Post on 26-Dec-2015
Personality - describing, causing
A person’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, acting - Q1
Aristotle
• Hedonist - seeks happiness
• Acquisitive - seeks assets, wealth
• Ethical - seeks moral virtue
• Logical - thinks, investigates
Galen
• Yellow bile Choleric
• Black bile Melancholic
• Phlegm Phlegmatic
• Blood Sanguine
Freud - Q2
• 1856 - 1939
• Medical doctor
• Looked for ways to treat ailments with no apparent physical causes
• Used hypnosis, then psychoanalysis
• Interpretation of Dreams - 1900
• Sex and aggression
Freud - Q3
• The unconscious - a part of the mind that is inaccessible, filled with strong emotions that we repress - but these emotions may be expressed in disguised form - iceberg metaphor
• The conscious mind - relatively smaller part of the mind that is easily accessible
• The preconscious mind – memory, etc
Personality structure - Q4, Q5
• Id - unconscious repository of basic human instincts - sex and aggression
• Pleasure principle• Superego - our conscience - tells us how we
should behave ideally• Ego - the reality manager - mediates struggles
between the id and superego in order to allow us to live in real world - reality principle
Personality development
• Oral• Anal• Phallic - oedipal complex, castration
complex, identification, Electra complex, penis envy
• Latent• Genital • fixation
Defense mechanisms - Q7
• Enables us to control basic instincts and express them in socially acceptable ways
• Repression
• Regression
• Reaction formation - makes unacceptable impulses look like their opposite
• Projection - attributes impulses to others
Defense mechanisms
• Rationalization – gives us a plausible reason for doing something
• Displacement – replacing the object of aggression etc
• Sublimation – transforming negative energy into art
Accessing the unconscious - Q8
• Free association in psychoanalysis, introspection, insight
• Projective tests - TAT, Rorschach, Draw a Person, etc
• Dream analysis
• Hypnosis
Personality Tests - Q9
• Projective - How reliable and valid are they?
• Inventories - MMPI, MBTI, traits
After Freud
• Carl Jung - intro/extraversion, collective unconscious, science/culture balance
• Alfred Adler - inferiority complex, multiple causes, fear or exaggerated sense of self
• Karen Horney - disagreed with Freud about genital stage and about women
• Anna Freud - focused on children, development• Harry Stack Sullivan - interpersonal relationships
key to development or illness
Freud today
• Unconscious mind
• Development in stages - used in intellectual, social, moral development theory
• Defense mechanisms
• Talk therapy
• Psychoanalysis - psychodynamics
Personality
Humanists, behaviorists, social/cultural, cognitive theory, traits
Maslow’s hierarchy - Q10
Biological
Safety
Social
Ego
SA
Carl Rogers - Q11
• Ideal personality– Open to experience
– Trust feelings
– Live in the moment
• Ideal environment - attributes of the therapist– Unconditional positive regard
– Genuineness
– Empathy
Self
• Self-ideal - ideal vs actual (all your ideas, values, perceptions, what I am, what I do)
• Possible selves - motivation
• Self-esteem
• Q12 Self-efficacy - Albert Bandura
• Q13 Self-serving bias
• The spotlight effect
Congruence
• Evaluate experiences in terms of self-concept - large gap results in anxiety and defense
• Gap between ideal and real -> large gap = sad, small gap = happy
Society and personality Q14
• Personality in collectivist cultures
• Personality in individualistic cultures
Temperament – Q15
• Ranges from calm to excitable
• Apparent within hours of birth
• Very stable over a lifetime
• Genetic?
Traits
• Gordon Allport counted 18,000 words to describe people - beginning the trait perspective in personality research
• Hans Eysenck developed a system of assessing personality on two scales, extroversion and stability
• Raymond Cattell developed a list of 16 traits
The Big Five – Q16
• OC E A N – outofservice.com
• Openness to new experience
• Conscientiousness
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism (nervousness)
Big 5
• Stable?– Generally stable, less intense as we age– C increase in 20’s– A increases in 30’s
• Heritable?
• Cross-cultural?
• Predictors?
Take another test Q17
• humanmetrics.com• Jung/Myers-Briggs typology test - MBTI• Extraversion / Introversion - external / internal
energy• Sensing / iNtuitive - source of information• Thinking / Feeling - processing info - logic /
feeling• Judging / Perceiving - using info - planning /
improvising
Q18 - Stable across situations?
• According to Walter Mischel, cognitive traits are stable in most situations, emotional traits less so
• Person / situation problem - hard to predict behavior in a given situation - on average, stable
Social learning/cognitive perspective
• Albert Bandura - modeling
• Q19 Locus of control
• Attributional style – Situations vs real self– Q20 Fundamental attribution error
• Q21 Learned helplessness - Martin Seligman
Q22 Behaviorism and personality
• Behavior is personality
• You are what you do
Can you change your personality?
• No
• Temperament is very stable; most traits are generally stable
• Research has demonstrated there is a genetic component to personality
Can you change your personality?
• Yes -• a characteristic pattern of feeling, thinking,
acting• Certain types of therapy help you to change
how you think about things, especially effective with phobias
• Habits are just habits
Q23 Methods of studying personality
• Projective tests
• Surveys
• Case studies
• Correlations
• MMPI, NEO-PI
Q24 Names to know
• Alfred Adler, Bandura, Paul Costa and Robert McCrae, Freud, Jung, Maslow, Rogers