Personality and Psychodynamic Theory

• Personality is the pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make each person unique
• Personality includes character, temperament, and nature
• Some believe personality is biological and constant through life
• Others believe personality is dynamic and changes due to external factors like life experiences, environment, and culture
• The debate on whether personality is genetic or influenced by external factors is known as "nature versus nurture"

Questions to discover your personal traits

• How would I describe myself?
• What's my biggest fear?
• What's my biggest dream?
• What's my biggest accomplishment?
• What brought me joy as a child?
• What brings me joy now?

Psychodynamic Theory

• Also known as psychoanalytic psychotherapy
• Created by Sigmund Freud
• Human behavior can be explained by intrapsychic processes and interpersonal patterns outside of a person’s conscious awareness
• Based on childhood experiences
• Forces outside of a person’s awareness explain why they behave a certain way

Conscious and Unconscious

• The ID (Interactive Drive) is the first part, which is UNCONSCIOUS
• This leads you to do certain things without thinking
• The ego and super ego are the second part, which are CONSCIOUS

Trait Theories

• Concentrate on descriptive terms used to detail an individual
• Believe these descriptive terms, such as happy, outgoing, and angry, make up a personality
• Focuses on the differences between individuals that formulate their personalities
• The combination of traits or descriptive terms works together to create the entire personality
• Gordon Allport found 4,500 words in the English language that could describe people

Big Five Personality Dimensions

• Openness: Appreciates new art, ideas, values, feelings, and behaviors
• Conscientiousness: Careful, on-time, follows rules, and is hardworking
• Extraversion: Talkative, sociable, and enjoys others, tends to have a dominant style
• Agreeableness: Agrees and goes along with others rather than assert own opinions
• Neuroticism: Frequently experiences negative emotions and is interpersonally sensitive

The Dark Triad

• Machiavellianism: Pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, believes ends justify means
• Narcissism: Arrogant, requires excessive admiration, has a sense of entitlement
• Psychopathy: Lacks concern for others, lacks guilt or remorse

Behavioral Theories

• Personality is a result of interaction between the individual and the environment
• Study observable and measurable behaviors
• Often ignoring the role of internal thoughts and feelings
• Behavioral theorists include B.F Skinner and John Watson

Humanist Theories

• Emphasize the importance of free will and individual experience in developing a personality
• Humanist theorists include Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow
• Emphasize human potential, creativity, health, hope, meaning, connection, purpose, and the ability to reach self-actualization

Personality Characteristics in Organizations

• High Openness: More creativity, flexibility, eagerness to learn; higher job satisfaction, adaptability, strong leadership
• High Conscientiousness: More effort, drive, discipline; better job performance and leadership ability, less likely to leave
• High Extraversion: Relates easily to others, more emotional, dominates socially; better job performance and leadership, less likely to leave
• High Agreeableness: Complies with rules, easy to like; better job performance and on-the-job behavior
• High Neuroticism: Thinks negatively, expresses negative emotions; lower job satisfaction, higher stress

History of Personality Tests, The Myers Briggs Personality Test

• Carl G. Jung introduced the Theory of Psychological Types in the 1920s
• Isabel Briggs Myers and Katherine Briggs refined the findings of Jung and Introduced MBTI in the 1940s
• MBTI used 8 Psychological traits Leading to 16 Individual Personalities to understand people in a much easier un-conventional way

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

• A self-help assessment test that helps people gain insights about how they work and learn
• A framework for relationship-building, developing positivism, and achieving excellence
• Relies on sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking functions
• Preferences are driven through interests, values, needs, and motivation
• Carl Jung came up with this theory through subjective clinical evaluations

Dimensions of type

• Extraversion vs. Introversion: Where do you get your energy from?

• Sensing vs. Intuition: What kind of information do you prefer to use?

• Thinking vs. Feeling: What process do you use to make decisions?

• Judging vs. Perceiving: How do you deal with the world around you?

• In general those who score the same on the quiz behave and think in similar manners

• Results can be skewed as we can only measure how people answer

• There are 16 different combinations you could receive

• For most people, the Myers Briggs profile assigned to them is quite accurate

• Myers Briggs profiles can change over time

• Time, Trauma and Drugs can all cause changes

Social Perception

• Social Perception is the study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people
• Factors influencing social perception are perceiver, target, and situation

Attribution Theory

• It is concerned with how ordinary people explain the causes of behavior and events
• It is the process of inferring the causes of events or behaviors
• Occurs without any awareness of the underlying processes and biases that lead to inferences

Attribution three-stage process

• The behavior of an individual must be observed
• The perceiver must determine that the behavior they have observed is deliberate.
• The observer attributes the observed behavior to either internal or external causes
• Internal attribution = Dispositional
• External attribution = Situational