Personality Theories Overview

Personality

• Personality is defined as an individual's unique, relatively stable, and enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Lecture Overview

• Covered topics include: Trait Theories, Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic Theories, Humanistic Theories, Biological Theories, and How Sex, Gender, and Culture Affect Personality.

Trait Theories

• Traits are relatively stable and consistent personal characteristics.
• Early trait theorists include Allport, Cattell, and Eysenck.
• A modern trait theory is the five-factor model (FFM) by McCrae & Costa.
• The FFM explains personality in terms of five dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Trait Dimensions

• Openness: Ranges from original and imaginative to conventional and down-to-earth.
• Conscientiousness: Ranges from responsible and organized to irresponsible and lazy.
• Extraversion: Ranges from talkative and outgoing to quiet and passive.
• Agreeableness: Ranges from trusting and good-natured to suspicious and ruthless.
• Neuroticism: Ranges from worried and moody to calm and even-tempered.

Evaluating Trait Theories

• Pro: Describes and organizes personality characteristics using the fewest number of traits (FFM).
• Con: Fails to explain why traits develop, change, and which ones change; ignores situational effects.

Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic Theories

• Psychoanalytic theories explain individual differences by examining how unconscious mental forces interplay with thoughts, feelings, and actions.
• Freud is the founding father of psychoanalytic theory.

Levels of Consciousness

• Conscious: Thoughts in one's current mind.
• Preconscious: Thoughts that might become conscious easily.
• Unconscious: Thoughts beyond a person's normal awareness.

Personality Structures

• Id: Innate, operates on the pleasure principle.
• Ego: Rational part of the psyche; operates on the reality principle.
• Superego: Conscience; operates on the morality principle.

Defense Mechanisms

• The ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by distorting reality.
• Examples include repression, rationalization, and projection.

Psychosexual Stages of Development

• Oral stage: Birth to 18 months (focus on the mouth).
• Anal stage: 18 months to 3 years (toilet training).
• Phallic stage: 3 to 6 years (developing a sense of self).
• Latency stage: 6 years to puberty (interacting with same-sex peers).
• Genital stage: Puberty to adulthood (developing intimate relationships).

Evaluating Psychoanalytic Theories

• Pro: Proposes that the unconscious influences behavior and developed defense mechanisms.
• Con: Difficult to test, overemphasizes biology and unconscious forces, has inadequate empirical support, is sexist, and lacks cross-cultural support.

Humanistic Theories

• Each individual's personality is created out of his or her unique way of perceiving and interpreting the world.

Rogers: The Self-Concept

• Emphasized the importance of the self-concept.
• Concerned with a match between the self-concept and actual experiences with life.

Rogers: Positive Regard

• Conditional Positive Regard: Positive behavior toward a person is contingent on behaving in certain ways.
• Unconditional Positive Regard: Positive behavior toward a person with no contingencies attached.

Maslow: The Search for Self-Actualization

• Self-actualization is the innate tendency toward growth that motivates all human behavior and results in the full realization of a person's highest potential.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

• Physiological needs: Hunger, thirst, body maintenance.
• Safety needs: Security, safety.
• Belonging and love needs: Affiliation, acceptance, attention.
• Esteem needs: Achievement, competence, approval.
• Self-actualization needs: Self-fulfillment, realizing potential.

Evaluating Humanistic Theories

• Pro: Many concepts are incorporated into therapy.
• Con: Has naive assumptions, poor testability, and inadequate evidence; narrowness.

Biological Theories

• Three major contributors to personality include brain structures (like frontal lobes), neurochemistry, and genetic factors.

Biopsychosocial Model

• Personality is influenced by genetics (40-50%), nonshared environmental factors (27%), shared environmental factors (7%), and unknown factors (16-26%).

How Sex, Gender, and Culture Affect Personality

• Sex: Biological dimensions of maleness and femaleness, including physical anatomy, secondary sex characteristics, and brain differences.
• Gender: Psychological and sociocultural meanings added to sex, influencing almost every aspect of life and personality formation.
  • Examples of differences: Males may be slightly better at math and more aggressive; females may be cuddled more by parents.
  • Gender role: Societal expectations of appropriate male and female behavior.
• Culture: Influences personality.
  • Individualistic cultures emphasize individual needs and goals.
  • Collectivistic cultures emphasize group needs and goals.

Personality Assessment

• Interview (personality): Face-to-face meeting to gain information about personality, psychological state, or history.
• Types of interviews: Unstructured (conversational) and structured (prearranged questions).
• Limitations: Halo effect (generalizing first impressions).
• Direct Observation: Assessing behavior through direct surveillance.
• Other methods: Behavioral assessment (recording frequency of behaviors) and situational tests (simulating real-life situations).
• Personality Questionnaire: Paper-and-pencil measure with questions to reveal personality aspects. Example: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2).
• Reliability: A test consistently giving the same score to the same person.
• Validity: A test measuring what it claims to measure.
• Projective Tests: Tests using ambiguous or unstructured stimuli to reveal personality through individual responses. Example: Rorschach Technique (inkblots) and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).