Week 1

Personality

Dr. Robert L. Fauber

Office: Weiss Hall, Rm. 482
Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

What is personality?
Enduring patterns of behavior (actions, feeling, thoughts,
interactions) that are relatively consistent over time and
across circumstances

Basic questions in personality

What?
are the basic elements?
Structure
Organization

Emphasizes sameness
Universal dimensions

How do we differ?
Individual differences

How, When and Why?

How is personality shaped?
What are the basic forces?
When does it happen?
Are there certain important periods?
Why is it affected in a particular way?
 Personality Theories
Formal attempts to describe and explain

Like all theories, they are propositions, not facts

Theories – like the people who create them – are bound in

time and culture

Theories we will consider:

- Psychodynamic Theories
- Social learning-Cognitive Theories
- Trait Theories

Psychodynamic Theories
Freudian Psychodynamic Theory
Sigmund Freud
Practicing neurologist
Late 19th century Europe
Seeing patients with hysterical physical symptoms
So the theory shaped by his observations of these
particular problems

Interested in failure of conscious determination (will) to

govern behavior

Result of opposing forces vying for control of behavior

Conscious will moving in one direction
Unconscious counter-will moving in another
Hence, psycho-dynamic theory
Opposing forces of the mind

Main theme of Freud’s theory is conflict

Energy, tension, and resolution

The Unconscious
Freud’s Topographic Model

First model of personality

Sometimes called Freud's Theory of the Mind or Theory of

the Unconscious

Model of mental processes (i.e., how the mind operates)

Three types of mental processes:

Conscious
Immediate awareness
Rational, goal-directed

Preconscious
Can be accessed readily

Unconscious
Out of awareness
Irrational

Motivated unconscious
Purposeful exclusion of information or material from
conscious awareness
Because it is threatening to the stability and integrity of the self

Self-protective function

Emphasizes ambivalence and conflict

Freud saw the unconscious as the key to understanding
human experience (dreams, slips of the tongue, irrational,
inexplicable feelings) and especially to understanding
human problems, or what we sometimes call
psychopathology
“Psychoanalysis aims at and achieves nothing more than the
discovery of the unconscious of mental life” – Sigmund Freud

Freud’s Drive Model

Thinks we are animals-biological creatures.

Theory of instincts (psychic energies)

Instincts or drives as inborn psychic energies
Arising from basic biological needs

Two instincts:
Life instincts
Libido (Eros)
Survival and reproduction (survival of the individual and survival
of the species). Survival- eat, drink, breathe

Death/ Aggression instincts

Thanatos
“the aim of all life is death” (life is the march towards death).

How is this energy dealt with?

Freud’s Structural Model

Three systems that make up the structure of personality:
these do not actually exist, it is dividing up functions into a
way that we handle things.
Id
Ego
Superego
Personality dynamics is reflected in the relative distribution
of psychic energy among the three systems

Id
Original system
Completely instinctive
In contact with bodily needs (infants are all id…when they are hungry, when
they are wet, and they want their needs met now).
Reservoir of libidinal energy
Operates according to pleasure principle
Maximize pleasure (need gratification)
Minimize pain (need frustration)
Primary process thinking (adults)
Unconscious, irrational, wishful

Ego
Develops out of id
Restrains id impulses in accordance with demands of
external world-a kid begins to recognize that they can’t
always get what they want.
Operates according to reality principle
Need fulfillment can be realistic accomplished
Secondary Process thinking
Logical, rational, goal-oriented

Superego
Develops out of ego through identification
Internalized standards and ideals (morals) of culture
Ego ideal-idealized standards of the person you should be
and conscience- the should not, that would be wrong
Unrealistic and unforgiving- person can never live up to
their own standards, they are never good enough.
Ego and Superego both restrain id
Superego also non-rational, so Ego must use most of the
energy to balance the forces
Good psychological health = strong ego (ego strength)
Ego is the executive, striking balance

If balance is threatened, anxiety results

Neurotic anxiety-comes out of internal processes-more troublesome than
realistic anxiety
Defense mechanisms:
Unconscious processes generated by ego designed to protect from
anxiety and distress associated with libidinal drive
All defense mechanisms have 2 characteristics:
They operate unconsciously
They involve the denial or distortion of reality so as to make it less
threatening (repression of a memory, denial)
Present in normal and abnormal functioning-(displacement- work, you
can’t have an outburst at your boss because you can get fired, so
you go home and take it out on someone else even when they just
ask a question).

Freud’s Developmental Model

Learning to deal with libidinal energy is major developmental
task
Focused on different biological functionng and tasks as
child grows
Erogenous zones (from Eros)
Part of body that is source of pleasure (need and gradification, not
sexual)
Different zones at different stages:

Psychosexual Stages of Development

Oral (0-18 months)
Anal (2-3 years)
Phallic (4-6 years)
 Latency (7-11 years)
Genital (12+ years)

Stage resolution important in personality development

Fixations – unresolved stage conflicts persisting beyond the
period
Regression – reverting to conflicts of earlier stage under
stress
Identification – introjective process occurring in phallic
stage

Evaluating Freud
Great narrative of human development and experience
Observant
Intuitive appeal (in most ways)
Remember the context:
Victorian Europe
Observations of patients with ‘hysteria’

Criticisms:
Excessive focus on unconscious, conflict
Excessive focus on sex, instincts
Sexist; pejorative to women
Little emphasis on social context
Insufficient attention to conscious experience
Exclusive focus on early childhood
Non-parsimonious- simple, straight forward
Little scientific support

Contributions:
Recognition of the unconscious
Importance of early childhood experience
Recognition that we are biological creatures
Recognition of basic needs and instincts

Contemporary Psychodynamic Theory

- More ego, less id
- Less exclusive focus on childhood
- Less unconscious conflict
- Less sex

Examples:
Object Relations Theory
Relational theories
Interpersonal Theory of Depression
_______________________________________________

Social Learning-Cognitive Theories

Broad Term and Category
Encompasses a number of Variations

Outgrowth of Behavioral/Learning Theory

Which was partly counter–reaction to Freud

American pragmatism

Social Learning-Cognitive Theories

Basic principles:
Learning (not instincts) is the basis of what we call
personality
Personality as acquired response tendencies

Emphasize interplay between environmental /situational

demands and response tendencies

Response tendencies shaped by:

Specific situations and contexts

Reinforcement history

Meaning and interpretation of events and situations

Expectancies and Competences

Meaning and interpretation of events

Schemas –
repeatedly exercised organized patterns of thought
E.g. “I am…” or “people will always…”

Activated by and applied to situations and contexts

Schemas
Encoding schemas – the categories you fit situations into

Relevance schemas – personal values and goals

Interpretative schemas – attributions about events

e.g., attributional style for positive & negative events
 Expectancies & Competences
Expectancies – expected outcome

Behavior-outcome expectancy

Self-efficacy expectancy

Competence
Specific problem-solving skills

Enhance (but not equal) expectancies

Evaluation of Social Learning-Cognitive

Theories
More rooted in science
Propositions more easily researched

More emphasis on conscious awareness, choice

More emphasis on how we make sense of the world

But…

Overemphasis on rational processes (information processing,

decision-making)

Overvaluation of being logical, rational

Insufficient attention to emotion and motivation

_____________________________________________________
__
 Trait Theory
More about the what than the how or why

Focus is on:
description of personality
common elements of personality
individual variation in common elements
measurement of personality

Traits:
“Emotional, cognitive, and behavioral tendencies that
constitute underlying personality dimensions on which
individuals vary”

Two aspects to traits (Allport):

Observed patterns of behavior (tendencies) that occur
frequently

Inferred underlying dimensions or disposition from which the

behavior emanates.

Most personality theory is derived form statistical attempts to

find core dimensions or traits

Personality tests use self-reported behavior patterns to infer

underlying dimensions
Trait Theory
Are there universal core dimensions?
Several approaches:

Cattell’s 16 PF

Eysenck’s 3 factors

Five Factor Model

Five Factor Model

Five superordinate factors

Also known as The Big Five:

Openness to experience

Conscientiousness

Agreeableness

Extroversion

Neuroticism

Issues in Trait Theory

Consistency:

Across situations?

Over time?

Person-by-situation interactionism:

People tend to behave in certain ways in certain situations

tendencies activated by situation
Genetics and Inheritance:

To what extent is personality heritable?

Heritability – the proportion of variance in particular trait that

due to inherited genetic influence

Twin studies

Evidence: 20%-50% (depending on trait)