Unit 2: PersonalityLesson 1: Personality Theories

• Personality is the organized system of behaviors, attitudes and values that characterize an individual and account for a particular way in which to function in the environment.

• Personality psychology is the study of these characteristics as they make a person different from others and consistent within themselves.

• Like other areas of psychology, personality study deals with characteristics common to all – but unlike other areas, the emphasis is on individual variations.

Video

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqad4BUVju4

Cross-over between personality theories as explained using life and personality of Nelson Mandela

Invictus – the poem and the movie

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oIKqeZWjis

• Poem by William Ernest Henley• Used in the movie because of connection to

Nelson Mandela’s life

Invictus by William Ernest HenleyOut of the night that covers me,Black as the Pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may beFor my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstanceI have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chanceMy head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tearsLooms but the Horror of the shade,And yet the menace of the yearsFinds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll.I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.

Psychoanalysis

• based on the assumption that how we develop and behave is the result of impulses or needs that are unknown to us.

• In other words, what we are comes from hidden forces. • The theory arose from a belief that people with

psychological problems were unable to see the origin of their difficulties.

• To view these forces requires a trained professional who will analyze one’s thoughts, feelings, and history to reveal what is going on beneath the surface. That’s how we got the term psychoanalysis.

Sigmund Freud• The most famous psychoanalyst• His theory of how we develop and what controls us dominated psychology from the

early 1900s through the late 1940s. • Freud believed that the core of one’s personality appeared within the first five or six

years of life and was more or less fixed by that age. • For him, individual development had its source in the family and the conflicts that

every family has. • Our feelings about ourselves come from jealousies, anxieties, and guilt regarding how

we relate to other family members and how they view us. Poor Freud • This emphasis is not hard to understand since Freud’s own family life was chaotic. His

father was 20 years old than his mother, had a couple of children by a previous marriage, and he had a mistress as well.

• Freud’s mother then had eight children. At one point, there were the eight children, a half-brother the age of Freud’s mother, the father, and a nephew all living in the same cramped 30-foot by 30-foot room. It makes sense that the family friction and unwanted intimacy this brought about would lead to many of Freud’s beliefs.

Quirks about Freud

• Freud studied to become a physician and for a while practiced medicine.

But two things changed the course of his life:1) as he listened to patients, he became more

and more convinced that the problems they were having were coming from psychological forces rather than physical ones

2) he couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

Weird Cases• One of Freud’s first patients was a woman who couldn’t drink water but who stayed alive

by eating only fruit such as melons. This clearly wasn’t a normal sickness, and Freud couldn’t make sense of it at first.

• A physician friend of Freud’s told him that he had been successful in using hypnosis with patients with strange symptoms in order to find out what was going on.

• So Freud thought he would try it. Under hypnosis, the woman recalled that when she was a child, she one day found a hated servant’s dog drinking out of a water glass in the kitchen.

• Thus, it seemed that hypnosis helped Freud get to parts of the patient’s mind that were unknown to her normally.

• Another colleague of Freud’s had a truly bizarre case: he was treating a female patient for dizziness, fainting, and coughing spells. Before long, the woman had what is called an “hysterical pregnancy.” The word hysteria refers to physical symptoms that come from a psychological problem.

• In hysterical pregnancy, the patient has all the symptoms, pains and even a major swelling of the abdomen (from body water) that goes on for nine months, so you expect a baby when it is all over. But there is no baby in there. A few such cases still occur every year, even on occasion to males.

The Unconscious• Freud believed that childhood conflicts within the family are removed from conscious

memory but are still “in us.” These events are held in the unconscious, the part of us we are not aware of. Our true feeling sometimes appear in dreams or in mistakes we make when speaking.

• Freud claimed that if he talked to a patient long enough, he found some of the material that was causing the trouble buried below the surface. So, he gave up hypnosis as not needed and used his “talking cure.”

• Freud reached the unconscious by using free association, a process in which the patient says everything that appears in the mind, even if seemingly not connected.

• In other words, no censoring is allowed. The basis for this method of treatment was Freud’s assumption that the unconscious always seeks expression in one way or another.

• If the patient talked long enough, more and more of the unconscious would appear in what was being said. The analyst could then put it all together into a coherent picture and thus explain problem-causing behavior.

• For example, if you have a deep-seated anger toward a friend, the more you talk about this person the more likely it is that some unconscious material about what caused the anger will appear.

• Freud was quite taken by the theory and writings of Charles Darwin. Darwin’s work suggested that the human was basically an animal, even though we have higher mental abilities as well as the ability to make moral decisions.

• As a result, Freud focused on our behavior as mostly animal-like – our very strong drives to satisfy bodily needs such as food comfort, sex, and self-preservation.

• Since all human societies try to block expression of too much animal-like behavior, we hide from them by putting them into our unconscious. If everything we wanted to do was good, there would be no problem.

• But all of us have desires that we would just as soon no one else knew about, so we make them disappear.

• This disappearance is called repression. According to Freud’s theory, from childhood on, needs and desires that are forbidden cause guilt.

• As a result, they are pushed out of consciousness (repressed) into the unconscious where they live. They do not remain quiet, however, but reappear as conflicts and anxieties that interfere with daily life.

Id, Ego, Superego• Freud’s Map of the Mind• Freud divided the individual’s inner world into three parts. 1. One is responsible for survival needs2. Another for society’s rules of behavior3. The third part deals with the real world and tries to keep

the demands of the other two in balance.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O78LXXGQFvE

In Cartoons

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVBCo7hZOPU

• Id – All of our basic needs and drives make up the id. Therefore, it contains our major energy force which is constantly seeking expression. We cannot know, directly, what goes on in the id because it is unconscious. It is also completely unconcerned about any reality except its own desires. Because of its emphasis on sexual and aggressive impulses, the id can cause many psychological problems. Without it though, we would not eat when hungry or defend ourselves if attached. We need it to survive.

• Superego – Although the id is necessary, if we acted out any impulse we had at any time, society would fall apart. To hold the id in check, we each have, according to Freud, a superego, a term that is an approximately synonym for conscience. The superego causes guilt for being bad and pride for doing the right things. It develops out of the punishments and rewards we get from our parents, the first representatives of society’s laws and customs. We need a superego, but like the id, it exists only for what it wants. If allowed to operate unchecked, it would block all our drives and instincts, letting us die rather than break a rule.

• Ego - The ego is roughly the same as the self. The ego’s job is to follow what Freud called the reality principle. This means that the ego tries to satisfy id impulses, but is realistic about it. The ego may delay satisfying the id, or may find alternate behaviors.

• If the id says I want to eat – I want to eat NOW, the ego says Well, it’s the middle swimming practice: you will probably get into trouble – let’s wait. The superego on the other hand, tries to stop the id, primarily through guilt: How could you even think about eating at a time like this? What would the coach say, or your parents?

• Freud believed that once our repressed conflicts surface and we face them, whatever physical or psychological symptoms we have will eventually disappear. The id and superego are both irrational, to the point that a person can become self-destructive if they were not controlled by the rational ego.

Can you think of other examples of the Id, Ego and Superego in books, cartoons,

movies?

Id, Ego and Superego in….

• Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jK6l1WJKUU

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

• According to Freud, adults’ psychological problems have their roots in early childhood and can be traced to unresolved conflicts during that time.

• When a conflict is not adequately resolved, some energy gets stuck, or fixated at that stage.

1. Oral Stage: Birth to Age One-and-a-Half - pleasure comes from feeding - main problem is weaning- When a child is weaned too early or too late, personality problems develop. - Examples: too much dependency on other people, rejection of others or being very sarcastic, and either overeating or self-starvation.

2. Anal Stage: Ages One-and-a-Half to Two-and-a-Half - toilet training- If parents are either too lenient or too harsh will cause psychological problems. - Ex. being excessively stingy or overly generous, sticking very rigidly to rules and regulations or being irresponsible and rebellious.

3. Phallic Stage: Ages Two-and-a-Half to Five or Six- “Oedipus complex” = involves a desire to marry the opposite-sex parent along with jealous and hostile feelings for the same-sex parent- Fear of punishment involved and causes guilt - Complicated set of emotions must be dealt with during this stage, which can be solved by “identifying” with the parent of the same sex- Failure to resolve this conflict can lead to unreasonable anxiety, extreme guilt, phobias, and depression original in the phallic stage of development.

4. Latency Stage: Ages Six to Preadolescence - Latent means below the surface, hidden and not obvious. - Conflicts and problems from the earlier stages remain subdued or hidden.

5. Genital Stage: Adolescence Onward - Seeking marriage and preparing for adult life - Conflict of early childhood reappear

Carl Jung

• Believed humans are controlled by certain beliefs we inherit.

• All these archetypes together make up the collective unconscious.

• It is called collective (meaning “everyone together”) because the ideas are shared by the entire human race.

• Jung felt that it was “unconscious” since we are not fully aware that we are part of these forces.

Social Psychoanalytic TheoriesKaren Horney• strongly disagreed with Freud’s focus on biological drives• stressed a different dynamic than id, ego and superego. • Part of us wants to socialize; part of us at times wants to

withdraw; and there’s a part of us that competes with the others. We must learn to balance these three urges.

• claimed that the human feels most helpless, anxious and lost in life around the issues of getting enough love.

• All of us need love badly, so we are constantly afraid that important people (like our parents when we are very young) will not like us.

• This is so threatening that we build our personalities around fighting rejection. • A person who does not receive love is one who is always anxious and afraid, anxiety

gradually builds up in the unconscious because of confused or inadequate social relationships.

• dominated by social concerns

Alfred Adler• Follower of Freud who also had trouble with

the heavy emphasis on biological needs• He believed, like Horney, that social interaction

was the key to proper development. • biggest problems people face is trying to feel

important and worthwhile around others• Those who are insecure struggle to make

themselves look better. They spend their lives trying to dominate and control others in order to avoid their own inner feelings of inferiority.

• Ex. School bullies• When one gets beneath the surface to the

unconscious, one finds that these people doubt themselves, are afraid and weak; hence, they take off after those who are physically weaker in order to try to make themselves feel important and strong.

Example of Sibling Rivalry

Alfred Adler Psych of Personality • http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=xczVfSurtrc

Erik EriksonErikson’s theory is appealing because it implies that we can “rescue” ourselves from problems almost any time in life, all the way up to old age.

Behaviorism• The unconscious is ignored altogether. • Early theories in this area focused on our

acts or behaviors as if we were robots. • According to these theories, our

personalities evolve from a series of rewards or punishments without concern about any deep motives. • For example, those who drop out of school to work will, in the

long run, lose a great deal of money. But for the short term, each week or so they get a lot more money than their friends who are still in school. Thus, they are getting a continued series of rewards that are more important than the pleas of their parents to stay in school.

• Note that the psychoanalysts would claim that these people have a deep-seated fear of failing in school or that they feel unimportant. As a result, they use the fact that they are making more money than their peers to feel superior.

John B. Watson

• He believed that if he had complete control of a person’s environment from infancy, he could make that person become absolutely anything at all – doctor, lawyer, beggar, or thief.

• His best known research was on learned fears. According to Watson, we are afraid of objects or situations because of frightening associations we have made to them in the past.

B.F. Skinner• Skinner had a very strict religious upbringing. His grandmother

used to hold his face over a stove of hot coals to show him “what hell was like.”

• Later, when he was in school, he chose to withdraw from social activities, and he spent his time reading science books instead of going to movies, hanging around, or dating much.

• If we were using the psychoanalytic method, we might come up with the idea that these early events in his life were part of what led him to see people in mechanical terms: the negative associations he had with religion and social activities may have developed his late picture of people as mechanical rather than as thinking, reasoning creatures.

• In any case, for the early Skinner, everything we do is the result of a mechanical association of events with their consequences.

• For example, if you plan to go over to a friend’s house tonight but then later in the day you decide to find a different with whom to go get something to eat, this was not a voluntary decision on your part, according to Skinner.

• Instead, you added up the number of pleasant experiences you have had with friend number one and those you have had with friend number two, and you chose the second friend because you had more positive experiences with that person.

• While you think you had a choice, you really didn’t. In the months to come, the number of positive experiences with different people might change so that you will choose friend number three.

• Thus, all our behaviors are the result of a series of reinforcements. Those who make clothing know that there are certain parts of the shirt that take more of a beating than others.

• If you haven’t bought something really cheap, the manufacturer will have used extra stitches or material to reinforce these parts – make them stronger. A similar thing happens to humans, according to Skinner’s system.

• Each time you laugh or share with friend A versus friend B, you reinforce the odds that you’ll want to see friend A again. The same thing applies throughout all personality development:

• If studying is reinforced by good grades, you will study more often; if skipping school offers more reinforcement than it creates guilt, you will continue to skip school.

Albert Bandura• Believed that Skinner’s system is flawed because it doesn’t give a person enough

credit for being a thinking creature.• He does not deny that we learn a great number of things just by straight association. • Ex. If you’re bitten by a dog, a cat, a raccoon, and a snake when you are growing up,

there’s no question that your personality will include a clear-cut fear of animals. • On the other hand, we learn many things by using our ability to think, analyze, and

interpret. • Bandura feels that much of our personality comes from observing others and

modeling ourselves after them. • This process can be very complex, rather than just mechanical: if you observe an

alcoholic uncle in the family who is very friendly and outgoing and an aunt who is a teetotaler but nasty and aggressive, your feelings for or against alcohol are going to be very complex – something Skinner’s system doesn’t allow for.

• Bandura still is behavioristic though, because he believes learning is a process of association, but the organism interprets and chooses between associations rather than just “counting” them and responding automatically to the one that for the moment has the most positive reinforcements. In other words, the organism performs an internal analysis.

Humanistic Theories• As you might have guessed, some people soon objected to

what they saw as a rather depressing picture of us either as a bubbling id trying to express itself or as a robot.

• These people considered Freud’s unconscious filled with id impulses unacceptable and the behaviorist’s failure to acknowledge the importance of personal experience unworkable.

• In reaction to these theories, some psychologists developed humanism, which emphasizes the whole person with his or her positive potential and which accepts the person as an individual human with all kinds of good qualities.

• So the focus is on human qualities, which explains how the name of this theory came about.

Carl Rogers• The leading humanist, Carl Rogers was a minister for a while, but he had

trouble with the idea that people re sinful and bad. Instead, he believed that we are all basically good.

• The biggest problem we have, he said, is living up to what he called the ideal self.

• The ideal self is as close to perfection as one can get. We come into the world ready to become this ideal self, but at times we fall by the wayside while trying to get there. We are like a flower in our potential.

• If the environment is halfway decent, we will grow into a human who can be proud and internally beautiful. This can be accomplished by almost anyone who has the acceptance and warmth of love from parents in the early stages, from friends in the next stage, and from an intimate, personal relationship with someone as an adult.

• When we have united what we should be with what we are, we have become what he called a fully functioning individual.

Abraham Maslow• He saw the human as having deep needs for beauty, goodness, justice,

and a feeling of completeness – all the hopeful and positive things about human beings.

• Each of us has inherited something unique, and if the environment will cooperate a little, we have the opportunity to become great. Maslow does not mean “great” in the sense of “famous” but in terms of actualizing (bringing to life) our personal skills.

• Thus, the fulfilled person is self-actualized. We can accomplish this despite personal problems.

• For instance, he saw Abraham Lincoln as self-actualized, even though the man suffered endless bouts of deep depression. A truly self-actualized person would be a student who comes from a terrible environment but who propels himself or herself to a level of outstanding achievement.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Basically…

In a way, humanism is a balance between psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Humanists acknowledge that the environment is important, but they insist that inner forces are important as well. In their view, the inner forces (if given a chance to be expressed) would push us to be our best.

Examining Personality Traits• The more or less permanent characteristics each of us has

are sometimes called personality traits. • A great deal has been learned from research with twins.

Since identical, or monozygous twins have exactly the same heredity (they come from the same fertilized egg in the mother), they can be compared with fraternal, or dizygotic twins (who do not have as much heredity in common since they come from different fertilized eggs) or with just brothers and sisters (least amount of common heredity).

• If the same trait shows up in the identical twins, but not in the other pairs, then the odds are very good that it is an inherited trait.

The “Big Five” Personality FactorsTrait Dimension DescriptionEmotional Stability Calm versus anxious

Secure versus insecureSelf-satisfied versus self-pitying

Extraversion/Neurotic Sociable versus retiringFun-loving versus soberAffectionate versus reserved

Openness Imaginative versus practicalPreference for variety versuspreference for routine Independent versus conformingCreative versus close minded, spontaneous

Agreeableness Soft-hearted versus ruthlessTrusting versus suspiciousHelpful versus uncooperative

Conscientiousness Organized versus disorganizedCareful versus carelessDisciplined versus impulsiveResponsible, organized, on time

Discover Your Personality Type - Myers Briggs

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQoOqQiVzwQ&feature=related

Is personality something you’re born with or something that you

develop in your life through experiences and your environment?

This is essentially the continual debate regarding:

NATURE VS. NURTURE