Personality Psychology

Personality Psychology

• Personality is a complex and dynamic concept that is inherent in all individuals
• It is not seen as better or worse, but rather as a unique combination of traits that can be developed and modified
• Personality can be seen as the most dominant or salient individual traits/characteristics, with each individual possessing different traits to a lesser or greater extent

Definition of Personality

• The American Psychological Association (APA) defines personality as: "the enduring configuration of characteristics and behaviors that comprise each individual's unique adjustment to life, including major traits, interests, drives, values, self-concept, skills, and emotional patterns."
• Personality is an integrated, complex, and dynamic structure shaped by many forces, including hereditary tendencies, physical maturation, identification with significant individuals and groups, culturally conditioned values and roles, experiences, and relationships

Factors that Determine Personality

• Biological factors: genetic factors, heredity, brain structure, temperament, and attractiveness
• Cultural factors: cultural values and norms, reinforcement of personality traits
• Family factors: family structure, quality of care, and identification process
• Social factors: influence of relevant people, groups, and organizations, socialization process
• Situational factors: demands of different situations evoke different aspects of personality

Personality Theories

• Trait/Dispositional Theory: seeks to identify personality traits that characterize different individuals
• Biological Theory: seeks to specify the role of genetic and social factors in the formation of personality
• Behavioral Theory: seeks to analyze specific patterns of behavior that characterize individuals and the conditions that regulate their occurrence and strength
• Psychodynamic/Motivational Theory: seeks to understand the motivations, conflicts, and unconscious defenses that contribute to the construction of personality
• Phenomenological/Humanistic Theory: seeks to understand the private side of personality by studying subjective experience
• Social Cognition Theory: seeks to study how each individual's characteristic way of thinking and processing information determines their social experience and behavior

Psychodynamic Theory

• Developed by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Alfred Adler
• Seeks to understand the motivations, conflicts, and unconscious defenses that contribute to the construction of personality
• Divided into three structures: ID, Ego, and Superego
• ID: primitive instinctual component of the personality that operates according to the pleasure principle
• Ego: component that operates according to the reality principle, mediates between the ID and the external social world
• Superego: moral component of the personality that internalizes parental and social values of morality
• Defense mechanisms: unconscious mechanisms used to protect against disruptive emotions caused by internal conflict
• Criticisms of psychodynamic theory: lack of testability, inadequate empirical evidence, and male focus

Carl Jung's Theory

• Developed the concept of the collective unconscious and archetypes
• Collective unconscious: harbors ancestral memories inherited from our evolutionary past and is shared by all human beings
• Archetypes: patterns of thought and experience that are part of the collective unconscious

Alfred Adler's Theory

• Developed the concept of individual psychology and the search for superiority
• Search for superiority: drive to adapt, improve oneself, and overcome life's challenges
• Compensation: process of overcoming imagined or real inferiority
• Inferiority complex: exaggerated feelings of weakness and inadequacy
• Role of birth order in personality development: emphasized the importance of birth order, but research has been inconclusive### Projective Techniques
• Unstructured stimuli, tasks, or situations to study personality
• Allow individuals to "project" internal motivations onto the test
• Examples: drawing a picture, telling a story, completing a sentence, free association, Rorschach test
• Limitation: subjectivity (low reliability)

Biology of Personality

• Focus on the biological basis of personality
• Examines the role of genetic and social factors in shaping personality (Nature vs Nurture)
• Main author: Hans Eysenck
• Methods:
  • Twin studies: comparing similarities between monozygotic and dizygotic twins
  • Adoption studies: comparing similarities between adopted individuals and biological/adoptive families
• Findings:
  • Genetic factors influence personality traits
  • Heritability of traits (e.g., 30-50% for personality traits)
  • Most characteristics are polygenic (influenced by multiple genes)
  • Interaction between genes and environment

Hans Eysenck's Theory

• Viewed personality as a hierarchy of characteristics
• Three higher-order characteristics:
  • Extraversion/Introversion
  • Neuroticism/Emotional stability
  • Psychoticism/Impulse control
• Heredity influences personality, and individuals have a predisposition to develop certain traits based on their physiological functioning

Evolutionary Theory

• Personality dimensions exist because they played an adaptive role in human evolution
• Limitations:
  • Genetics researchers focus on establishing the exact magnitude of heritability coefficients
  • Lack of comprehensiveness in Eysenck's model and evolutionary theory

Trait/Dispositional Theories

• Traits: stable dimensions of personality that describe individual differences in behavior
• Models:
  • 3-Factor Model (Eysenck): Extraversion, Neuroticism, Psychoticism
  • 5-Factor Model (Big Five): Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness
  • 16-Factor Model (Cattell): 16 primary factors
• Measurement tools:
  • NEO-PI Personality Inventory
  • 16-Factor Personality Questionnaire
  • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Humanistic Theories

• Focus on the importance of personal agency, free will, and individual choice
• Emphasize the inherent value and potential of human beings
• Study subjective experiences and personal growth
• Key figures: Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers

Abraham Maslow's Theory

• Human beings have a set of hierarchical needs:
  • Physiological needs (basic)
  • Security needs (basic)
  • Love and belonging needs (psychological)
  • Esteem needs (psychological)
  • Personal fulfillment (self-realization)
• Characteristics of self-actualized people:
  • Efficient perception of reality
  • Acceptance and non-judgment
  • Focus on external problems
  • Need for privacy
  • Autonomy
  • Gratitude
  • Culminating experiences
  • Deep relationships
  • Discrimination between means and ends
  • Creativity

Carl Rogers' Theory

• Personality structure corresponds to the self-concept (mental representation of oneself)
• Self-concept is based on experiences and interactions with the world
• Incongruence: disparity between self-concept and experience
• Congruence: alignment between self-concept and experience, associated with greater psychological well-being and personal growth
• Development:
  • Congruent development: unconditional positive regard from significant others
  • Incongruent development: conditional positive consideration, leading to incongruity between self-concept and experience
• Ideal self: what the individual would like to be, the most fulfilled version of themselves### Self-Actualization and Humanistic Approach
• Self-actualization is the process of an individual becoming their authentic self and achieving their fullest potential, the ideal self.
• It is the inherent drive in individuals to develop their unique abilities, realize their potential, and live in accordance with their core values and inner nature.
• When an individual's ideal self is aligned with the self, it promotes congruence and self-actualization; when not aligned, it promotes incongruence.
• The role of the psychologist is to create a supportive and non-judgmental therapeutic environment that allows individuals to openly explore their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Contributions of Humanistic Approach

• Subjective opinions can be more important than objective reality.
• Self-concept is a widely used construct in psychology.
• The approach is oriented towards growth and health, which serves as the basis for positive psychology.

Criticisms of Humanistic Approach

• Poor testability: humanists have been criticized for generating hypotheses that are difficult to test (e.g., personal growth and self-realization).
• Inadequate evidence: many humanistic psychologists have dismissed efforts to quantify the human experience to test hypotheses.
• View of human nature: human nature is not fixed and predetermined but rather something particular and moldable that is formed through social relations in a given cultural, political, and historical context.
• Excessive and unrealistic criteria for self-realization: self-actualized people as defined by Maslow seem almost perfect, being difficult to find in the real world.

Behaviorism

• Behaviorism is a learning theory based on the idea that behavior is acquired through conditioning that occurs in interaction with the environment.
• The object of study is exclusively observable behavior, ruling out cognitive processes.
• Learning is seen as the cause and means of controlling behavior (vs. internal causes).

Classical Conditioning

• Learning process in which associations are made between a conditioned stimulus (initially neutral) and an unconditioned stimulus.
• Principles of classical conditioning:
  • Acquisition: neutral stimulus becomes conditioned stimulus by repeated association with the unconditioned stimulus.
  • Extinction: elimination or suppression of the conditioned response (salivation at the bell) which occurs when the conditioned stimulus (bell) is presented repeatedly without being associated with the unconditioned stimulus (food).
  • Spontaneous recovery: reappearance of the conditioned response in the presence of the conditioned stimulus, after a period of rest, i.e., an interval of time without conditioning (after extinction).
  • Generalization: stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus can trigger the same conditioned response.
  • Discrimination: learnt ability to respond to the conditioned stimulus and not to similar stimuli.

Operant Conditioning

• Operant conditioning is the learning process in which behavior changes due to its consequences (reinforcements or punishments).
• Established by B.F. Skinner, who proposed the process of operant conditioning.
• Operant conditioning establishes an association between the behavior (response) and its consequence (stimulus).
• Reinforcement: a stimulus that strengthens or maintains the response, i.e., increases or maintains the likelihood of the behavior being repeated in the future.
• Punishment: a stimulus that weakens the response, i.e., decreases the likelihood of the behavior being repeated in the future.

Social Cognitive Theory

• Albert Bandura is a psychologist known for his contributions to the field of social cognitive theory.
• He sees humans as conscious and active beings, and agrees with the basis of behavioral theories: personality is shaped by learning (conditioning).
• However, he states that conditioning is not a purely mechanical process, and individuals are not passive recipients of external influences.
• He emphasizes the importance of planned and future-oriented behavior, and highlights that people define their own goals, anticipate the potential results of their actions, and make choices based on the anticipated results.

Role of Rewards

• Extrinsic motivation refers to behavior motivated by external rewards/punishments.
• Rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation by shifting the focus from the activity to the reward.
• Rewards tend to reduce creativity, promote a focus on extrinsic factors, create dependency, undermine the quality of relationships and co-operation, and limit the sense of autonomy and self-determination.

Integration of Theories

• The integration of personality theories involves combining different theoretical perspectives and concepts to provide a more comprehensive understanding of human personality.
• Levels of personality analysis:
  • Psychodynamic-motivational level
  • Phenomenological-humanistic level
  • Biological level
  • Trait-dispositional level
  • Behavioral conditioning level
  • Social cognitive level