1. Chalalai taesilapasathit Faculty of liberal arts, Thammasat university
Personality
Chalalai taesilapasathit
Faculty of liberal arts, Thammasat university

2. Personality
A pattern of enduring, distinctive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize the way an individual adapts to the world.
Approaches in psychological theories of personality:
Psychodynamics
Trait
Learning
Biology and Evolutionary
Humanistic

3. Psychodynamic Approach
Psychodynamic approaches to personality: Assume that personality is primarily unconscious
Motivated by inner forces and early childhood experiences

4. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Psychoanalytic theory: Unconscious forces act as determinants of personality
Theory by Sigmund Freud
Unconscious: Part of the personality that contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, drives, and instincts of which the individual is not aware
Unconsciousness consists of
Preconscious: non-threatening material that is easily brought to mind
Drives: instinctual wishes, desires, demands, and needs hidden from awareness because of the conflict and pain they would cause

5. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Personality structure: Id
Instinctual, unorganized, inborn part of personality
Pleasure principle
Ego
Balancing between Id’s and Superego’s needs
Reality principle
Superego
Moral branch of personality

6. Iceberg Analogy Ego Superego Id
Note: Instructor may choose to use this slide at several different points in lecture: (1) after Id/Ego/Superego are introduced; (2) after Unconscious processes and Repression are introduced; or (3) after Defense Mechanisms are enumerated. Reposition slide as appropriate.
Superego Id
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7. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Developing personality: Psychosexual stages
Psychosexual stages: Developmental periods that children pass through during which they encounter conflicts between the demands of society and their own sexual urges
Fixations: Remain locked in particular developmental stage

8. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Psychosexual stages:
Oral stage  Infant’s pleasure centers on the mouth
Anal stage  Child’s pleasure involves eliminative functions
Phallic stage  Child’s sexual interest in his or her opposite-sex parent, typically resolved through identification with the same-sex parent
Latency stage  Interest in sexuality is repressed
Genital stage  sexual reawakening during adolescence and adulthood

9. Psychosexual Stages

10. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Defense mechanisms: Unconscious strategies that people use to reduce anxiety by distorting reality and concealing the source of the anxiety from themselves

11. Defense Mechanisms

12. The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts
Psychoanalysts who were trained in traditional Freudian theory but who later rejected some of its major points:
Sexuality  not a pervasive force behind personality
Early experience  not as powerful as Freud thought
Importance of conscious thought
Sociocultural influences

13. Dissenters and Revisionistsx
Dissenters and Revisionists
Horney’s Sociocultural Approach
both sexes envy the attributes of the other
need for security, not sex, is primary motivator
Jung’s Analytical Theory
collective unconscious and archetypes
Adler’s Individual Psychology
perfection, not pleasure, is key motivator
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14. Trait Approach Trait: Consistent, habitual personality characteristics
An enduring disposition that leads behaviors displayed across different situations
Trait theories: Model of personality that seeks to identify the basic traits necessary to describe personality

15. Allport’s Trait Theory
Single characteristic that directs most of a person’s activities
Cardinal trait
Major characteristics of an individual
Central trait – honesty and sociability
Affect behavior in fewer situations
Secondary trait

16. Eysenck: Factoring Out Personality
Describes level of sociability
Extraversion
Encompasses emotional stability
Neuroticism
Degree to which reality is distorted
Psychoticism

17. Trait Approach: The Big Five

18. Evaluating Trait Approaches to Personality
Benefits:
Provide straightforward explanation of people’s behavioral consistencies
Allow comparison of one person to another
Influence the development of several useful personality measures
Drawbacks:
Validity of trait conceptions of personality
Do not provide explanations for behavior

19. Learning Approach B. F. Skinner’s behaviorist approach:
Personality is a collection of learned behavior patterns
Humans are infinitely changeable through the process of learning new behavior patterns

20. Learning Approach
Social cognitive approach to personality: Theories that emphasize the influence of a person’s cognitions and observation of others’ behavior, in determining personality
Self-efficacy: Belief that we can master a situation and produce positive outcomes

21. Learning Approach Walter Mischel:
Views personality as variable from one situation to another
Situationism – View that personality cannot be considered without taking the particular context of the situation into account
Cognitive-affective processing system theory (CAPS)
People’s thoughts and emotions about themselves and the world determine how they view, and then react, in situations

22. Evaluating Learning Approaches to Personality
Learning theories have:
Helped make personality psychology a scientific venture by focusing on observable behavior and the effects of their environments
Tend to share a highly deterministic view of human behavior
Maintains that behavior is shaped by forces beyond the individual’s control
Produced important, successful means of treating a variety of psychological disorders

23. Biological and Evolutionary Approaches
Suggest that important components of personality are inherited
Certain traits are more influenced by heredity than others
Social potency - Degree to which a person assumes mastery and leadership roles in social situations
Traditionalism - Tendency to follow authority

24. Biological and Evolutionary Approaches
Temperament: Individual’s behavioral style and characteristic way of responding that emerges early in life
Genes are found to be linked to specific personality characteristics
But cannot be viewed as the sole cause of personality

25. Humanistic Approach
Emphasize people’s innate goodness and desire to achieve higher levels of functioning
Rogers and the need for self-actualization
Self-actualization: State of self-fulfillment in which people realize their highest potential, each in a unique way
Self-concepts: Set of beliefs and perceptions people hold about their own abilities, behavior, and personality

26. Self-concept and Ideal-self

27. Evaluating Humanistic Approach
Benefits:
Highlights the uniqueness of human beings
Guides the development of a form of therapy designed to alleviate psychological difficulties
Criticisms:
Difficulty of verifying basic assumptions of the approach
Making the assumption that people are basically “good”

28. Assessing Personality
How can we most accurately assess personality?
What are the major types of personality measurement?

29. Psychological Tests
Standard measures devised to assess behavior objectively
Used by psychologists to help people make decisions about their lives and understand more about themselves

30. Self-Report Measures of Personality
Method of gathering data about people by asking them questions about their own behavior and traits
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2- Restructured Form (MMPI-2- RF )
Identifies people with psychological difficulties
Employed to predict some everyday behaviors

31. Projective Methods
Projective personality test: A test in which a person is shown an ambiguous, vague stimulus and asked to describe it or tell a story about it
Rorschach test: Involves showing a series of symmetrical visual stimuli to people who then are asked what the figures represent to them
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): Consists of a series of pictures about which a person is asked to write a story
Limitations of each, and use in clinical settings

32. Projective Methods

33. Behavioral Assessment
Direct measures of an individual’s behavior used to describe personality characteristics
Appropriate for observing and eventually remedying specific behavioral difficulties
Shyness in children