4 th edition copyright 2004 - prentice hall11-1 psychology stephen f. davis emporia state university...

Copyright 2004 - Prentice Hall 11-1

4th Edition

PsychologyStephen F. Davis

Emporia State University Joseph J. Palladino

University of Southern Indiana

PowerPoint Presentation by H. Lynn BradmanMetropolitan Community College-Omaha


4th Edition

Personality

Chapter 11


Analyzing Personality

• Psychologists define personality as a stable pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that distinguishes one person from another.

• Two important components of this definition are distinctiveness and relative consistency.



• Among the widely used self-report inventories of personality are the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the California Psychological Inventory (CPI).



• The MMPI was designed to help diagnose psychological disorders.

• The CPI is used to assess personality in the normal population.



• Projective tests use ambiguous stimuli and require a great deal of interpretation by the test administrator.



• The most frequently used projective test is the Rorschach inkblot test.



• The Barnum effect is the acceptance of generalized personality descriptions.

• The effect results from the use of favorable personality descriptions that apply to many people.



• Critics of the concept of consistency in behavior argue that behavior is controlled by situations.

• In defense of the idea of consistency, some researchers note that there are some problems with the methods used and the assumptions made in this research.



• Seymour Epstein proposes that both sides of the consistency issue are correct:– Situations control behavior in a given

instance, and broad consistencies do exist.– Consistencies become visible when we add

behaviors together, an approach termed aggregation.


Trait Approaches

• Traits are summary terms that describe tendencies to act and interact in particular ways that are consistent across situations.

• Gordon Allport developed a list of trait terms.


Trait Approaches

• Raymond Cattell proposed 16 source traits to describe personality and make predictions of future behaviors.


Trait Approaches

• Hans Eysenck proposed the existence of three major traits.

• Extraversion has been associated with a number of differences in everyday behavior.


Trait Approaches

• Current research offers a model of five major traits that seem to be relatively stable across the life span and across cultures.


Biological Factors in Personality

• Efforts to connect personality to biological factors can be traced to Hippocrates’ theory of "humors" and later to phrenology.



• William Sheldon suggested a relationship between body type and personality.

• Subsequent research demonstrated that his findings were influenced by his preconceptions.



• Additional support for the belief that biological factors influence personality is found in the negative correlation between sensation-seeking scores and levels of the enzyme MAO.



• The study of identical twins reared apart allows researchers to identify the effects of heredity independently of the influence of environmental factors.

• Evidence from such studies indicates that heredity plays a role in a wide range of personality characteristics as evidenced by heritability estimates between 20 and 50%.



• Evidence from such studies indicates that heredity plays a role in a wide range of personality characteristics as evidenced by heritability estimates between 20 and 50%.



• Recent evidence suggests that non-shared experiences exert a major influence on the personality of siblings.


The Psychodynamic Perspective

• Freud suggested that behaviors, feelings, and thoughts result from past events.

• Because this psychic determinism occurs at an unconscious level, we are often unaware of the true reasons for our behavior.



• Freud compared the mind to an iceberg, with three levels of consciousness (conscious, preconscious, and unconscious) and three structures (Id, ego, and superego).



• Conflicts among the structures of the mind occur beneath the level of conscious awareness.



• Severe unconscious conflict produces anxiety or guilt that warn the ego.

• The ego uses defense mechanisms to protect itself from being overwhelmed by anxiety or guilt.



• According to Freud, at different stages of development the id centers its pleasure-seeking behavior on different parts of the body, called erogenous zones.

• The resulting psychosexual stages begin with the oral stage and continue through the anal and phallic stages.



• The Oedipal and Electra complexes occur during the phallic stage.

• This stage is followed by the latency stage and then by the genital stage and the emergence of adult sexual desires.



• The neo-Freudians-including Jung, Horney, and Adler disagreed with a number of Freud's views (for example, those emphasizing the sexual and unconscious roots of behavior).



• Freud is credited with pointing out the influence of early childhood experiences and with developing a stage theory of development

• In addition, he noted the potential importance of unconscious experiences and the influence of sexuality on human behavior.



• Critics of psychodynamic theory note that Freud based his ideas on small, unrepresentative samples of disturbed individuals.

• Additionally, many of his concepts and principles are not directly testable; hence, there is little scientific evidence to support his theory.

• His subjective method of data collection and views about women also have attracted criticism.


The Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Behavioral and learning psychologists avoid commonly used terms such as traits.

• They explain the distinctiveness of a person's behavior as resulting from unique learning histories.



• While acknowledging the importance of learning, Julian Rotter and Albert Bandura incorporated cognitive factors into their theories of personality.



• Rotter's social learning theory recognizes that most reinforcers are social and that most learning takes place in social situations.

• Expectancy about obtaining a reinforcer in a given situation is an important cognitive variable.

• Individuals differ in the degree to which they see themselves or chance ("fate") as responsible for their successes and failures.



• Measures of generalized expectancy, known as locus of control, are related to a variety of outcomes, including academic and health behaviors.



• According to Albert Bandura, individuals not only are affected by the environment but also can influence it.

• What's more, cognitive factors can influence the person's behavior and his or her environment.



• This combination of cognitive, behavioral, and environmental effects is called reciprocal determinism.



• Self-efficacy is a person's judgment about his or her ability to succeed in a given situation.

• Unlike a trait, self-efficacy is specific to the situation and can change over time.


The Humanistic Perspective

• Humanistic approaches evolved in opposition to the behavioral and psychodynamic perspectives.

• They propose that human beings are basically good and are directed toward development and growth.



• Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs begins with deficiency needs and leads to self-actualization at the top.

• The power of deficiency needs keeps most people from reaching the level of self -actualization, which Maslow defines as doing the best that an individual is capable of doing.



• On the basis of his work with disturbed people, Carl Rogers concluded that efforts to achieve personal fulfillment were being stifled.

• He proposed that people's self-concepts had become distorted by conditions of worth imposed from the outside.

• In his theory, healthy individuals have a real self-concept that is consistent with their ideal self-concept

4 th edition copyright 2004 - prentice hall11-1 psychology stephen f. davis emporia state university...

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