Essentials of Understanding Psychology 9 th Edition By Robert Feldman Azhar Ali Shah1.

Essentials of Understanding Psychology

9th EditionBy Robert Feldman

Azhar Ali Shah 1

Chapter 10:Personality

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MODULE 31: Psychodynamic Approaches to

Personality • How do psychologists define and use the

concept of personality?

• What do the theories of Freud and his successors tell us about the structure and development of personality?

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MODULE 31: Psychodynamic Approaches to

Personality • Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality

– Based on the idea that personality is motivated by inner forces and conflicts about which people have little awareness and over which they have no control .

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Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind

• Psychoanalytic Theory– Sigmund Freud– Unconscious

• Part of the personality that contains memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, and drives of which one is not aware

• Motivates much of our behavior – Preconscious

• Holds material easily brought to mind e.g. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

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Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:Mapping the Unconscious Mind

• Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, & Superego– Id

• Raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality • Sex, hunger, aggression and irritation• Holds primitive drives• Pleasure principle

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• Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, & Superego– Ego

• Strives to balance the desires of the id and the realities of the objective, outside world

• It makes decisions, control actions, solving problems and allow thinking

• Reality principle• It is also called "Executive” of personality

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• Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, & Superego– Superego

• Represents the rights and the wrongs of society as taught and modeled by one’s parents, teachers, and other significant individuals

• Includes the conscience which enables us to prevent the improper behavior by making us guilty.

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• Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages– Individuals encounter conflicts between the

demands of society and their own sexual desires.– Failure to resolve conflicts at any stage can result

in fixation– 12-18 months baby (sucking, eating)– 12 months – 3 years baby (get toilet training) etc.

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• Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages– Oral stage ( birth to 1 year)

• Baby’s mouth is focal point of pleasure• Weaning (sucking the mother breast with power) is

main conflict • Fixation could include:

– Eating– Talking– Smoking – Other oral interests

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• Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages– Anal stage (12-18 to 3 years)

• Major source of development is the digestive system• Children get growth in both retention and expulsion of

feces• Fixation may result in:

– Rigidity: they can do patient.– Orderliness (expectation)– Punctuality: they ask the things at right time e.g. hunger– Sloppiness: they can sustain their feces.

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• Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages– Phallic stage (3-6 years)

• Oedipal conflict At this stage the male take interest in opposite sex

therefore they take interest in mother, even they hate their father.

• Identification : wanting to be like another person as much as possible

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• Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages– Latency period (5-6year)

• Lasts until puberty (sexual mature)• Sexual interests become dormant it reemerge during

adult again.

– Genital stage (adult)• This process is permanent and it Extends until death• Focus is on mature, adult sexuality (sexual intercourse)

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• Defense Mechanisms– Unconscious strategies that people use to reduce anxiety by

concealing its source from themselves and others• Repression: we put unacceptable and unpleasant Id

impulse back into our unconscious e.g. patience.

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The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud

• Jung’s Collective Unconscious– Common set of ideas, feelings, images, and

symbols that we inherit from our relatives, the whole human race, and even nonhuman animal ancestors from the distant past

• Archetypes• Universal symbolic representations of a particular person,

object, or experience– He paid greater attention to the effects of society and culture

on personality development.

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MODULE 32: Trait, Learning, Biological, Evolutionary, and Humanistic Approaches to Personality

• What are the major aspects of trait, learning, biological and evolutionary, and humanistic approaches to personality?

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Trait Approaches:Placing Labels on Personality

• Trait Theory– Seeks to explain, in a straightforward way, the

consistencies in individuals’ behavior• Traits

– Consistent personality characteristics and behaviors displayed in different situations

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• Allport’s Trait Theory: Identifying Basic Characteristics– Cardinal trait

• Single characteristic that directs most of a person’s activities

– Central trait • Major characteristics of an individual e.g. honesty &

sociability.

– Secondary trait• Affect behavior in fewer situations e.g. hesitation in eating

meat.

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• Cattell and Eysenck: Factoring Out Personality– Factor analysis

• Statistical method of identifying associations among a large number of variables to reveal more general patterns

– Factors » Combinations of traits

– Cattell:• Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF)

– Eysenck:• 3 major dimensions:

– Extraversion, neuroticism(sociability), and psychoticism (twist from reality)

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• The Big Five Personality Traits– Openness to experience (imaginative / practical)– Conscientiousness (careful / careless, disciplined/impulsive, etc )– Extraversion ( talkative / quiet, sociable / retiring)– Agreeableness (kind /cold, appreciative / unfriendly)– Neuroticism (stable / tense, calm /anxious)

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Learning Approaches:We Are What We’ve Learned

• B. F. Skinner’s Behaviorist Approach– States that personality is a collection of learned

behavior patterns

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• How much consistency exists in personality?– Walter Mischel

• Personality is variable from one situation to another• Situationism• 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

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• Self-esteem– The component of personality that encompasses

our positive and negative self-evaluations• Relationship harmony

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Biological and Evolutionary Approaches:Are We Born with Personality?

• Suggest that important components of personality are inherited– Temperament

• Innate disposition

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Humanistic Approaches:The Uniqueness of You

• Emphasize people’s inherent goodness and their tendency to move towards higher levels of functioning

• Carl Rogers– Self-actualization

• Self-concepts– Unconditional positive regard– Conditional positive regard

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MODULE 33: Assessing Personality: Determining What Makes Us Distinctive

• How can we most accurately assess personality?

• What are the major types of personality measures?

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Psychological Tests

• Standard measures devised to assess behavior objectively– Reliability

• The measurement consistency of a test

– Validity • When a test measures what it is designed to measure

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Self-Report Measures of Personality

• Self-Report Measures– Asks people about a relatively small sample of

their behavior• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory -2 (MMPI-

2)• Test standardization

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Projective Measures

• Projective Personality Tests– People are shown ambiguous stimulus and asked to describe it

or tell a story about it• Rorschach test• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

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Behavioral Assessment

• Direct measures of an individual’s behavior designed to describe characteristics indicative of personality

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Essentials of Understanding Psychology 9 th Edition By Robert Feldman Azhar Ali Shah1.

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