The Trait Perspective  Thinking About Psychology  Module 26

11/30/04Personality Identifying Traits  Gordon Allport’s Theory Should only be studied in normal adults Individual personalities are unique  Raymond Cattell’s Factor Analysis Do some traits predict other traits? 16 core personality dimensions (factors)

11/30/04Personality Indentifying Traits cont’d  Hans Eysenck’s Biological Dimensions Introversion/Extraversion Emotionally Unstable/Stable

11/30/04Personality The “Big Five” Traits  Agreeableness  Conscientiousness  Emotional stability  Extraversion  Openness

11/30/04Personality Testing for Traits  Personality inventories Questionnaires on which people respond to items to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors Used to assess personality traits Often true-false, agree-disagree, etc. types of questions

11/30/04Personality Testing for Traits cont’d  Validity Measures what it is suppose to Personality inventories off greater validity than projective tests  Reliability Consistent results Personality inventories are more reliable than projective tests

11/30/04Personality Testing for Traits cont’d  Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Most clinically-used personality test 500 questions Originally designed to assess abnormal behavior  MMPI-2 Revised and updated version Assesses test takers on 10 clinical scales and 15 content scales

11/30/04Personality MMPI Scoring Profile

11/30/04Personality Evaluating the Trait Perspective  Does not consider how the situation affects personality traits  Does not explain why we behave the way we do  Do explain how we behave  Does not explain how our thoughts affect behavior

Psychodynamic Perspective  Thinking About Psychology  Module 25

11/30/04Personality  Personality: the person’s characteristics thoughts and behavior

11/30/04Personality Sigmund Freud   Founder of psychoanalysis  Proposed the first complete theory of personality  Emerges from tensions between the unconscious motives and unresolved childhood conflicts

11/30/04Personality Freud cont’d  Structure of the Human Mind (iceberg) Conscious: what we are aware of Preconscious: easily retrieved Unconscious: includes unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories Free association Freudian slips

11/30/04Personality Freud cont’d  Three forces Id: the child  Unconscious energy from basic aggressiveness and sexual drives  pleasure principle Superego: your parent  Internalized ideals and standards  what we “should” do Ego: the adult  Mediates between the id and superego  reality principle

11/30/04Personality Freud cont’d  Defense Mechanisms: ways to reduce anxiety Repression-put anxiety-arousing thoughts into the unconscious Regression-the person retreats into a more comfortable, infantile stage of life Denial-the person refuses to admit that something unpleasant is happening Reaction formation- the person expresses the opposite of the anxiety- provoking, unconscious feeling Projection-disguises threatening feelings by attributing the problems to others Rationalization-replaces the anxiety-provoking explanations with more comforting justifications Displacement- shifts an unacceptable impulse toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person

11/30/04Personality Freud cont’d

11/30/04Personality Freud cont’d  Stages of personality development Oral stage  Conflict: weaning Anal stage  Conflict: potty training Phallic stage  Oedipus complex Latency period  Identification process & gender identity Genital stage  Starts at puberty

11/30/04Personality Neo-Freudians  Alfred Adler Believed that social tensions were more important that sexual tensions Believes psychological problems were the result of feelings of inferiority Inferiority Complex: a condition that comes from being unable to compensate for normal inferiority feelings

11/30/04Personality Neo-Freudians cont’d  Carl Jung Believed that humans share a collective unconscious Collective unconscious: concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our ancestors

11/30/04Personality Neo-Freudians cont’d  Karen Horney Found psychoanalysis negatively biased against women Believed cultural/social variables are the foundation of personality development

11/30/04Personality Assessing Personality from a Psychodynamic Perspective  Projective tests: ambiguous stimuli to trigger projection of one’s inner thoughts and feelings  Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) Ambiguous pictures

11/30/04Personality Assessing cont’d  Rorschach inkblot test Most widely used Set of 10 inkblots

11/30/04Personality Assessing cont’d  Problems with the Rorschach Not reliable Lack of a universal scoring system Does not accurately predict personality characteristics No scientific basis

11/30/04Personality Evaluating the Psychodynamic Perspective  Most psychodynamic theorists do not believe that sex is the basis of personality  Agree that there are inner conflicts  People do not “fixate” at various stages of development  Agree that childhood experiences do shape personality  Comprehensive theory