Chapter

Personalit
13
y

PowerPoint

Presentation
by Jim Foley
2013 Worth Publishers

Overview: Ways of Looking at

the Self
Freudian/Psychodynamic views of the Unconscious
parts of the self
Humanistic view of the Self-Actualizing Person
Examining Traits, including the Big Five
Factors/Dimensions
Social and Cognitive Influences on Personality
Self-Esteem and Self-Serving Bias

These different perspectives and

concepts can help us examine:
What we have in common:
Personality components, basic
drives, stages of development,
categories of traits
Ways in which we differ:
individual paths through stages,
ways of managing basic drives and

Personality: An individuals
characteristic patterns of thoughts,
feelings, and behaviors [persisting over
time and across situations]
Agreeable, Open
Introverted

Nave

Sensitive,
Reactive

Contentedly
lethargic

Neurotically Conscientious
irritable

Psychodynamic/Psychoanalyti
c Theories
These theories of human
personality focus on the
inner forces that interact
to make us who we are.
In this view: behavior, as
well as human emotions
and personality, develop
in a dynamic (interacting,
changing) interplay
between conscious and
unconscious processes,
including various motives
and inner conflicts.

Freuds Path to Developing

Psychonalysis
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) started
his career as a Vienna physician.
He decided to explore how mental and
physical symptoms could be caused
by purely psychological factors.
He became aware that many powerful
mental processes operate in the
unconscious, without our awareness.
This insight grew into a theory of the
structure of human personality and its
development.
His name for his theory and his
therapeutic technique:
psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis: Techniques
Techniques for
revealing the
unconscious mind:
He used creative
techniques such as free
association: he
encouraged the patient
to speak whatever
comes to mind, then the
therapist verbally traces
a flow of thoughts into
the past and into the
unconscious.
He also suggested
meanings for slips of the
tongue (as in this
cartoon) and for the
latent content of

Freuds Personality/Mind
Iceberg
The Mind is mostly
below the surface of
conscious awareness
Personality develops
from the efforts of our
ego, our rational self,
to resolve tension
between our id, based
in biological drives,
and the superego,
societys rules and
constraints.

The Unconscious, in
Freuds view: A
reservoir of thoughts,
wishes, feelings,
memories, that are
hidden from awareness
because they feel

The Developing
Personality
We start life
with a
personality
made up of
the id,
striving
impulsively to
meet basic
needs, living
by the
pleasure
principle.

In a toddler,
an ego
develops, a
self that has
thoughts,
judgments,
and memories
following a
reality
principle,
though still
focused on
serving the
ids needs.

The ego works as the

executive of this threepart system, to manage
bodily needs and wishes in
a socially acceptable way.

Around age 4 or
5, the child
develops the
superego, a
conscience
internalized from
parents and
society, following
the ideals of a
morality
principle.

Freuds Theory of
Psychosexual Stages

The id is focused on the

needs of erogenous
zones, sensitive areas of
the body.
People feel shame about
these needs and can get
fixated at one stage, never
resolve how to manage the
needs of that zones needs.

Male Development Issues

Freud believed that as boys in the phallic stage
seek genital stimulation, they begin to develop
unconscious sexual desires for their mothers and
hate their fathers as a rival, feeling guilt and
fearing punishment by castration.
He named these feelings the Oedipus complex,
after a story
Resolution
of from Greek mythology.
this conflict:
Boys identify
with their
fathers rather
than seeing
them as a rival.

Defending
Against
Anxiety

Freud believed that we are

anxious about our
unacceptable wishes and
impulses, and we repress this
anxiety with the help of the
strategies below.

Which Defense Mechanism Am

I?
A politician gives antigay speeches, then
turns out to have
homosexual
tendencies.
Reaction
Formation
Someone with an
anger problem
accuses everyone
else of being angry
and threatening.
Projection

These two are

sometimes confused
with each other.
The common theme,
as with all defense
mechanisms: they
seek to prevent
being conscious of
unacceptable
feelings.
The difference: the
first one
compensates, the
second one distracts.

Neo-Freudian, Psychodynamic
Theorists
Psychodynamic
theorists, such as
Adler, Horney, and
Jung, accepted
Freuds ideas about:
The importance of the
unconscious and
childhood relationships
in shaping personality
The id/ego/superego
structure of personality
The role of defense
mechanisms in
reducing anxiety about
uncomfortable ideas

Psychodynamic
theorists differed
from Freud in a few
ways:
Adler and Horney
believed that anxiety
and personality are a
function of social, not
sexual tensions in
childhood
Jung believed that we
have a collective
unconscious,
containing images from
our species
experiences, not just
personal repressed
memories and wishes

Carl
Jung

More About the

Psychodynamic
Theorists
Highlighted universal
themes in the

Alfred
Adler

Karen
Horney

unconscious as a source of
creativity and insight. Found
opportunities for personal growth
by finding meaning in moments of
coincidence.

Focused on the fight against

feelings of inferiority as a theme at
the core of personality, although he
may have been projecting from his
own experience.
Criticized the Freudian portrayal of
women as weak and subordinate
to men.
She highlighted the need to feel
secure in relationships.

Assessing the Unconscious:

Psychodynamic Personality
Assessment
Freud tried to get unconscious themes to be projected into the
conscious world through free association and dream analysis.
Projective tests are a structured, systematic exposure to a
standardized set of ambiguous prompts, designed to reveal
inner dynamics.

Rorschach test:
what do you
see in these
inkblots?
Problem:
Results dont
link well to
traits (low
validity) and
different raters
get different

Evidence has updated Freuds

ideas
Development appears to be lifelong, not set in
stone by childhood.
Infant neural networks are not mature enough to
create a lifelong impact of childhood trauma.
Peers have more influence on personality, and
parents less, than Freud assumed.
Dreams, as well as slips of the tongue, have many
possible origins, less likely to reveal deep
unconscious conflicts and wishes.
We may ignore threatening information, but
traumatic memories are usually intensely
remembered, not repressed.
Still, sexual abuse stories are more likely to be
fact, less likely to be wish fulfillment, than Freud
thought.

Unfalsifiability:
He developed
theories that are
hard to prove or
disprove: can we
Post facto test to see if there is
Unrepresentat
Flaws
explanations
ive sampling:
an id?
(hindsight bias)
in
He did not build
rather than
his theories on a
Freud
predictions:
broad sample of
s
Whether or not
observations; he
a situation
described all of
scienti
makes you
humanity based
fic
anxious or not,
on people with
you could either
unusual
metho
Biased
be fixated or
psychological
observations:
d
repressing.
problems.
He based theories
on his patients,
which may give him
an incentive to see
them as unwell
before his
treatment.

The Unconscious As Seen

Today: Processing,
Perceptions, and Priming,
But Not a Place

Unconsciou
s: a
stream, not
a reservoir

The following processes operate at

an unconscious level, not because
theyre repressed, but because
they are automatic:
Schemas guide our perceptions
Right hemisphere makes choices
the left hemisphere doesnt
verbalize
Conditioned responses, learned
skills and procedures, all guide our
actions without conscious recall
Emotions get activated
Stereotypes influence our
reactions
Priming affects our choices

Freuds Legacy
Freud benefitted psychology, giving us ideas
about: the impact of childhood on adulthood, and
human irrationality, sexuality, evil, defenses,
anxiety, and the tension between our biological
selves and our socialized/civilized selves.
Most colleges have courses related to
psychoanalysis outside of psychology departments!
Freud gave us specific concepts we still use often,
such as ego, projection, regression, rationalization,
dream interpretation, inferiority complex, oral
fixation, sibling rivalry, and Freudian slips.

Not bad for someone writing over 100 years

ago with no technology for seeing inside the
brain.

Humanistic
Theories of
Personality
Abraham
Maslow

Carl
Rogers

In the 1960s, some psychologists began to reject:

the dehumanizing ideas in Behaviorism, and
the dysfunctional view of people in Psychodynamic
thought.
Maslow and Rogers sought to offer a Third Force in
psychology: The Humanistic Perspective.
They studied healthy people rather than people with
mental health problems.
Humanism: focusing on the conditions that support
healthy personal growth.

Maslow: The SelfActualizing

Person
In Maslows view, people are

motivated to keep moving up a

hierarchy of needs, growing
beyond getting basic needs
met.
At the top of this
hierarchy are selfactualization,
fulfilling ones
potential, and selfIn this ideal state, a
transcendence.

personality includes
being self-aware,
self-accepting, open,
ethical, spontaneous,
loving caring,
focusing on a greater
mission than social
acceptance.

Rogers Person-Centered
Perspective
Rogers agreed that people have natural
tendencies to grow, become healthy, move
toward self-actualization

Genuineness: Being
honest, direct, not using a
faade.
Acceptance, a.k.a
The 3 conditions
Unconditional Positive
that facilitate
Regard: acknowledging
growth (just as
feelings, even problems,
water, nutrients, without passing judgment;
and light
honoring, tuning
not devaluing.
Empathy:
into the
facilitate the
feelings of others, showing
growth of a
your efforts to understand,
tree):
listening well (NOT
sympathy: people need to
be heard, not to be pitied)

Assessing the Self in

Humanistic Psychology: Ideal
Self vs. Actual Self

In the humanistic perspective,

the core of personality is the
self-concept, our sense of our
nature and identity
People are happiest with a selfconcept that matches their
ideal self

Questionnaires
can be used, but
some prefer
open interview.
Questions about
actual self: How
do you see
yourself? What
are you like?
What do you
value? What are
you capable of?
If the answers
do not match
the ideal, selfacceptance may
be needed, not
just self-change

Critiquing the Humanist

Perspective
What
Some about
say Rogers
did not
evil?
appreciate the human
capacity for evil.
Rogers saw evil as a
social phenomenon, not an
individual trait:
When I look at the world
Im pessimistic, but when I
look at people I am
optimistic. Rogers
Humanist response:
Self-acceptance is
not the end; it then
allows us to move
on from defending
our own needs to
loving and caring

Critiquing the Humanist

Perspective
Too much self-centeredness?

Some say that the pursuit

of self-concept, an
accepting ideal self, and
self-actualization
encouraged not selftranscendence but selfindulgence, selfcenteredness.
Humanist response: The
therapist using this
approach should not
encourage selfishness,
and should keep in mind
that that positive regard
means acceptance, not
praise.

Trait Theory of Personality

Gordon Allport decided
that Freud overvalued
unconscious motives
and undervalued our
real, observable
personality styles/traits.
Myers and Briggs
wanted to to study
individual behaviors and
statements to find how
people differed in
personality: having
different traits.
The Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI) is a
questionnaire
categorizing people by
traits.

Trait: An enduring
quality that makes a
person tend to act a
certain way.
Examples: honest.
shy. hard-working.
MBTI traits come in pairs:
Judging vs.
Perceiving. Thinking
vs. Feeling.
Trait
theory of
personality: That we are
made up of a collection of
traits, behavioral
predispositions that can be
identified and measured,
traits that differ from person
to person.

Factor Analysis and the

Eysencks Personality
Dimensions

Factor Analysis: Identifying

factors that tend to cluster
together.
Using factor analysis, Hans and
Sybil Eysenck found that many
personality traits actually are a
function of two basic
dimensions along which we all
vary.
Research supports their idea
that these variations are linked
to genetics.

Traits: Rooted in Biology?

Brain: Extraverts tend to have low levels of
brain activity, making it hard to suppress
impulses, and leading them to seek
stimulation.
Body: The trait of shyness appears to be
related to high autonomic system reactivity,
an easily triggered alarm system.
Genes: Selective breeding of animals
seems to create lifelong differences in traits
such as aggression, sociability, or calmness,
suggesting genetic roots for these traits.

Assessing Traits:
Questionnaires

Personality Inventory: Questionnaire assessing many personality traits, by

asking which behaviors and responses the person would choose
Empirically derived test: all test items have been selected to because they
predictably match the qualities being assessed.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): Designed to identify
people with personality difficulties
T/F questionnaire; items were selected because they correlated with various traits,
emotions, attitudes
Example: depressed people tend to answer true to: Nothing in the paper
interests me except the comics.

Sample MMPI Test Profile

Personality As Seen in Palms

and
Stars
And handwriting, and

crystal balls, and tea

leaves, and scattered
By saying
bones
something that is
vague and likely to
be true of you, then
following up on
comments that you
reinforce by
nodding, someone
can appear to see
into your soul.
You too can turn
your keen sense of
the obvious into a
career in predicting
the present!

I see by your
handwriting
you like
bananas.

The Big Five Personality

Factors
The Eysencks felt that
people varied along two
dimensions
Current cross-cultural
research and theory
supports the expansion
from two dimensions to five
factors:
to
help us
remember
the five
factors,
remember
that the
first
letters
spell
CANOE

Conscientiousnes
s: self-discipline,
careful pursuit of
delayed goals
Agreeableness:
helpful, trusting,
friendliness
Neuroticism:
anxiety, insecurity,
emotional instability
Openness:
flexibility,
nonconformity,
variety
Extraversion:
Drawing energy
from others,
sociability

The Big Five/

C.A.N.O.E.
Personality
Dimensions

Impulsive
Trusting
Anxious
Conformi
ng
FunLoving

Questions about Traits

These topics are the subject of
ongoing research:
Stability: Does ones
profile of traits change
over the lifespan?
No, ones distinctive
mix of traits doesnt
change much over the
lifespan.
However, everyone in
adulthood becomes:
More conscientious
and agreeable, and
Less extraverted,
neurotic/unstable, and
less open
(imaginative, flexible).

Predictive value:
Can we use these traits
to predict behavior?
levels of success in
work and relationships
relates to traits.

Heritability: Are
traits learned or
genetic? in
general, genes
account for 50% of
the variation for most
traits

Change vs. Consistency:

Shifts
with
Age
Over years of development, we change interests,
attitudes, roles, jobs, relationships; we develop
skills, maturity. Do traits stay stable through all
this change?

The evidence
shows that it
takes time for
personality to
stabilize. Traits do
change, but less
and less so over
time. We change
less, become
more consistent.

Person-Situation
Controversy
Trait theory

assumes that we
have traits that are
a function of
personality, not
situation.
There is evidence
that some traits
are linked to roles
and to personas we
use in different
cultures,
environments.

Personality Affecting the

Situation,
Just timeline
a Function
of the
Not
Your Facebook
and profile picture,
your
website, music lists, choice of ringtone--these all
Situation
reflect your personality.
These choices also may shape how others treat
you, which may affect your personality
This room may reflect
the personality of the
guy who lives there.
The setup and
contents of the room
may also shape his
personality.

Social-Cognitive
Perspective
Albert Bandura believes that Personality is:
The result of an interaction that takes place between a
person and their social context, involving how we think
about ourselves and our situations.
Questions raised in this perspective:

How do we
interpret
and
respond to
external
events?
How do
those
responses
shape us?

How do
our
memories,
expectatio
ns,
schemas,
influence
our
behavior
patterns?

How do the
personality
and social
environmen
t mutually
influence
each other?

Reciprocal Influences in
Becoming

the Kind of Person Who Does Rock

Climbing
Reciprocal: a back and
forth influence, with no
primary cause

Example: a
tendency to enjoy
risky behavior
affects choice of
friends, who in
turn may
encourage rock
Avoiding the highwayclimbing, which
may lead to
today without
identifying with
identifying or
explaining any fear: the activity.
the low road of

Reciprocal Determinism:
How personality, thoughts, social
environment
all reinforce/cause each other
Why is Jake a happy, smiley
person? He may have started
with an Easy temperament;
He may attract other happy
people, and people are more
likely to smile when around
him, which reinforces his
smiles;
His mind fills in the reasons
why hes smiling even if some
of it was a reflection of his
happy friends, and these
happy reasons give him more
reason to smile.

Biopsychosocial
Approaches to Personality

External vs. Internal Locus

of Control

Locus of control: Our perception of where

the seat of power over our lives is located.
Internal locus of
control: we feel that
we are in charge of
ourselves and our
circumstances.

External locus of
control: we picture that a
force outside of ourselves
controls our fate.

Too much internal locus

of control: We blame
ourselves for bad events,
or have the illusion that
we have the power to
prevent bad events.

Too much external locus

of control: We lose
initiative, lose
motivation to achieve,
have more anxiety
about what might
happen to us, dont
bother developing

 The ability to control impulses and

delay gratification, sometimes
called willpower
This is a finite resource, an
expenditure of brain energy, which
is replenished but can be depleted
short-term: People asked to resist
eating cookies later gave up
sooner on a tedious task
With practice, we can improve our
self-control
There seem to be individual
differences in this trait in childhood
The Marshmallow study: Kids who
resisted the temptation to eat
marshmallows later had more
success in school and socially

Experiment by
Martin Seligman:
Give a dog no
chance of
escape from
repeated shocks.
Result: It will
give up on trying
to escape pain,
even when it
later has the
option to do so.

Learned
Helplessness
vs. Personal
Normally, most
Control
creatures try to
escape or end a
painful situation. But
experience can make
us lose hope.

Learned
Helplessness:
Declining to
help oneself
after repeated
attempts to do
so have failed.

Personal
Control: When
people are given
some choices
(not too many),
they thrive

Optimism vs.
Pessimism
We can be optimistic or

pessimistic in various ways:

Prediction: We can expect the
best or the worst. At the
extremes, we can get ourselves
overconfident or simply depressed
or anxious about the future.
Focus of attention: We can
focus on what we have (half full)
or what we dont have (empty).

Attribution of intent: We can assume that people

meant to hurt us or that they were having a bad day.
Valuation: We can assume that we or others are
useless, or that we are lovable, valuable.
Potential for change: We can assume that bad
things cant be changed, or have hope.

Excessive
Pessimism

vs.
Realism

Excessive
Optimism

I cant do it,
might as well
forget it.

It might be hard;
Id better plan.

It will be easy, I
wont think
about it.

Im trapped,
cant get out of
this

I want to make
changes or get
out.

Someone will
rescue me.

That person
hates me, he
is against me.

I should ask
what he feels
about me, what
he wants.

Im sure he just
wants whats
best for me, Ill
trust him.

Excessive pessimism can leave us

depressed, inactive.

A More Positive Psychology

Martin Seligman, who
earlier kept dogs from
escaping his shocks until
they developed learned
helplessness.
Developed Positive
Psychology, the
scientific study of optimal
human functioning,
finding ways to help
people thrive.
Focus: building strengths,
Three pillars
of Positive
virtue, emotional
wellPsychology:
being, resilience,
1.Emotions,
optimism,
sense ofe.g. engagement
2.Character, e.g. courage
meaning.

3.Groups, Culture, Institutions

Evaluating Behavior in
Situations:
Blindness to Ones Own
Faults
Donald Trump as the host of The
Apprentice prided himself on assessing
executive skills in others.
Assessments based on performance in
such simulations predict future job
performance better than interviews and
questionnaires.
Donald Trump as a politician could not
understand why more people didnt join
his candidacy, his debates, his birther
theories.

Evaluating the SocialCognitive Perspective

The social-cognitive perspective
on personality helps us focus on
the interaction of behaviors,
thoughts, and social situations.
This focus, though, may distract
us from noticing an individuals
feelings, emotions, inner
qualities.
Critics note that traits may be
more a function of genetics and
upbringing, not just situation.
Example of two people with
different reactions in the same
situation: Two lottery winners
sharing a jackpot; one sobbed,
the other slept.

Exploring the Self, Viewing

the Self
Research in personality
includes the topic of a
persons sense of self.
Topics of research include
self-talk, self-esteem, selfawareness, selfmonitoring, self-control.
The field has refined a
definition of self as the
core of personality, the
organizer and reservoir of
our thoughts, feelings,
actions, choices,
attitudes.

Topics for our study of

peoples sense of self:
The Spotlight Effect
(self-consciousness)
Self-esteem, low and
high, benefits and
risks
Self-Serving Bias
Narcissism
Self-disparagement
Secure self-esteem

Self-Consciousness: The
Spotlight Effect
Experiment: Students put on Barry
Manilow T-shirts before entering a room
with other students. (Manilow was not
even cool back in the day.)
Result: The students thought others
would notice the T-shirt, assumed
people were looking at them, when this
was not the case; they greatly
overestimated the extent to which the
spotlight was on them.
The spotlight effect: assuming that
people are have attention focused on
you when they actually may not be
noticing you.
Lesson: People dont notice our errors,
quirks, features, and shirts as much as
we think they do.

Self-Esteem:
High and Low, Good and Bad
People who have normal Low self-esteem, even
or high self-esteem,
temporarily lowered by
feeling confident and
insults, leads to
valuable, get some
problems: prejudice,
benefits:
being critical of others
Increased resistance to
conformity pressure
Decreased harm from
bullying
Increased resilience and
efforts to improve their
own mood
But maybe this high
self-esteem is really
realistic, and is a result,
not a cause, of these
successes.

SelfServing
Bias

We all
generally
tend to think
we are above
average.
This bias can
help defend
our selfesteem, as it
does for the
people in this
wheel.

Self-Focus and Narcissism

Since 1980, song lyrics have become more focused on the self,
both gratification and self-praise.
Empathy scores and skills are decreasing, being lost; people
increasingly dont bother trying to see things from the
perspective of others.
There is a rise in narcissism (self-absorption, self-gratification,
inflated but fragile self-worth).
Narcissists see themselves as having a special place in the
world.
Danger, especially in narcissism: When self-esteem is
threatened, it can trigger defensive aggression.
Preventing this aggressive defense of self-esteem: not raising
self-esteem, but reinforcing it, having people state their own
values and qualities

Self-Disparagement, SelfAcceptance

Left behind in the supposed increase in egotism: those who feel

worthless, unlovable.
Some people have a habit of self-disparaging self-talk: Im no
good. Im going to fail.
Sometimes such remarks are a sign of depression or at least
feeling inferior.
Sometimes such remarks may elicit pity, or prepare us for
possible bad events, or help us learn from mistakes (people are
more critical of their past selves).
Moving from defensive to secure self-esteem requires realistic
expectations and self-acceptance.