Chapter 14 : PersonalityTytianna Hines, Gabriela Herrera, Justus Redix, Tien Nguyen

Intro Psychoanalytic Perspective

Psychoanalytic Perspective● Our personality comes from a deep hidden place within us called the unconscious.

● Founder : Sigmund Freud.

● Much of our unconscious is formed in our childhood.

● Mind comes in three parts :

1. Conscious Level - information about yourself and your environment that you are

currently aware of.

2. Preconscious Level - information about yourself that you are not currently thinking about

(in your conscious level), but could think about.

3. Unconsciousness Level - events and feelings that we find unacceptable for our

conscious minds.

Freud’s Three DrivesPersonality (psyche) made up of three drives :

Conscious - Ego : The boss or executive part of your

personality.

Unconscious - ID : The Id is your animalistic and most basic instincts.

Preconscious - Superego : Our morals and our sense of right and wrong.

Trait Perspective● A personality trait is a broad behavioral element that defines your personality. Psychologists typically define personality as

your characteristic patterns of thinking and behavior.

● Exploring traits: Instead of explain hidden aspects of personality, trait researchers describe predispositions that describe

our actions.

o example: factor analysis, researchers took 5 important dimensions of personality

● Assessing traits: psychologist devised self report inventories.

● evaluating the trait perspective: critics question the consistency with which traits expressed. people traits change over

time, from situation to situation

Five Factor Model● Five Factor Model - Many psychologists believe that the number of traits can be reduced to Five

factors and all the other traits fit into those Five Factors.

● OCEAN acronym for the five factors: o Openness to Experience

composed of 2 separable traits: openness to experience and intellect with behavioral interests

o Conscientiousness Scrupulous, meticulous, principled behavior guided or conforming to one's own conscience

o Extraversion Gregarious, outgoing, sociable, projecting one's personality outward.

o Agreeableness Refers to a compliant, trusting, empathic, sympathetic, friendly and cooperative nature.

o Neuroticism Refers to an individual's tendency to become upset or emotional.

Humanist Perspective● The humanistic perspective focuses on the

positive image of what it means to be human.

● Focuses on methods that allow fulfillment of potential.

● Humanistic Psychologist believes individuals behavior is connected to their inner feelings.

Abraham Maslow Abraham Maslow’s “the third force” (Maslow, 1968) - he proposed that an individual is motivated by a hierarchy of needs. Basic needs must be met before higher ones can be satisfied. Arranged in order from lowest to highest (in a hierarchy), The needs are:

● physiological (satisfaction of hunger and thirst)● safety (security)● belongingness and love (being loved, avoiding

loneliness)● esteem (achievement, recognition, self‐esteem)● self‐actualization (realization of one's full potential).

Carl Rodger

Carl Rodger proposed a theory called the “Person-Centered Theory”.He believed people are aware of their self-concepts, includes thoughts, feelings, beliefs people have of themselves.

Example: A person man consider himself to be very honest but often lies to his boss about why he is late to work.

● Incongruence - discrepancy between the self-concept● Congruence - accurate match between the self-concept

and reality.

Examples: Examples of Human Perspective:

1. A person feels like his life is boring. humanistic perspective- encourage the person to do some soul searching and determine what is missing.

2. Family therapy- it allows families to talk about their relationships with one another in order to encourage and strengthen those relationships.

Social Cognitive Perspective● The social-Cognitive Theory is a theoretical perspective in which learning by observing others is the focus of

study.

● Social cognitive theory is the view that people learn by watching others.

● In psychology, it explains personality in terms of how a person thinks about and

responds to one's social environment.

Example : A child watching his parents or relative smoking in front of him,

he eventually grows up and also do the same, disregarding whether

it’s acceptable to the society or not.

Bobo Doll ExperimentIn 1960s, psychologist, Albert Bandura believed that when an individual watch someone else being awarded for a certain behavior.

Bandura famous experiment shows a children punching a doll mirror-imaged with the person before them- similar in an aggressive way. Boys imitated more physically aggressive acts than girls. There was little difference in the verbal aggression between boys and girls.

4-Steps

There are four steps must be followed for a proper observational learning :

1. Attention : Anything distract your attention will have a negative effect on the result. If the subject is interest in the topic then full

attention will be successful.

2. Retention : Ability to store information and act upon it.

3. Reproduction : Once the subject paid attention upon the information, it’s time to perform the behavior the subject has

observed. Repeatedly would leads to improvement and skill development.

4. Motivation : In order for the behaviour that was learned through observation to be successful, reinforcement and punishment

are important factors.

a. For example, if you see another student rewarded with extra credit for being to class on time, you might start to show

up a few minutes early each day.