-expulsive – disorderly, destructive, cruel, or messy person

4. The Phallic Stage – psychosexual stage (3 – 6 yrs), when a child is preoccupied with the genitals

a. phallic personality – person who is vain, exhibitionistic, sensitive, and narcissistic

b. Oedipus conflict – boy’s sexual attraction to his mother and feelings of rivalry with his father

c. Electra conflict – girl’s sexual attraction to her father and feelings of rivalry with her mother

5. Latency – period in childhood when psychosexual development is more or less interrupted

6. The Genital Stage – period of full psychosexual development, marked by the attainment of mature adult sexuality

IV. Psychodynamic Theories: neo-Freudian – a psychologist who has revised Freud’s theory, while still accepting some of its basic features

A. Alfred Adler

1. Striving for superiority – basic drive propels us toward perfection

2. Compensation – any attempt to overcome feelings of inadequacy or

inferiority

3. Style of life – pattern of personality and behavior that defines the pathway each person takes through life

4. Creative self – the “artist” in each of us that creates a unique identity

and style of life

B. Karen Horney

1. Basic anxiety – primary form of anxiety that arises from living in a

hostile world

C. Carl Jung

1. Persona – “mask” or public self presented to others

2. Personal unconscious – mental storehouse for a single individual’s

unconscious thoughts

3. Collective unconscious – mental storehouse for unconscious ideas and

images shared by all humans

4. Archetype – universal idea, image, or pattern, found in the collective

unconscious

a. anima – archetype representing the female principle

b. animus – archetype representing the male principle

c. self archetype – unconscious image representing unity, wholeness, completion, and balance (self actualization)

5. Mandala – circular design representing balance, unity, and completion

V. Learning Theories of Personality

A. Terminology

1. Behavioral personality theory – any model of personality that emphasizes learning and observable behavior

2. Learning theorist – psychologist interested in the ways that learning shapes behavior and explains personality

3. Situational determinants – external conditions that strongly influence

behavior

B. Personality = Behavior

1. Habit – deeply ingrained, learned pattern of behavior

2. Drive – any stimulus strong enough to goad a person to action

3. Cue – external stimuli that guide responses, especially by signaling

the presence or absence of reinforcement

4. Response – any behavior, either observable or internal

5. Reward – anything that produces pleasure or satisfaction; a positive

reinforcer

C. Social Learning Theory – explanation of personality that combines learning principles, cognition, and the effects of social relationships

1. Psychological situation – situation as it is perceived and interpreted by an individual, not as it exists objectively

2. Expectancy – anticipation about the effect a response will have, especially regarding reinforcement

3. Reinforcement value – subjective value a person attaches to a particular activity or reinforcer

4. Self-reinforcement – praising or rewarding yourself for having made a particular response

D. Behavioristic View of Development

1. Social Reinforcement – praise, attention, approval, and/or affection from others

2. Critical Situations – situations during childhood that are capable of

leaving a lasting imprint on personality

3. Becoming Male or Female

a. identification – feeling emotionally connected to a person and seeing oneself as like him/her

b. imitation – attempt to match one’s own behavior to another

person’s behavior

VI. Humanistic Theory

A. Terminology

1. Humanism – approach that focuses on human experience, problems, potentials, and ideals

2. Human nature – those traits, qualities, potentials, and behavior patterns most characteristic of the human species

3. Free choice – ability to feely make choices that are not controlled by genetics, learning, or unconscious forces

4. Subjective experience – reality as it is perceived and interpreted, not as it exists objectively

B. Maslow and Self-Actualization – process of fully developing personal potentials

1. Characteristics of Self-Actualizers – one who is living creatively and making full use of his/her potentials; p. 499

2. Peak experiences – temporary moments of self-actualization, feeling

one with the world

C. Carl Rogers’s Self Theory

1. Personality Structure and Dynamics

a. fully functioning person – person living in harmony with his/her

deepest feelings, impulses, and intuitions

b. self – continuously evolving conception of one’s personal identity

c. self-image – total subjective perception of one’s body and

personality (self-concept)

d. symbolization – process of admitting an experience to awareness

e. incongruence – stat that exists when there is a discrepancy between one’s experiences and self-image or between one’s self-image and ideal self

f. incongruent person – person who has an inaccurate self-image or

whose self-image differs greatly from the ideal self

g. ideal self – an idealized image of oneself or who the person would like to be

D. Humanistic View of Development

1. Possible self – collection of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and images concerning the person one could become

2. Conditions of worth – internal standards used to judge the value of one’s thoughts, actions, feelings, or experiences

3. Positive self-regard – thinking of oneself as a good, love=able, worthwhile person

4. Organismic valuing – natural, undistorted, full-body reaction to an

experience

5. Unconditional positive regard – unshakable love and approval given

without qualification

VII. Personality Theories

A. Trait Theories

B. Psychoanalytic Theory

C. Behavioristic Theory

D. Humanistic Theory

VIII. Personality Assessment

A. The Interview

1. Terminology

a. interview – face-to-face meeting held for the purpose of gaining information about an individual’s personal history personality traits, current psychological state, etc.

2. unstructured interview – interview in which conversation is informal and topics are taken up freely as they arise

3. structured interview – an interview that follows a prearranged play, usually a series of planned questions

2. Computerized Interviews

a. diagnostic interview – interview used to find out how a person is feeling and what complaints of symptoms he/she has

3. Limitations

a. problems with preconceptions (shouldn’t be)

b. interviewer’s own personality can influence patient

c. trys to deceive interviewers (TESTING IMPORTANT); this is

major limitation with psychiatrist (who don’t test) vs. psychologist

d. halo effect – tendency to generalize a favorable or unfavorable first impression to unrelated details of personality (shouldn’t occur)

B. Direct Observations and Rating Scales

1. Terminology

a. direct observation – assessing behavior through direct surveillance/observation

b. rating scale – list of personality traits or aspects of behavior on which a person is rated (ADHD checklist)

c. behavioral assessment – recording the frequency of various behaviors

2. Situational Testing – simulating real-life conditions so that a person’s

reactions may be directly observed (police training)

C. Personality Questionnaires – paper-and-pencil test consisting of questions that reveal aspects of personality

1. Objective test – test that gives the same score when different people score/correct it

2. Reliability – ability of a test to yield nearly the same score each time it is given to the same person

3. Validity – ability of a test to measure what it purports to measure

4. Minnesota Mulitphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) – one of the

best known and most widely used objective personality questionnaires

5. MMPI-2 profile – graphic representation of an individual’s cores on each of the primary scale of the MMPI-2

6. Validity scales – scales that tell whether test scores should be invalidated for lying, inconsistency, or “faking good/bad”

7. Honesty test – paper-and-pencil test designed to detect attitudes, beliefs, and behavior patterns that predispose a person to dishonest behavior

IX. Projective Tests of Personality – psychological tests making use of ambiguous or unstructured stimuli

A. The Rorshach Inkblot Test – projective tests comprised of 10 standardized inkblots

B. Thematic Apperception Test – projective test consisting of 20 different scenes and life situations about which respondents make up stories

C. Limitations of Projective Testing

1. concerns about reliability and validity

2. test battery – group of tests and interviews given to the same individual

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