Projective Personality Assessments

• Personality refers to the relatively enduring characteristics differentiating individuals, leading to consistent, predictable behavior across situations and time.
• Personality encompasses enduring patterns of behavior and thought across time and situations

Four Major Perspectives on Personality

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

Sigmund Freud

• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) graduated from the University of Vienna in 1873 and specialized in nervous disorders.
• Freud noted that some patients' disorders lacked a physical cause.
• Psychoanalysts such as Freud believe that much behavior stems from unconscious parts of personality.
• Freud proposed three levels of awareness/consciousness: the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind.

Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious

• The mind is like an iceberg, with most of it hidden below the surface.
• Conscious awareness is a small part above the surface (preconscious)
• The unconscious holds thoughts, feelings, wishes, and memories below the surface.
• Repression banishes unacceptable thoughts and passions to the unconscious, manifesting in dreams and slips.

Freud's Theory of Personality

• Conscious mind includes things being focused on.
• Preconscious mind includes things not currently aware of, but can focus on.
• Unconscious mind includes things unaware of.
• Personality consists of the id, ego, and superego.
• The id is the unorganized, inborn part of personality that reduces tensions related to hunger, sex, aggression, and other primitive impulses.
• The ego restrains instinctual energy to maintain individual safety and social membership.
• The superego represents societal rights and wrongs, consisting of the conscience and the ego-ideal.
• The id constantly strives to satisfy basic drives based on the pleasure principle.
• The ego seeks to gratify the id in realistic ways based on the reality principle.
• The superego represents the voice of conscience, focusing on how one ought to behave.
• The id uses the most primitive thinking process, fulfilling basic biological urges.
• The id operates on the Pleasure Principle, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, and functions entirely at an unconscious level, with no direct reality contact.
• The id has 2 major instincts:
  • Eros (life instinct) motivates pleasure-seeking tendencies, such as sexual urges.
  • Thanatos (death instinct) motivates the use of aggressive urges to destroy.
• The energy for the id's instincts comes from the libido, which is the energy storehouse.
• The ego can consciously perceive and intelligently deal with reality, mediating between the id and superego, and make rational decisions.
• The ego serves the id, maintaining contact with reality, and uses higher mental processes like reasoning and problem-solving.
• The superego is the moral part of personality with internalized rules of parents and society.
• The superego consists of the conscience that holds notions of right and wrong, and the ego ideal that defines how we ideally like to be.
• It constrains gratification of impulses due to immorality, not fear of getting caught
• The superego operates partly consciously and partly unconsciously.
• Individual feelings, thoughts, and behaviors result of the interaction of the id, the superego, and the ego.

Conflict and Anxiety

• The id, ego, and superego are in constant conflict, generating anxiety.
• Ineffectively handled anxiety results in overwhelming feelings that hinder daily life.
• The ego controls anxiety via ego defense mechanisms.
• Defense mechanisms reduce/redirect anxiety by distorting reality at an unconscious level.
• Awareness of defense mechanism use may come later.
• Repression pushes unacceptable thoughts into the unconscious, that involves unintentional forgetting of memories or unacceptable impulses.
• Regression involves acting in ways fitting of earlier life stages or earlier stages of personality.
• Reaction formation replaces an anxiety-producing feeling with its opposite and repressed thoughts appear as mirror opposites.
• Rationalization creates false excuses to justify inappropriate behavior where real motives are unacceptable to the ego.
• Displacement redirects emotional feelings to a less threatening target.
• Denial involves believing something false as true. Example: disbelieving you are getting old.
• Projection attributes unacceptable feelings or beliefs to others, using them to perceive the external world in terms of personal conflicts.
• Sublimation substitutes socially acceptable behavior for unacceptable impulses.

Freud's Stages of Personality Development

• Personality develops through stages associated with major biological functions based on psychoanalytic theory.
• Freud theorized that as people age, they pass through several systematic stages of psychosexual development in their personality.
• The psychosexual stages of development are the source of unconscious conflicts that involve events in every child's life.
• Each level has conflict between pleasure and reality and the resolution of this conflict determines personality.
• At any stage, a "fixation" may occur if needs are under-gratified or over-gratified.
• Each stage also involves an erogenous zone.
• Personality forms during the first few years of life, rooted in unresolved conflicts of early childhood.
• Psychosexual stages:
  • Oral (0-18 months): centered on the mouth.
  • Anal (18-36 months): focus on bowel/bladder elimination.
  • Phallic (3-6 years): focus on genitals, including the "Oedipus Complex" (Identification & Gender Identity).
  • Latency (6 to puberty): sexuality is dormant.
  • Genital (puberty on): sexual feelings toward others.
• Oral Stage occurs during birth to 18 months, characterized by the mouth as the erogenous zone and gratification through sucking and swallowing.
• Oral fixation has two possible outcomes: oral receptive personality and oral aggressive personality.
  • Oral receptive personality: preoccupied with eating/drinking, reduce tension through oral activity, passive and needy, sensitive to rejection.
  • Oral aggressive personality: hostile and verbally abusive to others.
• Anal Stage occurs during 1 1/2 to 3 years of age when the erogenous zone is the anus and conflict surrounds toilet training.
• Anal fixation results in:
  • Anal retentive personality: stingy, compulsive orderliness, stubborn, perfectionistic.
  • Anal expulsive personality: lack of self-control, messy, and careless.
• Phallic Stage occurs during 3 to 6 years of age
  • The erogenous zone is the genitals and self-stimulation produces pleasure.
  • At age 5 or 6, children may experience the Oedipal conflict (boys) or the Electra conflict (girls). This begins the process of identification with the same gender parent by acting as much like that parent as possible.
  • Oedipus complex (boys) vs Electra complex (girls): Child is sexually attracted to the opposite sex parent and wishes to replace the same sex parent.
  • Oedipus complex (little boys) results in castration anxiety because the son believes the father knows about his desire for his mother, fears his father will castrate him, and represses his desire and defensively identifies with his dad..
  • Electra complex (little girls) begins with penis envy when daughter is initially attached to mom. This shifts when daughter realizes she lacks a penis, desires her dad whom she sees as a means to obtain a penis substitute, represses her desire and incorporates the values of her mother and accepts her inherent inferiority in society.
• Latency Period involves little girls and boys socializing only with their own gender to minimize awareness of sexuality.
• 5th stage of psychosexual development: During the Genital Stage people develop secondary sexual characteristics and have sexual urges that can no longer be repressed and search for a marital mate.
• Strong conflict can fixate an individual at Stages 1,2 or 3
• Freud's theories lack objective observations and testable hypotheses and does not predict behavior or traits.

4 Types of Personality Theories

• Psychodynamic approaches focus on personality.
• Humanistic approaches focus on personality.
• Trait approaches focus on personality
• Social Cognitive approaches focus on personality

Psychodynamic Theories

• Source of information about personality from expert analyst from people in therapy.
• Cause of behavior, thoughts, and feelings from unconscious internal conflict associated with childhood experiences and conflicts between pleasure-seeking impulses and social restraints.
• Comprehensive theory with a negative outlook on humans.
• Neo-Freudians place less emphasis on sex. Example: Carl Jung created concepts of Collective Unconscious, introversion and extroversion. Alfred Adler developed an Inferiority Complex and Karen Horney said Personality is Cultural rather than biological.

Humanistic Theories

• Source of information obtained from self-reports from the general population and people in therapy.
• The cause of behavior, thoughts, and feelings come from self-concepts, self-actualizing tendencies; along with conscious feelings about oneself.
• The outlook on humans are positive and fairly comprehensive.
• The humanistic approach rejects Freud's pessimistic view of personality and Behaviorist's mechanistic views.
• More optimistic/positive and believes Humans are free and good and have the potential for healthy growth which involves Self-actualization.
• Individuals have a unique and positive perspective. Each individual should be looked as greater than the sum of the test scores.
• "Be all you can be" given the right environmental conditions.
• Carl Rogers: the need for positive regard/approval from others that are only obtained under conditions of worth.
• Carl Rogers stated that one needs unconditional positive regard and that anxiety signifies that we are not being true to our ideal self.
• Maslow's Hierarchy of human motives: one must satisfy lower needs (physiological and safety) before gratifying higher needs (belonging, esteem and self-actualization)
• Self-actualization is the life time culmination of inner-directed growth and improvement that includes a self-actualized person being creative, open, committed, courageous, trusting and non-dependant.

Trait Personality Theories

• Source of information about personality comes from observation of behavior and questionnaire responses from the general population, as well as from people in therapy.
• Cause of behavior, thoughts, and feelings are from stable internal characteristics and maybe genetic influences.
• The outlook on humans is neutral and not very comprehensive.
• Trait approaches identify basic and enduring dimensions that people differ along known as traits.
• It is undetermined how many trait dimensions are and how they originate.
• Allport felt Most important personality traits are those that reflect our values. There are 3 kinds of traits: cardinal, central and secondary.
  • Cardinal: a single personality trait that directs most of a person's activities.
  • Central: a set of major characteristics that make up the core of a person's personality.
  • Secondary: less important personality traits that do not affect behavior as much as central and cardinal traits do.
• Eysenck identifies two (2) major trait dimensions: introversion versus extroversion and emotional stability (neuroticism).
• Cattell distinguished dynamic, ability, and temperament traits and surface and source traits and also identified 16 basic traits.
• Personality is defined by 5 basic personality dimensions: 1: emotional stability versus neuroticism 2: extraversion versus introversion 3: openness versus close-mindedness 4: agreeableness versus disagreeableness 5: conscientiousness versus undependable
• Traits are characteristics or typical ways of acting. Example: Consistency across situations, or there Distinctiveness in that each personality is unique.
• Personality is only measured via traits, it does not explain why individuals behave in certain ways and there is little consensus on how to measure personalities or determine traits.

Assessing Personality Traits

• It can be assessed and simplified through personality inventories. Example: The MMPI assess psychological disorders via test items selected based upon how well they discriminate between groups of traits.
• Walter Mischel (1968) argued that:
  • Behavior is not consistent across time or situation.
  • If no consistency, not much point in arguing for "personality."
• Thus, "personality" is an illusion.
• Situationism: Mischel believed that behavior is influenced more by the situation than any internal "trait."
• Person x situation interactionism: Both (a) internal traits and (b) the situation we are in are important determinants of behavior.

Social-Cognitive Personality Theories

• The source of information is obtained from experiments, observations of behavior, and questionnaire responses from the general population.
• Cause of behavior, thoughts, and feelings come from reciprocal influence between people (cognitions and behavior) and their environmental situations, colored by their perceptions of control.
• Outlook on humans is neutral and is not very comprehensive.
• Behavior is learned through conditioning and observation through the interaction of Environment and Intellect.
• Bandura: emphasized the role of learning in personality particularly Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning and Modeling.
• Self-efficacy: Our beliefs about our ability to achieve goals. Individuals accepts greater challenges, try harder to meet challenges when accepting a challenge.
• Reciprocal Determinism: The individual and the environment continually influence one another.
• Personal control can be internal: You pretty much control destiny. External: Luck, fate and/or powerful others control destiny.
• This can lead to Learn Helplessness: important factors include uncontrollable back events, a perceived lack of central which leads to generalize helpless behavior that may need to be addressed in Nursing Homes, Prisons and Colleges.

Personality Assessment

• Personality assessment involves the techniques for systematically gathering information about a person in order to understand and predict behavior.
• The goal of personality assessment is to obtain reliable, valid measures of individual differences that will permit the accurate prediction of behavior.
• 4 ways to measure include:
  • Interview: ask the person about themselves and obtain information that reveals personality.
  • Behavioral Observation: Watch the individual's behavior in an actual or simulated situation. is based on the principles of learning theory and employs direct measurement of behavior to determine the characteristics related to personality.
  • Objective Tests: These personality tests present test takes with self report questionnaires. The most commonly used self-report measure is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2).
• Personality assessment uses objective personality tests that use questionnaires with specific items to which she is asked to respond on paper or on a computer screen. There is usually a scale to compare for a differential diagnosis for psychological difficulties. Like the MMPI.
• Projective Tests are one in which the subject is given an ambiguous stimulus and asked to respond spontaneously. In the test no answer is clear. (pictures or inkblots). The ambiguous stimulus allows test takers to project their own needs, dreams, feelings into their response. The two most frequently used projective tests are: the Rorschach: reactions to inkblots are employed to classify personality types and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): stories about ambiguous pictures are used to draw inferences about the storyteller's personality.