Module 5 Personality PDF

B  INTRODUCTION Personality is the distinctive and characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that make up an individual’s personal style of interacting with the physical and social environment.  Personalitypsychology is a branch of Psychology which studies the concept of pers...

B  INTRODUCTION Personality is the distinctive and characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that make up an individual’s personal style of interacting with the physical and social environment.  Personalitypsychology is a branch of Psychology which studies the concept of personality and how it differs among people.  This area of psychology looks at the overall psychological makeup of people, the psychological differences among individuals and the similarities found within human nature.  Theories of Personality Psychoanalytic Behavioral perspectives Humanistic perspectives Cognitive perspective Evolutionary perspective Psychoanalytic/Freudian Perspective  The psychoanalytic approach focuses on the importance of the unconscious mind.  In other words, psychoanalytic perspective dictates that behavior is determined by your past experiences that are left in the Unconscious Mind (people are unaware of them).  This perspective is still based on Freud's psychoanalytic perspective about early experiences being so influential on current behavior.  Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality argues that human behavior is the result of the interactions among three component parts of the mind: the id, ego, and superego.  This theory, known as Freud’s structural theory of personality, places great emphasis on the role of unconscious psychological conflicts in shaping behavior and personality.  STRUCTURE OF PERSONAILITY  Freud divided personality structure into three components: the id, ego and superego.  The id is the instinctive component that follows the pleasure principle,  the ego is the decision making component that follows the reality principle and  the superego is the moral component that follows the morality principle.  The Id, the most primitive of the three structures, is concerned with instant gratification of basic physical needs and urges. It operates entirely unconsciously (outside of conscious thought).  The Superego is concerned with social rules and morals. It develops as a child learns what their culture considers right and wrong.  The Ego One of the three components of the psyche, it is the part of the psyche that deals with reality. Ego balances the demand of Id and Superego in the practical context of reality.  Levels of Consciousness According to Freud, there are three levels of consciousness:  conscious (small): this is the part of the mind that holds what you are aware of. You can verbalize about your conscious experience and you can think about it in a logical way.  preconscious (small-medium): this is ordinary memory. So although things stored here are not in the conscious, they can be readily brought into conscious.  unconscious (enormous): Freud felt that this part of the mind was not directly accessible to awareness. In part, he saw it as a dump box for urges, feelings and ideas that are tied to anxiety, conflict and pain. These feelings and thoughts have not disappeared and according to Freud, they are there, exerting influence on our actions and our conscious awareness. PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES  Freud (1905) proposed that psychological development in childhood takes place in a series of fixed psychosexual stages:  oral,  anal,  phallic,  latency, and  genital  Each of the psychosexual stages is associated with a particular conflict that must be resolved before the individual can successfully advance to the next stage.  Or possibly the person's needs may have been so well satisfied that he/she is reluctant to leave the psychological benefits of a particular stage in which there is overindulgence.  Both frustration and overindulgence (or any combination of the two) may lead to what psychoanalysts call fixation at a particular psychosexual stage )  Oedipus Complex : The most important aspect of the phallic stage is the Oedipus Complex. In the young boy, the Oedipus complex or conflict, arises because the boy develops sexual (pleasurable) desires for his mother.  Electra Complex: The girl develops the pleasurable desire for the father.  The little boy then sets out to resolve this problem by imitating, copying and joining in masculine dad-type behaviors and is how the three-to-five year old boy resolves his Oedipus Complex.  Similarly,a girl starts copying her mother, she resolves an Electra Complex.  DEFENSE MECHANISMS In order to deal with conflict and problems in life, Freud stated that the ego employs a range of defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms operate at an unconscious level and help ward off unpleasant feelings (i.e. anxiety) or make good things feel better for the individual.  We use defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from feelings of anxiety or guilt, which arise because we feel threatened, or because our id or superego becomes too demanding.  With the ego, our unconscious will use defense mechanism protect us when we come up against a stressful situation in life. Behavioral Perspective  Formally founded by John B. Watson in 1913 Later on Ivan Pavlov and B.F skinner worked on behavioristic approach. In contrast to the psychoanalysis approach to personality, the behaviorist approach emphasizes the importance of environmental, or situational, determinants of behavior. It gives emphasis on observable behavior rather than mental states. The effects of other people’s actions – the rewards and punishments they provide – are an important influence on an individual’s behavior. Behavioral perspective  Behaviorists believe that personality is shaped by operant conditioning principles. When we receive positive reinforcement such as attention or praise for a behavior, we are likely to repeat that behavior. We will avoid negative situations becoming negatively reinforced for avoiding, reducing or terminating the painful stimulus.  Over time these responses become Habit Patterns or Response Tendencies known as personality by behaviorists SKINNER’S THEORY  Skinner and other behaviorists believe all behavior is Learned, Determined by what we have learned from our Environment. They emphasize the importance of Environmental Factors.  They believe that the environment may shape normal or abnormal behavior but emphasize that "There is no such thing as an abnormal person, only a normal person in an abnormal environment."  BANDURA’S THEORY  Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory posits that people learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling by using cognitive factors such as attention, memory, and motivation.  It is the bridge between behavior and cognition.  Classical & Operant Conditioning Classical conditioning is a learning process in which an association is made between a previously neutral stimulus and a stimulus that naturally evokes a response. The underlying idea behind operant conditioning is that the consequences of our actions shape voluntary behavior. COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE  THE COGNITIVE APPROACH It is a general empirical approach and a set of topics related to how people process information about themselves and the world. For the cognitive theorist, differences in personality stem from differences in the way individuals mentally represent information. As early as 1954, Julian Rotter was introducing cognitive variables into the behaviorist approach (1954,1982).  Rotter proposed the concept of behavior potential, meaning the likelihood of a particular behavior occurring in a particular situation – for example, staying up all night to study for an exam.  The strength of the behavior potential is determined by two variables: expectancy and reinforcement value  In the case of pulling an all-nighter, the likelihood of engaging in that behavior is greater if the student expects to receive a higher grade as a result.  This expectation will depend on what happened the last time the student was in a similar situation.  If studying all night resulted in a higher grade the last time, the student will expect the same result this time.  As for reinforcement value, it depends on the degree to which we prefer one reinforcer over another.  If a student prefers sleeping over receiving a higher grade, the likelihood of pulling an all-nighter decreases. ALBERT BANDURA: Social Cognitive Theory Bandura, one of the leading contemporary theorists in this area, has taken this approach even further, developing what he calls social-cognitive theory (1986, 2006). His theory emphasizes that external determinants of behavior (such as rewards and punishments) and internal determinants (such as beliefs, thoughts, and expectations) are part of a system of interacting influences that affect both behavior and other parts of the system (Bandura, 1986) When they encounter a new problem, they imagine possible outcomes and consider the probability of each. HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE CARL ROGER’S THEORY ABRAHAM MASLOW'S THEORY HUMANISTIC APPROACH During the first half of the twentieth century, the psychoanalytic and behaviorist approaches were dominant in psychology. In 1962, however, a group of psychologists founded the Association of Humanistic Psychology. They saw humanistic psychology as a ‘third force’, an alternative to the other two approaches It focuses on personal growth, self actualization and subjective experiences. Abraham Maslow is considered the founder and spiritual leader of the humanistic psychology movement. He objected to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis, particularly Freud’s approach to personality. According to Maslow, when psychologists study only abnormal or emotionally disturbed examples of humanity, they ignore positive human qualities such as happiness, contentment, and peace of mind. A frequently quoted statement sums up Maslow’s position: “The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology” (Maslow, 1970b, p. 180).  Maslow’s Theory  Abraham Maslow proposed that human motives are organized into a hierarchy of needs in which basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused.  At the top is the self-actualization need which fulfill one’s potential so according to Maslow, self actualizing people are with very healthy personalities marked by continued personal growth.  Carl Roger’s Theory  Central to Rogers' personality theory is the notion of real-self or self-concept. This is defined as "the organized, consistent set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself".  According to Rogers (1959), we want to feel, experience and behave in ways which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like, our ideal- self.  The humanistic approach states that the self is composed of concepts unique to ourselves. The self- concept includes three components:  Self worth (or self-esteem) – what we think about ourselves  Self-image – How we see ourselves, our body image, our inner personality. Self-image has an effect on how a person thinks, feels and behaves in the world.  Ideal self – This is the person who we would like to be. It consists of our goals and ambitions in life.  The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more consistent or congruent we are and the higher our sense of self-worth.  A person is said to be in a state of incongruence if a difference may exist between a person’s ideal self and actual experience.  According to Rogers, highly incongruent self concepts are prone to recurrent anxiety. The Evolutionary Approach Darwin ventured some ideas about the evolutionary roots of human behavior, but the modern field of evolutionary psychology began with the work of Wilson (1975) on ‘sociobiology’. The basic premise of sociobiology and, later, evolutionary psychology is that: behaviors that increased the organism’s chances of surviving and leaving descendants would be selected for over the course of evolutionary history and thus would become aspects of humans’ personalities THE GENETICS OF PERSONALITY Personality traits are largely determined by the genes an individual was born with. Another pair of twins with fairly different backgrounds are both British homemakers. They were separated during World War II and raised by families that differed in socioeconomic status. Both twins, who had never met before, arrived for their interviews wearing seven rings on their fingers. These studies reveal that twins reared apart are just as similar to each other across a wide range of personality characteristics as twins reared together. Permitting us to conclude with greater confidence that identical twins are more similar to each other on personality characteristics than fraternal twins because they are more similar genetically  INTERACTIONS BETWEEN PERSONALITY AND ENVIRONMENT  In shaping personality, genetic and environmental influences do not act independently but are intertwined from the moment of birth.  Because a child’s personality and his or her home environment are both a function of the parents’ genes, there is a built-in correlation between the child’s genotype (inherited personality characteristics) and that environment. Three dynamic processes of personality–environment interaction are (1) reactive interaction – different individuals exposed to the same environment experience it, interpret it, and react to it differently; (2) evocative interaction – an individual’s personality evokes distinctive responses from others; and (3) proactive interaction – individuals select or create environments of their own. As a child grows older, the influence of proactive interaction becomes increasingly important.