Personality Perspectives• Psychoanalytic—importance of unconscious

processes and childhood experiences• Humanistic—importance of self and

fulfillment of potential• Trait—description and measurement of

personality differences• Social cognitive—importance of beliefs

about self

Freud Couch

Dream AnalysisAnother method to analyze the unconscious mind is through

interpreting manifest and latent contents of dreams.

The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli (1791)

Personality StructurePersonality develops as a result of our efforts to resolve conflicts between our biological impulses (id) and social

restraints (superego).

Personality Development

Freud believed that personality formed during the first few years of life divided into psychosexual stages. During these stages the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on pleasure sensitive body areas called erogenous zones.

Psychosexual StagesFreud divided the development of personality into

five psychosexual stages.

Oral Stage

• Pleasure centers on the mouth– sucking, biting, chewing.

Personality Development Oedipus Complex

a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father

Electra Complex a girl’s sexual desires toward her father and

feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival mother

Personality Development• Castration Anxiety

boys feel guilt and fear that their father would punish them (castration) for sexual desires for their mother & jealousy of their father.

• Penis Envy women fixated in this stage symbolicallycastrate men through embarrassment,deception, and derogation.

Identification

Children cope with threatening feelings by repressing them and by identifying with the rival

parent. Through this process of identification,

their superego gains strength that incorporates

their parents’ values.

From the K. Vandervelde private collection

Personality Development

Fixation a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies

at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved

Personality Development

• Oral fixation possibly because of overindulging or depriving

(abrupt, early weaning). They exhibit either passive dependence (like that of a nursing infant) or an exaggerated denial of this dependence--perhaps by acting tough and uttering biting sarcasm. They might also continue to seek oral gratification through excessive smoking or eating.

Personality Development• Anal fixation

never resolve anal conflict (Toilet training)– Anal expulsive– messy & disorganized. – Anal retentive– highly controlled and compulsively

neat.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Developed by Henry Murray, the TAT is a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests

through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

Lew M

errim/ Photo Researcher, Inc.

Assessing the Unconscious Rorschach Inkblot Test

the most widely used projective test a set of 10 inkblots designed by Hermann

Rorschach seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by

analyzing their interpretations of the blots

Projective Tests: CriticismsCritics argue that projective tests lack both reliability (consistency of results) and validity (predicting

what it is supposed to).

1. When evaluating the same patient, even trained raters come up with different interpretations (reliability).

2. Projective tests may misdiagnose a normal individual as pathological (validity).

Carl Jung• Universality of themes- archetypes are

inherited universal human concepts–“Mother”Archetypes are primordial images inherited from our ancestors and include mother, father, God, death, snakes, animus/anima, the persona, the shadow, and the self. The animus is the masculine side of the female. The anima is the feminine side of the male.

The Neo-Freudians

Like Freud, Adler believed in childhood tensions. However, these tensions were social in nature and not sexual.

A child struggles with an inferiority complex during

growth and strives for superiority and power.

Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

National Library of M

edicine

Alfred Adler• Alfred Adler strove throughout his life

to overcome a sense of inferiority.• 1911: Left Freud’s analytic society• Individual Psychology• We all begin life with a sense of inferiority.• Striving for superiority is the motivating force in life.• If unsuccessful: inferiority complex• Well-adjusted people express their striving for

superiority through concern for the social interest.

Alfred AdlerBirth Order• The order in which you are born to a

family inherently affects your personality:• First born children who later have

younger siblings have it the worst.• Middle born children have it the easiest.• The youngest child, like the first born, is more likely to

experience personality problems during adulthood.• Research examining birth order effects does not often

support Adler’s predictions. The impact of birth order on personality is far more complex than Adler suggests.

The Neo-Freudians

Like Adler, Horney believed in the social aspects of childhood growth and

development. She countered Freud’s assumption that

women have weak superegos and suffer from

“penis envy.”

Karen Horney (1885-1952)

The Bettmann Archive/ Corbis

Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective

1. Personality develops throughout life and is not fixed in childhood.

2. Freud underemphasized peer influence on the individual, which may be as powerful as parental influence.

3. Gender identity may develop before 5-6 years of age.

Modern Research

Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective

4. There may be other reasons for dreams besides wish fulfillment.

5. Verbal slips can be explained on the basis of cognitive processing of verbal choices.

6. Suppressed sexuality leads to psychological disorders. Sexual inhibition has decreased, but psychological disorders have not.

Modern Research

Is Repression a Myth?• Many researchers now believe that repression

rarely, if ever, occurs.

Evaluating the Psychoanalytic PerspectiveFreud's psychoanalytic theory rests on the repression of

painful experiences into the unconscious mind.

The majority of children, death camp survivors, and battle-scarred veterans are unable to repress painful

experiences into their unconscious mind.

Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective

The scientific merits of Freud’s theory have been criticized. Psychoanalysis is meagerly testable. Most of its concepts arise out of clinical practice, which are the

after-the-fact explanation.

Humanistic PerspectiveBy the 1960s, psychologists became discontent with

Freud’s negativity and the mechanistic psychology of the behaviorists.

Abraham Maslow(1908-1970)

Carl Rogers(1902-1987)

Humanistic Perspective

• Carl Rogers– “Father of Humanism”• Abraham Maslow

Free willSelf-awarenessPsychological growth

Humanistic Perspective Unconditional Positive Regard

an attitude of total acceptance toward another person

Self-Concept all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in an answer to the question, “Who am I?”

Fig. 12-9, p. 488

Assessing the Self

In an effort to assess personality, Rogers asked people to describe themselves as they would like to be (ideal) and as they actually are (real). If the two descriptions were close

the individual had a positive self-concept.

Existentialism

• Existence• Lack of Certainty• Authenticity

Rollo May

Evaluating Humanism

• Difficult to test or validate scientifically• Tends to be too optimistic, minimizing some

of the more destructive aspects of human nature

A. Gordon Allport• Cardinal- strong personality traits that affect us the most• Central Traits- highly characteristic of a person

B. Cattell• Surface Traits- easily observed by others• Source Traits- underlie surface behavior

C. Eysenck• Extraversion- outgoing, sociable• Intraversion- shy

Contemporary Research– The Trait Perspective

Trait a characteristic pattern of behavior a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports

GordonAllport

Exploring Traits

Factor analysis is a statistical approach used

to describe and relate personality traits.

Cattell used this approach to develop a 16 Personality Factor (16PF)

inventory.Raymond Cattell

(1905-1998)

Factor Analysis

Cattell found that large groups of traits could be reduced down to 16 core personality traits based on

statistical correlations.

Impulsive

Excitement

Impa

tient

Irritable

Boisterous

BasictraitSuperficial

traits

Raymond Cattell

Personality DimensionsHans and Sybil Eysenck suggested that personality could be reduced down to two polar dimensions, extraversion-introversion and emotional stability-

instability.

Assessing Traits

Personality inventories are questionnaires (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) designed to

gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors assessing several traits at once. The answers are

then compared to established norms

Self-Report Inventory

• Psychological test in which an individual answers standardized questions about their behavior and feelings

• The answers are then compared to established norms

Strengths of Self-Reports

• Standardized—each person receives same instructions and responds to the same questions

• Use of established norms: results are compared to previously established norms and are not subjectively evaluated

Weaknesses of Self-Reports

• Evidence that people can “fake” responses to look better (or worse)

• Tests contain hundreds of items and become tedious

• People may not be good judges of their own behavior

The Trait Perspective Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

(MMPI) the most widely researched and clinically used of

all personality tests originally developed to identify emotional

disorders (still considered its most appropriate use)

now used for many other screening purposes

MMPI

• Originally designed to assess mental health and detect psychological symptoms

• Has over 500 questions to which person must reply “True” or “False”

• Includes “lying scales”

The Trait Perspective Minnesota

Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) test profile

Hysteria(uses symptoms to solve problems)

Masculinity/femininity(interests like those of other sex)

T-score

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

100 30 40 50 60 70 80

Hypochondriasis(concern with body symptoms)

Depression(pessimism, hopelessness)

Psychopathic deviancy(disregard for social standards)

Paranoia(delusions, suspiciousness)

Psychasthenia(anxious, guilt feelings)

Schizophrenia(withdrawn, bizarre thoughts)

Hypomania(overactive, excited, impulsive)

Social introversion(shy, inhibited)

Clinicallysignificant

range

After treatment(no scores

in the clinicallysignificant range)

Beforetreatment(anxious,

depressed,and

displayingdeviant

behaviors)

The Trait Perspective Empirically Derived Test

a test developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups

such as the MMPI

Endpoints

Evaluating the Trait PerspectiveThe Person-Situation Controversy

Walter Mischel (1968, 1984, 2004) points out that traits may be enduring, but the resulting behavior in various situations

is different. Therefore, traits are not good predictors of behavior.

We look for genuine personality traits that persist over time and across situations.

If you consider friendliness a trait, friendly people must act friendly

at different times and places.

Evaluation of Trait Perspective

• Doesn’t really explain personality, simply describe the behaviors

• Doesn’t describe the development of the behaviors

• Trait approaches generally fail to address how issues such as motives, unconscious, or beliefs about self affect personality development

Social-Cognitive Perspective

Bandura believes that personality is the result of an interaction that takes place between a person and their social context.

Albert Bandura

Social Cognitive Perspective• Social cognitive theory— the importance of

observational learning, conscious cognitive processes, social experience, self-efficacy and reciprocal determinism in personality

• Reciprocal determinism--model that explains personality as the result of behavioral, cognitive, and environmental interactions

• Self-efficacy—belief that people have about their ability to meet demands of a specific situation

Martin Seligman:Methodology and Results

• Thought dogs would learn to avoid shock

• Dogs placed in harness and given shocks

Seligman: Methodology and Results

• When able to avoid the shocks, the dogs cowered in the box• Hypothesis not confirmed

Learned Helplessness

• Dogs learned that they couldn’t control or avoid the shocks, so didn’t even try to avoid them

• Significant in the study of depression in humans

0

20

40

60

80

100

% of dogs learning

avoidance response

Control Shocked

Effect of inescapable shock on avoidance learning

Learned Helplessness: Implications

Learned helplessness is related to depression

Nursing home studies Totalitarian governments

Learned HelplessnessWhen unable to avoid repeated adverse events an animal

or human learns helplessness.