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Chapter 10: Personality

Defining Some Terms

• Personality: A person’s unique and relatively stable behavior patterns; the consistency of who you are, have been, and will become
• Character: Personal characteristics that have been judged or evaluated
• Temperament: Hereditary aspects of personality, including sensitivity, moods, irritability, and adaptability

Personality Trait

• Stable qualities that a person shows in most situations - Personality Type: People who have several traits in common

Personality Types

• Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist who was a Freudian disciple, believed that we are one of two personality types: - Introvert: Shy, self-centered person whose attention is focused inward - Extrovert: Bold, outgoing person whose attention is directed outward

Self-Concept

• Your ideas, perceptions, and feelings about who you are

Self-Esteem

• How we evaluate ourselves; a positive self- evaluation of ourselves - Low Self-esteem: A negative self- evaluation

Personality Theories: An Overview

• Personality Theory: System of concepts, assumptions, ideas, and principles proposed to explain personality; includes four perspectives

Trait Theories

• Attempt to learn what traits make up personality and how they relate to actual behavior

Psychodynamic Theories

• Focus on the inner workings of personality, especially internal conflicts and struggles

Behavioristic and Social Learning

Theories

• Focus on external environment and on effects of conditioning and learning; Attribute differences in perspectives to socialization, expectations, and mental processes

Humanistic Theories

• Focus on private, subjective experience and personal growth

Gordon Allport (1961) and Traits

• Common Traits: Characteristics shared by most members of a culture
• Individual Traits: Describe a person’s unique qualities
• Cardinal Traits: So basic that all of a person’s activities can be traced back to the trait
• Central Traits: Core qualities of a personality
• Secondary Traits: Inconsistent or superficial aspects of a person

Raymond Cattell and Traits

• Surface Traits: Features that make up the visible features of personality
• Source Traits: Underlying traits of a personality; each reflected in a number of surface traits
• Cattell also created 16PF , personality test
  • Gives a “picture” of an individual’s personality

Raymond Cattell and the “Big Five”

Personality Factors

• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Conscientious
• Neuroticism
• Openness to Experience

Traits and Situations

• Trait-Situation Interactions: When external circumstances influence the expression of personality traits
• Behavioral Genetics: Study of inherited behavioral traits and tendencies

Some Key Freudian Terms

• Psyche: Freud’s term for the personality
• Libido: Energy
• Eros: Life instincts
• Thanatos: Death instinct

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: The Id

• Made up of innate biological instincts and urges; self-serving, irrational, and totally unconscious
• Works on Pleasure Principle: Wishes to have its desires (pleasurable) satisfied now, without waiting and regardless of the consequences

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: The

Ego

• Executive; directs id energies
  • Partially conscious and partially unconscious
  • Works on Reality Principle: Delays action until it is practical and/or appropriate

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: The

Superego

• Judge or censor for thoughts and actions of the ego - Superego comes from our parents or caregivers; guilt comes from the superego
• Two parts
  • Conscience: Reflects actions for which a person has been punished
  • Ego Ideal: Second part of the superego; reflects behavior one’s parents approved of or rewarded

Freudian Dynamics of Personality and

Anxieties

• Ego is always caught in the middle of battles between superego’s desires for moral behavior and the id’s desires for immediate gratification
• Neurotic Anxiety: Caused by id impulses that the ego can barely control
• Moral Anxiety: Comes from threats of punishment from the superego

Unconscious et al

• Unconscious: Holds repressed memories and emotions and the id’s instinctual drives
• Conscious: Everything you are aware of at a given moment
• Preconscious: Material that can easily be brought into awareness

Freudian Personality Development

• Develops in stages; everyone goes through same stages in same order
• Core of personality is formed before age 6
• Erogenous Zone: Area on body capable of producing pleasure
• Fixation: Unresolved conflict or emotional hang-up caused by overindulgence or frustration