Myers’ EXPLORINGPSYCHOLOGY (7th Ed)

Chapter 12

PersonalityPersonality

Modified from:James A. McCubbin, PhD

Clemson University

Worth Publishers

What is Personality?

� Personality

� Individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, & actingthinking, feeling, & acting

�Historic perspectives

�Psychoanalytic

�Humanistic

Psychoanalytic

Perspective

� Freud’s Theory

� Proposed that childhood sexuality & unconscious motivations influence personality

� Psychoanalysis

� Attributes thoughts & actions to unconsciousmotives & conflicts

� Treat psychological disorders by seeking to expose & interpret unconscious tensions

� Used free association to explore unconscious

Psychoanalytic

Perspective

� Unconscious

� According to Freud - a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings & unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings & memories

� Contemporary viewpoint - information processing of which we are unaware

Personality Structure

� Id� Reservoir of unconscious psychic energy

� Strives to satisfy basic sexual & aggressive drives

� Pleasure principle (immediate gratification)

� Ego� Ego� Largely conscious, “executive” part of personality

� Mediates among demands of id, superego, & reality

� Reality principle, satisfying id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain

� Superego� Internalized ideals

� Standards for judgment (conscience) & aspirations

Personality

Development

� Psychosexual Stages

� Childhood stages of development during which id’s pleasure-seeking energies which id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones

� Fixation

� Lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts unresolved

Personality

Development

Defense Mechanisms

� Ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

� Repression

� Regression� Regression

� Reaction Formation

� Projection

� Rationalization

� Displacement

Humanistic

Perspective

� Focused on ways “healthy” people strive

for self-determination & self-realization

� Maslow’s Self-Actualization

�Ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical & psychological needs met & self-esteem achieved

�Motivation to fulfill one’s potential

Humanistic

Perspective

� Rogers’ Person-Centered Perspective� Focused on growth & fulfillment of individuals

� Requires genuineness, empathy & acceptance

� Unconditional Positive Regard� Unconditional Positive Regard

� Attitude of total acceptance toward another

� Self-Concept

� Central feature of personality for Rogers & Maslow

� All thoughts & feelings about ourselves, in answer to question, “Who am I?”

Contemporary Research:

Trait Perspective

� Trait� Characteristic pattern of behavior or

� Disposition to feel & act, as assessed by self-report inventories & peer reportsreport inventories & peer reports

� Personality Inventory� Questionnaire (often true-false or agree-

disagree items) on which respond to items designed to gauge wide range of feelings & behaviors

� Assesses selected personality traits

Trait Perspective

� Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

� Most widely researched & clinically used of all personality testsof all personality tests

� Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (considered most appropriate use)

� Now used for other screening purposes

� Empirically Derived Test

Trait Perspective

Contemporary Research:

Social-Cognitive Perspective

� Views behavior as influenced by interaction between persons & social contextcontext

� Reciprocal Determinism (Bandura)

� Interacting influences between personality & environmental factors

Social-Cognitive

Perspective

� Personal Control

� Sense of controlling environments rather than feeling helpless

� External Locus of Control

� Perception that chance or outside forces beyond personal control determine fate

� Internal Locus of Control

� Perception that one controls own fate

� Learned Helplessness

Exploring the Self

� Spotlight Effect

� Overestimating others noticing & evaluating our appearance, performance, & blundersblunders

� Self Esteem

� One’s feelings of high or low self-worth

� Self-Serving Bias

� Readiness to perceive oneself favorably