Personality

Defining and Measuring

Personality
• “Who am I?” – what makes a personal quality
part of your personality?
– characteristic, enduring pattern of thinking,
feeling, and acting
My observations of you

Results from personality testing

 Assessing Personality

Rorschach Inkblot Test TAT

 Assessing Personality

Objective measures (examples from

your text?)
Different perspectives on
personality

• psychoanalytic
• biological / trait
• humanistic
• social-cognitive
 The Psychoanalytic
Perspective
• Psychoanalysis
– Background
– Freud’s theory in a
nutshell -- thoughts
and actions are
driven by
unconscious motives
and conflicts
 Psychoanalysis
• Free Association
• Interpretation of dreams
and “slips”
 Freud’s Personality
Theories
1. Personality Structure
2. Personality Development
Personality
Structure
Mediator:
Internalized Ego
ideals:
Superego

Unconscious
psychic
energy: Id
Personality Development
• Psychosexual Stages
– stages of development: pleasure-seeking
energies focus on erogenous zones (i.e.,
oral, anal, phallic…)
• Oedipus Complex
 Fixation
• Freud’s belief that we can get “stuck” at an
earlier stage (where conflicts were unresolved)
…
• Nail-biting, etc.?
• Don’t be so “anal”
 Defense Mechanisms
• The Ego’s methods of reducing anxiety – by
unconsciously distorting reality
– Repression
– Regression
– Displacement

(“mechanisms of defense” exercise)

What can we say about Freud?
•Scientific?
•Impact
•Psychology & madness
•Everyday language

•Why?
•Sex
•Turn-of-the-century science
•Applicable
 Biological / Trait perspective

We’ve discussed this perspective a

lot already this semester…
Examples…?
 Humanistic Perspective
• Background
• Major theorists:
– Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) -- self-actualization (the
motivation to fulfill one’s potential)
– Carl Rogers (1902-1987) -- growth and fulfillment of
individuals -- requires:
– genuineness
– acceptance - unconditional positive regard
– empathy
 Humanistic Perspective
• Recognizes the impact of culture on
personality
– Individualism vs. Collectivism
Social-Cognitive Perspective
Internal personal/
cognitive factors
(enjoy high-risk
• Reciprocal
activities)
Determinism
– the interacting
influences between
Environmental personality,
Behavior factors
(learning to
(rock-climbing
behavioral, &
rock climb)
friends) environmental
factors
Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Personal Control
– our sense of how well we control our environments
• Locus of control scale (handout – if we have time)
– External Locus of Control -- the perception that
chance or outside forces beyond one’s personal
control determine one’s fate
– Internal Locus of Control -- the perception that one
controls one’s own fate
 Social-Cognitive Perspective –
Learned Helplessness
• Learned Helplessness

Uncontrollable
bad events

Perceived
lack of control

Generalized
helpless behavior
 Personality- Summary
The Four Perspectives on Personality
Perspective Behavior Springs From Assessment Techniques Evaluation

Psychoanalytic Unconscious conflicts Projective tests aimed at A speculative, hard-to-test

between pleasure-seeking revealing unconscious theory with enormous cul-

impulses and social restraints
Trait Expressing biologically
influenced dispositions, such
as extraversion or introversion
motivations
(a)Personality inventories
that assess the strengths
of different traits
(b)Peer ratings of behavior
patterns
tural impact
A descriptive approach crit-
icized as sometimes under-
estimating the variability
of behavior from situation
to situation

Humanistic Processing conscious feelings (a)Questionnaire A humane theory that

about oneself in the light of
one’s experiences
assessments
(b)Empathic interviews
reinvigorated contemporary
interest in the self; criticized
as subjective and sometimes
naively self-centered and
optimistic

Social-cognitive Reciprocal influences between (a)Questionnaire assessments Art interactive theory that in-
people and their situation, of people’s feelings of control tegrates research on learning,
colored by perceptions of (b) Observations of people’s cognition, and social behavior,
control behavior in particular criticized as underestimating
situations the importance of emotions
and enduring traits