Psychology of Personality

PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONALITY

DR AARTI GORWADKAR

• Personality can be defined as the distinctive and characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that make up an individual’s personal style of interacting with the physical and social environment.

GENETICS OF PERSONALITY • It has been widely accepted that personality

develops through the interaction of hereditary dispositions and environmental influences.

• Genetic differences account for about half of the variance in differences between people for most normally distributed temperament traits.

• Of the remaining 50 percent of the variance in differences among people, 30 to 35 percent is explained by non shared environmental effects (i.e., influences unique to each individual) and 10 to 15 percent by measurement error and non-trait score fluctuations.

• Of note, adoption studies suggest somewhat lower heritability of about 30 percent for personality traits.

• Contrary to the common belief, environmental influences that are shared by siblings (such as having the same parents, living in the same neighborhood, going to the same schools, etc.) have only modest influences on the differences among people.

Definition

• “Dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his/her unique adjustment to his/her environment.”

Allport

• From the structural standpoint personality can be decomposed into

Temperament Character Psyche

• Basic functions of personality are to feel, think, and perceive and to incorporate these into purposeful behaviors.

Temperament • Temperament refers to the body’s biases in the

modulation of conditioned behavioral responses to prescriptive physical stimuli.

• Four major temperament traits have been identified and subjected to extensive neurobiological, psychosocial, and clinical investigation:

• Harm• Avoidance• Novelty Seeking• Reward Dependence• Persistence

• Each of the four major dimensions is a normally distributed quantitative trait, moderately heritable, observable early in childhood, relatively stable in time, and moderately predictive of adolescent and adult behavior.

• Also known as the “emotional core” of personality.

• Depending on whether a particular temperament trait is high or low, certain emotions will tend to dominate an individual’s motivation, perception, and behavior.

• Even though some basic character components develop early in life, such as trust and confidence, it is the completion of self-object differentiation (“me” vs. “not-me”) between 18 months and 3 years of age that sets the stage for the development of character traits and secondary emotions like empathy.

Effect of + & - reinforcements on emotional states of 4 temperaments

TEMPERAMENT DIMENSION

HIGH SCORES+

HIGH SCORES_

LOW SCORES+

LOW SCORES_

HARM AVOIDANCE

ANXIOUS(AGITATED)

DEPRESSED(RETARDED)

CHEERFUL FEARLESS

NOVELTY SEEKING

EUPHORIC ANGRY PLACID STOICAL

REWARD DEPENDENCE

SYMPATHETIC DISGUSTED ALOOF INDIFFERENT

PERSISTENCE ETHUSIASTIC STEADFAST UNSTABLE DISCOURAGED

• Depending on whether a particular temperament trait is high or low, certain emotions will tend to dominate an individual’s motivation, perception, and behavior.

• Each of the these character traits is associated with a typical pattern of secondary emotions.

Character • Character refers to the “mind” that is the

“conceptual core” of the personality.

• Whereas temperament involves basic emotions like fear and anger, character involves secondary emotions like purposeful moderation, empathy, and patience and, in even more mature individuals, hope, love, and faith.

• Character is a “mental self-government” which involves executive, legislative and judicial functions.

• These functions are measured as 3 different character traits :

Self Directedness CooperativenessSelf Transcendence

CHARACTER DIMENSIONSCHARACTER DIMENSION HIGH LOW

SELF DIRECTEDNESS RESPONSIBLE, RESOURCEFUL,RESILIENT,SPONTANEOUS,PURPOSEFUL

BLAMING,WISHFUL, PASSIVE,GOAL-LESS.CONFLICTED

COOPERATIVENESS TOLERANT, EMPATHETIC,COMPASSIONATE,HELPFUL, PRINCIPLED

INSENSITIVE, SELFISH,INTOLERANT, REVENGEFUL,OPPORTUNISTIC

SELF TRANSCENDENCE CREATIVE, SPIRITUAL,TRANSPERSONAL,INSIGHTFUL,ACQUIESCENT ,HUMBLE

CONCRETE, AVOIDANT,ALIENATED,SKEPTICAL, CONTROLLING,CONVENTIONAL,PRETENTIOUS

• Normal character reflects one’s capacity to postpone immediate gratification and process internal needs through sublimation, anticipation,altruism, and humor.

• Character development is modular and stepwise.

• The developing character traits (i.e., newly internalized concepts about one’s self and the external world) optimize the adaptation of temperament (i.e., early emotionality) to the environment by reducing discrepancies between one’s emotional needs and norm-favoring social pressures.

Psyche • Psyche refers to a person’s consciousness, self-

awareness, or spirit.• The growth of self-awareness is crucial to the

development of full coherence of personality, which is manifest as creativity, well-being, and wisdom.

• Cloninger observed five distinct levels of intuitive awareness in human beings.

Assessment of psyche by the 5 levels

Conscious of being, Freedom of will, Beauty, Truth, and Goodness.

• Personality is conceptualized as a complex adaptive system involving a multidimensional interaction among temperament, character, and psyche.

• WHAT’S YOUR PERSONALITY???????

Theories of Personlaity

Psychodynamic TheoryBehaviorist TheoryHumanistic TheoryCognitive TheoryEvolutionary ApproachTrait Theory

Psychodynamic Approach• Sigmund Freud was the creator of the

psychodynamic approach.

• Despite its shortcomings as a scientific theory, the psychoanalytic account of personality remains the most comprehensive and influential theory of personality ever created.

• The basic premise is that much of what we do & act is driven by unconscious processes.

Personality Dynamics• Humans are closed energy systems.

• There is a constant amount of psychic energy for any given individual, which Freud called libido.

• One corollary of the principle of conservation of energy is that if a forbidden act or impulse is suppressed, its energy will seek an outlet somewhere else in the system, possibly appearing in a disguised form.

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

• They help us over the rough spots until we can deal with stressful situations more directly.

• Defense mechanisms become maladaptive only when they become the dominant mode of responding to problems.

MODIFICATION OF FREUD’S THEORIES

• Carl Jung ( collective Unconscious) The collective unconscious consists of primordial

images or archetypes inherited from our ancestors.

• Harry Stack Sullivan ( Interpersonal Relations) He argued that a personality can never be isolated

from the complex of interpersonal relations in which the person lives and his being.

• These theorists and more recent psychoanalytic theorists all place greater emphasis on the role of the ego.

• It is now hypothesized by some that ego develops independently from the ID.

• Current approaches to ego ties it more closely to cognitive processes.

CRITICAL EVALUATION• Freud’s recognition that unconscious

processes play an important role in much of our behavior is almost universally accepted.

• Very different behaviors may share the same underlying motive.

• Most of its concepts are ambiguous and difficult to define or measure objectively.

• Difficult to make predictions that can be empirically verified.

• Freud’s theory of anxiety & defense mechanisms has withstood the test of time, research & observation.

• It was he who first proposed that childhood experiences are responsible for shaping adult personality .

• First introduced the centrality of both “conflicts” & “unconscious” in human mental life.

BEHAVIORIST THEORY

• Emphasizes the importance of environmental, or situational, determinants of behavior.

• In this view, behavior is the result of a continuous interaction between personal and environmental variables.

• Persons & situations influence each other.• Focuses on environmental determinants of

behavior.

BEHAVIORIST THEORY• For the behaviorist, it is classical conditioning

that produces the internalized source of anxiety that Freud labeled the superego.

• Sees personality as the product of the individual’s unique reinforcement history and emphasizes the degree to which behavior varies across situations.

• Focuses primarily on environmental determinants as against the biological determinants of the psycho-analytic approach.

BASIC TENET OF BEHAVIORISM

• People behave in ways that are likely to produce reinforcement and that individual differences in behavior result primarily from differences in the kinds of learning experiences a person encounters in the course of growing up.

CRITICAL EVALUATION• It has led us to see human actions as reactions

to specific environments, and it has helped us focus on how environments control our behavior and how they can be changed to modify behavior.

• The systematic application of learning principles has proved successful in changing many maladaptive behaviors.

• Criticized for overemphasizing situational influences on behavior.

COGNITIVE APPROACH

• Differences in personality stem from the differences in the way individuals represent information.

• Instead of explaining behavior simply in terms of conditioning, it emphasizes the role of observational learning.

BEHAVIOR POTENTIAL

• Likelihood of a particular behavior occurring in a particular situation .

• Strength of the behavior is determined by 2 variables:

Expectancy Reinforcement value

• For eg: staying up for an exam up all night.

Social-Cognitive Approach• Developed by Albert Bandura and gave the

concept of “Reciprocal Determinism”. • External determinants of behavior (such as

rewards and punishments) and internal determinants (such as beliefs, thoughts, and expectations) are part of a system of interacting influences that affect both behavior and other parts of the system.

KELLY’S PERSONAL CONSTRUCT THEORY

• He proposed that the goal should be to discover personal constructs, the dimensions that individuals themselves use to interpret themselves and their social worlds.

• He devised his own test for eliciting a person’s personal constructs, the Role Construct Repertory Test or ‘Rep Test’.

• The Rep Test is a very general procedure and is not restricted to interpretations of other people.

ME AAI BABA AMRUT ABHI AMMA SWATI CONTRUCT CONTRAST

EMOTIONAL

RATIONAL

CONTROLLING

EASY GOING

DELIGENT LAZY

• Walter Mischel, has attempted to incorporate individual differences into social learning theory by introducing the following set of “cognitive variables”:

CompetenciesEncoding Strategies Expectancies Subjective ValuesSelf Regulatory Systems & Plans

• The concept of personal agency is central to the cognitive approach to personality and behavior.

• “Personal agency” – belief that they can influence important situations in their lives, drives their choices of what situations to approach and what to avoid, their level of motivation and persistence, and their well-being.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

• Although the cognitive perspective gives hope and encouragement to some, it can lead to ‘blaming the victim’.

• Employs vague concepts.• It suggests that individuals who do not triumph

over adversity are lacking the right attitude – if they would just believe in themselves, they could overcome their circumstances.

• This may not be true for everyone

• Based on empirical research.• It goes beyond the trait approach in explaining

personality characteristics.

HUMANISTIC APPROACH• Human choice, creativity, and self-actualization

are the preferred topics of investigation.• Meaningfulness must precede objectivity in the

selection of research problems.• Ultimate value is placed on the dignity of the

person. People are basically good. The objective of psychology is to understand, not to predict or control people.

• The experiencing person is of primary interest.• Humans are not simply objects of study.

• Basic force motivating the human organism is the “actualizing tendency”.

• “Actualizing Tendency” – tendency toward fulfillment or actualization of all the capacities of the organization.

• Many people experience what Maslow called peak experiences: transient moments of self-actualization.

ABRAHAM MASLOW’S SELF ACTUALIZATION THEORY

PEAK EXPERIENCE

• Peak Experience is characterized by happiness and fulfillment – a temporary, nonstriving, non-self-centered state of goal attainment.

CHARACTERISTICS OF SELF ACTUALIZERS

• Perceive reality efficiently and can tolerate uncertainty• Accept themselves and others for what they are• Spontaneous in thought and behavior• Problem-centered rather than self-centered• Have a good sense of humor• Highly creative• Resistant to enculturation, although not purposely• Unconventional • Concerned for the welfare of humanity• Capable of deep appreciation of the basic experiences of life• Establish deep, satisfying interpersonal relationships with a few, rather

than many, people.• Able to look at life from an objective viewpoint

• Emphasize the individual’s own role in defining and creating his or her destiny, and they downplay the determinism that is characteristic of the other approaches.

• Take a positive & optimistic view of healthy personality.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

• There is little empirical evidence for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

• This theory relies solely on the observations made on a few very healthy people.

• The applicability of these theories to malfunctioning or disadvantaged individuals is less apparent.

EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH

• One proxy for fertility is youth, and one proxy for economic resources is older age.

• Men are more individualistic, domineering, and oriented toward problem solving than women because these personality characteristics increased males’ ability to reproduce often over history and thus were selected for.

• Some critics argue that evolutionary psychology simply provides a thinly veiled justification for the unfair social conditions and prejudices in today’s world.

• Evolutionary theory is attractive in its power to explain a wide range of behaviors, however.

TESTS FOR PERSONALITY

MMPI

Q SORT METHOD

MMPI• Based on the criterion-keyed method or

empirical construction.• Was the 1st major inventory to incorporate a

number of validity scales within it.• It does not really matter whether the person

says an answer is true. What is important is the fact that he/she says it.

LIMITATION OF MMPI

• It is less successful in making finer distinction among various forms of psychopathology.

• Not much theoretical understanding of connection between the test responses & the personality characteristics they identify.

• The scores that were considered healthy were not representative of people from a wide range of national, ethnic & racial backgrounds.

Q SORT METHOD• A rater or sorter describes an individual’s

personality by sorting a set of approximately 100 cards into piles.

• Each card contains a personality statement, Eg: Has a wide range of interests.

• The rater sorts the cards into nine piles, placing the cards that are least descriptive of the individual in pile 1 on the left and those that are most descriptive in pile 9 on the right.

• The rater is explicitly comparing each trait with other traits within the same individual.

TRAIT THEORY

• A consensus is emerging among many trait researchers that five trait dimensions capture most of what we mean by personality – referred to as the ‘Big Five’.

BIG FIVE MODEL• EXTROVERSION

• OPENESS TO EXPERIENCE

• NEUROTICISM

• CONSCIENTIOUSNESS

• AGREEABLENESS

INTRAVERSION Vs EXTRAVERSION

AGREEABLENESS

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS

NEUROTICISM

OPENNESS

CRITICAL EVALUATION

• Important aspects of personality are left out while explaining personality solely on the basis of the trait approach.

• It puts a lot of emphasis on the individual differences but there is not much done to explain common underlying processes of personality.

• By itself, the trait approach is not a theory of personality but a general orientation and set of methods for assessing stable characteristics of individuals.

REFERENCES

• Atkinson & Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology, 15th Edition

• Kaplan & Sadock Concise Textbook of Psychiatry, 9th edition

• USMLE Pre Test Behavioral Sciences• Morgan & King’s Introduction to Psychology

• Think about your own tendency to be friendly or unfriendly. To what extent is the situation important in determining your level of friendliness?

THANK YOU