Chapter 14 Overlap and Integration among Perspectives PDF

Chapter 14 Overlap and Integration among Perspectives Learning Objectives 14.1 Summarize parallels that have been suggested between psychoanalysis and the evolutionary, self-regulation, and cognitive perspectives 14.2 Research two issues that recur across a surprisingly wide range of otherwise di...

Chapter 14 Overlap and Integration among Perspectives Learning Objectives 14.1 Summarize parallels that have been suggested between psychoanalysis and the evolutionary, self-regulation, and cognitive perspectives 14.2 Research two issues that recur across a surprisingly wide range of otherwise different views of personality 14.3 Examine how personality theorists often join together parts of different personality perspectives 14.4 Recognize that what is the best viewpoint on personality is a personal preference Six blind men from Indostan heard of a creature called an elephant and went to discern its nature. One of them bumped into the elephant's side and concluded that elephants resemble walls. The second encountered a tusk and decided that elephants are like spears. The third, grasping the wriggling trunk, decided that elephants are similar to snakes. Wrapping his arms around one of its legs, the fourth concluded that elephants are like trees. The fifth felt a floppy ear and surmised that an elephant is a type of fan. Coming upon the animal's tail, the sixth decided that elephants are like ropes. Each of these men was sure his investigation had led him to the truth. And, indeed, each of them was partly right. But all were partly wrong. ---Hindu fable In previous chapters, you encountered a series of viewpoints on the nature of personality. Each was rooted in its own assumptions about how best to view human nature. Each had its own way of conceptualizing how people function, and each addressed the importance of individual differences. Each approach had merits and each had drawbacks, places where things were left unexplained or even unexamined. In writing about these perspectives on personality, we tried to give you a sense of what each is like from inside that perspective. In so doing, we tended to emphasize what makes each approach distinct from the other ones. The views do differ in important ways, and some points of conflict are hard to resolve. For example, how can the belief that people have free will (from the self-actualization perspective) be reconciled with the belief that behavior is determined by patterns of reinforcement (from the learning perspective) or the belief that behavior is determined by internal forces (from the psychoanalytic perspective)? Our emphasis on the uniqueness of each theory may have created the impression that the theories are quite different from one another. The diversity may even have led you to wonder whether the theorists were even describing the same creature (much like someone listening to the blind men describe the elephant). The diversity of ideas in earlier chapters certainly raises questions: Do the various perspectives have anything in common? Is one perspective right, or better than the others? If so, which one? This chapter considers these questions. Do the theories you've read about have anything in common? Yes. The first part of this chapter describes several commonalities we think are interesting. You certainly noticed some of them, but others are more subtle and harder to spot. We also consider a couple of key issues that many different theories address, albeit from different angles. The question of which view is best or right is harder to answer. One answer is that even big differences among perspectives may not mean that one is right and the others are wrong. It often happens that some issue, or some element of personality, seems very important from the view of one theory but is less important or even irrelevant from the view of another theory. Like the blind men, one theory grapples closely with an issue, but another doesn't even touch on it. Perhaps, then, various perspectives on personality are facets of a bigger picture. From this point of view, the perspectives would complement, rather than contradict, each other. Each may have some truth, but none by itself has the whole truth. The idea that the perspectives are facets of a broader picture is developed more fully in the last part of the chapter. 14.1: Similarities among Perspectives 14.1 Summarize parallels that have been suggested between psychoanalysis and the evolutionary, self-regulation, and cognitive perspectives Let's first consider some specific similarities among the views described earlier in the book. We won't point to every single one. Rather, we'll try to give you a general sense of some of the connections that can be made. We begin with commonalities between psychoanalysis and other views. Psychoanalysis is a natural starting point. It's been around for a very long time. Some regard it as the only really comprehensive theory of personality ever devised. For both of these reasons, it's a natural comparison point for other approaches. On the other hand, psychoanalysis is also a particularly unusual theory. This suggests it may be hard to find similarities between it and other approaches. As we noted in Chapter 9, even theories that derive from psychoanalysis don't seem to share a lot with it. Nonetheless, several similarities are worth noting. In fact, parallels have been suggested between psychoanalysis and at least three other perspectives: the evolutionary, self-regulation, and cognitive perspectives. 14.1.1: Psychoanalysis and Evolutionary Psychology Often overlooked is the fact that Freud was strongly influenced by Darwin's view of evolution. Psychoanalytic theory is about beings that are deeply controlled by biological necessities: survival and reproduction. Attaining these goals is critical, because that's what biological life is all about. It should be no surprise, then, that the core of personality focuses on them. Even so, because humans live in a dangerous world, it's necessary to deal with the complexities imposed by reality. And because we live in groups, it's eventually important to deal with another issue, as well: the fact that people other than ourselves also have needs. This general line of thought underlies an attempt by Leak and Christopher (1982) to interpret some of Freud's ideas from the framework of evolutionary psychology. They noted that the evolutionary view sees behavior as self-serving (with one exception, to which we turn momentarily). This self-serving quality resembles the selfish nature of Freud's concept of the id. The id is primitive and single minded about its desires. It represents the self-interested animal that our genes make us, as those genes try to continue their existence. The id isn't rational, and neither are genes. Freud tied rationality to the ego, a mechanism that mediates between the id and reality. Leak and Christopher (1982) argued that genes also need help in dealing with the complexities of reality and that the cerebral cortex evolved to serve this purpose. Evolution of the cortex in humans would parallel evolution of the ego in the person. Both structures---cortex and ego---permit greater planfulness and care in decision making. Both are adaptations that foster survival. What about the superego? This is the trickiest part of Leak and Christopher's (1982) argument. To view the superego in evolutionary terms requires one more idea. Specifically, survival isn't only an individual matter. Humans evolved as highly social beings, living and surviving in groups. Because people are so interdependent, they sometimes do better in the long run by letting group needs override personal needs in the short run. As noted in Chapter 6, it's been argued that people in groups evolved mechanisms for inducing---even forcing---reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971). Having a genetic mechanism to do this would increase the adaptive success of the group. In psychological terms, evolving such a mechanism looks like developing a capacity to have a superego. Thus, having a superego confers an evolutionary advantage. People who adopt and conform to the values of their social group will be accepted as members of the group. They will be more likely to get the benefits that follow from group membership (e.g., having other members take care of you if you're sick). Clearly, these benefits have ­survival value. In sum, Leak and Christopher (1982) suggested that the ego (conscious rationality) is a behavioral management system, for which the id and the superego provide motivation. There are two types of motivation---selfish and group-related---with adaptive value. The id adapts to the physical environment, where competition for resources is intense and selfish. The superego comprises the tendencies that evolved in response to pressures from group living. We see one more similarity between psychoanalytic and evolutionary views---one that's quite different from the points made by Leak and Christopher. Think back to the Oedipal conflict and the fixations that can emerge from it. For a male, fixation in the phallic stage is said to cause an exaggerated attempt to show that he hasn't been castrated. He does this by having sex with as many women as possible and by seeking power and status. Female fixation in this stage involves a seductiveness that doesn't necessarily lead to sex. These patterns look remarkably similar to the mating strategies that evolutionary psychologists argue are part of our species. Recall from Chapter 6 the idea that men and women have different reproductive strategies, due to differing investment in offspring (Trivers, 1972). The male mating tactic is to create the appearance of power and status and to mate as frequently as possible. The female tactic is to appear highly desirable but to hold out for the best mate available. These tactics have strong echoes in the fixations just described. We can't help but wonder whether Freud noticed a phenomenon that's biologically based, and ascribed psychodynamic properties to it in order to fit it better into his theory. 14.1.2: Psychoanalysis and Self-Regulation The psychoanalytic approach to personality also has certain similarities to the self-regulation view. One similarity derives from the notion of a self-regulatory hierarchy. The behavioral qualities in such a hierarchy range from very limited movements through organized sequences to abstract higher-level qualities. As pointed out in Chapter 13, when attention is diverted from the higher levels, behavior is more spontaneous and responsive to cues of the moment. It's as though low-level action sequences, once triggered, run off by themselves. In contrast to this impulsive style of behavior, actions being regulated according to higher-order values (programs or principles) have a more carefully managed character. Aspects of this description hint at similarities to Freud's three-part view of personality. Consider the spontaneity and responsiveness to situational cues in the self-regulation model when high-level control isn't being exerted. This resembles aspects of id functioning. An obvious difference is Freud's assumption that id impulses are primarily sexual or aggressive, whereas the self-­regulation model makes no such assumption. It's worth noting, though, that alcohol intoxication and deindividuation, which seem to reduce control at high levels (see Chapter 13), often lead to sexual or destructive activity. The link between id processes and low-level control is a bit tenuous. In contrast, there's quite a strong resemblance between program control in the self-regulation approach and ego functioning in the psychoanalytic approach. Program control involves planning, decision making, and behavior that's pragmatic, as opposed to either impulsive or principled. These qualities also characterize the ego's functioning. Levels higher than program control resemble, in some ways, the functioning of the superego. Principle control, in at least some cases, induces people to conform to moral principles. Control at the highest level involves an effort to conform to your idealized sense of self. These efforts resemble, in some respects, the attempt to fit your behavior to the principles of the ego ideal and to avoid a guilty conscience for violating these principles. The fit between models at this high level isn't perfect, partly because not all principles are moralistic. Yet here's a question: Why did Freud focus on morality and ignore other kinds of ideals? Was it because morality was so prominent an issue in his society at that time? Maybe the superego is really the capacity to follow abstract rules in general, rather than just moral rules. If this were so---if the superego actually pushed behavior toward other principles as well as moral ones---the similarity between models would be even greater. 14.1.3: Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Processes Several links also exist between psychoanalytic themes and ideas from cognitive psychology (e.g., Westen, 1998). Matthew Erdelyi (1985) even suggested that Freud's theory was largely a theory of cognition. Indeed, he said that Freud was straining toward an analogy between mind and computer but never got there because the computer didn't exist yet. Erdelyi (1985) argued that cognitive psychologists have essentially reinvented many psychodynamic concepts. For example, Freud assumed a process that keeps threats out of awareness. This resembles the filtering process by which the mind preattentively selects information to process more fully. Freud's concept of ego becomes executive processes. The topography of the mind becomes a matter of levels of processing, and distortions become biases in processing. As an example of Erdelyi's (1985) approach, consider repression and denial (see also Paulhus & Suedfeld, 1988). When ideas, desires, or perceptions arise that are threatening, repression and denial prevent them from reaching consciousness. This reaction can occur before a threatening stimulus is even experienced, a phenomenon termed perceptual defense. Alternatively, it can involve forgetting an event after it's been experienced. Erdelyi argued that these reflect a sequence of information-processing decisions (see Figure 14.1). Figure 14.1 An information-processing picture of repression and denial. Input information (top)---whether perceptual or from a suppressed ­memory---is judged preattentively for its anxiety-inducing value. Then come a series of implicit decisions. First, does the anxiety the information would create (x) exceed a criterion of unbearability (u)? If so, processing stops; if not, the material goes to a memory area corresponding to the preconscious. Next, does the predicted anxiety exceed a serious discomfort criterion (v)? If so, processing ceases and the information stays in memory; if not, the information moves to consciousness. The final decision is whether to acknowledge openly the information that's now conscious, depending on whether the anxiety from doing so will exceed a final criterion (w). This sequence provides for information never to be stored in memory, to be stored but not reach consciousness, to reach consciousness but be suppressed, or to be acknowledged openly A diagram of a flowchart Description automatically generated  The flowchart shows that input information at the top is used to compute potential anxiety, x. The computed value is then compared with criterion of unbearability (u). If x exceeds u, the processing stops, or it reaches the preconscious memory area. Then x is compared with a serious discomfort criterion (v). If x exceeds v, the processing stops or it reaches conscious memory area. Then x is compared with a final criterion (w). If x exceeds w, the processing stops or it should be responded. Information is partially analyzed preattentively. This may yield an implicit estimate of how much anxiety would arise if the information reached consciousness. If the estimate exceeds a threshold, processing stops and the information goes no farther. If the estimate is lower, the information goes to a memory area corresponding to the preconscious. Similar decisions are made at other stages, with lower and lower criteria for moving to the next level of processing. This model treats repression, response suppression, and self-deception more generally as reflecting checks at several stages of information processing. As implied by this description, today's cognitive view assumes that much of the mind's functioning is unconscious. Indeed, the study of unconscious processes is a very active area of work (Hassin, Uleman, & Bargh, 2005). Today's cognitive view tends to equate consciousness with attention. Events that are unconscious are those that get little or no attention. There are several reasons an event might get little attention. It may be tagged preattentively as having too much potential for anxiety. Or it might occur in a part of the nervous system that attentional processes don't reach. Many cognitive scientists think of the nervous system as a set of special-­purpose components, only some of which can be examined consciously (Gardner, 1985). Thus, the basic "wiring" of the system renders some aspects of experience inaccessible. Sometimes events are unconscious because certain behaviors are highly automatic. Acts that are automatic require little or no monitoring. Highly automated sequences can be triggered by stimuli that are noted by the nervous system at some low level but never reach consciousness (Bargh, 1997; Norman, 1981). Even elaborate actions drop mostly out of awareness as they become routine (which all experienced drivers discover at one time or other, as they arrive at home with no memory of how they got there). These descriptions obviously differ in important ways from Freud's treatment of the unconscious. Only Erdelyi's (1985) example using preattentive estimates of anxiety implies the sort of conflict-avoidance process that Freud assumed. All these ideas, however, suggest ways in which information can fail to reach consciousness. Another body of work has linked cognitive processes to the psychoanalytic concept of transference. Transference occurs when a person in therapy displaces emotional reactions onto the therapist. Presumably, these reactions were initially stimulated by significant others in the person's earlier life. Several studies have provided a cognitive explanation for such a turn of events (Andersen, Glassman, Chen, & Cole, 1995; Glassman & Andersen, 1999). Specifically, the schemas people have of significant others seem chronically to be partially active (and thus accessible). As with other instances of partial activation, this makes it easier for the schema to emerge and be used in perceiving and interpreting other stimuli. As a result, you may view many people through the lens of that schema and not even realize it. If someone does something that reminds you vaguely of your mother's way of inducing guilt, it may evoke your mother schema and make you perceive that person as being like your mother. Indeed, when such schemas pop up, self-aspects relating to those significant others emerge as well (Hinkley & Andersen, 1996). Thus, if someone tends to induce guilt as your mother did, you may react just as you did to your mother (e.g., by becoming irrationally angry), even if the reaction isn't appropriate to the present situation. All this can happen in therapy---or anywhere. 14.1.4: Social Learning, Cognitive, and Self-Regulation Views As new theories were created over the years, personality psychologists were often influenced by ideas that were being used in other areas of psychology. Indeed, this cross-fertilization has been very common. Among the sources of ideas for personality psychologists during the past several decades have been learning psychology and cognitive psychology. To a considerable extent, people who sampled from these sources sampled from both, rather than just one. One result of this pattern is a set of similarities between social--cognitive learning ideas (Chapter 10) and cognitive and self-regulation approaches (Chapters 12 and 13). These approaches have diverse histories, but their central concepts resemble one another more than just a ­little. Indeed, as you may have noticed, the work of several people pertains not just to one of these views but to two or more of them. Highly programmed acts, such as walking, can occur with little awareness. This suggests a possible point of contact between cognitive and self-regulation ideas and psychodynamic theory. One area of overlap concerns the importance these approaches ascribe to cognitive processes in creating representations of the world and the self. To the extent the perspectives differ on this issue, it's because they have different reasons for emphasizing cognition. In discussing cognition from the social learning approach, Mischel (1973) said that if we want to understand learning, we have to look at people's mental representations of stimuli, not the stimuli themselves. People learn from what they think is there, not what an outsider sees. The way the stimuli are mentally represented and transformed determines how people respond to them (see also Bandura, 1977a, 1986). From the learning perspective, these statements emphasize that human learning is more complicated than it seems. An event doesn't lead automatically to conditioning that's the same for everyone. From the learning perspective, such statements are qualifications on theories of learning. They say to other learning theorists that the person has to be considered in analyzing learning. That's the point of such statements---when they're made from the learning perspective. When embedded in the cognitive view on personality, however, ideas about the role of cognition take on a broader life. From this view, cognitive processes are central to everything about personality. From the cognitive view on personality, Mischel (1973) focused not on the subtleties of learning but on how people organize their understanding. Note the difference of emphasis. In the cognitive view, the idea that people organize their experience is a key principle regarding the essence of personality. Learning is more peripheral. Cognitive processes are also critical to the self-regulation view on personality, although once again there's a difference of emphasis. The focus in the self-regulation approach is mostly on the role cognitions play in creating behavior. Another similarity among the social learning, cognitive, and self-regulation views concerns expectancies. Indeed, expectancies also appear in the motive approach. All these approaches see expectancies as determinants of how hard people try to do things. Many people (e.g., Bandura, 1977a, 1986; Carver & Scheier, 1981, 1998; Kanfer, 1977; Kirsch, 1985, 1990; Mischel, 1973, 1979; Rotter, 1966) have argued that people hold expectancies about the effects their actions are likely to have and whether they can do things they want to do. These expectancies can influence how hard a person tries and what the person learns from an event. The social learning, cognitive, and self-regulation approaches also resemble each other in the structures they assume underlie behavior. The social learning view says people have incentives, which draw them forward into action. Incentives function the same as goals, a concept that plays a key role in the self-regulation perspective. Indeed, other perspectives also have constructs that serve a comparable role. There is, however, an important difference of emphasis here between the learning and self-regulation views. It concerns the concept of reinforcement. The learning view uses this concept explicitly. It's basic to the principle of instrumental learning. As we noted in Chapter 10, however, one social learning theorist---Bandura---consistently used the concept differently than did others. To him, reinforcers create mental representations of future incentives. They cause people to learn expectancies about what actions are useful in what situations. But they don't directly increase the tendency to do the acts that preceded them. The way Bandura used the reinforcement concept raises questions about whether its meaning is compatible with that assumed by other learning theorists. Keep in mind, though, that Bandura stands with one foot in the learning perspective and one in the self-regulation perspective. His view on reinforcement may reflect Bandura the self-regulation theorist more than Bandura the learning theorist. As we noted in Chapter 13, self-regulation theorists are divided on reinforcement as a concept. Some say that people self-reinforce after success. Others see the concept of self-reinforcement as less useful. On this issue, the personal histories of the theorists probably influenced how their ideas were constructed. Most self-regulation theorists who assume a role for self-reinforcement began their work in the learning perspective. Only gradually did they identify with the newer self-regulation view. Perhaps they retained a role for self-reinforcement partly because it was a comfortable tie to the past. Of particular interest is that those people are more likely to talk about self-reinforcement than external reinforcement (e.g., Kanfer, 1977). It's the person's own goal representations that matter, after all. Only you can decide whether your goal has been met. Thus, self-reinforcement, rather than external reinforcement, is at the heart of these discussions. To others, introducing self-reinforcement as a concept simply raises questions. Certainly, people often feel pride after success and sadness after failure. But do these reactions create the learning, or are they just emotional reactions to informational events, with the latter being what really matters? This is an issue that hasn't been settled in the self-regulation perspective (or, to some extent, even in the learning perspective). 14.1.5: Maslow's Hierarchy and Hierarchies of Self-Regulation There are also similarities between elements of the self-actualization perspective and the self-regulation perspective. Consider Maslow's hierarchy of motives (Chapter 11). There are two similarities between that hierarchy and the self-regulation hierarchy. First, Maslow conceived of the motive qualities at the top of the hierarchy not only as more abstract and subtle, but also as more integrative, than those at lower levels. The levels of the hierarchy of control discussed in Chapter 13 also have this character. Second, Maslow saw the lower motives as more demanding than the higher ones, in the sense that a deficit or a problem lower in the hierarchy draws the person's attention to it and forces him or her to deal with it. Similarly, in at least one version of the self-regulatory hierarchy, if a problem develops at a low level, attention is brought to that level in an attempt to resolve the problem. There are, however, clear differences between these views, as well. The biggest difference concerns the content of the hierarchies. Maslow's analysis was explicitly an analysis of motives intended to incorporate both biological needs and psychological motives. The control hierarchy, in contrast, focuses on the structure of action with goals that relate to qualities of behavior. This difference means that the two hierarchies are very different at their low levels. Maslow's hierarchy points to survival needs; the other hierarchy points to muscle movements. At higher levels, though, the two hierarchies are more similar. The highest level of control in the self-regulation view seems roughly equivalent to the concept of self-­actualization used by Maslow and Rogers. The nature of the goal at the highest level---an ideal self that relates to the many principles in force at the next lower level---is quite diffuse. It's so diffuse, in fact, that it isn't too hard to imagine that self-regulation toward it might also feel diffuse. In some ways, this echoes the idea that self-actualization has a very quiet voice. 14.1.6: Self-Actualization and Self-Regulation Two other similarities between the self-actualization view and the self-regulation view of personality go beyond Maslow's hierarchy. One similarity is that both viewpoints use concepts corresponding to idealized and experienced qualities of self. The labels real self and ideal self are explicit in the view of Rogers. The sense of an idealized self is also one value at the top of the control hierarchy, as is the experienced actual self that's compared with it. The comparison process itself is also shared by the approaches. Rogers emphasized that people compare their current selves with their ideal selves and that they experience anxiety when there's incongruity between them. The comparison between a sensed condition and a standard, or reference point, is also intimately involved in the self-regulation perspective, not only with respect to an ideal self but at all levels of the hierarchy. 14.1.7: Traits and Their Equivalents in Other Models Another resemblance among theories brings us full circle to an idea with which we began this book. We started with the concept of traits. We now return to it. As noted in Chapter 1, a major theme of personality psychology is how people differ from one another, not just temporarily but in enduring ways. This theme is the basis for the trait perspective on personality. Other theories also hold assumptions about people's dispositions. The motive perspective assumes enduring motive dispositions. The genetic perspective assumes inherited temperaments, which are the bedrock for traits. The essence of dispositions, if not the concept itself, is also prominent in at least two more views on personality. The psychoanalytic view assumes that people derive stable personality qualities from childhood psychosexual crises. In the social perspective, Erikson assumed that childhood psychosocial crises shape adult personality, and object relations and attachment theories make similar assumptions. Although these theories differ regarding the sources of dispositions, they share two assumptions: that something is stamped onto or etched into the individual early in life and that this characteristic continues to influence the person from then on. The disposition has been viewed as a biological temperament, a transformation of sexual drives, a reflection of a psychosocial crisis, a learned motive quality, and simply a trait. Yet all the theories involved treat dispositions as having enduring influences on the person's experiences. This similarity among approaches, which is often overlooked, is not a trivial one. Indeed, the disposition concept also has a place in other views. For example, one version of the learning approach assumes that people differ in self-efficacy, which helps determine how much effort they expend. One aspect of the self-regulation approach assumes that people vary in the disposition to be self-reflective and thus how carefully they self-regulate. In both of these cases (and many others, as well), individual differences are seen as stable dispositions that influence a broad range of the person's experiences. 14.2: Recurrent Themes, Viewed from Different Angles 14.2 Research two issues that recur across a surprisingly wide range of otherwise different views of personality Emphasis in the preceding section was on the notion that certain ideas in one theoretical perspective resemble ideas from another perspective. We also want to note another kind of similarity across perspectives: a similarity in the issues the theories take up. We said earlier that different theories often address different issues. That's true. But at least a couple of issues recur across a surprisingly wide range of perspectives. 14.2.1: Impulse and Restraint One of these issues concerns what seems to be a basic distinction between impulse and restraint. This issue has been part of personality psychology for a long time, but it has become even more prominent in recent years. It is often introduced in the context of delay of gratification, where a choice must be made between receiving a small reward now or a larger reward later. We've discussed that phenomenon from several viewpoints: psychoanalysis (where we said the ego restrains the id's impulses), social learning theory (where we considered effects of models), and the cognitive perspective (where the focus was on mental images that can foster restraint). The issue of impulse versus restraint is far broader than delay of gratification, however. It bears on a wide range of manifestations of self-control. In some ways, it's fundamental to personality. As a result, its broader manifestations emerge in many views of personality: It's there in trait psychology, in which a trait of conscientiousness is assumed to be defined partly by self-discipline and deliberation (McCrae & Costa, 1987). Indeed, one trait theory treats constraint as a basic dimension of personality (Tellegen, 1985). It comes up in temperament theories, where some argue that constraint (Clark & Watson, 1999) or effortful control (Rothbart, Ellis, Rueda, & Posner, 2003) is a basic temperament. It's found in biological process models, where an argument is made that approach and avoidance systems are joined by a system that concerns restraint versus impulsiveness (Carver & Miller, 2006; Depue & Spoont, 1986; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1976; Zuckerman, 2005). It's a core issue in psychoanalysis, concerning the balance between the id's desires in many domains and the ego's restraint over how and when those desires are met. It's there in cognitive theories, in the form of a contrast between rational and experiential systems (Epstein, 1994) and in a contrast between "hot," incentive-related cognition and "cool," restrained cognition (Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999). It also appears in self-regulation theories, in the distinction between deliberative and implemental mindsets (Heckhausen & Gollwitzer, 1987). Impulse versus restraint has emerged in the past decade as a key issue in several areas of personality psychology (Carver, 2005; Carver, Johnson, & Joormann, 2009). Indeed, this issue is one that's led a number of people to think seriously about cognitive processing occurring in two modes (as described in Chapter 12). In such theories, the management of behavior is seen as subject to two layers of influence, which rely on two different parts of the brain. One system provides an automatic, intuitive, superficial, and fast way of interacting with the world. It's believed to have evolved earlier. The other system provides a rational, deliberative, but slower way of interacting with the world. It's believed to be of more recent origin. The question of how and why a person chooses to act quickly versus hold back from acting is basic. It's no wonder that many theories say something or other about this question. This issue undoubtedly will remain a focus of interest for many people in the years ahead. 14.2.2: Individual versus Group Needs Another fundamental issue concerns the competing pressure of individual self-interest versus the needs arising from being involved in groups (or couples). In many cases, this issue is tangled up with the issue of action versus restraint. This is because recognizing other people's needs is often what urges restraining one's own impulses. Conceptually, however, it's a separate issue. Earlier in this chapter, we noted that psychoanalytic theory and evolutionary psychology both confront the contrast between these pressures. In psychoanalysis, the ego deals with the immediate demands of both social and physical reality and the superego deals with other more complex aspects of social needs. In evolutionary psychology, people have individualistic needs---survival, competition for mates. But they also have group-based needs---cooperation with one's mate and with the larger society. This distinction between individualistic and social goals also appears in other approaches. In trait psychology, it emerges in two places. One is the trait of agreeableness, which concerns maintaining positive relations with others. People high on this dimension are attuned to mutual well-being; those lower on the dimension are unconcerned with others' interests. The distinction also emerges in the trait of extraversion. Extraverts want to have social impact, whereas introverts are less concerned with group involvement and follow more individualistic paths. In the motive approach, this issue shows up in the motives to achieve and exert power versus affiliate and attain intimacy. In the biological process approach, this issue appears in unsocialized sensation seeking, with its disregard of others' needs. It's in the psychosocial approach, in the issue of separation--individuation versus merger. It's in the self-actualization approach, in the balance between the self-actualizing tendency and the need for positive regard from other people. In all these cases, people confront the need to balance the two competing pressures. Both pressures are important but in different ways. Given all this attention from theorists of so many different perspectives, this issue appears to be critically important in human experience. 14.3: Combining Perspectives 14.3 Examine how personality theorists often join together parts of different personality perspectives As should now be apparent, similarities do exist between seemingly unrelated approaches to personality. These similarities may, in time, allow integration of the approaches. As we noted in Chapter 1, several people are trying to move in that direction (e.g., McAdams & Olson, 2010; McAdams & Pals, 2006; Roberts & Wood, 2006). It's probably safe to say, though, that most personality psychologists view that as a desirable but still distant goal. One reason is the sheer size and complexity of the job. Theorists have sometimes integrated across boundaries, even in the past. Examples include Eysenck and Zuckerman. In describing Eysenck's work in earlier chapters, we treated it as two sets of ideas with separate focuses. One is a hierarchical model linking acts, habits, traits, and supertraits. Another is biological, dealing with brain function (and heritability of differences). Even though we presented the ideas as separate, Eysenck viewed them as an integrated model. Zuckerman (1991, 1994, 2005) has made similar statements, binding together---in a single model---trait, inheritance, and biological process views. A more recent example of integration is the suggestion that different perspectives have different things to offer at different times in human development. For example, McAdams and Olson (2010) noted that infant temperaments (with their biological roots) are the bedrock for traits, which are in place early in life. As the child develops and acquires a sense of self as an agent in the world, issues surrounding motives and goals become more salient. Perspectives on personality that focus on motives and goals have a good deal to say about this part of life. During adolescence and young adulthood, people begin to construct narratives about their lives to help provide meaning and identity. These narratives don't take the place of traits or goals but are layered over them (see also Lodi-Smith, Geise, Roberts, & Robins, 2009). This position suggests an integration across viewpoints that's different from what Eysenck and Zuckerman offered, and one that is potentially quite useful. 14.3.1: Eclecticism Another option, exercised by many, is to take an eclectic approach to personality. This involves drawing useful ideas from many theories, rather than being tied to just one or two. Essentially, it means saying that different ideas are useful for different purposes and that there may be no approach that's best for all purposes. To understand a phenomenon, you may need to look at it from the angle of a theory that focuses on it, rather than a theory that doesn't. As Scarr (1985) put it, "There is no need to choose a single lens for psychology when we can enjoy a kaleidoscope of perspectives" (p. 511). This sort of approach suggests that views of personality from the various perspectives may be mutually supportive. It may not be necessary to integrate them into a single set of constructs or principles. As noted earlier, the focus of one theory differs from that of any other theory. By taking bits of theory across several focuses, perhaps we can obtain a more rounded picture of what personality really is. For example, most personality psychologists today accept the idea that personality was shaped by evolutionary pressures. Most assume that there are inherited temperaments and that the processes by which personality is reflected are biological. Several ideas from psychoanalytic theory are also widely accepted----for example, that determinants of behavior are sometimes outside awareness and that mechanisms exist within the mind that protect us from things we don't want to think about. Many personality psychologists accept that early experiences have a big impact on what people are like. Obviously, learning has an influence on personality, yet people seem to organize memories of their lives in idiosyncratic ways. We may well have an inner voice of self-actualization. Behavior may also reflect the operation of feedback loops. All of these ideas may be true or only some of them. All of them may be useful or only some of them. Many psychologists pick and choose bits from various perspectives and use them wherever they seem reasonable. The choice among the available elements is an individual one. 14.3.2: Biology and Learning as Complementary Influences on Personality Perhaps the simplest illustration of an eclectic approach is that psychologists almost universally acknowledge the importance to personality of both biology and learning. Almost everyone does: people who focus on biology, people who focus on learning, and people who take some other view of personality. Early learning theorists claimed the mind is a "blank slate," on which any kind of personality can be sketched. It's clear, though, that this isn't true. There are biological constraints on learning. Simply, some associations are learned more easily than others. The term used to describe this is preparedness. This term implies that organisms are prepared to learn certain connections more easily than others (Öhman & Mineka, 2001; Seligman & Hager, 1972). Preparedness isn't all or nothing. It's a continuum of ease versus difficulty in learning connections. Presumably, this is biologically influenced.  Both biological and learning principles are needed to understand fully the phenomenon of preparedness---such as the biological readiness that people and other primates show in learning to use tools. For example, if you get sick to your stomach, you could, in theory, develop a conditioned aversive response toward any number of stimuli. If conditioning depended only on associations between stimuli, you should condition aversions to all neutral stimuli that are present. However, you're much more likely to develop an aversion to a flavor you experienced just before getting sick than to anything else (Garcia & Koelling, 1966). Apparently, the links are just easier to create in the nervous system for some pairs of events than others. Preparedness also seems to be involved in instrumental learning. That is, some kinds of actions are easier for animals to learn than others, even if the same reward follows both. Rats learn more quickly to avoid a foot shock by jumping than by pressing a bar (Wickelgren, 1977). Pigeons easily learn to peck a spot to obtain food, but it's hard to get them to learn to refrain from pecking to get food. Just as it's clear the mind isn't a blank slate, it's also clear that the expression of most biological tendencies depends on experience. Earlier in the book, we talked about diathesis--stress models, in which a particular kind of stress produces a problem only if the person also has a particular vulnerability (which might be biological, though it doesn't have to be). One reason such models are widely accepted is that twin studies of disorders show two things at once: that disorders are genetically influenced and that genes aren't everything. If you are the monozygotic twin of someone with schizophrenia, your chance of being schizophrenic is elevated but still less than 100%. If genes were all that mattered, the figure would be 100%. Thus, an eclectic acceptance of both biology and learning as important influences on personality seems well founded. New conceptual partnerships are being explored even as you read this chapter. Perhaps they someday will prove to be similarly well founded. 14.4: Which Theory Is Best? 14.4 Recognize that what is the best viewpoint on personality is a personal preference As we said earlier, one answer to the question of which theory is best is that no theory is perfect and you may benefit from using bits and pieces of many theories. We should point out, though, that this question is sometimes answered another way. This answer returns us to a point we made in the book's opening chapter. We think it provides a fitting way to end, as well. As we said in Chapter 1, over a century ago William James wrote that a theory must account reasonably well for the phenomena that people experience as real; to be successful, however, a theory must do more than that. James (1890) wrote that people will believe those theories that "are most interesting, those which appeal most urgently to our æsthetic, emotional, and active needs" (p. 312). Put more simply, the theory that's best is the one you like best. The one that's best---for you---is the one that appeals most to you, the one you find most interesting and engaging. Edward Tolman (1959) also put it pretty simply: "I have liked to think about psychology in ways that have proved congenial to me.... In the end, the only sure criterion is to have fun. And I have had fun" (p. 152). Summary: Overlap and Integration among Perspectives Although various perspectives on personality differ from one another in important ways, they also resemble one another in important ways. The psychoanalytic perspective is similar to at least three alternative views. First, ideas about evolution in the species parallel Freud's ideas about the evolution of personality in the individual. That is, in each case, a primitive force (the genes, the id) needs another force to help it deal with reality (the cortex, the ego), and eventually it also needs a force to keep it in contact with the social world (inherited sensitivity to social influence, the superego). There are also similarities between Freud's picture of fixations from the Oedipal crisis and the mating tactics that evolutionary theorists posit for males and females. Second, the psychoanalytic view and the self-regulation view resemble each other in that the notion of a hierarchy of control echoes psychoanalytic theory's three components of personality. Third, work from the cognitive viewpoint on unconscious influences has resulted in concepts that resemble, in some ways, those postulated years earlier by Freud. A substantial overlap exists among the social learning, the cognitive, and the self-regulation viewpoints. They share an emphasis on mental representations of the world, although they have somewhat different rationales for the emphasis. They also have similar views of the importance of people's expectancies and similar views on the basic structure of behavior. A similarity also exists between the notion of a hierarchy in self-regulation and Maslow's ideas about motives. Although the lower levels of Maslow's motive hierarchy deal with motives that are ignored in the control hierarchy, at their upper levels, the models resemble each other more closely. The principle of self-actualization also resembles the self-regulation model in the concepts of ideal and actual self and the desire for congruity between them. Another similarity among approaches concerns the notion of disposition. This construct is central to the trait perspective, and it's also important in the psychoanalytic and social views. In all these cases (and by implication in others, as well), the assumption is made that people have qualities that endure over time and circumstances and that influence their behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. Although the various theories differ in their focus, certain issues do seem to recur across many of them. This represents another kind of similarity among the theories. One issue that many different theories address is the polarity between impulse versus restraint. Indeed, this issue has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Another is the competition between individual self-interest and communal group-interest. Thus, there are areas of overlap among theories. Yet the theories also differ. Which theory, then, is right? One answer is that all the perspectives seem to have something of value to offer. Maybe the value of each viewpoint depends on what part of the person's life you are focusing on. Many psychologists prefer an eclectic position, taking elements and ideas from several views, rather than just one. At a minimum, people who operate within the framework of a given theory must take into account the limitations and challenges imposed by evidence generated by other views. For example, temperament theorists believe much of personality is determined by genetics, but they also understand that temperaments are modified by learning. Learning theorists believe that personality is a product of a learning history, but it's clear that some kinds of learning are easier than others. Perhaps the future will see greater emphasis on this eclecticism---the sharing of ideas from one perspective to another.