Psychology Personality Theories Quiz

Personality

• Personality is an individual's unique and consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving
• Personality theory aims to describe and explain individual similarities and differences

The Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Psychoanalysis focuses on the influence of unconscious mental processes, the significance of sexual and aggressive instincts, and the lasting impact of early childhood experiences on personality.

Freud's Dynamic Theory of Personality

• Freud believed personality and behavior are the result of a continuous interaction between conflicting psychological forces.
• These forces operate at three levels of awareness: conscious, preconscious, and unconscious.

Level of Awareness and the Structure of Personality

• Conscious: Contact with the outside world
• Preconscious: Material just beneath the surface of awareness
• Unconscious: Difficult to retrieve material; deep below the surface of awareness

The Id

• Present at birth, entirely unconscious.
• Governed by the pleasure principle (immediate satisfaction of urges, especially sexual ones).
• Seeks pleasure, reduces tension, and avoids pain.

The Ego

• Partly conscious, organized and rational
• Operates on the reality principle (awareness of environmental demands and adapting to them by postponing gratification).
• Manages the demands of the id and the outside world, adjusting over time.

The Superego

• Partly conscious, internal representation of parental and social norms.
• Evaluates and reinforces behavior/thoughts.
• Imposes guilt and shame when moral standards are not met. Called the "conscience".

Major Ego Defense Mechanisms

• Repression
• Rationalization
• Projection
• Denial
• Undoing
• Regression

Evaluating Freud and the Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Inadequacy of evidence: data from a limited number of patients and self-analysis.
• Lack of testability: concepts like the id and superego are too vague to measure objectively.
• Sexism: Freud saw women as being driven more by emotions and lacking the same moral sense as men.

The Humanistic Perspective

• Emphasizes inherent goodness of people, human potential, self-actualization, and the healthy development of self-concept.
• Sees personality as innately positive, focusing on healthy personality growth and development.
• Contrasts with Freud's pessimistic view that people are driven primarily by unconscious and sexual instincts.
• Contrasts with behavioralists' view that human and animal behavior is primarily driven by environmental factors.

The Self-Concept

• Perceptions and beliefs about yourself, including typical behaviour and personality traits.

Positive Regard

• Conditional positive regard: Parents value their children only when they meet their standards.
• Unconditional positive regard: A sense of consistent love and acceptance, regardless of behavior

Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective

• Difficulty in validating humanistic theories scientifically.
• Some critics see humanistic psychology's view of human nature as overly optimistic.

The Social Cognitive Perspective

• Emphasizes observational learning, social experiences, self-efficacy beliefs, conscious cognitive processes, and reciprocal determinism. Self-efficacy: Beliefs about ability to meet the demands of a particular situation.

Reciprocal Determinism

• Human functioning is affected by the interaction of cognitive personal factors, behavior, and environment.

Evaluating the Social Cognitive Perspective

• The social cognitive perspective is mostly useful for laboratory-based research.
• It overlooks the importance of unconscious influences, emotions, and conflicts that drive behavior.
• Focuses on a limited number of psychological elements.

The Trait Perspective

• A trait is a relatively stable predisposition to behave in a specific way.
• Trait theory seeks to identify, describe, and measure individual differences.

Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factors

• Raymond Cattell identified 16 basic source traits which form the basis of personality.

The Five-Factor Model of Personality

• A trait theory that identifies five basic source traits (factors):
  • Extraversion
  • Neuroticism
  • Agreeableness
  • Conscientiousness
  • Openness to Experience

Evaluating the Five-Factor Model

• The five-factor model simply labels predispositions, without explaining how or why these differences develop.
• It doesn't explain the complexities of human personality.

Assessing Personality

• Methods to assess personality include:
  • Psychological tests
  • Projective tests
  • Self-report inventories