Individual Differences: Traits and Behaviors

• Individual differences are the variations in traits and behaviors among individuals.

Human Similarities

• Humans are largely similar in their anatomical features.
• Humans are largely similar in their social behaviors.
• Humans share similar needs.
• Humans have similar abilities.
• Humans have similar vulnerabilities.

Human Differences

• Humans differ in their anatomical features.
• Humans differ in their social behaviors.
• Humans differ in their needs.
• Humans differ in their abilities.
• Humans differ in their vulnerabilities.

Origins of Similarity

• Genetic makeup contributes to human similarity.
• Similar environments contribute to human similarity.
• Nature versus nurture plays a role in similarity.
• Differences can be beneficial or not.

Main Areas of Difference

• Personality varies among individuals.
• Intelligence varies among individuals.

Personality

• Personality is difficult to define.
• Personality refers to relatively stable and enduring aspects of an individual that distinguish them from others.
• Personality forms the basis of predictions about future behaviors.
• Personality shapes characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Perspectives on Personality

• Psychoanalytic perspective focuses on unconscious motivations.
• Trait perspective focuses on specific dimensions of personality.
• Humanistic perspective focuses on inner capacity for growth.
• Social-cognitive perspective focuses on the influence of environment.

Psychoanalytic Perspective

• The psychoanalytic perspective is the first comprehensive theory of personality.
• Sigmund Freud developed this perspective.
• Freud specialized in nervous disorders.
• Some patients' disorders had no physical cause.

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

• Freud explored the cause of neurological symptoms in patients with no neurological problems.
• Freud used hypnosis to understand the unconscious.
• The process of psychoanalysis includes free association.
• The mind is like an iceberg, mostly hidden.
• Conscious awareness is a small part above the surface.
• The unconscious includes thoughts, feelings, wishes, and memories below the surface.
• Repression banishes unacceptable thoughts and passions to the unconscious.
• Repression may manifest in dreams and slips of the tongue.
• Personality arises from conflict between aggressive, pleasure-seeking impulses and social restraints.

Freud’s Personality Structure

• The id is the energy constantly striving to satisfy basic drives and operates on the pleasure principle.
• The ego seeks to gratify the id in realistic ways and operates on the reality principle.
• The superego is the voice of conscience that focuses on how we ought to behave

Freud's Psychosexual Stages

• Personality forms during the first few years of life.
• Rooted in unresolved conflicts of early childhood.
• Oral stage (0-18 months): centered on the mouth.
• Anal stage (18-36 months): focus on bowel/bladder elimination.
• Phallic stage (3-6 years): focus on genitals/Oedipus complex.
• Latency stage (6-puberty): sexuality is dormant.
• Genital stage (puberty on): sexual feelings toward others.
• Strong conflict can fixate an individual at stages 1, 2, or 3.

Defense Mechanisms

• Defense mechanisms protect the ego.
• Defense mechanisms reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality.
• Repression banishes certain thoughts/feelings from consciousness and underlies all other defense mechanisms.
• Regression involves retreating to an earlier stage of development.
• Reaction formation is when the ego makes unacceptable impulses appear as their opposites.
• Projection attributes threatening impulses to others.
• Rationalization generates self-justifying explanations to hide the real reasons for our actions.
• Displacement diverts impulses toward a more acceptable object.
• Sublimation transforms unacceptable impulses into something socially valued.

Assessing the Unconscious

• Projective tests tap into the unconscious.
• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is a projective test.
• Rorschach Inkblot Test is a projective test.
• Objective tests do not tap into the conscious.

Evaluating Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Current research contradicts many of Freud's ideas.
• Development does not stop in childhood.
• Slips of the tongue may be competing "nodes" in a memory network.
• Dreams may not be unconscious drives and wishes.
• Freud's theories were based on his recollections and interpretations of patients' free associations, dreams, and slips of the tongue.
• Freud's theories do not predict behavior or traits.

Trait Perspective

• The trait perspective focuses on basic personality dimensions.
• Traits are people's characteristic behaviors and conscious motives.
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator classifies people based on responses to 126 questions.

Basic Traits

• Personality can be described by a combination of genetically determined dimensions.
• The Big Five factors include a broader set of traits.
• Extraversion/introversion is a trait dimension.
• Emotional stability/instability is a trait dimension.
• Emotional stability includes Calm/Anxious and Secure/Insecure traits.
• Extraversion includes Sociable/Retiring and Fun Loving/Sober traits.
• Openness includes Imaginative/Practical and Independent/Conforming traits.
• Agreeableness includes Soft-Hearted/Ruthless and Trusting/Suspicious traits.
• Conscientiousness includes Organized/Disorganized and Careful/Careless traits.
• Genes have an impact on personality traits.

Assessing Traits

• Personality inventories such as the MMPI are used to assess traits.
• The MMPI is the most widely used personality inventory.
• The MMPI assess psychological disorders.
• The MMPI uses empirically derived test items selected based on how well they discriminate between groups of traits.

Humanistic Perspective

• The humanistic perspective emphasizes seeing individuals as healthy rather than classifying them as "sick".
• The humanistic perspective emphasizes seeing the individual as greater than the sum of a test scores.
• Maslow's concept of self-actualization.
• Roger's person-centered perspective.
• Self-actualization is the process of fulfilling our potential.
• Maslow studied healthy, creative people like Abe Lincoln, Tom Jefferson, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
• Self-aware and self-accepting individuals.
• Open and spontaneous individuals.
• Loving and caring individuals.
• Problem-centered individuals, not self-centered.
• Roger's person-centered perspective views people as basically good with actualizing tendencies.
• Given the right environmental conditions, we will develop to our full potentials.
• Genuineness, acceptance, and empathy are important.
• Self-concept is a central feature of personality.
• The humanistic perspective asses people primarily through questionnaires in which people report their self-concept.
• The humanistic perspective emphasizes understanding others' subjective personal experiences during therapy
• Concepts of the humanistic perspective are vague and subjective.
• Assumptions are naïvely optimistic.

Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Behavior is learned through conditioning and observation.
• What we think about our situation affects our behavior.
• Focuses on the interaction of environment and intellect.
• Reciprocal determinism involves personal/cognitive factors, environment factors, and behavior.
• Internal world + external world = us.

Personal Control

• Internal locus of control means you pretty much control your own destiny.
• External locus of control means luck, fate, and/or powerful others control your destiny.
• Correlate feelings of control with behavior.
• Experiment by raising/lowering people's sense of control and noting effects.

Outcomes of Personal Control

• Learned helplessness results from uncontrollable bad events leading to a perceived lack of control.
• Results in generalized helpless behavior.
• Important issue in nursing homes, prisons and colleges.

Paranoid

• Paranoid personality disorder is characterized by a distrust of others and a constant suspicion that people around you have sinister motives.
• People with this disorder tend to have excessive trust in their own knowledge and abilities and usually avoid close relationships with others.
• They search for hidden meanings in everything and read hostile intentions into the actions of others.
• They are quick to challenge the loyalties of friends and loved ones and often appear cold and distant to others.
• They usually shift blame to others and tend to carry long grudges.

Schizoid

• People with schizoid personality disorder avoid relationships and do not show much emotion.
• They genuinely prefer to be alone and do not secretly wish for popularity.
• They tend to seek jobs that require little social contact.
• Their social skills are often weak and they do not show a need for attention or acceptance.
• They are perceived as humorless and distant and are often termed “loners.”

Schizotypal

• Many believe that schizotypal personality disorder represents mild schizophrenia.
• The disorder is characterized by odd forms of thinking and perceiving, and individuals with this disorder often seek isolation from others.
• They sometimes believe to have extrasensory ability or that unrelated events relate to them in some important way.
• They generally engage in eccentric behavior and have difficulty concentrating for long periods of time.
• Their speech is often over elaborate and difficult to follow.

Antisocial

• A misconception is that antisocial personality disorder refers to people who have poor social skills.
• Antisocial personality disorder is characterized by a lack of conscience.
• People are prone to criminal behavior, believing that their victims are weak and deserving of being taken advantage of.
• They tend to lie and steal.
• Often, they are careless with money and take action without thinking about consequences.
• They are often aggressive and are much more concerned with their own needs than the needs of others.

Borderline

• Borderline personality disorder is characterized by mood instability and poor self-image.
• People with this disorder are prone to constant mood swings and bouts of anger.
• Often, they take their anger out on themselves, causing themselves injury.
• Suicidal threats and actions are not uncommon.
• They think in very black and white terms and often form intense, conflict-ridden relationships.
• They are quick to anger when their expectations are not met.

Histrionic

• People with histrionic personality disorder are constant attention seekers.
• They need to be the center of attention, often interrupting others to dominate the conversation.
• They use grandiose language to describe everyday events and seek constant praise.
• They may dress provocatively or exaggerate illnesses to gain attention.
• They also tend to exaggerate friendships and relationships, believing that everyone loves them.
• They are often manipulative.

Narcissistic

• Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by self-centeredness.
• Like histrionic disorder, people with this disorder seek attention and praise.
• They exaggerate their achievements, expecting others to recognize them as being superior.
• They tend to be choosy about picking friends, since they believe that not just anyone is worthy of being their friend.
• They tend to make good first impressions, yet have difficulty maintaining long-lasting relationships.
• They are generally uninterested in the feelings of others.

Avoidant

• Avoidant personality disorder is characterized by extreme social anxiety.
• People with this disorder often feel inadequate, avoid social situations, and seek out jobs with little contact with others.
• They are fearful of being rejected and worry about embarrassing themselves in front of others.
• They exaggerate the potential difficulties of new situations to rationalize avoiding them.
• Often, they will create fantasy worlds to substitute for the real one.
• Unlike schizoid personality disorder, avoidant people yearn for social relations yet feel they are unable to obtain them.
• They are frequently depressed and have low self-confidence.

Dependent

• Dependent personality disorder is characterized by a need to be taken care of.
• People with this disorder tend to cling to people and fear losing them.
• They may become suicidal when a break-up is imminent.
• They tend to let others make important decisions for them and often jump from relationship to relationship.
• They often remain in abusive relationships.
• Over-sensitivity to disapproval is common.
• Dependents often feel helpless and depressed.

Obsessive-Compulsive

• Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is similar to obsessive-compulsive anxiety disorder.
• People with this disorder are overly focused on orderliness and perfection.
• Their need to do everything "right" often interferes with their productivity.
• They tend to get caught up in the details and miss the bigger picture.
• They set unreasonably high standards for themselves and others, and tend to be very critical of others when they do not live up to these high standards.
• They avoid working in teams, believing others to be too careless or incompetent.
• They avoid making decisions because they fear making mistakes and are rarely generous with their time or money.
• They often have difficulty expressing emotion.