Presentation on theme: "Theories of Personality Michael Jackson"— Presentation transcript:
1 Theories of Personality Michael Jackson A composite of the ways in which individuals relate to others and adapt to the demands placed on them by the environment.
2 Personality TheoryPersonality is the unique way in which each individual thinks, acts, and feels throughout life.Four main viewpoints in personality theory:(1) The psychodynamic perspective – Focuses on the role of the _________________ mind in the development of personality.(2) The behaviorist perspective – Is based on the theories of ___________________.(3) The humanistic perspective – Focuses on the role of each person’s ___________________ life experiences and choices in personality development.(4) The trait perspective – In lieu of trying to explain the process that causes personality to form into its unique characteristics, trait theorists are more concerned with the end result- the ____________________ themselves.
3 The Psychodynamic Perspective Personality is the relatively stable constellation of psychological characteristics and behavioral patterns that account for our individuality and consistency over time.Psychoanalytic theory is the belief that a dynamic struggle takes place within the human psyche (mind) between unconscious forces that shapes our personality and behavior.
4 Levels of Consciousness Freud represented the human mind as consisting of three levels of consciousness: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious.The conscious mind represents our present awareness - what we are thinking or feeling at any given moment in time. The preconscious mind holds information we have stored from past experiences, events, or learning. The unconscious mind contains our primitive sexual and aggressive impulses as well as memories of troubling emotional experiences, all of which are not easily or voluntarily brought into consciousness. For Freud, the unconscious mind was the most important determining factor in human behavior and personality.
5 The Structure of Personality Freud argued that personality consisted of three mental entities called the id, ego, and superego; each existing at one or more levels of conscious awareness. The Id is a completely unconscious, amoral part of our personality. It operates only in the unconscious and it is the only psychic structure present at ____________. It contains our basic animal drives or instinctual impulses, including hunger, thirst, elimination, sex, and aggression. It also operates on the Pleasure principle which seeks instant gratification without regard to social rules, customs, or regard for consequences. By sex drive, Freud meant _______________________________. The id seeks out pleasurable sensations. “If it feels good, do it.” “If you’re not with the one you love then you love the one you are with.”
6 As the id soon finds it must cope with frustration and learns to delay gratification. At this point, a second part of the mind forms during the first year of life that is responsible for organizing ways to handle delays of gratification, called the ego. The ego (the Executive Director that helps the id deal with reality) seeks to satisfy instinctual demands in ways that are practical and socially acceptable. Operating in this mode is called the reality principle – operating in a practical and acceptable way that satisfies basic needs. The ego seek ways to satisfy the demands of the id without incurring __________________ consequences or social disapproval. The ego is mostly conscious and is far more rational, logical, and cunning than the id.
7 The Moral WatchdogThe superego is our internal moral guardian or conscience, the part of the personality that makes people feel pride when they do the right thing and guilt, or moral anxiety, when they do the wrong thing. By 3 to 5 years of age, it splits off from the ego and develops by internalizing the moral teachings of parents or other significant figures. Our behavior is then a product of the dynamic struggles among the id, the ego, and the superego. Part of the ego rises to the level of consciousness, but much of the ego operates below the surface of consciousness, where it employs strategies called defense mechanisms to prevent awareness of unacceptable sexual or aggressive impulses or wishes.
8 Defense MechanismsAccording to Freud, when the anxiety created by the conflict among the personality structures get out of hand is when disordered behavior arises. The ego will then use defense mechanisms to prevent the anxiety that would result if troubling desires and memories residing in the unconscious were fully realized in conscious awareness. The major defense mechanism - ________________ - involves the ejection of threatening desires from awareness into the depths of the unconscious. In Freud’s view, slips of the tongue may reveal underlying motives and wishes kept hidden by repression.
9 Defense MechanismsDefense mechanisms are ways of dealing with stress through unconsciously distorting one’s perception of reality. Freud believed that the psychosexual stages were determined by the developing __________________ of the child. And that at each stage, a different _______________ or area of the body that produces pleasurable feelings, becomes important and can become the source of conflicts. Conflicts not fully resolved can result in _____________ to some degree in a stage of development. Because the personality or psyche develops as a result of __________________ development, Freud called the stages- psychosexual stages of personality development.
10 Stages of Personality Development Therefore, according to Freud, personality develops through five psychosexual stages of development.Psychological or emotional conflicts which often arise from receiving too much or too little gratification, can lead to the development of fixations – personality traits characteristic of a particular stage of psychosexual developments, resulting from either excessive or inadequate gratification at that stage.
11 Stages of Personality Development Oral Stage – Is the first stage because the erogenous zone is the _______________; the infant seeks sexual gratification through oral stimulation. This stage spans the period of birth through about 12 to 18 months of age. Too much gratification at this stage may lead to oral fixations in adulthood such as smoking, overeating, talking too much, nail biting etc. Too little gratification, may lead to a clinging dependence, too aggressive, or may have a pessimistic outlook.Anal Stage - This stage occurs by about the age of 18 months thru about age 3. During this stage, sexual gratification (erogenous zone) is centered on processes of elimination (retention and release of bowel contents). Anal fixations reflect either too harsh or too lenient toilet training.
12 Training that is too harsh may lead to traits associated with “anal-retentive personality” such as perfectionism and extreme needs for self-control, orderliness, and neatness. Extremely lax training may lead to “anal-expulsive personality such as messiness, lack of self-discipline, and carelessness. They see messiness as a statement of personal control and who is somewhat _________________ and ___________________.Phallic Stage – This stage spans the ages of 3 to 6, where the erogenous zone shifts to the phallic region- the penis in males and the clitoris in females. Freud believed that when boys realized that little girls had no penis that they would develop a fear of losing their penis and he called it _____________________ while girls developed _________________ because they were missing a penis. Freud believed that boys develop both sexual attraction to their mothers and jealousy of their fathers during this stage, a phenomenon called the _______________________.
13 Oedipus and Electra Complex To deals with this anxiety two things must occur by the time the phallic stage ends. The boy will repress his sexual feelings for his mother and ____________ with his father.Identification with the parent of the same sex leads to the development of gender-based behaviors.
14 Castration anxiety is the fear that their father will retaliate against their sexual desires for their mother by removing the organ that has become the primary erogenous zone.Penis envy, according to Freud, leads girls to feel inferior or inadequate in relation to boys and to unconsciously blame their mother for bringing them into the world so ill-equipped.
15 Latency Stage spans the years between about 6 to 12 years Latency Stage spans the years between about 6 to 12 years. It is named because of the belief that sexual impulses remain latent (dormant) yielding to a time when the child’s psychological energies are focused on other pursuits such as school and play activities, and acquiring skills. In this stage, children grow and develop intellectually, physically, and socially but not sexually.Genital Stage is the final stage of psychosexual development from about puberty to adulthood, where there is the forsaken incestuous desires for the parent of the opposite sex that give rise to yearnings for more appropriate sexual partners of the opposite gender.
16 Neo-Freudians - Other Psychodynamic Approaches Carl Jung: Analytical Psychology – Jung believed that the unconscious held much more than personal fears, urges, and memories. He believed that there was not only a personal unconscious as described by Freud, but a collective unconscious as well; a repository of accumulated ideas and images in the unconscious mind. The collective, universal human memories were called the archetypes, Jung’s collective, universal human memories that reflect the ancestral or universal experiences of humans.Jung shared with Freud the beliefs that defense mechanisms distort or disguise people’s underlying motives. Jung also placed greater emphasis on the present than on infantile or childhood experience, and he emphasized conscious processes, such as self-awareness and pursuit of self-directed goals, more than unconscious processes.
17 Alfred Adler: Individual Psychology – Called his theory individual psychology because of its emphasis on the unique potential of each individual. He believed that conscious experience plays a greater role in our personalities than Freud had believed. The creative self is what he called the part of the personality that is aware of itself and organizes goal-seeking behavior. Feelings of inferiority – inferiority complex, lead to a desire to compensate, called the drive for superiority or will-to-power. Therefore, the driving force behind all human endeavors, emotions, and thoughts for Adler was not the seeking of pleasure but the seeking of superiority. The defense mechanism of ________________, in which people try to overcome feelings of inferiority in one area of life by striving to be superior in another area, figured prominently in Adler’s theory. Adler also developed a theory that the ______________ of a child affected personality.
18 Karen Horney: Horney accepted Freud’s belief that unconscious conflicts shape personality, but she focused less on sexual and aggressive drives and more on the roles of social and cultural forces. Horney also felt that when parents are harsh or uncaring, children may develop a deep-seated form of anxiety she called basic anxiety, which is associated with the feeling of being isolated and helpless in a potentially hostile world. Also, she believed that children could develop a deep form of resentment toward their parents, which she labeled basic hostility. Horney raised the possibility that men may experience “womb envy” over the obvious physiological superiority of women with respect to their biological capacity for creating and bringing life into the world. She also believed that children could developed neurotic personalities by having maladaptive ways of dealing with relationships.
19 Erik Erikson became a psychoanalyst by studying with Anna Freud Erik Erikson became a psychoanalyst by studying with Anna Freud. He broke away from Freud’s emphasis on sex, preferring instead to emphasize the social relationships that are important at every stage of life. Erikson put forth eight psychosocial stages:1) Trust vs. Mistrust,2) Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt,3) Initiative vs. Guilt,4) Industry vs. Inferiority,5) Identity vs. Role Confusion,6) Intimacy vs. Isolation,7) Generativity vs. Stagnation, and8) Ego Integrity vs. Despair
20 Current Thoughts on Freud and the Psychodynamic Perspective Modern researchers have had to admit that there are influences on human behavior that exist outside of normal conscious awareness.Criticisms of the Psychodynamic Perspective:1) Freud did no experiments to arrive at his conclusions about personality.2) Freud based much of his interpretations of a patient’s problems on the interpretations of dreams and the results of the patient’s free association.3) Freud’s clients were almost all wealthy Austrian women living in the Victorian era of sexual repression.
21 The Behaviorist and Social Cognitive View of Personality _______________ view personality as a set of learned responses or habits. Habits are a set of well-learned responses that have become automatic.Social cognitive learning theorists emphasizes the importance of both the influences of other people’s behavior and of a person’s own expectancies on learning, coupled with observational learning, modeling, and other cognitive learning techniques can lead to the formation of patterns of personality.
22 Social Cognitive ViewThe social-cognitive view, argues that __________________ is governed not just by the influence of external stimuli and response patterns but also by ___________________ processes such as anticipating, judging, and memory as well as learning through the imitation of models.
23 Reciprocal Determinism and Self-Efficacy Bandura (1989) believes that three factors influence one another in determining the patterns of behavior that make up personality: the environment, the behavior itself, and personal or _______________ factors that the person brings into the situation from earlier experiences.Self-efficacy is an individual’s expectancy of how effective his or her efforts to accomplish a goal will be in any particular circumstance.
24 Julian Rotter: The Locus of Control – the tendency for people to assume that they either have control or do not have control over events and consequences in their lives. Rotter believed that explaining and predicating one’s behavior involved knowing an individual’s reinforcement history as well as the person’s expectancies and subjective values. Expectancies are your personal predictions of the outcomes of your behavior, e.g., students who hold a positive expectancy about schoolwork believe that studying will improve their chances of getting a good grade. Subjective value is the worth you place on desired outcomes.
25 Locus of control in Rotter’s theory, refers to one’s general expectancies about whether one’s efforts can bring about desired outcomes or reinforcements.Albert Bandura: Reciprocal Determinism- holds that cognitions, behaviors, and environmental factors influence each other. Bandura also distinguished between two types of expectancies: outcome expectations and efficacy expectations. Outcome expectations are predictions of the outcomes of behavior. Efficacy expectations are predictions about your personal ability to perform the behaviors you set out to accomplish.
26 The Third Force: Humanism and Personality Humanism focuses on the things that make people uniquely ___________, such as subjective emotions and the freedom to choose one’s own destiny. Carl Rogers believed that all humans have the striving to fulfill one’s innate capacities and capabilities that he called ___________________. Rogers taught that an important tool in human self-actualization is the development of an image of oneself that is called ________________. Two important components of the self-concept are the real self and the ideal self. The real self is one’s actual perception of characteristics, traits, and abilities. The ideal self is the perception of what one would like to be.
27 Carl Rogers believed that each of us possesses an inner drive that leads us to strive toward self-actualization- toward realizing our own unique potentials. He also believed that the self is the center of the human experience. Therefore, he named his theory of personality as self-theory. Self is the executive part of your personality that organizes how you relate to the world.Unconditional positive regard refers to valuing another person as having intrinsic worth, regardless of the person’s behavior at the particular time. It is giving positive regard without strings attached.Conditional positive regards is when you value a person only when that person’s behavior meets certain expectations or standards.Fully functioning person is a person who is in touch with and trusting of their deepest, innermost urges and feelings.
28 The Trait PerspectiveTrait theorists look within the personality to explain behavior; they endeavor to describe the characteristics that make up human personality in an effort to predict future behavior. They believe that personality consists of a distinctive set of relatively stable or enduring characteristics or dispositions called traits.Gordon Allport: A Hierarchy of Traits – Dr. Allport argued that personality traits are physical entities embedded in the brain that come to influence our behavior; that the traits are literally wired into the nervous system to guide one’s behavior across many different situations and that each person’s constellation of traits are unique. He also believed that traits are inherited but are also influenced by experience. At the highest level of his hierarchy of traits are cardinal traits, which are pervasive characteristics that influence a person’s behavior in most situations.
29 Raymond Cattell: Mapping the Personality He believed that there are two basic levels of traits: Surface traits and Source traits.Surface traits are personality traits that lie on the surface of ones personality that can be gleaned from the observations of behavior.Source traits are those traits at a deep level of personality that are not apparent in observed behavior but must be inferred based on underlying relationships among surface traits.
30 The Five-Factor Model of Personality The Five-Factor Model refers to a model of personality traits that describes five basic trait dimensions; a model that is the most widely adopted trait model of personality in use today. The Five traits are: 1) Neuroticism- Prone to anxiety vs. being relaxed; 2) Extraversion- Outgoing, friendly vs. solitary, shy; 3) Openness- Imaginative, curious vs. conforming, practical; 4) Agreeableness- Sensitive, concerned with other’s feelings and needs, vs. cold, suspicious, hostile; and 5) Conscientiousness- Reliable, self-disciplined, vs. disorganized, unreliable, and careless.
31 Walter Mischel: Situation VS Walter Mischel: Situation VS. Person Variables- Mischel argued that behavior is influenced by both situation variables (environmental factors) and trait variables or internal personal factors he called trait-situation interaction. In this interaction, Mischel argued that the particular circumstances of any given situation are assumed to influence the way in which a trait is expressed.THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE- argued that conscious choice and personal freedom are central features of what it means to be a human being.
32 The Biology of personality: Behavioral Genetics/The Genetic Basis of Traits The field of study that is devoted to studying just how much of an individual’s personality is due to inherited traits is called ________________________. Research suggests that genetics accounts for between 40 and 60 percent of the variability with the remaining variability accounted for by environmental factors such as early learning experiences.Geert Hofstede found four basic dimensions of personality along which cultures differed:1) Individualism/collectivism2) Power distance3) Masculinity/femininity4) Uncertainty avoidance
33 Four Dimensions of Cultural Personality Individualism culture – tend to have loose ties between individuals, with people tending to look after themselves and their immediate families. They value autonomy, change, youth, security of the individual, and equality. Collectivistic culture, from birth are deeply tied into very strong in-groups (extended families); and the care of the family is placed before the care of the individual. This culture values duty, order, tradition, respect for the elderly, and respect for the group status and hierarchy.2) Power distance referred to the degree to which the less powerful members of a culture accept and even expect that the power within the culture is held in the hands of a select few rather than being more evenly distributed.
34 3) Masculinity/femininity: Refers to how a culture distributes the roles played by men and women within a culture. Masculine cultures are assertive and competitive, while the feminine cultures are more modest and caring.4) Uncertainty avoidance: Some cultures are more tolerant of uncertainty, ambiguity, and unstructured situations. Cultures that do not tolerate such uncertainty and lack of structure tend to have strict rules and laws with lots of security and safety measures and tend toward a philosophical/religious belief of One Truth (and we have it!”).
35 Methods of Personality Assessment Interview: Is when the professional asks questions of the client and allows the client to answer, either in a structured or unstructured fashion.Projective tests: Are tests in which ambiguous test materials are used to elicit responses that are believed to reveal a person’s unconscious needs, drives, and motives; e.g., Rorschach Inkblot test, TAT.Behavioral Assessments/Direct observation: The psychologist observes the client engaging in ordinary, everyday behavior, preferably in the natural setting of home, school, or workplace.Personality Inventories: Is a paper and pencil or computerized test that consists of statements that require a specific, standardized response from the person taking the test, e.g., MMPI-2THE ENDSTUDY STUDY STUDY
36 Hans Eysenck: A Simpler Model – Eysenck model describes personality using three major traits: 1) Introversion-Extraversion; 2) Neuroticism; and 3) Psychoticism. Introversion-Extraversion describes people that are introverted as being solitary, reserved, and unsociable, where as those who are extraverted are out going, friendly, and people-oriented. Neuroticism are people who tend to be tense, anxious, restless, and moody. Persons who are low on neuroticism tend to be relaxed, calm, stable, and even-tempered. Psychoticism- persons who score high on this scale are perceived as cold, hostile, and insensitive. Those who score low on this scale, are described as warm, sensitive, and concerned about others.