Sarah Grison • Todd Heatherton • Michael Gazzaniga Psychology … 13 Slides... · 13.1 How Do We Know Ourselves? •Personality –The characteristic thoughts, emotional responses,

Psychology in Your Life

SECOND EDITION

Chapter 13Self and Personality

Sarah Grison • Todd Heatherton • Michael Gazzaniga

© 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.1

13.1 How Do We Know Ourselves?

• Personality– The characteristic thoughts, emotional

responses, and behaviors that are relatively stable in an individual over time and across circumstances

• Self-schema– An integrated set of memories, beliefs, and

generalizations about the self• Researchers typically observe activity in the middle

of the frontal lobes of the brain when people process information about themselves

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Our Sense of Self Is Who We Believe We Are

• Each of us has a notion of something we call the self, but the self is difficult to define– For college students, the sense of self

typically includes • Gender• Age• Student status• Interpersonal style (e.g., shy, friendly)• Personal characteristics (e.g., moody, optimistic)• Body image (e.g., positive, negative)

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Our Sense of Self Is Who We Believe We Are (3)

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• Working self-concept– Reflects how people think of themselves at a

given moment• Research respondents are especially likely to mention

features such as ethnicity, gender, or age if they differ in these respects from other people around them at that moment

• Self-esteem– The affective aspect of the self

• Many theories propose that self-esteem is based on how we believe others perceive us

– This view is known as reflected appraisal 5


• Sociometer theory– Self-esteem is a sociometer, an internal

monitor of social acceptance or rejection• When our sociometer indicates a high possibility of

rejection, we experience low self-esteem• When our sociometer indicates a low probability of

rejection, we tend to experience high self-esteem

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• Self-esteem and life outcomes– Evidence from psychology indicates that self-

esteem may be less important than is commonly believed

• A review of several hundred studies found that although people with high self-esteem report being much happier than others, self-esteem is weakly related to objective life outcomes

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– One characteristic associated with inflated self-esteem is narcissism

• An analysis of many studies found increasing narcissism among American college students between 1979 and 2006

– Even though we might encourage children to have high self-esteem, there is a tendency for self-esteem to fall during adolescence and be at its lowest for people, especially young women, aged 18 to 22 years

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We Try to Maintain a PositiveSense of Self (3)

• Better-than-average effect– According to research, most people have

positive illusions—that is, overly favorable and unrealistic beliefs—in at least three areas

1. They continually experience the better-than-average effect2. They have unrealistic beliefs about how much they can control events3. They are unrealistically optimistic about their personal future

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• Social comparisons– Downward comparisons: Comparing oneself to

another person who is less competent or in a worse situation, which tends to protect one’s high self-esteem

– Upward comparisons: Comparing oneself to another person who is more competent or in a better situation, which tends to confirm one’s low self-esteem

• Temporal comparison is another form of downward comparison, in which people view their current selves as better than their former selves 12


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• Self-serving biases– Self-serving bias: The tendency for people

to take personal credit for success but blame failure on external factors

• For instance, students who do extremely well on exams often explain their performance by referring to their skills or hard work

• Those who do poorly might describe the test as an arbitrary examination of trivial details

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Our Sense of Self Is Influenced by Cultural Factors (1)

• Some cultures emphasize the collective self: connections with others, following norms etc.– Such collectivist cultures include those in Japan,

Greece, Pakistan, China, and some regions of Africa

• Individualist cultures emphasize rights and freedoms, self-expression, and diversity, – This includes the cultures of northern and western

Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States

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13.2 How Can We UnderstandPersonality? (1)

• In the past century, psychologists have studied personality based on several different approaches– Psychodynamic theory– Humanistic approaches– Social cognitive approaches– Trait approaches

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Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious Conflicts (1)

• Psychodynamic theory– Freudian theory stating that unconscious

forces determine behavior• The central idea of this theory is that unconscious

forces—such as wishes, desires, and hidden memories—determine behavior

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• Unconscious conflicts– The conscious level of our mental activity

consists of the thoughts that we are aware of – The preconscious level consists of content

that is not currently in our awareness but that could be brought to awareness

– The unconscious level contains material that the mind cannot easily retrieve

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• Three structures of personality1. Id: The component of personality that is

completely submerged in the unconscious and operates according to the pleasure principle• Freud called the force that drives the pleasure principle

the libido. Today, the term has a specifically sexual connotation

2. Superego: In psychodynamic theory, the component of personality that reflects the internalization of societal and parental standards of conduct• It is a rigid structure of morality, or conscience 21


3. Ego: In psychodynamic theory, the component of personality that tries to satisfy the wishes of the id while being responsive to the superego• The ego operates according to the reality principle,

which involves rational thought and problem solving

– Conflicts between the id and the superego lead to anxiety. The ego then copes with the anxiety through various defense mechanisms• Defense mechanisms: Unconscious mental strategies

that the mind uses to protect itself from distress22


• Psychosexual stages of development– In each stage, the libido is focused on one of the

body’s erogenous zones, which include the mouth, the anus, and the genitals

– Newborns to age two kids are in the oral stage– Kids 2 to 3 years old enter the anal stage– From ages 3 to 5, children are in the phallic stage– The phallic stage is followed by a latency stage– In the genital stage, adolescents and adults attain

mature attitudes about sexuality and adulthood• Oedipus complex 23


– According to Freud, progression through these psychosexual stages profoundly affects personality

• For example, some people become fixated, or stuck, at a stage during which they receive either excessive parental restriction or indulgence

– Those fixated at the oral stage develop oral personalities

– Those fixated at the anal phase develop anal-retentive personalities

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• Psychodynamic theory today– Contemporary neo-Freudians focus on social

interactions• In object relations theory our mind and sense of self develop

in relation to others (“objects”) in our environment, and how we relate to these others shapes our personality

– Because Freud’s central premises cannot be examined through accepted scientific methods, psychologists have largely abandoned psychodynamic theories

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Humanistic Approaches EmphasizeGoodness in People (1)

• Humanistic approaches– Ways of studying personality that emphasize

self-actualization, the search for fulfillment of potential through greater self-understanding

• Carl Rogers introduced a person-centered approach to understanding personality and human relationships

– Conditions of worth– Unconditional positive regard

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Social Cognitive Approaches Focus on How Thoughts Shape Personality (1)

• Social cognitive approaches– Ways of studying personality that recognize

the influence of how people think• Expectancy theory

– According to Rotter’s expectancy theory, our behaviors are a part of our personality

• They result from how we think about two things– Our expectancies for reinforcement – The values we ascribe to particular reinforcers

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– Personalities are based on locus of control• The idea that personality is based on people’s

perception of whether they control the rewards and punishments they experience (internal locus of control) or not (external locus of control)

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• Reciprocal determinism– Albert Bandura argued that three factors

influence how a person acts1. Person’s environment2. Person factors, which include the person’s

characteristics, self-confidence, and expectations3. Behavior itself

– Because personality is explained by the interaction of all three factors, the model is called reciprocal determinism

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Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics (1)

• Trait approaches– Ways of studying personality that are based

on people’s characteristics—their tendencies to act in a certain way over time and across circumstances

– These allow us to predict a variety of different behaviors

– Traits exist on a continuum • Most people fall somewhere in the middle, and

relatively few are at the extremes31

Trait Approaches DescribeCharacteristics (3)

• The Big Five, or Five Factor Theory– This theory identifies five basic personality traits

1. Openness to experience 2. Conscientiousness 3. Extraversion 4. Agreeableness5. Neuroticism (secure, calm, rarely angered)

– Evidence supports the five-factor theory• The Big Five personality traits emerge across cultures

and among adults and children, even when vastly different questionnaires are used to assess the factors 32


• Biological trait theory– Eysenck developed the biological trait theory– Eysenck initially proposed that personality

traits had two major dimensions1. How outgoing people were 2. Whether their emotions tended to be stable or

unstable

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– Introversion refers to how shy, reserved, and quiet a person is

– Extraversion refers to how sociable, outgoing, and bold a person is

– Eysenck believed that this dimension reflects differences in biological processes

– Eysenck also proposed a third dimension of personality traits. Psychoticism reflects a mix of aggression, poor impulse control, self-centeredness, or a lack of empathy, and is now called constraint

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13.3 How Does Biology AffectPersonality?

• Research has shown that certain genes can be linked with some personality traits– Numerous studies have shown that identical

twins are more similar than non-identical twins in personality traits described by the five-factor theory

– Further evidence for the genetic basis of personality comes from adoption studies

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Our Temperaments Are Innate (1)• Temperament

– Biologically based tendency to feel or act in certain ways

• Life experiences may alter personality traits, but temperaments represent the innate biological structures of personality

• Three aspects of temperament– Three personality characteristics can be

considered temperaments1.Activity level2.Emotionality3.Sociability 37

Our Temperaments Are Innate (4)• Long-term implications of temperament

– Early childhood temperament appears to influence behavior and personality significantly throughout a person’s development

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Personality Is Influenced by Physiology (1)

• Research on the neurobiological basis of personality has explored the dimension of extraversion/introversion– Reticular activating system (RAS)

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Personality Stability Is Influencedby Biology and Situation (1)

• Genetic makeup may predispose people to certain personality traits or characteristics– Whether personality is fixed or changeable

depends on how we define the essential features of personality

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• Cross-cultural findings suggest that age-related changes in personality occur independently of environmental influences and therefore that personality change itself may be based in human biology

• Identical twins’ personalities become more similar as they age

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• Other evidence suggests that some aspects of personality change in response to life events– Basic tendencies: Personality traits that are

largely determined by biology and are stable over time

– Characteristic adaptations: Changes in behavioral expression of basic tendencies based on the demands of specific situations

– Parenting style has less influence on personality than we used to believe it did 42


• Life events can also change personality– Personality is usually stable because

environments tend to be relatively stable– Stability increases over time, particularly after 50

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How Do We Assess Personality?• Projective measures

– Personality tests examine unconscious processes by having people interpret ambiguous stimuli

• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)• Rorschach inkblot test

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Several Methods Are Used to Assess Personality (2)

• Self-report measures– Personality tests that use questionnaires to let

people respond to items that reveal traits and behaviors

• NEO Personality Inventory

• Personality in everyday life– Electronically activated record (EAR)

• People wear a device that unobtrusively tracks their real-world moment-to-moment interactions, picking up snippets of conversation and other auditory information

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Several Methods Are Used to Assess Personality (5)

• Observational methods– How well do observers’ personality judgments

predict others’ behavior?• Our close acquaintances may predict our behavior

more accurately than we do ourselves• Research suggests that we have blind spots about

various aspects of our personality because we want to feel good about ourselves

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Behavior Is Influenced by Personality and Situations (2)

• Interaction of personality and situation– Mischel proposed that behaviors are determined

more by situations than by personality traits• Situationism: The theory that behavior is determined

more by situations than by personality traits– Personality psychologists differentiate between strong

situations and weak situations• Strong situations (e.g., elevators, religious services, job

interviews) tend to mask differences in personality, thanks to the power of the social environment

• Weak situations (e.g., parks, bars, one’s house) tend to reveal differences in personality

• Interactionists: Theorists who believe that behavior is determined jointly by situations and underlying traits 47

There Are Cultural and Sex Differences in Personality (1)

• Researchers found the five-factor theory personality traits in 56 countries, but there were modest differences across the countries– Women and men are much more similar than

different in terms of personality, but the differences between them largely support the stereotypes

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Sarah Grison • Todd Heatherton • Michael Gazzaniga Psychology … 13 Slides... · 13.1 How Do We Know Ourselves? •Personality –The characteristic thoughts, emotional responses,

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