Understanding Personality

• Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
• It encompasses an individual's unique and relatively stable psychological traits and behavioral patterns.

Approaches to Studying Personality

• Psychodynamic Approach: Emphasizes unconscious processes and early childhood experiences in shaping personality.
  • Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory is a key example, focusing on the id, ego, and superego.
  • Defense mechanisms are used to cope with unconscious conflicts.
• Trait Approach: Focuses on identifying and measuring stable personality traits.
  • Traits are enduring patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion.
  • The Five-Factor Model (FFM) is a dominant model, including Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN).
• Humanistic Approach: Emphasizes personal growth, self-actualization, and the inherent goodness of people.
  • Carl Rogers' person-centered therapy highlights the importance of empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard.
  • Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggests that self-actualization is the ultimate goal.
• Social-Cognitive Approach: Highlights the role of cognitive processes, learning, and social environment in shaping personality.
  • Albert Bandura's theory of self-efficacy emphasizes the belief in one's ability to succeed in specific situations.
  • Observational learning and modeling are key mechanisms of personality development.

Key Concepts in Personality Psychology

• Traits: Enduring characteristics that describe a person's behavior and tendencies.
  • Can be assessed through self-report questionnaires or observer ratings.
  • Traits are often viewed as existing on a continuum.
• States: Temporary behaviors or feelings that depend on a person's situation and motives at a particular time.
  • Influenced by the immediate context and are more variable than traits.
• Self-Concept: An individual's perception and evaluation of themselves.
  • Includes beliefs, values, and attitudes.
  • Influenced by social interactions and personal experiences.
• Identity: A sense of self that integrates past, present, and future goals and values.
  • Provides a sense of coherence and purpose.
  • Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development emphasizes the importance of identity formation.
• Temperament: Innate behavioral and emotional characteristics.
  • Considered to be the biological building blocks of personality.
  • Includes dimensions such as activity level, emotionality, and sociability.

Personality Assessment

• Self-Report Measures: Individuals answer questions about their behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.
  • Examples include the NEO-PI-R (assesses the Big Five traits) and the MMPI (assesses personality and psychopathology).
  • Easy to administer but can be influenced by response biases (e.g., social desirability).
• Observer Ratings: Others provide assessments of an individual's personality.
  • Can provide a more objective perspective than self-reports.
  • Useful for studying personality in children or individuals with limited self-awareness.
• Projective Tests: Individuals respond to ambiguous stimuli, and their responses are interpreted to reveal unconscious aspects of personality.
  • Examples include the Rorschach inkblot test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).
  • Controversial due to low reliability and validity.
• Behavioral Observations: Directly observing an individual's behavior in specific situations.
  • Can provide valuable information about personality in real-world contexts
  • Can be time-consuming and subject to observer bias.

Personality Development

• Genetic Influences: Genes contribute to individual differences in personality traits.
  • Twin studies and adoption studies are used to estimate the heritability of personality traits.
  • Heritability estimates typically range from 40% to 60% for most traits.
• Environmental Influences: Environmental factors, including family, peers, and culture, also play a significant role in shaping personality.
  • Shared environmental influences (e.g., parenting style) have a smaller impact on personality than non-shared environmental influences (e.g., unique experiences).
  • Cultural norms and values can influence the expression of personality traits.
• Stability and Change: Personality traits tend to be relatively stable over time, but changes can occur, particularly during adolescence and young adulthood.
  • Rank-order stability refers to the consistency of an individual's position within a group.
  • Mean-level changes refer to shifts in the average level of a trait within a population.
• Life Events: Significant life events, such as marriage, career changes, and traumatic experiences, can lead to changes in personality.
  • Individuals may develop new coping strategies or adapt their goals and values in response to these events.
  • Therapy and interventions can also facilitate personality change.

Personality Disorders

• Definition: Enduring patterns of inner experience and behavior that deviate markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture, are pervasive and inflexible, have an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, are stable over time, and lead to distress or impairment.
• Cluster A: Odd or eccentric disorders (paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal). Show features similar to schizophrenia; aloof, suspicious, peculiar thinking.
• Cluster B: Dramatic, emotional, or erratic disorders (antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic). Impulsive, dramatic, and erratic behaviors.
• Cluster C: Anxious or fearful disorders (avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive). Experience high levels of anxiety and fear.
• Treatment: Often challenging due to the chronic and pervasive nature of these disorders.
  • Psychotherapy, particularly dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), is frequently used.
  • Medication may be used to manage specific symptoms.

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personality

• Cultural Universals: Some personality traits and processes appear to be universal across cultures.
  • The Five-Factor Model (FFM) has been found to be largely applicable in diverse cultures, however, some traits have slightly different structures/facets
• Cultural Differences: Cultures vary in their norms, values, and beliefs, which can influence the expression of personality traits.
  • Individualistic cultures emphasize independence and self-reliance, while collectivistic cultures emphasize interdependence and group harmony.
  • Cultures differ in their levels of tightness (strict norms) vs. looseness (permissive norms).
• Acculturation: The process of adapting to a new culture, which can lead to changes in personality and behavior.
  • Can result in integration (maintaining one's original culture while adopting aspects of the new culture), assimilation (adopting the new culture and abandoning the original culture), separation (maintaining the original culture and rejecting the new culture), or marginalization (rejecting both the original and new cultures).