Personality Theories

and Assessment
Psychology:
A Concise Introduction
2nd Edition

Richard Griggs
Chapter 8
Prepared by
J. W. Taylor V

Personality
A persons internally based
characteristic ways of
acting and thinking

The Journey

The Psychoanalytic Approach to

Personality

The Humanistic Approach and the

Social-Cognitive Approach to
Personality

Trait Theories of Personality and

Personality Assessment

The Psychoanalytic
Approach to Personality
Freudian Classical Psychoanalytic
Theory of Personality
Neo-Freudian Theories
of Personality

Freudian Classical Psychoanalytic

Theory of Personality

Developed by Sigmund Freud in the late

nineteenth century and continued until
his death in 1939

Freud received a medical degree and

established a practice as a clinical neurologist
treating patients with emotional disorders
Believed sex was a primary cause of
emotional problems and was a critical
component of his personality theory

Remains an important influence in

Western culture

Freuds Three Levels of Awareness

1. The conscious mind is what you are presently aware of,
what you are thinking about right now
2. The preconscious mind is stored in your memory that you
are not presently aware of but can gain access to
3. The unconscious mind is the part of our mind of which we
cannot become aware

It contains, however, the primary motivations for all of our

actions and feelings our biological instinctual
drives (such as for food and sex)
and repressed unacceptable
thoughts, memories, and
feelings, especially
unresolved conflicts
from our early
childhood experiences

Freuds
Three-Part Personality Structure

Id
Ego
Superego

The Id

Is the original personality, the only part present at

birth and the part out of which the other two parts of
our personality emerge

Resides in the unconscious mind

Includes our biological instinctual drives, the primitive
parts of our personality located in our unconscious

Life instincts for survival, reproduction, and pleasure

Death instincts, destructive and aggressive drives
detrimental to survival

Operates on a pleasure principle; that is, it demands

immediate gratification for these drives without the
concern for the consequences of this gratification

The Ego

Starts developing during the first year or so of life

to find realistic and socially-acceptable outlets for
the ids needs

Operates on the reality principle, finding gratification

for instinctual drives within the constraints of reality
(the norms and laws of society)
Part of the ego is unconscious (tied to the id) and part
of the ego is conscious and preconscious (tied to the
external world)
Serves as the executive manager of the personality

The Superego

Represents ones conscience and idealized

standards of behavior in their culture

Operates on a morality principle, threatening to

overwhelm us with guilt and shame
The demands of the superego and the id will come into
conflict and the ego will have to resolve this turmoil
within the constraints of reality
To prevent being overcome with anxiety because of
trying to satisfy the id and superego demands, the ego
uses what Freud called defense mechanisms,
processes that distort reality and protect us from anxiety

Freuds Defense Mechanisms

Repression

Regression

Displacement

Unknowingly placing an
Not remembering a
unpleasant memory or
traumatic incident in
thought in the unconscious which you witnessed a
crime
Reverting back to
Throwing temper tantrums
immature behavior from an as an adult when you
earlier stage of
dont get your way
development
Redirecting unacceptable
Taking your anger toward
feelings from the original
your boss out on your
source to a safer substitute spouse or children by
target
yelling at them and not
your boss

Freuds Defense Mechanisms

Sublimation

Replacing socially
unacceptable impulses
with socially acceptable
behavior

Channeling aggressive
drives into playing football
or inappropriate sexual
desires into art

Reaction
Formation

Acting in exactly the

opposite way to ones
unacceptable impulses

Being overprotective of
and lavishing attention on
an unwanted child

Projection

Attributing ones own

unacceptable feelings and
thoughts to others and not
yourself

Accusing your boyfriend

of cheating on you
because you have felt like
cheating on him

Rationalization Creating false excuses for

ones unacceptable
feelings, thoughts, or
behavior

Justifying cheating on an
exam by saying that
everyone else cheats

Unhealthy Personalities

Develop not only when we become too

dependent upon defense mechanisms, but
also when the id or superego is unusually
strong or the ego unusually weak

Freuds
Psychosexual Stage Theory

Was developed chiefly from his own childhood memories

and from his years of interactions with his patients and their
case studies that included their childhood memories
An erogenous zone is the area of the body where the ids
pleasure-seeking psychic energy is focused during a
particular stage of psychosexual development
A change in erogenous zones designates the beginning
of a new stage
Fixation occurs when a portion of the ids pleasure-seeking
energy remains in a stage because of excessive
gratification or frustration of our instinctual needs and
continue throughout the persons life and impact their
behavior and personality traits

Five Psychosexual Stages

Oral Stage (birth to 18 months)
Anal Stage (18 months to 3 years)
Phallic Stage (3 to 6 years)

Latency Stage (6 years to puberty)

Genital Stage (puberty to adulthood)

Freuds Psychosocial States

of Personality Development
Stage (age range)

Erogenous Zone Activity Focus

Oral
(birth to 1 years)

Mouth, lips, and

tongue

Sucking, biting, and

chewing

Anal
(1 to 3 years)

Anus

Bowel retention and

elimination

Phallic
(3 to 6 years)

Genitals

Identifying with same-sex

parent to learn gender role
and sense of morality

Latency
(6 years to puberty)

No erogenous
zone

Cognitive and social

development

Genital
(puberty to
adulthood)

Genitals

Development of sexual
relationships, moving
toward intimate adult
relationships

Potty Training

Parents try to get the child to have self-control

during toilet training

If the child reacts to harsh toilet training by trying to get

even with the parents by withholding bowel movements, an
anal-retentive personality with the traits
of orderliness, neatness, stinginess,
and obstinacy develops
The anal-expulsive personality
develops when the child rebels
against the harsh training and
has bowel movements
whenever and wherever
he desires

Phallic Stage Conflicts

In the Oedipus conflict, the little boy

becomes sexually attracted to his
mother and fears the father (his rival)
will find out and castrate him
In the Electra conflict, the little girl is
attracted to her father because he
has a penis; she wants one and feels
inferior without one (penis envy)

Identification

In the process of identification, the child adopts

the characteristics of the same-sexed parents and
learns their gender role (the set of behaviors
expected of someone of a particular sex)
It is during identification that the superego begins
to develop

Evaluation of Freuds
Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality

Freuds notion of an unconscious level of

awareness is not accessible to anyone and is
impossible to examine scientifically

Indeed, unconscious information processing does

impact our thinking and behavior
However, the unconscious is not a storehouse of
instinctual drives, conflicts, and repressed memories
and desires

Although early childhood experiences are

indeed important, there is little evidence for his
psychosexual stages impacting development

Evaluation of Freuds
Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality

Contemporary researchers think repression,

seldom, if ever, really occurs

We understand today how Freuds questioning

during therapy may have created such
repressed memories in his patients

There is evidence we fight hard to maintain

self-esteem, but not necessarily through
defense mechanisms as Freud described
them

Neo-Freudian
Theories of Personality

Agree with many of Freuds basic ideas,

but differ in one or more important ways

Carl Jungs
Collective
Unconscious

Alfred Adlers
Striving for
Superiority

Karen Horney
and the
Need for
Security

Carl Jungs
Collective Unconscious

The collective unconscious

is the accumulated universal experiences
of humankind, with each of us inheriting
the same cumulative storehouse of all
human experiences
These experiences are manifested in
archetypes, which are images and
symbols of all the important themes in the
history of humankind (e.g., God, mother,
hero)
Notions of collective unconscious and
archetypes are more mystical than
scientific and cannot be empirically tested

Carl Jungs
Collective Unconscious

Jung proposed two main personality attitudes,

extraversion and introversion
Jung also proposed four functions/styles of
gathering information

Sensing is the reality function in which the world is

carefully perceived
Intuiting is more subjective perception
Thinking is logical deduction
Feeling is the subjective emotional function

The two personality attitudes and four functions

are the basis for the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator, still in wide use today

Alfred Adlers
Striving for Superiority

Adler thought the main motivation was what he

termed striving for superiority to overcome
the sense of inferiority that we feel as infants
given our totally helpless and dependent state
A healthy person learns to cope with these
feelings, becomes competent, and develops a
sense of self-esteem
Inferiority complex is the strong feeling of
inferiority felt by those who never overcome
this initial feeling of inferiority

Karen Horney and

The Need for Security
Focused on dealing with our need for security,
rather than a sense of inferiority
A childs caregivers must provide a sense of security
for a healthy personality to develop or else basic
anxiety, a feeling of helplessness and insecurity in a
hostile world, will result
Three neurotic personality patterns

Moving toward people

A compliant, submissive person
Moving against people
An aggressive, domineering person
Moving away from people
A detached, aloof person

The Humanistic Approach

and the Social-Cognitive
Approach to Personality
The Humanistic Approach
to Personality
The Social-Cognitive Approach
to Personality

Alternative Approaches

Humanistic theories developed in the 1960s as a part

of a response to the deterministic psychoanalytic and
strict behavioral psychological approaches that then
dominated psychology and the study of personality

The humanistic approach emphasizes conscious free will

in ones actions, the uniqueness of the individual person,
and personal growth

During the 1960s, social-cognitive theorists rebelled

against the narrowness of the strict behavioral
approach to the development of personality,
emphasizing both social and cognitive factors along
with conditioning to explain personality development

The Humanistic
Approach to Personality

Abraham Maslow is considered the father of

the humanistic movement

He studied the lives of very healthy and creative

people to develop his theory of personality

Maslows hierarchy of needs is an

arrangement of the innate needs that motivate
our behavior, from the strongest needs at the
bottom of the pyramid to the weakness needs
at the top of the pyramid

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

Self-Actualization
SelfEsteem
Social
Safety
Physiological

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

Self-Actualization

Characteristics of self-actualized people include

Accepting themselves, others, and the nature of world for

what they are
Having a need for privacy
and only a few close,
emotional relationships
Being autonomous and
independent, democratic,
and very creative
Having peak experiences,
which are experiences of deep
insight in which you experience
whatever you are doing as fully as possible

Critique

Maslow hierarchy of needs is criticized for

being based on non-empirical vague
studies of a small number of people that he
subjectively selected as self-actualized

Rogers Self Theory

Carl Rogers was a client-centered therapist

who dealt with young, bright college
students with adjustment problems

Emphasized self-actualization
Believe that people have a strong need for
positive regard to be accepted by and have
the affection of others, especially the significant
others in our life

Rogers Self Theory

Our parents set up conditions of worth, the

behaviors and attitudes for which they would give
us positive regard

Unconditional positive regard acceptance and

approval without conditions

Meeting conditions of worth continues throughout life, and

a person develops a self-concept of what others think he
should be

Empathy from others, and having others be genuine with

respect to their own feelings is necessary if we are to selfactualized

Note that neither Maslow nor Rogers theories are

research-based

The Social-Cognitive
Approach to Personality

Is research-based by combining
elements of three major research perspectives

Cognitive
Behavioral
Sociocultural

Maintains that learning through environmental

conditioning contributes to personality
development

However, social learning/modeling and cognitive

processes, such as perception and thinking, are also
involved and are actually more important to the
development of our personality

Banduras Self-System

The self-system is the set of cognitive processes by

which a person observes, evaluates, and regulates
his/her social behavior

There is a conscious decision to choose what behavior to

engage in, acting in accordance with the assessment of
whether the behavior will be reinforced or not

Self-efficacy is a judgment of ones effectiveness in

dealing with particular situations and plays a major role in
determining our behavior

Low self-efficacy is associated with depression, anxiety, and

helplessness
High self-efficacy is associated with self-confidence, positive
outlook, and minimal self-doubt

Rotters Locus of Control

Locus of control is a persons perception

of the extent to which he/she controls what
happens to him/her

External locus of control refers to the

perception that chance or external forces
beyond your control determine your fate
Internal locus of control refers to the
perception that you control your own fate

Locus of Control

People with an internal locus of control perceive

their success as dependent upon their own needs,
but they may or may not feel that they have the
competence (efficacy) to bring about successful
outcomes in various situations

People with an internal locus of control are

psychologically and physically better off

External locus of control may contribute to

learned helplessness, a sense of hopelessness
in which one thinks that he/she is unable to
prevent unpleasant events

Self-Perception

Attribution is the process by which we

explain our own behavior and that of others

Internal attribution means that the outcome is

attributed to the person
External attribution means that the outcome is
attributed to factors outside the person

Self-Perception

Self-serving bias is the tendency to make

attributions so that one can perceive
oneself favorably

If the outcome is positive, we make an internal

attribution for it
If the outcome is negative, we make an external
attribution for it
Self-serving bias is adaptive because it protects
us from falling prey to learned helplessness and
depression

Learned Helplessness
and Depression

Can result from:

Internal attributions for negative outcomes

(I failed the test because I am no good at math)
External attributions for positive outcomes
(I aced the test because it was so easy)

Pessimistic explanations are also stable

(i.e., the causes are permanent, I will always
have no ability for math) and global
(I have no ability for anything)

Trait Theories of Personality

and Personality Assessment
Trait Theories of Personality
Personality Assessment

Trait Theories of Personality

Personality traits are internally based, relatively

stable characteristics that define an individuals
personality

Each trait is a dimension, a continuum ranging from one

extreme of the dimension to the other

Trait theorists use factor analysis and other

statistical techniques to tell them how many basic
personality factors (or traits) are needed to describe
human personality, as well as what these factors are

Factor analysis identifies clusters of test items (e.g., on a

personality test) that measure the same factor/trait

The Number and Kind

of Personality Traits

Raymond B. Cattell, using factor analysis,

found that 16 traits were necessary to
describe human personality
Hans Eysenck, also using factor analysis,
argued for three trait dimensions
Cattell and Eysenck differed because the
number of traits depends on the level of
categorization in the factor analysis
Eysencks theory is at a more general and
inclusive level of abstraction than Cattells

Eysencks Three-Factor Theory

ExtraversionIntroversion
NeuroticismEmotional
stability
PsychoticismImpulse
control
Eysenck argued that these traits are determined by heredity

Eysencks Three-Factor Theory

The biological basis for the extraversionintroversion trait is level of cortical arousal
(neuronal activity)

Introverts have higher normal-levels of arousal

than an extravert, so extraverts need to seek
out external stimulation to raise the level of
arousal in the brain to a more optimal level

Eysencks Three-Factor Theory

People who are high on the neuroticismemotional stability dimension tend to be overly
anxious, emotionally unstable, and easily upset
because of a more reactive sympathetic nervous
system
The psychoticism-impulse control trait is
concerned with aggressiveness, impulsiveness,
and empathy

A high level of testosterone and a low level of MAO, a

neurotransmitter inhibitor, lead to high levels of
psychoticism

Five-Factor Model of Personality

These five factors appear to be universal

and are consistent from about age 30 to
late adulthood
These factors are measured using an
assessment instrument called the NEO-PI

The Big Five Personality

Trait Dimensions
Dimension

High End

Low End

Openness

Independent, imaginative,
broad interests, receptive
to new ideas

Conforming, practical,
narrow interests, closed to
new ideas

Conscientiousness

Well-organized,
dependable, careful,
disciplined

Disorganized,
undependable, careless,
impulsive

Extraversion

Sociable, talkative,
friendly, adventurous

Reclusive, quiet, aloof,

cautious

Agreeableness

Sympathetic, polite, goodnatured, soft-hearted

Tough-minded, rude,
irritable, ruthless

Neuroticism

Emotional, insecure,
nervous, self-pitying

Calm, secure, relaxed, selfsatisfied

Personality Assessment

The main uses of personality tests are to aid

in diagnosing people with problems,
counseling, and making personnel decisions

Personality
Inventories
Projective
Tests

Personality Inventories

Are designed to measure multiple traits of

personality, and in some cases, disorders

Are a series of questions or statements for which

the test taker must indicate whether they apply to
him or not

The MMPI (the Minnesota Multiphasic

Personality Inventory) is the most widely used,
translated into more than 100 languages

MMPI

Uses a True/False/Cannot Say format with 567

simple statements (e.g., I like to cook)
Developed to be a measure of abnormal
personality, with 10 clinical scales such as
depression and schizophrenia
Items were developed and tested to differentiate
different groups of people (a representative sample
of people suffering a specific disorder versus a
group of normal people) on certain dimensions; to
be retained, the two groups generally responded to
an item in opposite ways

MMPI

Contains three validity scales, which

attempt to detect test takers who are
trying to cover up problems and fake
profiles or who were careless in their
responding
Its test construction method leads to
good predictive validity for its clinical
scales and its objective scoring
procedure leads to reliability in
interpretation

Projective Tests

Contain a series of ambiguous stimuli, such

as inkblots, to which the test taker
must respond about his
perceptions of the stimuli
Sample tests

Rorschach Inkblots Test

Thematic Apperception
Tests (TAT)

Rorschach Inkblots Test

Contains 10 symmetric inkblots used in

the test, in which the examiner then goes
through the cards and asks the test taker
to clarify her responses by identifying the
various parts of the inkblot that led to the
response
Assumes the test takers responses are
projections of their personal conflicts and
personality dynamics
Widely used but not demonstrated to be
reliable and valid

Thematic Apperception Tests (TAT)

Consists of 19 cards with black and white

pictures of ambiguous settings and one blank
card
Test taker has to make up a story for each card
he sees (what happened before, is happening
now, what the people are feeling and thinking,
and how things will turn out)
Looks for recurring themes in the responses
Scoring has yet to be demonstrated to be either
reliable or valid