Personality

Lecture Notes

1. Dispositional – trait models
1. Dispositions = collective ways an individual usually thinks and behaves.
2. Trait = characteristic assumed to describe a person across many situations.
3. Personality type Theories
1. Hippocrates = temperaments associated with dominant humors
1. (Bodily fluids) – yellow bile, blood, phlegm, black bile
2. William Sheldon = body builds effect temperament
4. Personality Trait Theories
1. Gordon Allport
1. Cardinal traits – overwhelming importance to individuals
1. 1 trait that dominates personality (few people have)
2. Central (Global) traits = characteristic ways of behaving
1. 5-10 traits reflecting characteristic behaviors, reactions = everyone has
3. Secondary traits – more changeable aspects of personality
4. Theory is more concerned with explaining how we differ from each other than explaining why
2. Raymond Cattell
1. Factor analysis (stats)
2. Surface traits – visible in words or deeds
3. Source traits – underlying causes of surface traits
3. Hans Eysenck
1. Factor analysis
2. Introversion vs. extroversion
3. Emotionality vs. stability (neuroticism)
4. Psychoticism (cruelty, hostility, oddness, rejection of social customs)
4. Robert McCrae, Paul Costa
1. The big five = supported by research as fundamental traits
2. Introversion vs. extroversion (shy vs. outgoing)
3. Neuroticism or emotional instability (the extent to which people have negative affectivity = general emotional instability
4. Agreeableness – extent to which people are good-natured.
5. Conscientiousness – responsibility, scrupulousness
6. Openness to experience (or imagination) = originality
5. Overall critiques
1. Personality traits do seem to be fairly consistent
2. But while useful as a descriptive of behavior, doesn’t offer explanation of development
5. Biological Personality theories
1. Ragan – temperamental styles
1. Inhibited = shy/timid children; react negatively to novel situations
1. Increased SNS during mildly stressful mental tasks
2. Uninhibited = talkative/spontaneous
3. Heritability = between .4 and .6
2. Critiques:
1. Measures of environmental influences are "crude", causing researchers to miss them and overestimate the role of heredity
2. Many separated twins grew up in similar environments
2. Learning Theories
1. Learning Theories (behaviorists)
1. Personality is predictable from individual’s history of reinforcement and punishment. Inconsistencies reflect situational specificity. Minimal "free will"
2. B.F. Skinner: personality is the result of operant conditioning (reinforcement/punishment)
3. Behavior Therapy is an attempt to modify behavior through the systematic alteration of undesired patterns of action to produce desired patterns of action to produce desired patterns.
2. Learning theories (cognitive learning theory or social learning)
1. Human actions are determined from without – reactions to external forces
2. Rotter = expectancy theory
1. Learning creates cognitive expectancies – guide behavior
2. Behavior is determined by what someone expects to happen and the value the person places on it
3. Internal vs. external Locus of control
1. Degree to which people expect events to be controlled by their internal efforts of external forces.
2. Internal = people control own destiny
3. External = victims of luck, fate, or others
3. Differences between behaviorism/cognitive/social learning
1. Cognitive social learning theories emphasize
3. Observational learning (models)
1. Cognitive processes (perception & interpretation of events)
2. Motivating values, emotions, and beliefs (such as expectations of success or failure, confidence in ability to reach goals)
3. Bandura = social learning theory
1. Personality is acquired behavior taking place in a social context
2. Reciprocal determinism = behavior, cognition, and environment influence one another
3. Self efficacy = a learned expectation of success
3. Psychodynamic or Psychosexual developmental theories
1. General elements
1. Based on forces within the mind (intrapsychic dynamics)
2. Adult behavior and problems determined primarily by childhood experiences
3. Psychological development occurs in fixed stages
4. Unconscious fantasies and symbols are main motivators of personality
5. Reliance on subjective methods
2. Freud
1. Personality based on three elements
1. Id: pleasure principle
1. Life instinct (Eros Libido) –sex
2. Death instinct (Thanatos) aggression, destruction
2. Ego: Reality principle
1. Referees ID and society
2. Reason and good sense
3. Superego = Moral principle
1. Morality and rules
2. Judges activities of Id
3. Ego ideal (Moral and social standards one learns are right)
4. Conscience (Inner voice that says you did something wrong)
2. Defense Mechanisms
1. Used by ego to reduce conflicts with ID and superego to guard against anxiety caused by instinctual wishes
2. Unconscious; deny or distort reality
3. Include denial, displacement, identification, Intellectualization, others pg. 369
3. Carl Jung
1. Analytic or Jungian psychology
2. Two separate unconscious regions of the mind
1. Personal unconscious = from personal experience
2. Collective unconscious = based on common human genetic heritage
3. Archetypes = themes and symbolic images repeatedly in myths
1. Anima = feminine Archetype in men
2. Animus = Masculine archetype in women
3. Others: hero, trickster, great mother, spiritual father, Mandala, transformation
1. The hero. From world leaders to mythic gods to gargantuan sandwiches, the hero represents someone who rises to the occasion to conquer and vanish with great might. Often the hero is a relatively weak individual, but one who connects to powerful internal forces. Herein lies a blueprint for the development of one’s own sense of individuality.
2. The Trickster. This archetype is often seen as a collective shadow figure representing the underdeveloped or inferior traits of individuals. In Mythology (such as many Native American folktales) the trickster is often dull-witted but someone who typically provides positive outcomes.
3. Great Mother. The Virgin Mary = the Hindu goddess Kali, Fertility symbols, Henry Moore sculptures, "mother earth", myths and legends of motherhood…These are all reflections of our Archetype of one who ushers us into existence and nurtures us.
4. Spiritual father. Our image and sense of fathers is tied to spirituality. An obvious link, established well before Jung, is found in many Judeo-Christian Religions.
5. Mandala. The Archetype of order, examples of this are plentiful within and across cultures. Circles, squares, fractal forms, swastikas, wheels, yin-yang, crosses, and numbers are a few examples.
6. Transformation. Journeys to the self, whether in mythology, dreams or symbols, represent transformation. From Diogenes’ search for an honest person to someone’s life-altering revelation, transformation plays a role in human development and growth.
4. Adler
1. Inferiority complexes
2. Birth Order too
5. Horney
1. Freud = male bias
2. Suggested penis envy ahs male counterpart in "womb envy"
3. Childhood anxiety caused by sense of helplessness triggers a desire for life and security
6. Erikson
1. Psychosocial vs. Psychosexual
4. Humanistic (Phenomenological) Theories
1. Common components
1. Instead of focus on negative aspects, highlight positives
2. Humans born with a positive drive to grow and improve
3. People strive for self determination and self actualization
4. Self concept reflects our subjective perception of who we are and what we like
5. Inner-directedness as an internal force leading people to grow and improve
2. Abraham Maslow
1. Hierarchy of needs
2. Self actualization is highest psychological need and cannot be attained until basic physical and psychological needs are met
3. Carl Rogers
1. "Person centered perspective"
2. Fully functioning person
3. Congruence between self image and true feelings
1. Trusting, warm, and open to new experiences
2. Unconditional positive regard: attitude of total acceptance towards another person
3. Conditional love: incongruence and unhappiness
4. Focused on relationship between self and organism
1. Self: your conscious view of you (self concept = all thoughts and feelings which answer "who a I?"
2. Organism = the sum of all your experiences, including unconscious feelings, perceptions and wishes
5. Cognitive theories
1. View individual personality in terms of tendencies to process, interpret, and understand the environment
2. George Kelly = personal construct theory
1. Personality = the habitual way people make sense out of the world
2. Personality is thus constructed through our own cognitive processes
3. Fundamental postulation = people behave according to the way the will behave in similar situations in the future is predictable from the constructs they are currently using
3. Fritz Heider
1. Attribution theory
2. People make inferences about the causes of others’ behavior
3. Tend to locate causes either within the person or within the situation
4. Evaluate/Critique
1. Seen as too narrow
2. Humans = unfeeling but thinking creatures
3. Behaviorists disagree with dependence on observable processes
4. Psychoanalytic theorists object to leaving out childhood influences.
6. Assessment techniques
1. Observation(s)
2. Interview(s)
3. Peer ratings
4. Self-report personality tests
1. Objective tests: Standardized written format (also called self report)
1. Answer questions
2. Limited response options (T/F) Agree/neutral/disagree etc.)
3. e.g. Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (MMPI); million clinical, multi axial inventory ( MCMI)
2. Projective tests: Free response format
1. Relatively unstructured stimuli, which can be perceived in many ways with no response restrictions
2. (Theoretically) the individual "projects" personality traits onto the task
3. e.g. Thematic apperception test (TAT), Rorschach inkblot technique