PERSONALITY

Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality

Psychodynamic Approach

Approaches that assume that personality is motivated by inner forces and

conflicts about which people have little awareness and over which they have no

control

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind

Freud’s theory that unconscious forces act as determinants of

personality

Unconscious: a part of the personality that contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, dries, and instincts the individual is not aware of

Freud's Three Levels of Mind

• The conscious mind includes everything that we are aware of. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally.

• The preconscious mind is the part of the mind that represents ordinary memory. 

• The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of our conscious awareness. presents ordinary memory. 

Structuring Personality: ID, Ego and Superego

Structuring Personality: ID, Ego and Superego

• ID: The raw, unorganized inborn, part of personality whose sole purpose is to reduce tension created by primitive drives related to hunger, sex, aggression, and irrational impulses

Structuring Personality: ID, Ego and Superego (Cont’d)

• Ego: The part of the personality that provides a buffer between the id and the outside world

Structuring Personality: ID, Ego and Superego (Cont’d)

• Superego: according to Freud, the final personality structure to develop; it represents the rights and wrongs of society as handed down by a person’s parents, teachers, and other important figures.

Defense Mechanisms

• In Freudian theory, unconscious strategies that people use to reduce anxiety by concealing the source of it from themselves and others. • Repression: The primary defense

mechanism in which unacceptable or unpleasant id impulses are pushed back into the unconsciousness

The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud

Psychoanalysts who were trained in traditional Freudian theory but who later

rejected some of its major points Collective unconscious: according to Jung,

a common set of ideas, feelings, images, and symbols that we inherit from our ancestors, the whole human race, and even animal ancestors from the distant past

The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud (Cont’d)

• Archetypes: according to Jung, universal symbolic representations of a particular person, object, or experience (such as good and evil)

Neo-Freudian Perspective

• Horney’s Perspective• Adler and the other Neo-Freudians

Trait, Learning, Biological and Evolutionary and Humanistic

Approaches to Personality

Trait Approaches: Placing Labels on Personality

• Trait theory is a model of personality that seeks to identify the basic traits necessary to describe personality

• Traits: consistent personality characteristics and behavior displayed in different situations.

Allport’s Trait Theory: Identifying Basic Characteristics

• Three fundamental categories of traits• Cardinal trait – is a single characteristic that

directs most of a person’s activities. Example: a totally selfless woman.

• Central traits – such as honesty and sociability, are an individual’s major characteristics; they usually number from five to ten in any one person

• Secondary traits – are characteristics that affect behavior in fewer situations and are less influential than central or cardinal traits

Cattell and Eysenck: Factoring out Personality• Factor analysis Is a statistical method of

identifying associations among a large number of variables to reveal more general patterns.

• Raymond Cattall suggested that 16 pairs of source traits represent the basic dimensions of personality and developed The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire

Cattell and Eysenck: Factoring out Personality (Cont’d)

• Hans Eysenck described personality’s three major dimensions:• Extraversion – relates to the degree of

sociability• Neuroticism – encompasses emotional

stability• Psychoticism – refers to the degree to which

reality is distorted

The Big Five Personality Factors and Dimensions of Sample Traits

Learning Approaches: We are What We have Learned• Skinner’s Behaviorist Approach• According to the most

influential learning theorist, B.F.Skinner, personality is a collection of learned behavior patterns.

Learning Approaches: We are What We have Learned (Cont’d)

• Social Cognitive Approaches to Personality

• Theories that emphasize the influence of a person's cognitions – thoughts, feelings, expectations, and values – as well as observation of others; behavior, in determining personality.

Learning Approaches: We are What We have Learned (Cont’d)

• Self-efficacy• Belief in one’s personal abilities

. Self efficacy underlies people’s faith in their ability to carry out a particular behavior or produce a desired outcome.

How much consistency exists in Personality?

• Personality cannot be considered without taking the particular context of the situation into account – a view known as situations.

• Mischel in his cognitive-affective processing system (CAPS) argues that the people’s thoughts and emotions about themselves and the world determine how they view and then react in particular situation

Learning Approaches: We are What We have Learned (Cont’d)

• Self-Esteem• The component of personality

that encompasses our positive and negative self-evaluation.

Biological and Evolutionary Approaches:

Are We Born with Personality

• Approaches to personality – theories that suggest that important component of personality are inherited.• Biological and evolutionary approaches

to personality seek to explain the consistencies in personality that are found in some families.

Humanistic Approaches: The Uniqueness of You

• Theories that emphasize people’s innate goodness and desire to achieve higher levels of functioning• It is this conscious self motivated

ability to change and improve, along with people’s unique creative impulses, that humanistic argue make up the core of personality

Rogers and the Need for Self-actualization

• Self-actualization – A state of self fulfillment in which people realize their highest potential, each in a unique way.• Unconditional positive regard – a

attitude of acceptance and respect on the part of an observer, no matter what a person says or does.