2. What is Personality?
• Personality as the distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling, and acting
that characterize a person’s responses to life situations.
• Not to be confused with:
- Character, which refers to value judgments made about a person’s morals or ethical
behavior
- Temperament, the enduring characteristics with which each person is born, such as
irritability or adaptability.
• Four traditional perspectives in personality theory:
- Psychodynamic Perspective
- Humanistic Perspective
- Behavioral Perspective
- Trait Perspective
4. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
• Freud (1856–1939) spent most of his life in Vienna, where he
attended medical school with the intention of becoming a medical
researcher.
• During this time period, Europe was in what is commonly known
as the Victorian Age, named for Queen Victoria of Great Britain – a
time of sexual repression.
• While working with Charcot, a neurologist Freud learned about
conversion hysteria – a disorder in which physical symptoms such
as paralysis and blindness appear suddenly and with no apparent
physical cause.
• Freud’s experiences in treating these patients convinced him that
their symptoms were related to painful memories and feelings
that seemed to have been repressed, or pushed out of awareness.
• He observed that his patients’ physical symptoms often
disappeared or improved markedly upon reexperiencing them in
therapy (they were usually sexual or aggressive in nature).
5. The Unconscious Mind
Preconscious Mind
• Contains memories, feelings, thoughts, and
images that we are unaware of at the moment
but that can be recalled.
Conscious Mind
• Consists of mental events in current awareness
Unconscious Mind
• It is a dynamic realm of wishes, feelings, and impulses that
lies beyond our awareness.
7. The Id
• The id, which corresponds roughly to Freud’s earlier notion of unconscious, is the most
primitive and least accessible part of the personality
• The id’s powerful forces include the sex and aggressive instincts
• They operate according to the pleasure principle, concerned with reducing tension by
seeking pleasure and avoiding pain
• The id contains our basic psychic energy, or libido, and is expressed through the reduction of
tension
The Ego
• The ego (meaning “I” in Latin, and from the German das ich, meaning “the I”) is aware of the needs of
both the id and the physical world, and its major job is to coordinate the two.
• The ego represents reason or rationality, in contrast to the unthinking, insistent passions of the id.
• The ego follows the reality principle, holding off the id’s pleasure-seeking demands until an
appropriate object can be found to satisfy the need and reduce the tension.
• The ego exists to help the id and is constantly striving to bring about satisfaction of the id’s instincts
8. The Superego
• The moral aspect of personality derived from internalizing parental and societal values and
standards.
• Develops early in life when the child assimilates the rules of conduct taught by parents or
caregivers through a system of rewards and punishments.
• Behaviors that are wrong and bring punishment become part of the child’s conscience, one
part of the superego
• The superego represents morality
• The ego must try to delay the id’s sexual and aggressive urges, perceive and manipulate
reality to relieve the resulting tension, and cope with the superego’s demands for
perfection.
9. Defense Mechanisms
• Definition: Behaviors that represent unconscious denials or distortions of reality but
which are adopted to protect the ego against anxiety.
• Freud believed that all ego defense mechanisms have two things in common:
- They distort reality
- They operate on the unconscious level—that is, a person is unaware of the fact that they
are using one
12. • Freud proposed that children pass through a series of psychosexual stages during
which the id’s pleasure-seeking tendencies are focused on specific pleasure-
sensitive areas of the body––the erogenous zones.
• Potential deprivations or overindulgences can arise during any of these stages,
resulting in fixation, a state of arrested psychosexual development in which
instincts are focused on a particular psychic theme
13. ORAL STAGE: WEANING AND ORAL FIXATION (0-1.5 years)
• Infants gain primary satisfaction from taking in food and from
sucking on a breast, a thumb, or some other object.
• Pleasure comes mainly through the lips, tongue, and such activities
as sucking, chewing, and swallowing
• If either over-gratification or under-gratification (frustration) of the
oral needs causes a fixation to occur at this level of development, as
an adult the child will be an oral character
• Personality traits associated with an orally fixated adult personality:
- Overeating
- drinking too much
- chain smoking
- talking too much
- nail biting
- gum chewing and a tendency to be either too dependent and
optimistic (when the oral needs are overindulged) or too aggressive
and pessimistic (when the oral needs are denied)
14. ANAL STAGE: Toilet Training and Anal Fixation (1.5-3 Years)
• The erogenous zone moves from the mouth to the anus
• According to Freud, children get a great deal of pleasure from both withholding and
releasing their faeces at will.
• The main area of conflict here is toilet training, the demand that the child use the toilet
at a particular time and in a particular way.
• Fixation in the anal stage, from toilet training that is too harsh, can take one of two
forms:
Anal expulsive personalities
• The child who rebels openly against the demands of the parents and other adults will refuse to go in
the toilet, instead defecating where and when he or she feels like doing it
• Translates in the adult as a person who sees messiness as a statement of personal control and who is
somewhat destructive and hostile.
Anal retentive personality.
• Children are terrified of making a mess and rebel passively—refusing to go at all or retaining the feces
• As adults, they are stingy, stubborn, and excessively neat.
15. PHALLIC STAGE (3-5 Years)
• Erogenous zone - genital region of the body
• Gratification involves sexual fantasies and fondling and exhibiting of the genitals
• Young boys experience castration anxiety – fear of losing the penis (upon finding out that girls do
not have it)
• The Oedipus complex occurs during this stage: the unconscious desire of a boy for his mother and
the desire to replace or destroy his father.
• Usually, children overcome the Oedipus complex by identifying with the parent of the same sex.
• Since the child sees his father as much more powerful than himself, the male child begins to
experience castration anxiety, which causes him to repress his sexual and aggressive tendencies
• They replace their sexual longing for the parent of the opposite sex with a more socially
acceptable kind of affection
• Girls go through a similar process called the Electra complex with their father as the target of
their affections and their mother as the rival.
• The result of identification is the development of the superego, the internalized moral values of
the same-sex parent
16. • Fixation may occur at this stage if the child does not have a same-sex parent to identify
with or the opposite sex parent encourages the child’s fantasies.
• Fixation in the phallic stage usually involves immature sexual attitudes as an adult.
• People who are fixated in this stage, according to Freud, will often exhibit promiscuous
sexual behavior and be very vain.
• The vanity is seen as a cover-up for feelings of low self-worth arising from the failure to
resolve the complex, and the lack of moral sexual behavior stems from the failure of
identification and the inadequate formation of the superego.
• Men who get fixated at this stage may be overly close to their mother and women with
this fixation may look for much older father figures to marry.
17. The Latency Stage. (6-Puberty)
• Because of the intense repression required during the phallic stage, sexual activity is all
but eliminated from consciousness during the latency stage.
• This stage is characterized by numerous substitute activities, such as schoolwork and peer
activities, and by extensive curiosity about the world.
The Genital Stage (Puberty – Death)
• The genital stage lasts from puberty through the remainder of one’s life. With the onset
of puberty, sexual desires become too intense to repress completely, and they begin to
manifest themselves.
• The focus of attention is now on members of the opposite sex.
• If everything has gone correctly during the preceding stages, this stage will culminate in
dating and eventually marriage.
18.
19. The Neo-Freudians
JUNG
• Carl Gustav Jung did not agree with Freud about the nature of the unconscious mind.
• 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 ( Jung, 1933).
• According to Jung, the collective unconscious contains a kind of “species” or “racial” memory,
memories of ancient fears and themes that seem to occur in many folktales and cultures.
• These collective, universal human memories were called archetypes by Jung.
• There are many archetypes, but two of the more well known are the anima/animus (the feminine
side of a man/the masculine side of a woman) and the shadow (the dark side of personality,
called the “devil” in Western cultures).
• The side of one’s personality that is shown to the world is termed the persona.
20. Alfred Adler
• Adler was also in disagreement with Freud regarding the importance of sexuality in the
development of personality.
• According to Adler’s (1954) theory, as young, helpless children, people all develop feelings of
inferiority when comparing themselves to the more powerful, superior adults in their world.
• For Adler, the driving force behind all human endeavors, emotions, and thoughts was not the
seeking of pleasure but the seeking of superiority.
• Compensation, 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 (1954) also developed a theory that the birth order of a child affected personality:
- Firstborn children with younger siblings feel inferior once those younger siblings get all the
attention and often overcompensate by becoming overachievers.
- Middle children have it slightly easier, getting to feel superior over the dethroned older child while
dominating younger siblings. They tend to be very competitive.
- Younger children are supposedly pampered and protected but feel inferior because they are not
allowed the freedom and responsibility of the older children.
- Some researchers have found evidence to support this theory while other researchers point to
sloppy methodology and the bias of researchers toward the birth-order idea.
21. Karen Horney
• Horney had disagreements with Freud over differences between males and females and the
concept of penis envy, with which she strongly disagreed
• She instead wrote about womb envy - stating that men felt the need to compensate for their
lack of childbearing ability by striving for success in other areas (Burger, 1997).
• Instead of sexuality, Horney focused on the child’s sense of basic anxiety – the anxiety created in
a child born into a world that is so much bigger and more powerful than the child.
• People whose parents gave them love, affection, and security would be able to overcome this
anxiety, while others with less secure upbringings would develop neurotic personalities and
maladaptive ways of dealing with relationships.
• According to Horney:
- Some children try to deal with their anxiety by moving toward people, becoming dependent and
clingy.
- Others move against people, becoming aggressive, demanding, and cruel.
- A third way of coping would be to move away from people by withdrawing from personal
relationships.
22. Criticisms of Psychodynamic Approach
• He did no experiments to arrive at his conclusions about personality. His theory is based
on his own observations (case studies) of numerous patients.
• Freud based much of his diagnoses of patients’ problems on the interpretations of
dreams and the results of the patient’s free association (talking about anything without
fear of negative feedback). These “sources” of information are often criticized as being
too ambiguous and without scientific support for the validity of his interpretations.
• Critics state that basing his theory on observations made with such a demographically
limited group of clients promoted his emphasis on sexuality as the root of all problems in
personality, as women of that social class and era were often sexually frustrated. Freud
rarely had clients who did not fit this description, and so his theory is biased in terms of
sexual frustrations (Robinson, 1993).
24. • For the behaviorist, personality refers to a set of learned responses or habits
(DeGrandpre, 2000; Dollard & Miller, 1950).
• In the traditional view of Watson and Skinner, everything a person or animal does is a
response to some environmental stimulus that has been reinforced or strengthened by a
reward in some way.
• Eg. of shy personality
• Social cognitive learning theorists, emphasize the importance of both the influences of
other people’s behavior and of a person’s own expectancies on learning, hold that
observational learning, modeling, and other cognitive learning techniques can lead to the
formation of patterns of personality.
• In the social cognitive view, behavior is governed not just by the influence of external
stimuli and response patterns but also by cognitive processes such as anticipating,
judging, and memory as well as learning through the imitation of models.
25. Bandura’s Reciprocal Determinism and
Self-efficacy
• According to Bandura, three factors influence one
another in determining the patterns of behavior that make up
personality.
• These three factors each affect the other two in a reciprocal, or
give-and-take, relationship called – reciprocal determinism.
• The intensity and frequency of the behavior will not only be influenced by the
environment but will also have an impact on that environment.
• One important personal variables that Bandura talks about is self-efficacy – a
person’s expectancy of how effective his or her efforts to accomplish a goal will be
in any particular circumstance (Bandura, 1998).
• People’s sense of self-efficacy can be high or low, depending on what has happened
in similar circumstances in the past (success or failure), what other people tell them
about their competence, and their own assessment of their abilities.
26. Rotter’s Social Learning Theory
• Julian Rotter devised a theory based on Thorndike’s law of effect – people are motivated to seek
reinforcement and avoid punishment.
• He viewed personality as a relatively stable set of potential responses to various situations.
• The way of responding would become a pattern or part of personality if it has led to a pleasurable
or reinforcing consequences in the past.
• An important pattern of responding according to Rotter is 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.
• People who assume that their own actions and decisions directly affect the consequences they
experience are said to be internal in locus of control.
• People who assume that their lives are more controlled by powerful others, luck, or fate are
external in locus of control.
• People with internal locus of control - high achievement and motivation
• An interaction of patterns determines the behavioral patterns that become personality for an
individual develops
• Expectancy and reinforcement value tend to impact a person’s decision-making abilities in any
situation.
27. Current Views on Behavioral and Social
Cognitive Perspective
• Behavioral theory does not take mental processes into account when explaining
behavior, nor does it give weight to social influences on learning.
• The social cognitive view of personality, unlike traditional behaviorism, does include
social and mental processes and their influence on behavior.
• Some of this most recent research has investigated how people’s expectancies can
influence their control of their own negative moods
29. Carl Rogers and Self-Concept
• Both Maslow and Rogers (1961) believed that human beings are always striving
to fulfill their innate capacities and capabilities and to become everything that
their genetic potential will allow them to become – called self-actualization.
• To achieve this it is important to develop one’s image of self called self-concept
- The image of oneself that develops from interactions with important,
significant people in one’s life.
• Two components of self- concept:
- Real self – one’s actual perception of characteristics, traits, and abilities that
form the basis of the striving for self-actualization
- Ideal self – the perception of what one should be or would like to be
• Rogers believed that unconditional positive regard, or love, affection, and
respect with no strings attached, is necessary for people to be able to explore
fully all that they can achieve and become.
• According to Rogers, a person who is in touch with and trusting of the deepest,
innermost urges and feelings is called a fully-functioning person
30. CURRENT THOUGHTS ON THE HUMANISTIC VIEW OF
PERSONALITY
• Some critics believe that the picture is a little too rosy, ignoring the more negative
aspects of human nature.
• Difficult to test the theory scientifically
31. Trait Theories
• Trait theories are less concerned with the explanation for personality development and
changing personality than they are with describing personality and predicting behavior
based on that description.
• A trait is a consistent, enduring way of thinking, feeling, or behaving, and trait theories
attempt to describe personality in terms of a person’s traits.
Gordon Allport
• Allport and his colleague H. S. Odbert literally scanned the dictionary for words that
could be traits, finding about 18,000, then paring that down to 200 traits after
eliminating synonyms.
• Allport believed (with no scientific evidence, however) that these traits were literally
wired into the nervous system to guide one’s behavior across many different situations
and that each person’s “constellation” of traits was unique.
32. Raymond Cattell
• Two types of traits:
- Source Traits : the more basic traits that underlie the surface traits, forming the core of
personality.
- Surface Traits : aspects of personality that can easily be seen by other people in the
outward actions of a person
• Using a statistical technique that looks for groupings and commonalities in numerical
data called factor analysis, Cattell identified 16 source traits and later identified seven
surface traits to make a total of 23
• The Sixteen Personality Factor (16PF) Questionnaire (Cattell, 1995) is based on just 16
source traits.
• These 16 source traits are seen as trait dimensions, or continuums, in which there are
two opposite traits at each end with a range of possible degrees for each trait
measurable along the dimension.
33. THE BIG FIVE: OCEAN, OR THE FIVE-FACTOR MODEL OF PERSONALITY (McCrae &
Costa, 1996)
• Five-factor model (Big Five) model of personality traits that describes five basic trait
dimensions.
34. CURRENT THOUGHTS ON THE TRAIT PERSPECTIVE
• Some theorists have cautioned that personality traits will not always be expressed in the
same way across different situations - trait-situation interaction (Mischel & Shoda,
1995).
• Cross-cultural studies have found evidence of these five trait dimensions in 11 different
cultures, including Japan, the Philippines, Germany, China, and Peru.
36. Nature of Intelligence
• Intelligence is the ability to acquire knowledge, to think and reason effectively, and to
deal adaptively with the environment.
• It is a broad and deep capacity that refers to insight in and understanding of affairs in
everyday life.
• It helps to decide what has to be done and is distinguished from creativity, character,
personality etc. (Neisser et al., 1996).
• Two major approaches in the study of intelligence have been used (Sternberg et al.,
2003):
- The psychometric approach attempts to map the structure of intellect and to discover
the kinds of mental competencies that underlie test performance.
- The cognitive processes approach studies the specific thought processes that underlie
those mental competencies.
37. The Psychometric Approach
• Psychometrics is the statistical study of psychological tests.
• The psychometric approach to intelligence tries to identify and measure the abilities that
underlie individual differences in performance.
Factor Analysis
• In order to understand the number and nature of mental abilities, researchers administer
diverse measures of mental abilities and then correlate them with one another.
• According to them, if certain tests are correlated highly with one another—if they
“cluster” mathematically—then performance on these tests probably reflects the same
underlying mental skill.
• Further, if the tests within a cluster correlate highly with one another but much less with
tests in other clusters, then these various test clusters probably reflect different mental
abilities.
• Factor analysis is a technique that reduces a large number of measures to a smaller
number of clusters, or factors, with each cluster containing variables that correlate highly
with one another but less highly with variables in other clusters.
38. Two factor theory of Intelligence
• Charles Spearman (1923) started the argument of intelligence as general ability.
• Spearman found that grades on subjects like English and Mathematics were almost
always positively correlated but not perfect.
• The same was found to be true for different types of Stanford-Binet intelligence test
items, such as vocabulary questions, arithmetic reasoning problems, and the ability to
solve puzzles.
• He concluded that intellectual performance is determined partly by a g factor, or general
intelligence, and partly by whatever special abilities might be required to perform that
particular task.
• Many theorists continue to believe that the g factor is the core of what we call
intelligence.
• g factor matters a great deal as a predictor of both academic and job performance.
39. • Initially, Spearman was only in favor of ‘g’ as the overall factors that account for human
intelligence but upon receiving critical review of his findings, he introduced ‘s’ factors or
specific factor/ability.
• These were less dominant factors which were considered to be responsible for the
performance of a person on a specific task like music, cycling etc.
Critical Evaluation of Spearman’s Theory:
• Thurston disagreed with Spearman’s idea and was of the view that the g factor was not a
genuine factor.
• He rejected Spearman’s theory and proposed his own theory of seven primary
abilities.
• Alfred Binet criticized Spearman for relating sensory discrimination tests with intellectual
abilities.
• He also indicated that the notion of ‘g; as the singular identity was highly mistaken
because two individuals could obtain the same scores using quite different knowledge and
skills.
40. Thurston’s Theory of Primary Mental
Abilities
• While Spearman had been impressed by the fact
that scores on different mental tasks are
correlated, Thurstone was impressed by the fact
that the correlations are far from perfect.
• Thurstone therefore concluded that human
mental performance depends not on a general
factor but rather on seven distinct abilities,
which he called primary mental abilities
• Educators are more interested in knowing the
specific mental abilities of learners as they can
point to a student’s areas of strength and
weakness.
• Additionally, it may appear more feasible to
enhance specific mental skills than to raise
general intelligence.
41. Critical Evaluation of Thurston’s Theory
Reviewers of Thurston’s theory have acknowledged it as a significant
contribution in the area of intelligence theorizing and testing. However,
it also created a confusion whether the different primary mental
abilities were really different or overlapped with one another.
42. Crystallized and Fluid Intelligence
• Proposed by Raymond Cattell (1971) and John Horn (1985)
• Spearman’s general intelligence was broken down into two distinct but related subtypes of g:
• Cattell and Horn concluded that over our life span, we progress from using fluid intelligence to
depending more on crystallized intelligence.
• Performance on tests of crystallized intelligence improves during adulthood and remains stable well
into late adulthood.
• In contrast, performance on tests of fluid intelligence begins to decline as people enter late
adulthood (Daniels et al., 2006; Schaie, 1998).
Crystallized intelligence
• The ability to apply previously acquired knowledge to current problems
• Examples of measures to asses crystallized intelligence: Vocabulary and information tests
• Dependent on previous learning and practice – long term memory
Fluid intelligence
• The ability to deal with novel problem-solving situations for which personal experience does
not provide a solution
• Includes inductive reasoning and creative problem-solving skills
• Dependent on the efficient functioning of the central nervous system – efficient working
memory
43. Cognitive Nature Approaches
• Cognitive process theories explore the specific information-processing and cognitive
processes that underlie intellectual ability.
Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (Sternberg, 1988, 2004)
• It involves both the psychological processes involved in intelligent behavior and the diverse
forms that intelligence can take
• Sternberg’s theory divides the cognitive processes that underlie intelligent behavior into
three specific components:
- Meta components: the higher-order processes used to plan and regulate task performance.
Eg. Problem solving skills, strategizing etc.
- Performance components: the actual mental processes used to perform the task. Eg.
perceptual processing, retrieving appropriate memories and schemas from long-term
memory, and generating responses
- Knowledge acquisition components: allow us to learn from our experiences, store
information in memory, and combine new insights with previously acquired information.
44. • Sternberg suggests that there maybe three different kinds
of intelligence.
• Environmental demands may call for three different
classes of adaptive problem solving and that people differ
in their intellectual strengths in these areas:
- Analytical intelligence involves the kinds of academically
oriented problem-solving skills measured by traditional
intelligence tests.
- Practical intelligence refers to the skills needed to cope
with everyday demands and to manage oneself and other
people effectively.
- Creative intelligence comprises the mental skills needed
to deal adaptively with novel problems.
45. Contemporary Theories of Intelligence
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence
• Howard Gardner believed that intelligence is more than just mental competencies.
• Intelligence should be broadly conceived as relatively independent intelligences that
relate to different adaptive demands
• He currently defines eight distinct varieties of adaptive abilities, and a possible ninth
variety (Gardner, 2000):
1. Linguistic intelligence: the ability to use language well, as writers do.
2. Logical-mathematical intelligence: the ability to reason mathematically and logically.
3. Visuospatial intelligence: the ability to solve spatial problems or to succeed in a field
such as architecture.
4. Musical intelligence: the ability to perceive pitch and rhythm and to understand and
produce music.
46. 5. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence: the ability to control
body movements and skillfully manipulate objects, as
demonstrated by a highly skilled dancer, athlete, or
surgeon.
6. Interpersonal intelligence: the ability to understand
and relate well to others.
7. Intrapersonal intelligence: the ability to understand
oneself.
8. Naturalistic intelligence: the ability to detect and
understand phenomena in the natural world, as a
zoologist or meteorologist might.
• Gardner (2000) has also suggested the possibility of the
ninth intelligence called existential intelligence, a
philosophically oriented ability to ponder questions
about the meaning of one’s existence, life, and death.
47. Genetics and Intelligence
• Atkinson and Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology by Nolen-
Hoeksema, Fredrickson Loftus & Wagenaar Pg No. 446-449
48. Emotional Intelligence
• John Mayer and Peter Salovey, emotional intelligence involves the abilities to read others’
emotions accurately, to respond to them appropriately, to motivate oneself, to be aware
of one’s own emotions, and to regulate and control one’s own emotional responses
(Mayer et al., 2004).
• Perceiving emotions is measured by people’s accuracy in judging emotional expressions in
facial photographs, as well as the emotional tones conveyed by different landscapes and
designs.
• Using emotions to facilitate thought is measured by asking people to identify the
emotions that would best enhance a particular type of thinking, such as how to deal with
a distressed coworker or plan a birthday party.
• Understanding emotions, people are asked to specify the conditions under which their
emotions change in intensity or type.
• Managing emotions is measured by asking respondents to indicate how they can change
their own or others’ emotions to facilitate success or increase interpersonal harmony.
49. • Emotionally intelligent people form stronger emotional bonds with others
• Enjoy greater success in careers, marriage, and childrearing
• Modulate their own emotions so as to avoid strong depression, anger, or anxiety
• Work more effectively toward long-term goals by being able to control impulses for
immediate gratification
