Psychologists who specialize in personality seek to understand the characteristic ways in which people behave. Personality comprises the pattern of enduring characteristics that differentiate people—those behaviors that make each of us unique. It is also personality that leads us to act in a consistent and predictable manner both in different situations and over extended periods of time.
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician, originated psychoanalytic theory in the early 1900s. Freud believed that conscious experience was just the tip of our psychological makeup and experience. In fact, he thought that that much of our behavior is motivated by the unconscious, a part of the personality of which a person is not aware.
Like the unseen mass of a floating iceberg, the material in the unconscious far surpasses in quantity the information about which we are aware. Freud argued that to understand personality, it is necessary to expose what is in the unconscious. But because the unconscious disguises the meaning of the material it holds, the content of the unconscious cannot be observed directly. It is therefore necessary to interpret clues to the unconscious—slips of the tongue, fantasies, and dreams—in order to understand the unconscious processes that direct behavior. A slip of the tongue such as the one quoted earlier (sometimes termed a Freudian slip) might be interpreted as revealing the speaker’s unconscious sexual desires.
To Freud, much of our personality is determined by our unconscious. Some of the unconscious is made up of the preconscious, which contains material that is not threatening and which is easily brought to mind, such as the knowledge that 2 + 2 = 4. But deeper in the unconscious are instinctual drives, the wishes, desires, demands, and needs that are hidden from conscious awareness because of the conflicts and pain they would cause us if they were part of our everyday lives. The unconscious provides a “safe haven” for our recollections of threatening events.
To describe the structure of personality, Freud developed a comprehensive theory, which held that personality consists of three separate but interacting components: the id, the ego, and the superego. Freud suggested that the three structures can be diagrammed to show how they are related to the conscious and the unconscious
If personality consisted only of primitive, instinctual cravings and longings, it would have just one component: the id. The id is the raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality. From the time of birth, the id attempts to reduce tension created by primitive drives related to hunger, sex, aggression, and irrational impulses. These drives are fueled by “psychic energy” or libido, as Freud called it.
The id operates according to the pleasure principle, in which the goal is the immediate reduction of tension and the maximization of satisfaction. However, reality prevents the fulfillment of the demands of the pleasure principle in most cases: We cannot always eat when we are hungry, and we can discharge our sexual drives only when time, place—and partner—are willing. To account for this fact of life, Freud suggested a second component of personality, which he called the ego.
The ego strives to balance the desires of the id and the realities of the objective, outside world. In contrast to the pleasure-seeking nature of the id, the ego operates according to the reality principle, in which instinctual energy is restrained in order to maintain the safety of the individual and help integrate the person into society. In a sense, then, the ego is the “executive” of personality: It makes decisions, controls actions, and allows thinking and problem solving of a higher order than the id’s capabilities permit
The superego, the final personality structure to develop, represents the rights and wrongs of society as taught and modeled by a person’s parents, teachers, and other significant individuals. The superego actually has two components, the conscience and the ego-ideal. The conscience prevents us from behaving in a morally improper way by making us feel guilty if we do wrong, while the ego-ideal, which represents the “perfect person” that we wish we were, motivates us to do what is morally right. The superego helps us to control impulses coming from the id, making our behavior less selfish and more virtuous.
The superego and id share an important feature: Both are unrealistic, in that they do not consider the practical realities imposed by society. The superego, if left to operate without restraint, would create perfectionists, unable to make the compromises that life requires. Similarly, an unrestrained id would create a primitive, pleasure-seeking, thoughtless individual, seeking to fulfill every desire without delay. As a result, the ego must compromise between the demands of the superego and the demands of the id.
In the first stage of development, called the oral stage, the baby’s mouth is the focal point of pleasure. During the first 12 to 18 months of life, children suck, mouth, and bite anything that will fit into their mouths. To Freud, this behavior suggested that the mouth was the primary site of a kind of sexual pleasure. If infants were either overly indulged (perhaps by being fed every time they cried) or frustrated in their search for oral gratification, they might become fixated at this stage.
From around 12 to 18 months until 3 years of age—where the emphasis in western cultures is on toilet training—the child enters the anal stage. If toilet training is particularly demanding, the result may be fixation.
At about age 3, the phallic stage begins, at which point there is another major shift in the primary source of pleasure for the child. This time, interest focuses on the genitals and the pleasures derived from fondling them. This is also the stage of one of the most important points of personality development, according to Freudian theory: the Oedipal conflict. At this time, according to Freud, the male unconsciously begins to develop sexual interests in his mother, starts to see his father as a rival, and harbors a wish to kill his father. But because he views his father as too powerful, he develops a fear of retaliation in the form of “castration anxiety.” Ultimately, this fear becomes so powerful that the child represses his desires for his mother and instead identifies with his father. Identification is the process of trying to be like another person as much as possible, imitating that person’s behavior and adopting similar beliefs and values. By identifying with his father, a son seeks to obtain a women like his unattainable mother.
For girls, the process is different. Freud reasoned that girls begin to experience sexual arousal toward their fathers and—in a suggestion that was later to bring serious accusations that he viewed women as inferior to men—that they begin to experience penis envy. Blaming their mothers for their lack of a penis, girls come to believe that their mothers are responsible for their “castration.” As with males, though, they find that in order to resolve such unacceptable feelings, they must identify with the same-sex parent by behaving like her and adopting her attitudes and values. In this way, a girl’s identification with her mother is completed.
Following the resolution of the Oedipal conflict, typically at around age 5 or 6, children move into the latency period, which lasts until puberty. During this period, sexual interests become dormant, even in the unconscious. Then, during adolescence, sexual feelings re-emerge, marking the start of the final period, the genital stage, which extends until death. The focus during the genital stage is on mature, adult sexuality, which Freud defined as sexual intercourse.
Fixation refers to conflicts or concerns that persist beyond the developmental period in which they first occur. Such conflicts may be due to having needs ignored or (conversely) being overly indulged during the earlier period. Fixation at the oral stage might produce an adult who was unusually interested in oral activities—eating, talking, smoking—or who showed symbolic sorts of oral interests: being either “bitingly” sarcastic or very gullible (“swallowing” anything).
If fixation occurs during the anal stage, Freud suggested that adults might show unusual rigidity, orderliness, punctuality—or extreme disorderliness or sloppiness.
Freud’s efforts to describe and theorize about the underlying dynamics of personality and its development were motivated by very practical problems that his patients faced in dealing with anxiety, an intense, negative emotional experience. According to Freud, anxiety is a danger signal to the ego. Although anxiety may arise from realistic fears—such as seeing a poisonous snake about to strike—it may also occur in the form of neurotic anxiety, in which irrational impulses emanating from the id threaten to burst through and become uncontrollable.
Because anxiety, obviously, is unpleasant, Freud believed that people develop a range of defense mechanisms to deal with it. Defense mechanisms are unconscious strategies that people use to reduce anxiety by concealing the source from themselves and others.
The primary defense mechanism is repression, in which unacceptable or unpleasant id impulses are pushed back into the unconscious. Repression is the most direct method of dealing with anxiety; instead of handling an anxiety-producing impulse on a conscious level, one simply ignores it. For example, a college student who feels hatred for her mother might repress these personally and socially unacceptable feelings. The feelings remain lodged within the unconscious, because acknowledging them would provoke anxiety. Similarly, memories of childhood abuse may be repressed (discussed in Chapter 7). Although such memories may not be consciously recalled, they can affect later behavior, and they may be revealed through dreams, slips of the tongue, or symbolically in some other fashion.
If repression is ineffective in keeping anxiety at bay, other defense mechanisms may be used. Freud, and later his daughter Anna Freud (who became a well-known psychoanalyst herself), formulated an extensive list of potential defense mechanisms; the major ones are summarized in Table 14-2 (Cooper, 1989; Conte & Plutchik, 1995; Basch, 1996).
All of us employ defense mechanisms to some degree, according to Freudian theory, and they can serve a useful purpose by protecting us from unpleasant information. Yet some people use them to such an extent that a large amount of psychic energy must constantly be directed toward hiding and re-channeling unacceptable impulses. When this occurs, everyday living becomes difficult. In such cases, the result is a mental disorder produced by anxiety—what Freud called “neurosis” (a term rarely used by psychologists today, although it endures in everyday conversation.)
One of the most influential neo-Freudians, Carl Jung (pronounced “yoong”), rejected the notion of the primary importance of unconscious sexual urges. Instead he looked at the primitive urges of the unconscious more positively, suggesting that people had a collective unconscious, a set of influences we inherit from our own relatives, the whole human race, and even nonhuman animal ancestors from the distant past. This collective unconscious is shared by everyone and is displayed by behavior that is common across diverse cultures—such as love of mother, belief in a supreme being, and even behavior as specific as a fear of snakes.
Jung went on to propose that the collective unconscious contains archetypes, universal symbolic representations of a particular person, object, or experience. For instance, a mother archetype, which contains reflections of our ancestors’ relationships with mother figures, is suggested by the prevalence of mothers in art, religion, literature, and mythology. Jung also suggested that men possess an unconscious feminine archetype affecting how they behave, while women have a male archetype that colors their behavior.
Alfred Adler proposed that the primary human motivation was a striving for superiority, not in terms of superiority over others, but as a quest to achieve self-improvement and perfection. Adler used the term inferiority complex to describe situations in which adults have not been able to overcome the feelings of inferiority that they developed as children, when they were small and limited in their knowledge about the world.
Other neo-Freudians, such as Erik Erikson (whose theory we discussed in Chapters 12 and 13), Freud’s own daughter Anna Freud, and Karen Horney (1937), also focused less than Freud on inborn sexual and aggressive drives and more on the social and cultural factors behind personality. Horney was one of the first psychologists who championed women’s issues. She suggested that personality develops in terms of social relationships and depends particularly on the relationship between parents and child and how well the child’s needs were met. She rejected Freud’s suggestion that women had penis envy, asserting that what women envied most in men was not their anatomy but the independence, success, and freedom that women were often denied.
If someone were to ask you to characterize another person, it is probable that—like the two people in the conversation just presented—you would come up with a list of that individual’s personal qualities, as you see them. But how would you know which of these qualities were most important to an understanding of that person’s behavior?
Personality psychologists have asked similar questions themselves. In order to answer them, they have developed a model of personality known as trait theory. Traits are enduring dimensions of personality characteristics along which people differ.
Trait theorists do not assume that some people have a trait and others do not; rather, they propose that all people possess certain traits, but that the degree to which a given trait applies to a specific person varies and can be quantified. For instance, you might be relatively friendly, whereas I might be relatively unfriendly. But we both have a “friendliness” trait, although your degree of “friendliness” would be higher than mine. The major challenge for trait theorists taking this approach has been to identify the specific primary traits necessary to describe personality. As we shall see, different theorists have come up with surprisingly different sets of traits.
When personality psychologist Gordon Allport systematically poured over an unabridged dictionary, he came up with some 18,000 separate terms that could be used to describe personality. Although he was able to pare down the list to a mere 4,500 descriptors after eliminating words with the same meaning, he was obviously still left with a problem crucial to all trait approaches: Which of these were the most basic?
Allport answered this question by suggesting that there are three basic categories of traits: cardinal, central, and secondary (Allport, 1961, 1966). A cardinal trait is a single characteristic that directs most of a person’s activities. For example, a totally selfless woman might direct all her energy toward humanitarian activities; an intensely power-hungry person might be driven by an all-consuming need for control.
Most people, however, do not develop a single, comprehensive cardinal trait. Instead, they possess a handful of central traits that make up the core of personality. Central traits, such as honesty and sociability, are the major characteristics of an individual; they usually number from five to ten in any one person. Finally, secondary traits are characteristics that affect behavior in fewer situations and are less influential than central or cardinal traits. For instance, a reluctance to eat meat or a love of modern art would be considered secondary traits.
More recent attempts to identify primary traits have centered on a statistical technique known as factor analysis. Factor analysis is a method of summarizing the relationships among a large number of variables into fewer, more general patterns. For example, a personality researcher might administer a questionnaire to many participants, asking them to describe themselves by referring to an extensive list of traits. By statistically combining responses and computing which traits are associated with one another in the same person, a researcher can identify the most fundamental patterns or combinations of traits—called factors—that underlie participants’ responses.
Using factor analysis, personality psychologist Raymond Cattell (1965) suggested that sixteen pairs of source traits represented the basic dimensions of personality. Using these source traits, he developed the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, or 16 PF, a measure that provides scores for each of the source traits. Figure 14-2 shows the pattern of average scores on each of the source traits for three different groups of participants—airplane pilots, creative artists, and writers (Cattell, Cattell, & Cattell, 1993).
Another trait theorist, psychologist Hans Eysenck (1975, 1994; Eysenck et al., 1992), also used factor analysis to identify patterns of traits, but he came to a very different conclusion about the nature of personality. He found that personality could best be described in terms of just three major dimensions: extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism. The extraversion dimension relates to the degree of sociability, while the neurotic dimension encompasses emotional stability. Finally, psychoticism refers to the degree to which reality is distorted. By evaluating people along these three dimensions, Eysenck has been able to predict behavior accurately in a variety of types of situations.
The most influential trait approach today contends that five broad trait factors—called the “Big Five”—lie at the core of personality. The five factors are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (emotional stability). (They are described in Table 14-3, and you can remember them using the mnemonic “OCEAN,” representing the first letter of each trait).
The Big Five emerge quite consistently in different populations of individuals, including children, college students, older adults, and speakers of different languages. Furthermore, cross-cultural research conducted in countries as diverse as Canada, Finland, Poland, and the Philippines is also supportive. In short, although the evidence is not conclusive, a growing consensus exists that the “Big Five” represent the best description of personality. Still, the debate over the specific number and kinds of traits that are fundamental to personality remains a lively one (McCrae & Costa, 1999; John & Srivastava, 1999; Saggino, 2000).
According to the most influential of the learning theorists, B. F. Skinner, personality is a collection of learned behavior patterns. Similarities in responses across different situations are caused by similar patterns of reinforcement that have been received in such situations in the past.
Strict learning theorists such as Skinner are less interested in the consistencies in behavior across situations, however, than in ways of modifying behavior. Their view is that humans are infinitely changeable through the process of learning new behavior patterns. Learning theorists are optimistic in their attitudes about the potential for resolving personal and societal problems through treatment strategies based on learning theory—methods we will discuss in Chapter 17
Unlike other learning approaches to personality, social cognitive approaches emphasize the influence of a person’s cognitions—thoughts, feelings, expectations, and values—in determining personality. According to Albert Bandura, people are able to foresee the possible outcomes of certain behaviors in a given setting without actually having to carry them out. This takes place mainly through the mechanism of observational learning—viewing the actions of others and observing the consequences.
Bandura places particular emphasis on the role played by self-efficacy, belief in one’s personal capabilities. Self-efficacy underlies people’s faith in their ability to carry out a particular behavior or produce a desired outcome.
Self esteem is the component of personality that encompasses our positive and negative self-evaluations. Although people have a general level of self-esteem, it is not uni-dimensional.
Self-esteem has strong cultural components. For example, having high relationship harmony—a sense of success in forming close bonds with other people—is more important to self-esteem in Asian cultures than in more individualistic western societies.
biological and evolutionary approaches to personality suggest that important components of personality are inherited. Researchers using biological and evolutionary approaches argue that personality is determined at least in part by particular combinations of genes, in much the same way that our height is largely a result of genetic contributions from our ancestors
The importance of genetic factors in personality has been illustrated by studies of twins. For instance, personality psychologists Auke Tellegen and colleagues at the University of Minnesota examined the personality traits of pairs of twins who were genetically identical but raised apart from each other.
The results of the personality tests indicated that in major respects the twins were quite similar in personality, despite having been raised separately from an early age. Moreover, certain traits were more influenced by heredity than others. For example, social potency (the degree to which a person assumes mastery and leadership roles in social situations) and traditionalism (the tendency to follow authority) had particularly strong genetic components, whereas achievement and social closeness had relatively weak genetic components
Infants are born with a particular temperament, a basic, innate disposition. Temperament encompasses several dimensions, including general activity level and mood. For instance, some individuals are quite active, while others are relatively calm. Temperament is quite consistent, with significant stability from infancy well into adolescence
Some researchers believe that specific genes are related to personality. For example, people with a longer variety of a dopamine-4 receptor gene are more likely to be thrill seekers than those without such a gene. These thrill seekers tend to be extroverted, impulsive, quick-tempered, and always on the prowl for excitement and novel situations. However, it is unlikely that any single gene is linked to a specific trait.
Genes and the environment never work in isolation. Although studies of identical twins raised in different environments are helpful, they are not definitive, because it is impossible to fully assess and control environmental factors.
Finally, even if more genes are found to be linked to specific personality characteristics, genes still cannot be viewed as the sole cause of personality.
humanistic approaches emphasize people’s basic goodness and their tendency to grow to higher levels of functioning. It is this conscious, self-motivated ability to change and improve, along with people’s unique creative impulses, that make up the core of personality.
The major proponent of the humanistic point of view is Carl Rogers (1971). Rogers suggests that people have a need for positive regard that reflects a universal requirement to be loved and respected. Because others provide this positive regard, we grow dependent on them.
According to Rogers, one outgrowth of placing importance on the opinions of others is that there may be a conflict between people’s actual experiences and their self-concepts, or self-impressions. If the discrepancies are great, they will lead to psychological disturbances in daily functioning, such as the experience of frequent anxiety.
Rogers suggests that one way of overcoming the discrepancy between experience and self-concept is through the receipt of unconditional positive regard from another person—a friend, a spouse, or a therapist. As we will discuss in Chapter 17, unconditional positive regard refers to an attitude of acceptance and respect on the part of an observer, no matter what a person says or does. This acceptance, says Rogers, allows people the opportunity to evolve and grow both cognitively and emotionally and to develop more realistic self-concepts.
On the other hand, if you receive conditional positive regard, others’ view of you is dependent on your behavior. In such cases, others withdraw their love and acceptance if you do something of which they don’t approve. The result is a discrepancy between your true self and what others wish you would be, leading to anxiety and frustration
To Rogers and other humanistic personality theorists such as Abraham Maslow (whose theory of motivation we discussed in Chapter 10), the ultimate goal of personality growth is self-actualization. Self-actualization is a state of self-fulfillment in which people realize their highest potential. To reach this state, people’s everyday experience and their self-concept must be closely matched. People who are self-actualized accept themselves as they are in reality, which enables them to achieve happiness and fulfillment.
psychological tests are standard measures devised to assess behavior objectively. Such tests are used by psychologists to help people make decisions about their lives and understand more about themselves. They are also employed by researchers interested in the causes and consequences of personality
Like the intelligence assessments that we discussed in Chapter 9, all psychological tests must have reliability and validity.
Psychological tests are based on norms, standards of test performance that permit the comparison of one person’s score on the test to the scores of others who have taken the same test. Norms are established by administering a particular test to a large number of people and determining the typical scores.
The establishment of appropriate norms is not a simple endeavor. For instance, the specific group that is employed to determine norms for a test has a profound effect on how an individual’s performance is evaluated. In fact, as we discuss next, the process of establishing norms can take on political overtones.
self-report measures ask people about a relatively small sample of their behavior. This sampling of self-report data is then used to infer the presence of particular personality characteristics.
One of the best examples of a self-report measure, and the most frequently used personality test, is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2). The original purpose of the measure was to differentiate people with specific sorts of psychological difficulties from those without disturbances. It also predicts a variety of other behaviors. Such as whether college students will marry within ten years and whether they will get an advanced degree.
The test itself consists of a series of 567 items to which a person responds “true,” “false,” or “cannot say.” The questions cover a variety of issues, ranging from mood (“I feel useless at times”) to opinions (“people should try to understand their dreams”) to physical and psychological health (“I am bothered by an upset stomach several times a week” and “I have strange and peculiar thoughts”).
There are no right or wrong answers. Instead, interpretation of the results rests on the pattern of responses.
How did the authors of the MMPI determine what specific patterns of responses indicate? The procedure they used is typical of personality test construction—a process known as test standardization. To create the test, groups of psychiatric patients with a specific diagnosis, such as depression or schizophrenia, were asked to complete a large number of items. The test authors then determined which items best differentiated members of these groups from a comparison group of normal participants, and these specific items were included in the final version of the test. By systematically carrying out this procedure on groups with different diagnoses, the test authors were able to devise a number of subscales that identified different forms of abnormal behavior
The shape in the figure is representative of inkblots used in projective personality tests, in which a person is shown an ambiguous stimulus and asked to describe it or tell a story about it. The responses are then considered to be “projections” of what the person is like.
The best-known projective test is the Rorschach test. Devised by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1924), the test consists of showing a series of symmetrical stimuli, similar to the one in Figure 14-8, to people who are then asked what the figures represent to them. Their responses are recorded, and through a complex set of clinical judgments on the part of the examiner, people are classified into different personality types. For instance, respondents who see a bear in one inkblot are thought to have a strong degree of emotional control, according to the rules developed by Rorschach (Aronow, Reznikoff, & Moreland, 1994; Weiner, 1998).
The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is another well-known projective test. As noted when we discussed achievement motivation in Chapter 10, the TAT consists of a series of pictures about which a person is asked to write a story. The stories are then used to draw inferences about the writer’s personality characteristics (Cramer, 1996; Kelly, 1997).
Tests with stimuli as ambiguous as the Rorschach and TAT require particular skill and care in their interpretation—too much, in many critics’ estimation. The Rorschach, in particular, has been criticized for requiring too much inference on the part of the examiner, and attempts to standardize scoring have frequently failed. Furthermore, many critics complain that the Rorschach does not provide much valid information about underlying personality traits. Despite such problems, both the Rorschach and TAT are widely used, particularly in clinical settings, and their proponents suggest that their reliability and validity are great enough to provide useful inferences about personality (Bornstein, 1996; Weiner, 1998; Meyer, 2000).
If you were a psychologist subscribing to a learning approach to personality, you would be likely to object to the indirect nature of projective tests. Instead, you would be more apt to use behavioral assessment—direct measures of an individual’s behavior used to describe characteristics indicative of personality. As with observational research (discussed in Chapter 2), behavioral assessment may be carried out naturalistically by observing people in their own settings: in the workplace, at home, or in school. In other cases, behavioral assessment occurs in the laboratory, under controlled conditions in which a psychologist sets up a situation and observes an individual’s behavior.
Regardless of the setting in which behavior is observed, an effort is made to ensure that behavioral assessment is carried out objectively, quantifying behavior as much as possible. For example, an observer might record the number of social contacts a person initiates, the number of questions asked, or the number of aggressive acts. Another method is to measure duration of events: the duration of a temper tantrum in a child, the length of a conversation, the amount of time spent working, or the time spent in cooperative behavior.
