PSYCHOLOGY 2e

Chapter 11 PERSONALITY
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PERSONALITY

(credit: modification of work by Nicolas Alejandro)

What makes two individuals have different personalities?

WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

Personality – the long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently
think, feel, and behave in specific ways.

Personality traits – tendencies to act, think, and feel in certain ways that remain the
same over time and across different situations.
- Comes from the Latin word persona (a mask worn by an actor). In ancient times,
theatrical masks were used to represent/project a specific personality trait.

Happy, sad, impatient, shy, fearful, curious, helpful. What characteristics describe your
personality?
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Hippocrates (370 BCE)
Theorized that personality traits and human behaviors are based on four separate
temperaments associated with four fluids (“humors”) of the body.
1. Choleric – yellow bile from the liver.
2. Melancholic – black bile from the kidneys.
3. Sanguine – red blood from the heart.
4. Phlegmatic – white phlegm from the lungs.

Galen
Believed both diseases and personality differences could be explained by imbalances in
the humors and that each person exhibits one of the four temperaments.
Prevalent view for over 1000 years and through the Middle Ages.
• Choleric – passionate, ambitious, and bold.
• Melancholic – reserved, anxious, and unhappy.
• Sanguine – joyful, eager, and optimistic.
• Phlegmatic – calm, reliable, and thoughtful.
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES - PHRENOLOGY
Franz Gall (1780)
Proposed that the distances between bumps on the skull reveal a person’s personality
traits, character, and mental abilities.
Phrenology = pseudoscience that proposed that the bumps on a person's head could be
used to determine their traits and character.
(a) Gall developed a chart that depicted which areas of the skull corresponded to particular
personality traits or characteristics (Hothersall, 1995).
(b) An 1825 lithograph depicts Gall examining the skull of a young woman.
Discredited for lack of empirical support.

(credit b: modification of work by Wellcome Library, London)

PHRENOLOGY (CONT.)
• Phrenology linked bumps on a person's
head to certain aspects of the individual's
personality and character.

• Phrenology heads or busts were used by

phrenologists to perform "skull readings"
that supposedly revealed information
about a person's character and
tendencies.

• The practice was based on the idea that

certain functions were located in specific
areas of the brain.

• Phrenologists suggested that the brain

was composed of muscles that, like other
areas of the body, grew bigger when they
were used more often.

• As a result, phrenologists proposed,

bumps were produced in those areas on
the skull.
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Immanuel Kant (18th century)
Agreed with Galen that individuals could be categorized into one of the four temperaments.
Developed a list of traits to describe the personality of each of the four temperaments.

Wilhelm Wundt (19th century)

Suggested that personality
could be described using two
major axes:
1. Emotional/non-emotional
– separated strong emotions
(melancholic, choleric) from
the weak emotions
(phlegmatic, sanguine).
2. Changeable/unchangeable
– divided the changeable
temperaments (choleric,
sanguine) from the
unchangeable ones
(melancholic, phlegmatic).
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

Psychodynamic Perspectives (20th Century)

Sigmund Freud:
• First comprehensive theory of personality explaining both normal and abnormal
behaviors.
• Proposed that unconscious drives influenced by sex, aggression and childhood
sexuality influence personality.
• Freud’s perspective of personality was the dominant theory of personality for the first
half of the 20th century.
SIGMUND FREUD – THE “TALKING CURE”

• Anna O. was Breuer's patient, who was

experiencing "hysteria."
• Breuer had discovered that if he
hypnotized Anna, she'd reveal all sorts
of information she didn't recall when
she was conscious.
• Allowing Anna O. to talk about her
experiences seemed to bring some
relief of her symptoms, i.e., her
symptoms would lessen afterward.
• This psychoanalytic treatment became
known the “talking cure”.
• Based on Breuer’s description of Anna
O.’s treatment, Freud concluded that:
• Hysteria was the result of sexual
abuse in childhood and that these
traumatic experiences had been
hidden from consciousness.
LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Unconscious – mental activity that we are
unaware of and are unable to access.
According to Freud:
• We are only aware of a small amount
(about one-tenth) of our mind’s activities
and most of it remains hidden from us in
our unconscious.
• Unacceptable urges and desires are kept
in our unconscious through repression.
• “The essence of repression lies simply
in turning something away, and keeping
it at a distance, from the conscious”
(Freud, 1915, p. 147).

• The information in our unconscious affects

behavior, although we are unaware of it.
Freudian slip - Freud suggested that slips of
the tongue (saying a word you did not intend
to say) are sexual/aggressive urges accidently
slipping out of our unconscious.
ID, EGO, & SUPEREGO

BASIC CONFLICT OCCURING IN THE MIND

• Our personality develops from a conflict between two forces: our biological
aggressive and pleasure-seeking drives versus our internal (socialized) control over
these drives
• The id and superego are in constant conflict, because the id wants instant
gratification regardless of the consequences, but the superego tells us that we must
behave in socially acceptable ways. Thus, the ego’s job is to find the middle ground.
ID, EGO & SUPEREGO
Freud posited that personality results from efforts to balance two competing forces.
1. Biological aggressive and pleasure-seeking drives.
2. Internal (socialized) control over these pleasure-seeking drives.

Freud described this process as an interaction between three systems.

Id (The Demanding Child)
• Contains primitive urges (for hunger, thirst, and sex).
• Impulsive, instinctual.
• Operates on the ”pleasure principle” – seeks immediate gratification.
Ego (self) (The Traffic Cop)
• Attempts to balance the id with the superego.
• Rational
• Operates on the “reality principle” – helps the id satisfy desires in a realistic way.
• The part of the personality seen by others.
Superego (The Judge)
• Develops through interactions with others, learning social rules for right and wrong.
• Moral compass that tells us how we should behave based on rules..
• Strives for perfection.
• Judges behavior - leads to feelings of pride or guilt.
EFFECTS ON PERSONALITY
Balanced id and → healthy personality.
Imbalanced id and superego → neurosis (tendency to experience negative emotions), anxiety
disorders, or unhealthy behaviors.
 DEFENSE MECHANISMS

• Unconscious protective
behaviors that work to
reduce anxiety.
• Used by the ego to
restore balance between
the id and superego.
• Freud believed them to
be used by everyone but
that overuse could be
problematic.
Figure 2.4, page 39
STAGES OF PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT

Freud theorized that children pass through five psychosexual stages.

In each stage, pleasure-seeking urges (id) are focused on a different erogenous zone (part
of the body).
Lack of proper nurturing and parenting during conflicts results in the person becoming
stuck/fixated in that stage.
Oral Stage (Birth – 1 year)
• Erogenous zone – mouth.
• Pleasure – from eating and sucking.
• Major conflict – being weaned from bottle or breast.
• Adult fixation – smoking, overeating, nail biting.
Anal Stage (1-3 years)
• Erogenous zone – anus.
• Pleasure – from bowel and bladder movements.
• Major conflict – toilet training.
• Adult fixation – anal-retentive personality (stingy, stubborn, need for order and
neatness), anal-expulsive personality (messy, careless, disorganized, prone to
emotional outbursts).
STAGES OF PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT
Phallic Stage (3-6 years)
• Erogenous zone – genitals.
• Major conflict – child feels a desire for the opposite-sex parent, and jealousy and
hatred toward the same-sex parent.
• Oedipus complex (boys) – desire for mother’s attention, urge to replace
father. Afraid of being punished by father for these feelings (castration anxiety).
• Electra complex (girls) - desire for father’s attention, urge to replace mother.
Angry at mother for not providing them with a penis (penis envy).
• Adult fixation – vanity, over-ambition.
Latency Period (6-12 years)
• Erogenous zone – none.
• Sexual feelings are dormant as children focus on school, friendships, hobbies and
engage with peers of the same-sex.
Genital Stage (12+)
• Erogenous zone – genitals.
• Sexual reawakening – urges are redirected from parents to more socially acceptable
partners.
THE BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE

Learning approaches to personality focus on observable, measurable phenomena.

Skinner
• We learn to behave in particular ways.
• Personality is shaped by reinforcements and consequences in the environment.
• Personality develops over our entire life.
• Personality can vary as we experience new situations.
THE SOCIAL-COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

Bandura
Agreed that personality develops through learning but disagreed with the behaviorist
approach because thinking and reasoning are important parts of learning.
Social-cognitive theory – emphasizes both learning and cognition as sources of
individual difference in personality.

Factors in personality development:

Reciprocal Determinism – cognitive processes (beliefs, expectations, and personality
characteristics), behavior, and context (environment/situation) all interact.
Observational learning – learning by observing someone else’s behavior and its
consequences.
Self-efficacy – level of confidence in our own abilities, developed through social
experiences.
RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM

Bandura proposed the idea of reciprocal determinism: Our behavior,

cognitive processes, and situational context all influence each other.
OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING AND
SELF-EFFICACY

Observational learning – learning by observing someone else’s

behavior and its consequences.
• Teaches us which behaviors are acceptable and rewarded in our
culture.
• Teaches us which behaviors are socially unacceptable.

Self-efficacy – level of confidence in our own abilities, developed

through social experiences.
• Affects how we approach challenges and reach goals.
• Affects which behaviors we choose to imitate as well as our success
in performing those behaviors.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BEHAVIORAL
AND SOCIAL-COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

Behavioral perspective (Skinner) Social-cognitive perspective

(Bandura)
Behavior acquired by observing others
Behavior is a function of stimulus and
and that learning occurs through the
response and learning occurs through
interaction between personal or cognitive
classical or operant conditioning
factors, the behavior and the environment.

Emphasizes stimulus-response
Emphasizes both learning and cognition as
behaviors
sources of individual difference in
personality.
Core concepts Core concepts
• Classical and Operant conditioning • Reciprocal determinism, Observational
learning, and Self-efficacy
Perspective on learning Perspective on learning
Learning occurs through environmental
Learning occurs through the interaction
(conditioning) factors only. between personal, behavioral and
environmental factors.
JULIAN ROTTER
LOCUS OF CONTROL
Locus of control – beliefs about the power we have over our lives.
• Proposed as a cognitive factor that affects learning and personality development.
Internal locus of control – tend to believe that most of our outcomes are the direct
result of our efforts.
• Perform better academically, achieve more in careers, more independent, healthier,
less depressed.
External locus of control – tend to believe that our outcomes are outside of our control.
• Believe lives are controlled by other people, luck, or chance.

People who develop an internal locus People who develop an external locus
of control believe that they are of control believe that external forces,
responsible for their own success. like luck, determine their outcomes.
WALTER MISCHEL
THE PERSON-SITUATION DEBATE
Mischel’s Findings:
• Behavior was inconsistent across different situations but more consistent within
situations.
• Behavior is consistent in equivalent situations across time.
• This data did not support the theory that a person’s personality traits are consistent
across situations - triggered the person-situation debate among psychologists.
Person-situation debate: the controversy concerning whether the person or the situation
is more influential in determining a person's behavior.
• Is behavior controlled by our personality or by the situational factors around us?
• Personality trait psychologists believe that a person's personality is relatively consistent
across situations.
• Situationists argue that behavior is decided and governed by the situational factors that
are present.
Most personality researchers have now concluded that both the person and the
situation contribute to behavior.
• People are situation processors; instead of behavior being determined by the situation,
people use cognitive processes to interpret the situation and then behave in
accordance with that interpretation.
WALTER MISCHEL
SELF-REGULATION AND THE MARSHMALLOW STUDY
Self-regulation:
• The ability to control one's behavior, emotions, and thoughts in the pursuit of long-term
goals.
• Mischel designed a study to assess self-regulation (aka will power) – ability to delay
gratification.

Marshmallow Study:
• Children were placed in a room with one marshmallow on the table; were told that they
could either eat it now, or wait until the researcher returned and could then have two
marshmallows.
• Revealed that children differ in levels of self-control.
• Children that had more self-control (waited for two marshmallows) in preschool were
more successful in high school.
• Children that had poorer self-control (took the one marshmallow) in preschool were
more likely to have academic and behavioral problems.
Mischel’s approach to personality – People use cognitive processes to assess the situation
in their own way and behave.
HUMANISTIC APPROACHES
• The humanistic approach developed as a reaction both to the pessimistic determinism
of psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on psychological disturbance, and to the
behaviorists’ view of humans passively reacting to the environment.
• The humanistic approach focuses on how healthy people develop.

Abraham Maslow
• Studied people he considered healthy, creative, and productive (Albert Einstein,
Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln).
• Found that they shared similar characteristics – open, creative, loving, spontaneous,
compassionate, concerned for others, accepting of themselves.
Carl Rogers
• Linked personality to self-concept (thoughts and feelings about ourselves).
• Divided the self into the idea self and the real self.
• Ideal self – the person you would like to be.
• Real self – the person you actually are.
• Believed we needed to find congruence between the ideal and real self – thoughts
about ideal self and real self are similar.
• High congruence → greater sense of self-worth and a health, productive life.
• Incongruence → maladjustment.
BIOLOGICAL APPROACHES

Perspective that differences in our personalities can be explained by inherited

predispositions and physiological processes
Evolutionary psychology relative to personality development looks at personality traits that
are universal, as well as differences across individuals. In this view, adaptive differences
have evolved and then provide a survival and reproductive advantage

Heritable Traits
Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart:
• Found that identical twins, whether raised together or apart, have very similar
personalities.
• Suggests the heritability of some personality traits.
• Traits with more than a 0.50 heritability ratio – leadership, obedience to authority, a
sense of well-being, alienation, resistance to stress, and fearfulness.
The implication is that some aspects of our personalities are largely controlled by genetics;
however, traits are determined by a combination of many genes, as well as by epigenetic
factors that control whether the genes are expressed.
BIOLOGICAL APPROACHES

Temperament
• Temperament appears very early in life (suggesting a biological basis).
• Temperament – the inborn, genetically based personality differences
• Babies can be categorized into one of three temperaments
• easy,
• difficult, or
• slow to warm up.

Environmental factors and maturation can affect expression of personality.

Two dimensions of temperament important to adult personality:
1. Reactivity – how we respond to new or challenging environmental stimuli.
2. Self-regulation – ability to control responses.
TRAIT THEORISTS
Trait theorists believe personality can be understood via the approach that all people have
certain traits, or characteristic ways of behaving.

Believe that people have certain traits (characteristics or ways of behaving).

• For example, optimistic or pessimistic, sociable or shy.
Gordon Allport
Found 4,500 words in the English language to describe people and organized them into
three categories.
1. Cardinal traits – dominates entire personality (rare).
2. Central traits – make up our personality.
3. Secondary traits – less obvious or consistent, present under certain circumstances
(e.g., preferences, attitudes).
Raymond Cattell
Narrowed Allport’s list to about 171 traits.
Identified 16 dimensions of personality – instead of a present being present or absent,
people are scored on a continuum.
 HANS & SYBIL EYSENCK
Hans and Sybil Eysenck focused on
temperament and believed that our personality
traits are influenced by our genetic inheritance.
2 specific personality dimensions:
1. Extroversion/Introversion.
• High in extroversion – sociable, outgoing.
• High in introversion – high need to be
alone, engage in solitary behaviors.
2. Neuroticism/Stability.
• High in neuroticism – anxious, overactive
sympathetic nervous system.
• High in stability – more emotionally stable.

(credit: "Sirswindon"/Wikimedia Commons)

HANS & SYBIL EYSENCK

The Eysencks described two factors to account for variations in our personalities:
extroversion/introversion and emotional stability/instability.
FIVE FACTOR MODEL

• In the Five Factor Model,

each person has five
traits, known as the Big
Five personality traits.
• Each trait is scored on a
continuum from high to
low.
• The first letter of each trait
spells the mnemonic
OCEAN.
1. Openness to experience
2. Conscientiousness
3. Extroversion.
4. Agreeableness.
5. Neuroticism.
SELF-REPORT INVENTORIES

Personality testing is often used:

• To screen applicants for employment and job training.
• In criminal cases and custody battles.
• To assess psychological disorders.
ASSESSMENT IN THE STUDY OF PERSONALITY

Assessment measures are vital in our attempt to understand

personality, by differentiating between normal and abnormal
behaviors and feelings.

Personality testing is often used:

• To screen applicants for employment and job training.
• In criminal cases and custody battles.
• To assess psychological disorders.
ASSESSMENT IN THE STUDY OF PERSONALITY

Assessment techniques differ in their degree of objectivity or

subjectivity.

The best techniques of personality assessment follow three

principles:
•Standardization involves the consistency or uniformity of
conditions and procedures for administering a test.

•Reliability involves the consistency of response to an

assessment device.

•Validity refers to whether the assessment device measures what

it is intended to measure.
SELF-REPORT INVENTORIES
Self-Report Inventories
Objective test to assess personality.
Often use multiple-choice items or numbered scales (Likert scales).

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality

Inventory (MMPI):
• One of the most widely used
personality inventories.
• Originally developed to assist in
diagnosing psychological
disorders.
• Newest version (MMPI-2-RF) has
338 questions.
• Scored on 10 scales –
hypochondriasis, depression,
hysteria, psychopathic deviance,
masculinity vs femininity,
paranoia, psychasthenia LIKERT SCALES: If you’ve ever taken a survey, you are
probably familiar with Likert-type scale questions. Most
(obsessive/compulsive qualities),
personality inventories employ these types of response
schizophrenia, hypomania, and scales.
social introversion.
MMPI

These true/false questions resemble the kinds of questions you would find on
the MMPI.
PROJECTIVE TESTS
Projective testing relies on projection (defense mechanism) to assess unconscious
processes.
• Ambiguous cards are shown to individual who is asked to tell a story, interpret an
image, or complete a sentence.
• Individual will project feelings, impulses, and desires onto the cards.
Rorschach Inkblot Test – individual interprets a series of symmetrical inkblot cards,
revealing unconscious feelings and struggles.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) –

individual tells a story about 8-12
ambiguous cards, giving insight into their
social world, revealing hopes, fears,
interests, and goals.
Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank
(RISB) – Individual is asked to complete 40
incomplete sentences as quickly as
possible to reveal desires, fears, and
struggles.
 ROTTER INCOMPLETE SENTENCE BLANK

These incomplete sentences resemble the types of questions on the RISB.

How would you complete these sentences?

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