Coon chapter 16 – Personality

What IS it, and how can we EXPLAIN it? How does one OBTAIN it? Is there anything a person can do to CHANGE it, and WHEN?

Personality – your unique and relatively stable behavior patterns and traits

Personality is different than temperament (in-born)

Temperament is the aspects of your personality you are born with, created by genes and prenatal physical development

Character - the learned aspects of your personality

Personality traits  - are the specific characteristics of a person – e.g., sociability, honesty,

Personality Types – traits that cluster together to form a kind of personality

Carl Jung – talked about dimensions of personality
            Introvert – extrovert (origin of Myers-Briggs)

Self-concept – your own perception of your traits

Many people think this guides our behavior

Self-esteem – your self-evaluation of your positive vs negative traits


MAJOR THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

Psychodynamic – unconscious motives drive you
Behavioristic – reinforcement and punishment create you
Humanistic – personal growth and basic goodness
Trait Theories – your "self" is a set of traits built together

Psychoanalytic theory - Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Major ideas:

  1. Structure of personality - Id, Ego, Superego
  2. Dynamics of personality - how they work together
    1. includes levels of awareness - unconscious, preconscious, consious
  3. Stages of personality formation - oral, anal, phallic, latent, genital
Notes from film:
Freud's life and times profoundly influenced his theory;
began studying hysteria - disorders unexplained by physical ailments
came to believe that diseases can be caused by ideas - in the MIND, as opposed to the brain
Began medical practice as a hypnotist - tried to end hysteria using hypnosis
"Talking cure" - allow a person to talk about their lives and emotions, and their physical symptoms are relieved - basis of psychotherapy, and free association
Patients traced their symptoms back to childhood trauma, especially sexual events
Female patients developed romantic feelings for Freud - these were "transferences" - feelings the patient has for someone else, but "projects" onto the therapist
Freud's sex life basically declined after 1895
married in 1886 - last child in 1895
Radical theoretical conception of the MIND
1896 - Father died, began self-analysis - his dreams and unconscious - Documented in "The Interpetation of Dreams"
published in 1900
Free association - say anything, without censorship
At first his self-analysis made his symptoms worse
(could have been his grief process over his father)

Radical notion of lust for the mother (Oedipal Complex) - came from his patients' stories about their childhood-
reversal of theory of childhood sexuality;

He was criticized severely in his lifetime by colleagues; a lot of jealousy, because he was famous, and because most of his colleagues didn't agree with him

His collaboration with and tutelage of Carl Jung - the "heir apparant" to the throne of psychoanalysis - broke off their relationship in 1914

The amount of aggression in the world led him to describe the instinct for death he called "thanatos"
contrasted with "eros" - loving, constructive drive

Freud's addiction and surgeries 1923 developed tumor
oral fixation and addiction to cigars
33 operations on his cancer in 13 years until his death - euthanasia
 

Id - we're born with instincts - mostly unconscious

Ego - develops in early childhood - conscious awareness, self-control

Superego – conscience (actions for which you have been punished), ego ideal (approved of behaviors)

Ego SERVES both the Id and Superego - tries to allow both to have their way - but this is always a struggle

Neo-Freudian or Psychodynamic theories

Karen Horney – challenged the male bias in Freud’s theory – she believed neurosis derives from people feeling isolated and helpless in a hostile world

Carl Jung

    1. persona – (introversion/extroversion)
    2. personal unconsciousness (individual memories of your own life)
    3. collective unconscious (ideas and images shared by all humans) - common themes in dreams, and symbols of our waking life represented in mandalas
    4. Archetypes – universal human experiences as a species – mother, father, God, birth, death, earth, animals
    5. Anima (female side) and Animus (male side)

LEARNING THEORIES

Habits, drives, cues, response, reward

Social Learning Theory

 Psychological situation – how do you define any given situation

 Expectancy – belief that your actions will produce a certain result

 Reinforcement value – we all respond differently to the same result

Observational learning – models

HUMANISTIC THEORY

Abraham Maslow – self-actualization

Steps toward Self-actualization – p. 539

S.E. is a process not a goal – a journey, not a destination

Carl Rogers – self theory – congruence between ideal self, true self, and self-image

Unconditional positive regard

Genuineness


TRAIT THEORIES

Created through research more than original theory

How do you normally act in certain situations?

We seem to behave consistently in the same situation time and again

Hans Eysenck – figure p. 522

Classifying traits –

Gordon Allport – identified several kinds of traits

Common traits – shared by most members of a culture

Such as competitiveness in US

Individual traits – what makes you an individual

Cardinal traits – basic to your personality – honesty, fairness, deceptiveness

Central traits – the cluster of core traits that describes you

Secondary traits – less consistent, more superficial aspects of your personality

THE BIG FIVE

Factor analysis-derived core traits

Extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness to experience

Traits, consistency, and situations

Traits interact with situations

Do we inherit personality?

Behavioral genetics – study twins, etc.

Show intelligence, some mental disorders, temperament, etc., are at least partly hereditary

Minnesota Twin Study

Heredity seems to be responsible for 20-25 % of the variation in some personality traits


Personality Assessment

Rating scales

Objective tests

Projective tests

Rorschach , TAT