Personality Day 2: Neo

Freudians and more

 The Modern Unconscious Involves…

 Schemas that control our perceptions

 Priming that points us toward certain interpretations
 Parallel processing (i.e. vision and thought) that occurs
without us knowing
 Implicit memories of learned skills
 Instantly activated emotions
 Self concepts and stereotypes that filter information
about ourselves and others
 Humanistic Theory
 Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow
 Humanistic theory is called the “3rd force” in psychology (psychoanalysis
and behaviorism)

 Humanistic theory makes certain assumptions about

people:
 Humans are basically “good” and not evil nor neutral. They strive
toward higher levels of functioning.
 This is contrary to psychoanalytic theory which assumes humans are
“evil” and behavior theory which assumes people are “neutral”
 Humanistic Theory

Reality,in humanism, is “subjective” and not

“objective” (this is also a post-modern idea)
There is no single “real world”
Self-conceptis of our own making based on our
own perception of ourselves
Changing your perception of yourself by changing your
reality can improve your self-concept
 Humanist: Carl Rogers
 Self-concept
 term for all the information and beliefs about your own
nature, qualities, and behavior
 Unconditional positive regard
 parentalacceptance and love regardless of our behavior leads
to becoming a fully functioning person. Also the cardinal rule
in humanistic psychotherapy
 Conditional positive regard
 acceptance and love dependent on behaving in certain ways
and fulfilling certain conditions. (What normally happens in
the real world.)
 Humanist: Carl Rogers

 The goal is to become a fully functioning person.

 An individual whose self-concept matches his/her inborn
potentials. One whose actual self and idealized self are
similar. i.e. There is a harmony between the image they
project to others and their true feelings or wishes.

 Anxiety results from experiences that threaten our

views of ourselves. We may become defensive to
block the threat.

© Prentice Hall, 1999

 Remember Maslow...
 Self-actualizing
tendency:
 the drive of
human beings to
fulfill their
potential.

 Truly self-actualized
people are hard to find.
 Self-Actualization
 Characteristics of self-actualized people include
 Accepting themselves, others, and the nature of world for
what they are
 Having a need for privacy and only a few close,
emotional relationships
 Being autonomous and
independent, democratic,
and very creative
 Having peak experiences,
which are experiences of deep
insight in which you experience
whatever you are doing as fully as possible
 Criticisms of the Humanist Theories

 Naïve
Assumptions—humanists are unrealistic,
romantic, and naïve about human nature
 Poortestability and inadequate evidence—
unconditional positive regard and self-actualization
are difficult to operationalize and test
 Narrowness—humanistic theories merely describe,
rather than explain personality
A Note to Consider about Humanism

 Unconditional Positive Regard is about giving care

and love but is not about condoning everything
and anything that a person has done

 Disciplinetakes the form of ‘I love you but not your

behaviour’
 It is NOT about inflating one’s self-esteem
Trait Theory and personality

What is a TRAIT?
 A trait is a characteristic pattern of behavior or a
disposition to feel and act
 Everyone has a combination of traits
Allport vs. Freud

 Gordon Allport focused

more on describing
personality with traits
VS.
 Freud tried to explain
individual traits with his
psychoanalytic theory
 Personality

 The Five-Factor Model of Traits

 The “Big Five” – OCEAN or Canoe
– Openness to experience
– Conscientiousness
– Extraversion
– Agreeableness
– Neuroticism (emotional stability)
 Traits vs Behaviour
 Traits do seem to be relatively stable over time
– especially true in longitudinal studies of adults
 Behaviors are less predictable
– how someone behaves depends on the situation as well
as internal characteristics

 Expressiveness does seem to be consistent in

various situations

 Averaging behavior over a variety of situations does

reveal distinct traits
Biological Factors for Traits?
Differences in brain functioning
e.g.
Extraverts seek
stimulation due to low
normal brain arousal
(less active in frontal
lobe)
Differences in children’s autonomic
nervous system
Genes contribute to temperament
& behavioral style
 Biological Theories of Personality

 Temperaments do
seem to be stable
from infants to old
age.
Personality Assessment

 The main uses of personality tests are to aid in

diagnosing people with problems, counseling, and
making personnel decisions

Personality
Inventories
Projective
Tests
 Personality Inventories
 Are designed to measure multiple traits of personality, and
in some cases, disorders (psycopathology)
 Area series of questions or statements for which the test taker
must indicate whether they apply to them or not

 The MMPI (the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory)

is the most widely used, translated into more than 100
languages
 Typically administered and scored by a computer
 Development of the MMPI
 Used empirical approach to item selection
 Test items were chosen based on their ability to discriminate one
group of people from another
 Items were selected for a scale if the psychiatric group scored
higher than non-clinical test-takers
 Example: “Much of the time my head seems to hurt all over”
 Endorsed by 4% of non-clinical test-takers

 Endorsed by 12% of Hypochondriasis group

 Difference was statistically significant
 Development of MMPI
 Originally eight psychiatric patient groups were formed for test
development (about 50 in each group): Hypochondriasis,
Depression, Hysteria, Psychopathic Deviate, Paranoia,
Psychasthenia, Schizophrenia, Hypomania

 MMPI-2 published in 1989 was re-normed on more

representative sample
 2600 people from across the country representative of 1980
U.S. census data
 Rewrote awkward or offensive items, some new items added,
some old items removed
 The MMPI is currently commonly administered in one of
two forms — the MMPI-2, which has 567 true/false
questions, and the newer MMPI-2-RF, published in 2008
and containing only 338 true/false items.

 The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is

considered a protected psychological instrument, meaning
it can only be given and interpreted by a psychologist
trained to do so
MMPI

 Contains four validity scales, which

attempt to detect test takers who are
trying to cover up problems and fake
profiles or who were careless in their
responding
 Its test construction method leads to
good predictive validity for its clinical
scales and its objective scoring
procedure leads to reliability in
interpretation
Evaluating the Trait Perspective
The Person-Situation Consistency of Expressive
Controversy Style
 Behavior influenced by  Our traits are less
the interaction of our constrained in a familiar
inner disposition with our environments
environment (our  First impressions are
personality is different in very accurate in terms
different situations) of expressiveness
 The Social-Cognitive
Perspective
 Proposed by Bandura; emphasizes the interaction of
persons and their situations

 Social-Cognitive theorists believe:

 we learn behaviors through conditioning or by observing
others and copying them
 our behavior is influenced by our thoughts about the
situation

 Bottom Line is the interaction between environment and people

 Reciprocal Influences
 “Behavior, environment & internal personal factors all
operate as interlocking determinants of each other”
1) Different people choose different environments
2) Our personalities shape how we interpret and react to events
3) Our personalities help create situations to which we react
 Reciprocal Influences

REMEMBER: behavior emerges

from the interplay of
external and internal
influences
Personal Control

 Are we controlling or are we controlled by our

environment?
 There are 2 ways to study the effect of personal
control
1) Correlate people’s feelings of control with
their behaviors and achievements
2) Experiment by raising or lowering people’s
sense of controlling and noting the effects
Locus of Control

EXTERNAL LOCUS OF INTERNAL LOCUS OF

CONTROL CONTROL
 Perception that  Believe in controlling
chance or outside one’s destiny
forces determine their  Achieve more in
fate school, able to handle
various stresses,
better health, feel
less depressed…
Self Control

- the ability to control impulses

and delay gratification
- predicts good adjustment,
better grades and social
success
- Requires attention and energy
Learning Helplessness vs. Personal
Control
Learned Helplessness:  Shock of unfamiliar
 Hopelessness and culture is a decreased
depression learned by sense of control due
an animal or human to being unsure about
when they can’t avoid people’s response
repeated aversive
events  Perceived control
makes people happier
 Martin Seligman and
studies on dogs
Optimism

 Measure of how helpless or

effective one feels
 Excessive optimism promotes
unrealistic optimism about
the future
 People are overconfident
when most incompetent
Assessing Behavior in Situations

 Past behavior patterns in similar situations best

measure future performance
 Some people are put in a simulated situation that
makes them do certain tasks and they are
evaluated on how they handle the situation
Evaluating the Social-Cognitive
Perspective
 How do situations affect or are affected by
individuals?
 Builds on psychological research on learning and
cognition
 Does this focus too much on situation rather than
the person’s inner traits?
 Biologically influenced traits still matter
 Evaluating the Social-
Cognitive Perspective
 How do situations affect individuals?
 Builds on psychological research on learning
and cognition
 Does this focus too much on situation rather
than the person’s inner traits?
 Biologically influenced traits still matter
 Possible Selves
 Includes the self you dream of
becoming: the rich self, the
successful self, the loved and
admired self
 Also includes the self you fear
becoming: the unemployed self, the
lonely self, the academically failed
self
 They motivate us by laying out
specific goals and providing the
energy to work towards them
 The Spotlight Effect
 Spotlight effect: overestimating other’s
noticing and evaluating our appearance,
performance, and mistakes (as if we assume
a spotlight shines on us)
 However, people notice less than we think
they do, even after an embarrassing moment
or a mistake we made
 We tend to remember information better if
it is encoded in terms of ourselves
Benefits of high self-esteem:

 Fewer sleepless  Less shy and lonely

nights
 Less likely to see
 Succumb less easily
to pressures to rejection where
conform none exists
 Less likely to use  You’re just plain
drugs happier
 More persistent with
difficult tasks
Low Self-Esteem

 Connects to
 Depression: people
feel they are falling
short of their hopes
 Anxiety:people feel
they are falling
short of what they
ought to be
 Effect of Low Self-Esteem:

 Ifyou temporarily deflate people’s self-image

(telling them they did poorly on a test, etc.) they are
more likely to scorn others or express greater racial
prejudice
 People negative about themselves tend to be easily
offended and judgmental
 Those made to feel insecure often become
excessively critical, as if to impress others with their
own brilliance
 People who have faced discrimination maintain
their self-esteem in three ways:
 They value the things at which they excel in
 They attribute problems to prejudice
 Theydo as everyone does, they compare
themselves to those in their own group
 Despite the realities of prejudice, groups like these
report levels of happiness roughly comparable to others
 Self-Serving Bias
 Self-serving
bias: a readiness to perceive
oneself favourably
People accept more responsibility for good
deeds than for bad, and for successes than for
failures
Most people see themselves as better than
average
We…
 Remember and justify our past
actions in self-enhancing ways
 Exhibit an inflated confidence
in our beliefs and judgments
 Overestimate how well we
would act in a situation
 Often seek our favourable,
self-enhancing information
 Are quicker to believe
flattering comments
about ourselves than
unflattering ones
 Overestimate how
much others support
our opinions
 Underestimate the
commonality of our
strengths
 Exhibit group pride –
our school, country,
etc is always superior
Pride does go before the fall…

 Encouraging people to feel good

about themselves when they
haven't earned it poses
problems. Conceited, self-
important individuals turn nasty
towards those who puncture
their bubbles of self-love. (Roy
Baumeister)
Culture and the Self

 Individualism: giving
priority to one’s own
goals over group
goals, and defining
one’s identity in terms
of personal attributes
rather than group
identifications.
 Collectivism: giving
priority to the goals
of one’s group
(often one’s
extended family or
work groups) and
defining one’s
identity accordingly.
 Value Contrasts Between
Individualism and Collectivism
Concept Individualism Collectivism
Self Independent Interdependent
(identity from (identity from
individual traits) belonging)
Life task Discover & express Maintain connections,
uniqueness fit in
What matters Me – personal Us – group goals and
achievement and solidarity; social
fulfillment; rights and responsibilities and
liberties; self-esteem relationships
Coping method Change reality Accommodate to
reality