Personality

Topic 12
 Topic Content
• What is Personality
• Determinants of Personality Development
• Trait Theories of Personality
- Enumerating and Measuring Personality Traits
- Cattell’s Source Traits
- Eysenck’s Three dimensions
- Big Five Personality Traits
• Cognitive and Motivational Properties of Personality
Assessment Methods
• The Psychodynamic Approach of Freud
• The Neo-Freudians
• Humanistic Approaches to Personality
- Carl Rogers and the Self
- Abraham Maslow and Self Actualization
 What is Personality
• Personality can be defined as the overall organization of
psychological characteristics – feeling, thinking, and
behaving – that differentiate one person from another and
lead us to act consistently across time and situations
 The central elements of personality called traits, that is
predispositions to respond consistently across times and
situations
 The full richness of a person’s personality cannot be
captured by just listing his or her traits
 Good personality theories must explain how the traits are
integrated. They must be able to explain how good or bad
qualities, as well as stability and change can be present in
every human being
 Personality
Three Key themes
1. Uniqueness:
- Each person is a collection of unique characteristics that results in
behavior that is unique to that individual and differentiate one person from
another
2. Situational Consistency
- Difference in opinion regarding the issue of consistency and
variability
- Individual characteristics will be similar in different situations only if:
(a) the situations are similar or
(b) the characteristics have produced similar outcomes in these
situations in the past
3. Stability:
Considerable evidence suggest it is stable and enduring over time
The overall profile or combination of characteristics that capture the

unique nature of a person as that person reacts and interacts with others.
 Determinants of Personality
Development
• Heredity
– Study of identical
twins
– Assessments of
newborns
– Genes
• Environment
– Social exposures
– Physiological forces
– Socioeconomic
factors
Determinants of Personality
Development
 Determinants of Personality
Development
 Heredity and environment.
– Heredity sets the limits on the development of
personality characteristics.
– Environment determines development within these
limits. 
– About a 50-50 heredity-environment split.
– Cultural values and norms play a substantial role in
the development of personality.
– Social factors include family life, religion, and many
kinds of formal and informal groups.
– Situational factors reflect the opportunities or
constraints imposed by the operational context.
 Enumerating and Measuring
Personality Traits
• Trait Taxonomies
 Are systems for counting and organizing the
important dimensions on which the people differ.
 As a general rule trait approaches seek to identify
stable individual differences by analyzing the
responses of large groups of people.
 The assessment devices are then evaluated with
statistical indexes of measurement quality
 Three modes of measurement are common in
this psychometric ( statistical) approach
 Enumerating and Measuring
Personality Traits
1. Self report: people describe themselves in interviews or
questionnaires
2. Observer report: person is rated by others who have
relevant information( friends, family, trained therapists)
3. Actual behavior , a concrete behavior that can be
measured objectively ( speed of initiating conversation,
heart rate, number of parties attended in a month)
 It has been estimated that comprehensive English
dictionaries contain approximately 4500 trait terms.
 We need a trait taxonomy that reduces these thousand of
descriptive terms into smaller set of more basic terms
that summarizes group s of related terms
 Enumerating and Measuring
Personality Traits
 One approach to resolve this problem is the use of factor analysis
 Factor analysis is a statistical procedure used to analyze the correlation
among large number of variables, in this case trait words
 The goal is simplification; that is reduce a large set of trait word
variables to a small number of factors by clustering similar traits into
subsets
 Traits are considered similar if they are highly correlated (e.g. 0.5)
 Factor analysis provides a dramatic simplification
 It examines all the correlation to find the subsets of trait words that are
highly correlated. Together they measure some broader personality
characteristics
 The final step is to name each factor in a way that captures the meaning
of the whole factor
 The logic behind factor analysis is to determine the common
 Trait Theories
• Cattell’s Source Traits:
 Raymond Cattell was first to conduct factor
analysis of all the traits in English dictionary
 His analysis yielded 16 basic personality factors
 An individual’s personality could now be
summarized by their scores on 16 summary
factors:
1. Outgoing
2. Calm
3. Dominant
 Trait Theories
4. Cheerful
5. Conscientious
6. Venturesome
7. Tough minded
8. Trusting
9. Imaginative
10. Shrewd
11. self-assured
12. Conservative
13. controlled
14. self-sufficient
15. Relaxed
16. Intelligent
 The sixteen factors was measured by a questionnaire called 16 Personality
Factor inventory (16PF)
 All 16 factors were source traits , meaning they represent the underlying causes
of behavior
 In contrast he used the term surface traits for many other consistent behavioral
tendencies typically observed in people
 Trait Theories
• Eysenck’s Three dimensions
 The major complaint about Cattell’s factors was that they
overlapped with each other, that is the even the factors
were inter-correlated
 To solve this problem, Eysenck used a type of factor
analysis that produced non-overlapping factors; they
showed zero correlations with each other
 This resulted in three dimensions;
1. Extroversion;
 how outgoing and sociable you are
2. Neuroticism;
 degree of anxiety, worry, or moodiness
3. Psychoticism;
 Tendency to be irresponsible or nasty towards others
Trait Theories
 Big Five Personality Traits

Extraversion Conscientiousness

Personality

Openness to
Agreeableness
experience
Emotional stability/
neuroticism

Adapted from: Exhibit 5.1 The Big Five Personality Traits

Extravert Introvert
Talkative Extraversion Reserved
Sociable Quiet

Adapter Challenger
Trusting Co- Agreeableness Rude, cold
operative soft- Uncaring
hearted
Flexible
Focused Conscientiousness sloppy, inefficient,
dependable, careless
efficient, organized

Stable Unstable
Emotional stability Anxious, angry
Self-confident,
depressed
relaxed,
secure Preserver,
Explorer Openness to Unimaginative,
Imaginative, Experience conventional, habit
curious, broad bound
minded
 Big Five Personality Traits
• Extraversion:
- The degree to which a person is outgoing and drives
energy from being around other people
- In more specific terms it the degree to which a
person :
1. Enjoys being around other people
2. Is warm to others
3. Speaks up in group settings
4. Maintains a vigorous pace
5. Like excitement and cheerful
 Big Five Personality Traits
- Research has shown that extraverts tend to have modest but
measurable performance advantage over introverts in
occupation requiring high level of interaction with other
people
- Specific occupations where extraverts have been found to
perform particularly well include sales and management
- Introverts tend to do particularly well in occupations such as
engineering, accounting, and information technology where
more solitary work is required
- For any occupation where teams are emphasized extraverts
may have slight edge, as teams require face-to-face-
interaction, group decision making, and navigation of
interpersonal dynamics
- A team with very high percentage of extraverts as members
may function poorly, more interested in talking than listening
 Big Five Personality Traits
2. Conscientiousness
• The degree to which an individual focuses on goals and works
towards them
• In specific terms it is the degree to which a person:
1. Feels capable
2. Is organized
3. Is reliable
4. Possesses a drive for success
5. Focuses on completing the task
6. Thinks before acting
• Research has shown that individuals scoring high on
conscientiousness have performance edge in most
occupations and tend to perform well on teams
• Research has shown that conscientiousness has a stronger
positive effect on job performance when a person also scores
high on agreeableness
 Big Five Personality Traits
• 3. Agreeableness
• The degree to which an individual is easy
going and tolerant
• Specifically it is the degree to which a person:
1.Believes in the honesty of others
2.Is straightforward
3.Is willing to help others
4.Tends to yield under conflict
5.Is sensitive to the feeling of others
 Big Five Personality Traits
• Research has not shown consistent pattern of job outcomes
on individuals scoring high or low on agreeableness
• Being agreeable and disagreeable can be valuable at different
times in the same job
• Agreeable individuals seems to be consistently effective in
team work
• They are positive for interpersonal dynamics, as they are
sensitive to the feelings of others and try to ensure the
participation and success of all team members
• Having a very high percentage of of very agreeable team
members may be associated with too little debate on
important issues
• When teams must make important decisions and solve non-
routine problems, having some members with lower scores
on agreeableness may be an advantage
 Big Five Personality Traits
4. Emotional Stability/neuroticism
• The degree to which an individual easily handles stressful situations and
heavy demands
• Specific traits include:
1. Is relaxed
2. Is slow to feel anger
3. Rarely becomes discouraged
4. Rarely becomes embarrassed
5. Resists unhealthy urges associated with addictions
6. Handles crisis well
• Research has shown that emotionally stable individuals tend to have an
edge in task performance across a large number of occupations
• Emotionally stable individuals have modest advantage as team members
• Emotional stability is positively linked to job satisfaction, independent of
specific conditions of the job situation
 Big Five Personality Traits
5. Openness to Experience
• The degree to which a person seeks new experiences
and thinks creatively
• More specifically openness is the degree to which a
person:
1. Has vivid imagination
2. Has appreciation for art and beauty
3. Values and respects emotions in himself and others
4. Prefers variety to routine
5. Has broad intellectual curiosity
6. Is open to reexamine closely held values
 Big Five Personality Traits
• Research has shown that individuals scoring both
high and low on openness can perform well in
variety of occupations and perform well on teams
• Those who score high on this dimension are more
effective at particular tasks calling for vision and
creativity, such as creative aspects of advertising, the
creative aspects of marketing and many aspects of
arts
• Individuals with low openness score may be more
effective in jobs calling for strong adherence to rules
such as piloting airplanes, and accounting
 Pop- Up Quiz
1. __________ the overall organization of psychological characteristics – feeling,
thinking, and behaving – that differentiate one person from another and lead us
to act consistently across time and situations
2. Are systems for counting and organizing the important dimensions on which the
people differ
3. A method of personality assessment in which people describe themselves in
interviews or questionnaires
4. A method of personality assessment in which person is rated by others who
have relevant information
5. A method of personality assessment in which a concrete behavior can be
measured objectively
6. 16 factors identified by Cattell which represent the underlying causes of
behavior
7. In Eysenck’s Three dimensions the trait that showed how outgoing and sociable
you are is called
8. In Eysenck’s Three dimensions the trait that showed degree of anxiety, worry, or
moodiness is called
9. In Eysenck’s Three dimensions the trait that showed the tendency to be
irresponsible or nasty towards others is called
 Pop- Up Quiz
10. According to big five traits The degree to which a
person is outgoing and drives energy from being
around other people is called
11. According to big five traits The degree to which an
individual focuses on goals and works towards them
is called
12. According to big five traits The degree to which an
individual is easy going and tolerant is called
13. According to big five traits The degree to which an
individual easily handles stressful situations and
heavy demands is called
14. According to big five traits The degree to which a
person seeks new experiences and thinks creatively
 Cognitive and Motivational
Properties of Personality

Authoritarianism

Locus of control Self-monitoring

Cognitive and
Motivational
Concepts

Achievement Approval
motivation motivation

Adapted from: Exhibit 5-3: Cognitive and Motivational Concepts of Personality

 Cognitive Concepts
• Locus of control
– Tendency to attribute the cause or control of events
to either
• Oneself
• Factors in the external environment
– Internals believe they can control what happens to
them
– Externals believe what happens to them is more a
matter of luck or fate, rather than their own
behavior
 Locus of Control: Internals
1., Are attentive to aspects of environment that provide
useful information. Engage in actions to improve their
environment
2. Place greater emphasis on striving for achievement
3. More inclined to develop skills
4. Less alienated from work environment
5. More likely to be the leader and the group led by
internals more effective than externals
.6. Internal leaders rely more on persuasion and
expertise, external leaders rely on coercive power
7. Internals are more satisfied with participative
management style than externals
 Locus of Control
Negative Aspects of Internal Locus of control
1. Externals have been found to be more inclined to initiate
structure ( to help clarify roles and to show consideration to
people
2. Internals are less likely to comply with leader direction and
are less accurate in processing feedback about success and
failures than External
3. Internals have more difficulty arriving at decisions with
serious consequences for others
 Authoritarianism:
• Belief whether lines of power and status should be
clearly delineated or not.
• Persons high in authoritarianism are more likely to:
1. Create and maintain power status differences by
actively using titles and symbols of their position and
conforming to rules
2. Less likely to employ participative techniques that
would result in subordinate being treated equally
3. Subordinates high in authoritarianism show proper
deference to their superiors and are willing to abide by
the rules of the game
 Machiavellianism:
• It is the degree to which an individual is pragmatic,
maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends
could justify means
 High Machs manipulate more, win more, are
persuaded less and persuade others more
 The successful outcomes of high Machs behavior
depends upon
(1) face to face interaction with other persons not by
indirect means
(2) When situation has minimum number of rules and
regulations
(3) Where emotional involvement with details are
irrelevant to winning
 Self-monitoring

– Degree to which people attempt to present the

image they think others want to see in the given
situation
– High-self monitors want to be seen as others want
them to be
– Low self monitors want to be seen as themselves,
not as others want them to be
 Achievement motivation
– The need for achievement (n-Ach)
– Desire to perform in terms of a standard of
excellence
– Desire to succeed in competitive situations
– Persons high in the need to achieve
• Set goals
• Accept responsibility for both success and failure
• Focus on task excellence rather than on power
 Approval motivation
– Concerned about presenting one-self in a socially
desirable way in evaluative situations
– Persons high in approval motivation tend to
• Be concerned about the approval of others
• Conform and “get along”
• Respond to personality tests in socially desirable ways
(may fake their answers according to perceived
desirability)
 Assessment Methods
• Self Report Questionnaires
 Personality test that ask the person of interest a set of questions about how he or
she thinks, acts, or feels
 The major advantage of self-report questionnaires is their ease of administration
 Self report questionnaires paint a reliable picture of how someone differs from the
average
 Many kinds of self report questionnaires are used by professionals
a. For assessing normal personality traits
i. 16 Personality Factor Inventory (16PF); contains 187 item questions designed to
measure the 16 primary personality factors identified by Cattell
ii. NEO-PI-R; measures Big Five personality traits
b. For clinical assessment
I. The most widely used self-report inventory is the Minnesota Multiphase inventory
(MMPI). The MMPI requires test takers to answer hundreds of true false questions
about themselves
 An individual’s answers are expressed in a personality profile that describes his or
her scores on various subscale
MMPI Profiles: A clients scores on the various clinical scales can be compared with
the average scores from people who do not have psychological problems as well as
average scores from people who have been diagnosed with specific problems
 Projective Test
 Based on the theory of Sigmund Freud
 In a projective test you are asked to interpret an unstructured or
ambiguous stimulus
 The underlying assumption is that you will “ project” your true thoughts
and feelings during your interpretation thereby revealing elements of
your personality
i. Rorschach inkblot test:
 A projective test that requires people to interpret ambiguous inkblots
ii. Thematic Appreciation Test (TAT):
 you are shown an ambiguous picture and then you are asked to make-up
a story that explain what is happening in the picture. The idea is that you
will reveal aspects of yourself in themes of the story
 Reliable standards have been developed for interpreting responses. Both
test use a standardized set of stimuli so that your responses could be
compared with those of thousands of other people
 Many clinicians look for traditional psychodynamic themes in
interpretation (sex, death, or aggressiveness)
 They may also look for motives like need for achievement(n Ach.) need for
power (n Pow.), need for affiliation (n Aff.)
Rorschach Inkblot test Thematic Appreciation Test: make a
What do you see hidden in this story for the man you see
inkblot
 Pop-Up Quiz
1. Tendency to attribute the cause or control of events to either, Oneself or Factors in the
external environment is called
2. believe they can control what happens to them
3. believe what happens to them is more a matter of luck or fate, rather than their own
behavior
4. Belief whether lines of power and status should be clearly delineated or not
5. It is the degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and
believes that ends could justify means
6. Degree to which people attempt to present the image they think others want to see in the
given situation
7. Desire to perform in terms of a standard of excellence
8. Concerned about presenting one-self in a socially desirable way in evaluative situations
9. contains 187 item questions designed to measure the 16 primary personality factors
identified by Cattell
10. measures Big Five personality traits
11. For clinical assessment the most widely used self-report inventory is the
12. A projective test that requires people to interpret ambiguous inkblots

13 . you are shown an ambiguous picture and then you are asked to make-up a
story that explain what is happening in the picture.
 The Psychodynamic Approach of
Freud
• The Structure of Mind
 Freud believed that human mind was divided into three
levels of awareness
i. The conscious mind:
 Consists of the contents of current awareness – those
things that occupy the focus of attention at the moment
ii. The preconscious:
 contains inactive but accessible thoughts and memories –
those things that you could easily recall, if desired, but
simply not thinking about it
iii. Unconscious mind:
 The Psychodynamic Approach of
Freud
 Houses all memories, urges, and conflicts that are beyond
awareness
 To Freud, the important contents of the mind are not
politics, sports but deep conflicts related to sex and
violence
 These topics are at once the most alluring and most
disturbing aspects of life. Important psychological events
involve the transfer of information among different levels
of awareness
 From the depths of unconscious mind, such conflicts
continue to exert powerful and enduring influences on
behavior
 To Freud the phenomenon of repressed conflicts is
thought to be primary reason for mental illness
 The Psychodynamic Approach of
Freud
• The structure of Personality
 The two powerful instinctual drives, sex and
aggression are said to motivate behavior
 Rather than revealing them themselves in fixed
traits, these two motives are played out in
conflict among mind’s three dynamic elements;
the id, ego, and superego
1. The id:
 Represent the portion of personality that seeks
immediate satisfaction of innate urges, without
concern for the morals and customs of society
 The Psychodynamic Approach of
Freud
 id has two main urges, the pleasure principle, i.e. sex
instinct and the death and aggression instinct
ii. Super ego:
 Deter us from breaking the moral standards we learn
from parents and culture
 It is acquired primarily from punishing experiences, the
details of these experiences are mostly forgotten and
superego exerts its influence as a conscience – a self
inflicted punishment mechanism that makes us feel
ashamed and guilty when our behavior strays from
accepted standards
 like id, superego is essentially irrational – its only goal is
to avoid sin
 The Psychodynamic Approach of
Freud
 Superego follows moralistic principle
iii. The ego
 Serves a managerial role in Freud’s conception of
personality
 It encourages you to act with reason and deliberation and
helps you to conform to the requirements of external
world
 The ego obeys the reality principle in that it monitors the
real world, looking for appropriate outlets of the id
needs. To avoid punishment, such as guilt, the ego also
considers the moralistic preaching of superego
 Its goal is compromise among three dynamic masters; the
external world, the id, and the superego
 The Neo-Freudians
1. Alfred Adler (1870 -1937):
 One of the main causes of the break with Freud was
Alder’s insistence that the will to power is as influential in
psychological development as sexual drive
 The will to power is an inborn drive to become effective
and competent
 If the will to power is frustrated this sets up conditions for
an inferiority complex
 An inferiority complex is a group related ideas that may or
may not be realistic about the self
 An inferiority complex tends to contribute to feelings of
inadequacy, incompetence, depression, anxiety, and
chronic anger
 The Neo-Freudians
 In order to cope with inferiority complex, the individual
often uses an ego defensive mechanism called
compensation, i.e. trying to prove he may be inadequate
in one area but he can be great in other areas.
 Inferiority complex tends to be specific. One can have
inferiority complex associated with mathematical ability,
athletic capacity, social skills, musical talents, appearance
so forth
 It is possible to have more than one inferiority complex
 An inferiority complex does not mean that a person is
inferior. It is a component of one’s self image
 Inferiority complexes are, according to Alder, an
important feature of human personality
 The Neo-Freudians
• Carl Jung (1875 – 1961)
 Jung was dissatisfied with Freud’s narrow reliance on
sexuality as dominant source human motivation
 Jung believed instead in an idea of a “general life
force”.
 The general life force was sexual in part but included
other basic sources of motivation as well, such as the
need for creativity
 Among Jung more influential ideas was his concept of
“collective unconscious”
 He argued that people have a shared unconscious, in
addition to personal unconscious described by Freud
 The Neo-Freudians
 This shared portion is filled with mystical symbols and universal images
that have accumulated over the life time of human species
 These symbols are inherited and passed genetically from one generation
to another
 They include enduring concepts (archetypes) such as God, Evil, Mother,
Hero, etc. these archetypes determine and direct our behavior
 If an individual tends to identify his ego with the archetype Hero, then the
person will tend to be courageous, have a sprit of adventure, be
concerned for the welfare of unfortunate people, so forth
 If the individual tends to identify his ego with Martyr, then that person
will be self-sacrificing and self punishing, and to seek opportunities for
others to be abusive to them
 one of the important archetype is Self. If an individual tend to identify his
or her ego with the Self, then that person will take a life pathway of
personal discovery. Life will have purpose and a mission. If successful ,
towards the end of life , the individual will feel fulfilled, complete.
 Jung call this process as “self realization” which is equivalent to concept of
self-actualization of Maslow
 Humanistic Approaches to
Personality
 Provides a more optimistic alternative to Freud’s
pessimistic view of human sprit
 Humanistic psychology talks about growth and potential
 It is not the animalistic urges that are stressed in explaining
personality but the human being’s unparalleled capacity of
self awareness, choice, responsibility, and growth
 Each human being is unique. People are more than sum of
predictable parts. The environment influences the natural
growth process, people will grow best in fertile and
supportive environment; barren environment can not stop
the growth process, but they can prevent us from realizing
our own true potential
 Humanistic Approaches to
Personality
 A central theme of humanistic psychology is the validity of
subjective experience
 How we act is determined is determined by our unique
view of the world – our interpretation of reality. Moreover,
our personal view of ourselves and the environment is as
genuine and valid as everyone’s else view. Nonetheless
some people’s subjective experience of reality is not very
adaptive
 Emphasis is on conscious mental process. We are assumed
to be responsible for our own actions, and accepting this
responsibility is key to good adjustment
 The ideas of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, have been
especially influential
 Carl Rogers and the Self
 The essence of personality lies in the concept of the
self
 Self concept is an organized set of perceptions about
our own abilities and characteristics: It amounts to that
keen sense of self, what it means to be “I” or “me”
 The self concept comes primarily from social
interactions, particularly the interactions we have with
our parents, friends, and other significant role models
through out our lifetimes
 The people around us shape our self image through
ongoing evaluation of our actions
 Carl Rogers and the Self
 Roger suggested that we have a basic need for positive regard. We
value what other think of us and constantly seek other others
approval, love and companionship
 Unfortunately in real life, conditions of worth tend to be attached
to the level of approval we get from others
 Suppose you come from a family that values education and
intellectual pursuit. However, you don’t care about such things,
your interest are in music and sports. To gain acceptance of your
parents you may well deny your true feelings and modify your self
concept to bring it more in line with what your parents believe
 This condition is called incongruence, which he defined as
discrepancy between the image you hold of yourself - your self
concept – the sum of all your experiences
 Carl Rogers and the Self
 Incongruence leads to anxiety and ultimately
forms the basis for variety of psychological
problems
 True psychological health comes when the self
concept is congruent with your true feelings,
experiences that is, when your opinions and
beliefs about yourself accurately reflect your
every day experiences
 The larger the discrepancy is, the greater the
anxiety and lower your self esteem
 Abraham Maslow and Self
Actualization
 All human beings are creative individuals yearning to fulfill personal
potential
 Every one has basic need for self-actualization – the need to move
forward toward the realization of potential
 Personality characteristics will reflect where one is positioned in the
hierarchy of needs
 All human beings are inherently good; a person may consistently
act unkind, defensive, or aggressive manner, but these personality
traits reflect a failure to satisfy basic needs – they will never
fundamental to human spirit
 People who are self actualization show none of the darker
personality traits exhibited by those locked at lower levels
 Self actualized people tend to be positive, creative, accepting
individuals
 Pop-Up Quiz
1. According to Freud _______ Consists of the contents of current awareness – those
things that occupy the focus of attention at the moment
2. According to Freud ________contains inactive but accessible thoughts and
memories – those things that you could easily recall, if desired, but simply not
thinking about it
3. According to Freud ________ houses all memories, urges, and conflicts that are
beyond awareness
• According Freud ________, _______, are the two powerful instinctual drives
which motivate behavior
• Represent the portion of personality that seeks immediate satisfaction of innate
urges, without concern for the morals and customs of society,
• Deter us from breaking the moral standards we learn from parents and culture
• Serves a managerial role in Freud’s conception of personality
• According to Alfred Adler, if the will to power is frustrated this sets up
conditions for an
• Among Jung more influential ideas was his concept of collective unconscious
• A central theme of humanistic psychology is the validity of
• According to Carl Rogers The essence of personality lies in the concept of the