CHAPTER 11 SELF AND PERSONALITY. Learning Objectives How is the personality typically defined, and what are the five principles of defining personality?

CHAPTER 11SELF AND PERSONALITY

Learning Objectives

• How is the personality typically defined, and what are the five principles of defining personality?

• How do psychoanalytic, trait, and social-learning theories explain personality development?

Conceptualizing the Self and Personality

• Personality

– An organized combination of attributes, motives, values, and behaviors unique to each individual

– Often described in terms of relatively enduring dispositional traits (extraversion or introversion, independence or dependence)


• Personality (continued)– Characteristic adaptations

• Situation-specific and changeable ways in which people adapt to their roles and environments

–Motives, plans, goals, schemas, self-conceptions, stage-specific concerns, coping mechanisms

– Narrative identities• Unique and integrative life stories that

construct to give ourselves an identity and meaning to our lives


• Our self-perceptions– Self-concept

• Our perceptions – positive, negative, realistic, unrealistic – of our attributes and traits as a person

– Self-esteem• Our overall evaluation of our worth as a person

based upon the positive and negative self-perceptions that constitute our self-concept

– Identity • Our overall sense of who we are and how we fit

into society


• Psychoanalytic theory

– Psychoanalytic theorists use in-depth interviews, dream analysis, etc. to understand personality

• Trait theory

– Trait theorists construct personality scales and use the statistical technique of factor analysis to identify groupings of personality scale items that correlate with each other but not with other grouping of items


• Currently, there is agreement that personality can be described in terms of a five-factor model.

– Five dimensions of personality known as the Big Five

• Openness to experience

• Conscientiousness

• Extraversion

• Agreeableness

• Neuroticism


• Social-learning theorists reject the notion of universal stages of personality development, question the existence of enduring personality traits, and emphasize that people change if their environments change

• From the social-learning perspective, personality is a set of behavioral tendencies shaped by interactions with other people in specific social situations

Learning Objectives

• How do infants develop a sense of self?

• What behaviors do researchers accept as evidence of infants’ self-awareness?

• What is temperament?

• How do researchers define and describe temperament?

The Infant – The Emerging Self

• Infants develop an implicit sense of self through their perceptions of their bodies and actions– In the first 2 or 3 months, infants discover they can cause

things to happen– After 6 months, infants realize they and other people are

separate beings with different perspectives, ones that can be shared• Illustrated by joint attention

– About 9 months, infants and their companions share perceptual experiences by looking at the same object at the same time

» When an infant points at an object and looks toward her companions to attempt to focus their attention on the object, she shows awareness that self and other do not always share the same perceptions


– Around 18 months, infants recognize themselves visually as distinct individuals• Lewis and Brooks-Gunn (1979)

demonstrated the development of self-recognition by putting a dot of rouge on a baby’s nose and placing the infant in front of a mirror

– Infants 18 to 24 months of age touched their noses rather than the mirror, which indicated they thought they had a strange mark on their faces – evidence of self-recognition


• Infants develop a categorical self

– Classify themselves into social categories based on age, sex, and other characteristics

– What is “like me” and what is “not like me”

– By age 2, infants master the task of distinguishing between photos of themselves and photos of other infants of the same sex


• What contributes to self-awareness in infancy?

– Cognitive development

• Ability to recognize the self

– Social interaction

• Social relationships that enable secure attachments

• Social feedback – positive and negative

The Infant – Temperament

• The study of infant personality has centered on dimensions of temperament – early, genetically based tendencies to respond in predictable ways to events– Easiness and difficultness

• Thomas and Chess (1986, 1999) and colleagues studied nine dimensions of infant behavior, including

– Typical mood– Regularity or predictability of biological functions– Tendency to approach or withdraw from new

stimuli– Intensity of emotional reactions– Adaptability to new experiences and changes in

routine


• Categories of temperament– Easy temperament

• Infants are even tempered, typically content or happy, open and adaptable to new experiences, have regular feeding and sleeping habits, and are tolerant of frustrations and discomforts

– Difficult temperament• Infants are active, irritable, and irregular in their habits,

often react negatively (and vigorously) to changes in routine, are slow to adapt to new people or situations, cry frequently and loudly, and often have tantrums

– Slow-to-warm-up temperament• Infants are relatively inactive, somewhat moody, only

moderately regular in their daily schedules, slow to adapt to new people and situations, but they typically respond in mildly, rather than intensely, negative ways.


• Jerome Kagan identified another aspect of early temperament – behavioral inhibition

– The tendency to be shy, restrained, and distressed in response to unfamiliar people and situations

– Kagan and his colleagues have concluded that behavioral inhibition is biologically rooted

• Individuals with inhibited temperaments display strong brain responses and high heart rates in reaction to unfamiliar stimuli


• Rothbart and colleagues defined infant temperament in terms of emotional reactions and the control/regulation of such reactions– Identified three dimensions of temperament

• Surgency/extraversion – the tendency to actively and energetically approach new experiences in an emotionally positive way (rather than to be inhibited and withdrawn)

• Negative affectivity – the tendency to be sad, fearful, easily frustrated, and irritable (as opposed to laid back and adaptable)

• Effortful control – the ability to focus and shift attention when desired, control one’s behavior and plan a course of action, and regulate or suppress one’s emotions


• Thomas and Chess referred to the goodness of fit between a child and her environment– The extent to which the child’s

temperament is compatible with the demands and expectations of the social world to which she must adapt

• Infants’ temperaments and their parents’ parenting behaviors reciprocally influence one another and interact over time to steer the direction of later personality development

Leaning Objectives

• What changes occur in the development of children’s self-esteem?

• What factors influence self-esteem?

• How does personality evolve over childhood, and what do children understand of their personality?

The Child – Elaborating on the Sense of Self

• Toddlers give evidence of their emerging self-concepts

– By age 2, toddlers may use the personal pronouns I, me, my, and mine when referring to the self and you when addressing another person

– Toddlers show their emerging categorical selves when they describe themselves in terms of age and sex


• The preschool child’s self-concept is concrete and physical

– A preschooler’s self-description focuses on physical characteristics, possessions, physical activities, accomplishments, and preferences

• Young children typically do not mention their psychological traits or inner qualities


• Around age 8, psychological and social qualities become prominent in self-descriptions– Describe their enduring qualities using personality

trait terms, such as funny or smart– Form social identities, define themselves as part of

social units• “I’m a Kimberly, a second-grader at Brookside

School, a Brownie Scout.” – Become more capable of social comparison –

using information about how they compare with other children to characterize and evaluate themselves• “I’m the fastest runner in my class”

The Child – Self-Esteem

• Susan Harter (1999, 2003, 2006) has found that self-esteem becomes more differentiated or multi-dimensional with age– Preschoolers distinguish two aspects of self-esteem

• Their competence (physical and cognitive)• Their personal and social adequacy (social

acceptance).– By mid-elementary school, children differentiate among

five aspects of self-worth• Scholastic competence• Social acceptance• Behavioral conduct• Athletic competence• Physical appearance.

Caption: The multidimensional and hierarchical nature of self-esteem

The Child – Self-Esteem

• As children age, they integrate their self-perceptions in the five distinct domains to form an overall, abstract sense of self-worth– Self-esteem becomes multidimensional and

hierarchical• Global self-worth is at the top of the hierarchy

• The accuracy of children’s self-evaluations increases over the elementary school years

• Children form a sense of what they “should” be like – an ideal self– With age, the gap between the real self and the

ideal self increases, which contributes to a decrease in average self-esteem from early to middle childhood

The Child – Influences on Self-Esteem

• Influences on self-esteem– Heredity– Competence– Social feedback– Secure attachment to warm, democratic

parents

• Self-esteem remains stable over the elementary school years

• High self-esteem is positively correlated with a variety of measures of good adjustment

The Child – The Developing Personality

• During childhood, temperament interacts with individual social experiences and evolves into predictable personality

• Researchers are finding links between the dimensions of temperament and Big Five personality trait dimensions– Exact relationships are unclear

• Many aspects of personality do not stabilize until the elementary school years, or adolescence, or adulthood

Learning Objectives

• How do adolescents conceptualize their selves, including self-esteem and personality?

• What factors influence the development of identity during adolescence?

• How do adolescents make vocational choices?

• How does work affect adolescents’ identities?

The Adolescent – Self-Conceptions

• Compared to children’s self-descriptions, those of adolescents– Become less physical and more psychological– Become less concrete and more abstract– Have a more differentiated self-concept

• Includes acceptance by a larger peer group, by close friends, and by romantic partners

– Are more integrated and coherent

• Recognizes and integrates inconsistencies– Are more self-aware and reflective

The Adolescent – Self-Esteem

• Between childhood and early adolescence self-esteem tends to decrease– Transition to middle or junior high school– Physical changes of puberty– Social context and social comparisons

• Big-fish – little-pond effect occurs when the social comparisons are changed

–A good student in a class of good students is a small fish in a big pond

–A good student in a class of not-so-great students is a big fish in a little pond

The Adolescent – Self-Esteem

• Adolescents who experienced a decrease in self-esteem in early adolescence typically emerge with higher self-esteem– Contributing factors

• Opportunities to feel competent in areas that are important to them

• Approval and support of parents, peers, and other important people

• As adults, adolescents with low self-esteem tend to have poorer physical and mental health, poorer career and financial prospects, and higher levels of criminal behavior than adolescents with high self-esteem

The Adolescent – Forging a Sense of Identity

• Eric Erikson proposed that adolescents experience the psychosocial conflict of identity versus role confusion– The search for identity involves important questions

• What kind of career do I want? • What religious, moral, and political values can I

really call my own? • Who am I as a man or woman and as a sexual

being? • Where do I fit into the world? • What do I really want out of my life?

• The many separate perceptions that are part of the self-concept must be integrated into a coherent sense of self – identity


• Erikson believed that an adolescent identity crisis can be explained by– Changing bodies that call for a revised self-

concept and adjustment to being sexual beings

– Cognitive growth that permits systematic thinking about hypothetical possibilities, including possible future selves

– Social demands to grow up• According to Erikson, the moratorium period

during high school and the college years permits adolescents to experiment with different roles to find themselves


• James Marcia (1966) expanded on Erikson’s theory and developed a procedure to assess adolescent identity formation

• Adolescents are classified into one of four identity statuses based upon their progress toward an identity– The key questions are

• Whether an individual has experienced a crisis (or has seriously grappled with identity issues and explored alternatives)

• Whether an individual has achieved a commitment (that is, resolved the questions raised)

Caption: The four identity statuses as they apply to religious identity


• James Marcia’s identity statuses– Diffusion

• No crisis and no commitment– Foreclosure

• Commitment without a crisis– Accepted an identity suggested by parents or other

people– Moratorium status

• Experiencing a crisis or actively exploring identity issues– Questioning their religious upbringing, experimenting

with drugs, changing majors or relationships– Identity achievement status

• After a period of moratorium, a commitment is made

Caption: Percentage of subjects in each of James Marcia’s four identity statuses as a function of age


• The process of identity development includes forming an ethnic identity– A sense of personal identification with an

ethnic group and its values and cultural traditions

• The ingredients of a positive ethnic identity include– Socialization/teaching by parents regarding

cultural traditions– Preparation to live in a culturally diverse

society– Preparation to deal with prejudice in a manner

that does not breed anger and mistrust


• Exploring and forging a positive ethnic identity can– Protect adolescents’ self-concepts from the

damaging effects of racial or ethnic discrimination

– Foster high overall self-esteem – Help promote academic achievement and

good adjustment– Reduce depression symptoms.


• The main developmental trend evident in vocational choice is increasing realism with age – Between the ages of 11 and 18, adolescents

become more realistic and begin to make preliminary vocational choices that consider their interests, capacities, and values

– By late adolescence or emerging adulthood, considerations include the realities of the job market, the physical and intellectual requirements for different occupations, the availability of job openings in a field, the years of education required, and the work conditions


• Some adolescents are challenged to form a positive vocational identity– Adolescents from lower income families,

especially minority group members living in poverty and facing limited opportunities, discrimination, and stress, may lower their career aspirations and aim toward jobs they are likely to get rather than the jobs that interest them most

– The vocational choices of females have been and continue to be constrained by traditional gender norms


– Young women who have adopted traditional gender-role attitudes for marriage and family in early adulthood may set their educational and vocational sights low, figuring that they cannot “have it all”

– Many young women do not seriously consider traditionally male-dominated jobs, doubt their ability to land such jobs, and aim toward feminine-stereotyped, and often lower-status and lower-paying, occupations

– Many teens – female and male – do not explore a range of possible occupations before making a choice


• Progress toward identity formation in adolescent is influenced by five factors– Cognitive growth

• The ability to contemplate possible future identities, to think in complex and abstract ways, and to seek information

– Personality• Low neuroticism and high levels of openness to

experience and conscientiousness – Relationships with parents

• Those who are in the moratorium and identity achievement statuses have solid relationships with parents who encourage autonomy


– Opportunities to explore• Exposure to diverse ideas and

independent thinking, such as occurs during a college education

– The broader cultural context• In industrialized Western societies,

adolescents are expected to forge an identity after exploring their options

• In traditional societies, identity foreclosure may be the most adaptive path to adulthood

Learning Objectives

• How does personality change during adulthood?

• Why do people change or remain the same?

• How does culture influence personality

The Adult – Self-Conceptions

• Self-esteem tends rise gradually through the adult years until the mid-60s and then – for some adults – to drop in the 70s and 80s

• How do most elderly people manage to maintain positive self-images for so long, even as they experience some of the disabilities and losses that come with aging? By– Reducing the gap between the ideal self and

the real self– Changing standards of self-evaluation– Making social comparisons to other old people– Avoiding self-stereotyping


• Reducing the gap between the ideal self and the real self– According to Ryff’s (1991) research, older

adults scaled down their visions of what they could ideally be and what they likely will be, possibly because they recognized that aging brings with it a loss of capacities

– They also judged more positively what they had been

– As a result, their ideal, future, present, and past selves converged


• Adjusting goals and standards of self-evaluation– People’s goals and standards change with

age so that what seem like losses or failures to a younger person may not be perceived as such by the older adult

– As our goals and standards change over the lifespan, we apply different measuring sticks in evaluating ourselves and do not mind failing to achieve goals that are no longer important


• Comparing the self to other older adults– Older adults are able to maintain self-

esteem by making social comparisons primarily to other older adults

• With people who have the same kinds of chronic diseases and impairments they have, or even worse


• Not internalizing ageist stereotypes– Negative stereotypes we learn and that are

reinforced over the years may be applied to the self once we being to think of ourselves as “old”

– Research shows that negative stereotypes of aging can affect gait (in walking) and memory performance

– Research suggests that ageist stereotypes are harmful to behavior, health, and self-esteem, especially among people who have come to identify themselves as “old” and apply ageist stereotypes to themselves


• Self-conceptions also reflect broad cultural influences– In an individualistic culture, individuals define

themselves primarily as individuals and put their own goals ahead of their social group’s goals• North American and Western European

societies– In a collectivist culture, people define themselves

in terms of group memberships and give group goals higher priority than personal goals• Latin America, Africa, and East Asia societies


• Self-conceptions in an individualistic society such as the United States mean– Being your own person – independent and

different from others– Describing one’s unique personal qualities

and the personality traits believed to be apparent in most situations and relationships

– Maintaining high self-esteem


• Self-conceptions in a collectivist society such as Japan mean– Being interdependent with others,

embedded in society– Believing that the self is different as the

social context or situation is different– Being more modest and self-critical, noting

inadequacies

The Adult – Continuity and Discontinuity in Personality

• McCrae and Costa’s (2003, 2008) studies of personality change and continuity revealed consistency in rankings within a group– The person who tends to be extraverted as a

young adult is likely to be extraverted as an elderly adult, and the introvert is likely to remain introverted over the years

– The adult who shows high or low levels of neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, or openness to new experiences is likely to retain that ranking compared with that of peers years later


• Studies of personality change over time find both continuity and discontinuity in personality during adulthood– There is a good deal of cross-age consistency in

personality• Example: the person who tends to be extraverted

as a young adult is likely to be extraverted as an elderly adult, and the introvert is likely to remain introverted over the years

– Cohort effects demonstrate that the historical context in which people grow up affects their personality development


– Personality growth from adolescence to middle adulthood is highlighted by less excitement seeking and openness to experience but more maturity (emotional stability, conscientiousness, and agreeableness)

– There is little personality change from middle adulthood to later adulthood except for decreased activity level and openness to experience and increased agreeableness


• What makes a personality stable over the lifespan?– Heredity

• Genes contribute to individual differences in all five of the Big Five personality factors

– Lasting effects of childhood experiences– Stable environments– Gene-environment correlations

• Our genetic endowment may influence the kinds of experiences we have, and those experiences, in turn, may strengthen our genetically based predispositions


• What causes changes in personality over the lifespan?– Biological factors

• Diseases that cause nervous system deterioration can cause moodiness, irritability, and irresponsibility

• Changes in the environment

• Poor fit between person and environment

Learning Objectives

• What is the focus of each of Erikson’s psychosocial stages?

• What factors can influence how each crisis is resolved?

The Adult – Eriksonian Psychosocial Growth

• According to Erikson, both maturational forces and social demands push humans through eight psychosocial crises– Later conflicts may be difficult to resolve if

early conflicts were not resolved successfully

– Optimal development results in the gain of a “virtue” or psychosocial strength


• The path to adulthood– Trust vs. mistrust– Autonomy vs. shame and doubt– Initiative vs. guilt– Industry vs. inferiority– Identity vs. role confusion– Intimacy vs. isolation– Generativity vs. stagnation– Integrity vs. despair


– Trust vs. mistrust• Infants learn to trust others if their

caregivers are responsive to their needs – Autonomy vs. shame and doubt

• Toddlers acquire a sense of themselves as individuals

– Initiative vs. guilt• Preschoolers develop a sense of

purpose and take pride in accomplishments


– Industry vs. inferiority

• Elementary school children focus on mastering important skills and on evaluating their competencies

– Identity vs. role confusion

• The adolescent integrates separate aspects of the self-concept into a coherent sense of self.


– Intimacy vs. isolation

• Commitment to a shared identity with another person

– Generativity vs. stagnation

• The capacity to produce something that outlives you and to care about the welfare of future generations


– Integrity vs. despair

• Finding a sense of meaning in life that will enable facing the inevitability of death

–A sense of integrity is related to a high sense of psychological well-being and low levels of depression or despair


• Butler (1963) proposed that older adults engage in a process called life review– A reflection on unresolved conflicts of the past

in order to come to terms with themselves, find new meaning and coherence in life, and prepare for death

– Researchers find that elders who engage in life review display a stronger sense of integrity and better overall adjustment and well-being than those who do not reminisce much and those who mainly stew about unresolved regrets

The Adult – Midlife Crisis?

• Daniel Levinson (1986, 1996) proposed a stage theory of adulthood– Based on interviews with 40 men– Suggested that adults build a life structure, or

pattern of living, that is altered during transition periods approximately every 7 years

– The transition period from age 40 to age 45 is a time of midlife crisis• A person questions his life structure and

questions where he has been and where he is going

– Researchers find little support for Levinson’s claim that most adults experience a genuine crisis in their early 40s

Learning Objectives

• How do career paths change during adulthood?

• How do adults cope with age-related changes that affect their working selves?

• How are older adults influenced by retirement?

• How can we characterize successful aging?

The Adult – Vocational Development and Adjustment

• According to Phillips’ research (1982), from age 21 to age 36, young adults progressed from wide-open exploration of different career possibilities to tentative or trial commitments to a stabilization of their choices

• Adults often reach the peaks of their careers in their 40s

• Job performance is consistently correlated with the Big Five dimensions of conscientiousness, extraversion, and emotional stability


• Person–environment fit is critical to work performance– People tend to perform poorly and become

open to changing jobs when there is poor fit between their personality and aptitudes and the demands of their job or workplace


• Why do U.S. women earn about 80 cents for every dollar men earn?– Traditional gender-role norms have prompted many women to

subordinate career goals to family goals• Earnings are affected by interruptions for childbearing,

reduced hours, relocations, or deferred promotions– Workplace discrimination against women

• Traditionally “female” jobs pay less than “male” jobs, even when the intellectual demands of the work are equal

• Women who enter jobs with the same management degrees and salaries as men, and receive equal performance ratings, still do not rise as far in the organization or earn as much as their male peers

• Women earn about 20% less than men, even controlling for the tendency of women to work less, step out of the workforce more, and enter lower-paying occupations


• According to studies on aging workers– The job performance of workers in their 50s and

60s is largely similar overall to that of younger workers

– Age was largely unrelated to quality of task performance and creativity on the job• Older workers outperformed younger workers

in areas such as good citizenship and safety and had fewer problems with counterproductive behavior, aggression, substance use on the job, tardiness, and absenteeism

• Older workers did not perform as well in training programs, possibly because many of them involved computer technology


• Aging workers may be able to maintain job performance because they use selective optimization with compensation to cope with aging– Selection – focus on a limited set of goals and

the skills most needed to achieve them– Optimization – practice those skills to keep

them sharp– Compensation – develop ways around the

need for other skills


• In the U.S., roughly half of adults are out of the labor force by age 62-64, two thirds are out by age 65-69, and about 90% are out by age 70 or older

• Since the 1960s, the average age of retirement has dropped from over 67 to 62– Appears to be increasing as retiring baby

boomers find that they need to continue working for financial reasons and as the age of eligibility for full Social Security benefits increases


• Some workers retire all at once

• For others, retirement is a process that plays out over a number of years

– May retire gradually, cutting back work hours, taking part-time “bridge” jobs, cycling in and out of retirement several times

• Retiring workers face two challenges

– Adjusting to the loss of their work role

– Developing a satisfying, meaningful lifestyle in retirement


• Atchley (1976) proposed that adults transition from worker to retiree in phases– Preretirement phase – gather information,

talk about retirement, plan for the future– Honeymoon phase – enjoy the newfound

freedom– Disenchantment phase – feel aimless,

possibly unhappy as the novelty wears off– Reorientation phase – begin to put

together a realistic and satisfying lifestyle


• Favorable adjustment to retirement is associated with– Voluntary rather than involuntary

retirement– Good physical and mental health– Financial resources to live comfortably– Marriage or strong social support


• Women face challenges in their adjustment to retirement– May feel pressured to retire if their husbands

retire or develop health problems– Have moved in and out of the workforce more

and have not earned as much as men and therefore often find themselves with no pension and an inadequate income in retirement

– Are likely to outlive their husbands and end up living alone

The Adult – Personality and Successful Aging

• Theories of successful aging offer insight to successful retirement and happy, fulfilling old age– Activity theory suggests that aging adults will

find their lives satisfying to the extent that they can maintain their previous lifestyles and activity levels, either by continuing old activities or by finding substitutes (for example, by replacing work with hobbies, volunteer work, or other stimulating pursuits)• According to this view, psychological needs

do not really change as people enter old age: most aging individuals continue to want an active lifestyle

The Adult – Personality and Successful Aging

– Disengagement theory suggests that successful aging involves a withdrawal of the aging individual from society that is satisfying to both parties – the individual and society

• Because the aging individual has needs that are different from those she once had, she seeks to leave old roles behind and to reduce activity

• Meanwhile, society both encourages and benefits from the older person’s disengagement, which makes room for the younger generation

Documents

CHAPTER 11 SELF AND PERSONALITY. Learning Objectives How is the personality typically defined, and what are the five principles of defining personality?