Personality

1. Personality A person’s pattern of thinking, feeling and acting.

2. Types of Personalities Type A Type B Relaxed and easygoing. But some people fit in neither type. • Feel time pressure. • Easily angered. • Competitive and ambitious. • Work hard and play hard. • More prone to heart disease than rest of population.

4. Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality Won our mind!!!! • Fathered by Sigmund Freud. • Idea of the Libido moving to different parts of our body. • Stages of Psycho-Sexual Development • Oral • Anal • Phallic • Latent • Genital • Free Association: exploring mind by saying whatever comes into it • Pyschoanalyisis: the treatment technique What’s on our minds!!! Sigmund Freud

5. Our Personality: Like an Iceberg • Conscious (ego)- things we are aware of. • Preconscious(superego)- things we can be aware of if we think of them. • Unconscious (ID)- deep hidden reservoir that holds the true “us”. All of our desires and fears…repressed

7. Freud’s Concept of Personality (Psyche): structure • Ego • Superego • Id

8. Id • Exists entirely in the unconscious (so we are never aware of it). • Our hidden true animalistic wants and desires. • Works on the Pleasure Principle • Avoid Pain and receive Instant Gratification.

9. Ego • Develops after the Id • Works on the Reality Principle • Negotiates between the Id and the environment. • In our conscious and unconscious minds. • It is what everyone sees as our personality.

10. Superego • Develops last at about the age of 5 • It is our conscience (what we think the difference is between right and wrong) • The Ego often mediates between the superego and id.

11. Personality Development: Psychosexual Stages: ORAL STAGE • Birth to 18 months • Child is focused on oral pleasures such as rooting and sucking. • The mouth is vital for eating and the infant derives pleasure from the oral stimulation through gratifying activities such as tasting and sucking. • Too much or too little gratification can result in an oral fixation or oral personality—preoccupied with oral activities such as smoking, drinking, eating, biting nails.

12. ANAL STAGE • 18 months to 3 years • Major focus is on eliminating and retaining feces. • Through society’s pressure, the child has to learn to control anal stimulation.—toilet training! • Developing this control leads to a sense of accomplishment and pride. • *Freud says it depends on how parents teach-if too lenient and an anal-expulsive personality can develop-person is destructive and disorganized. • If too strict, person develops an anal-retentive personality and is obsessed with cleanliness and order.

13. PHALLIC STAGE • Ages 3 to 6 • Pleasure zone switches to the genitals. • Oedipus Complex: According to Freud, boys develop unconscious sexual desires for their mothers. • Boy then becomes a rival with father-competes for mother’s attention. • Wanting to possess the mother and replace the father • Child also fears that he will be punished for this-castration anxiety.

14. PHALLIC STAGE • GIRLS- later it was decided that they went thru same thing—called Electra Complex. • Freud disagreed with this and said instead that girls experience penis envy. • According to Freud, out of fear of castration and due to the strong competition of father—boy develops masculine characteristics, and represses his sexual feelings. • Fixation in this stage: could result in sexual deviancies and weak or confused sexual identity

15. LATENCY STAGE • Age six to puberty • Libido interests are suppressed. • Development of ego and superego contribute to this calm. • Begins around time that kids start school and become concerned with peer relationships, hobbies and other interests. • Important to development of social and communication skills and self-confidence

16. GENITAL STAGE • Puberty on…. • Final stage of psychosexual development. • Individual develops a strong sexual interest in the opposite sex. • Interests in the welfare of others grows during the stage. • If the other stages have been successfully completed, person should be well-balanced, warm, and caring.

18. Defense Mechanisms • The ego has a pretty important job…and that is to protect you from threatening thoughts in our unconscious. • One way it protects us is through defense mechanisms. • You are usually unaware that they are even occurring.

19. Scenario Quarterback of the high school football team, Brandon, is dating Jasmine. Jasmine dumps Brandon and starts dating Drew, president of the chess club. Jasmine Brandon Drew

20. Repression • Pushing thoughts into our unconscious. • When asked about Jasmine, Brandon may say “Who?, I have not thought about her for awhile.” • Why don’t we remember our Oedipus and Electra complexes?

21. Denial • Not accepting the ego-threatening truth. • Brandon may act like he is still together with Jasmine. He may hang out by her locker and plan dates with her.

22. Displacement • Redirecting one’s feelings toward another person or object. • Often displaced on less threatening things. • Brandon may take his anger on another kid by bullying.

23. Projection • Believing that the feelings one has toward someone else are actually held by the other person and directed at oneself. • Brandon insists that Jasmine still cares for him.

24. Reaction Formation • Expressing the opposite of how one truly feels. • Cootie stage in Freud’s Latent Development. • Brandon claims he hates Jasmine.

25. Regression • Returning to an earlier, comforting form of behavior. • Brandon begins to sleep with his favorite childhood stiffed animal, Sajalicious.

26. Rationalization • Coming up with a beneficial result of an undesirable outcome. • Brandon thinks he will find a better girlfriend. “Jasmine was not all that anyway!” • I really did want to go to ……..anyway, it was too ……

27. Intellectualization • Undertaking an academic, unemotional study of a topic. • Brandon starts doing a research paper on failed teenage romances.

28. Sublimation • Channeling one’s frustration toward a different goal. • Sometimes a healthy defense mechanism. • Brandon starts to learn how to play the guitar and writing songs (or maybe starts to body build).

29. Criticisms of Freud • He really only studied wealthy woman in Austria. • His results are not empirically verifiable (really hard to test). • No predictive power. • Karen Horney said he was sexist with the “penis envy” and there is an actual “womb envy”.

30. Neo-FreudiansPsychodynamic Theories • Eric Erickson • Carl Jung and his concept of the “personal” and “collective” unconscious. • Alfred Adler and his ideas of superiority and inferiority. • Adler also talked about birth order and how it played a part in personality. • *Karen Horney:

31. NeoFreudians • Alfred Adler: agreed with Freud that childhood is important but that it is more social than sexual • Inferiority complex • Karen Horney (Horn- “EYE”) • Childhood anxiety triggers our need for love and security • Countered Freud’s suggestion that women have weak superegos—and penis envy

32. NeoFreudians • Carl Jung • Disciple turned dissenter • Thought unconscious contained more than our repressed thoughts and feelings. • Collective Unconscious: • -common reservoir of archetypes (images) derived from our species universal experiences.

33. Psychoanalysis Today • Couch sitting • Transference is likely to happen. • The idea is to delve into your unconscious. • Pull out Manifest Content. • Then talk about the Latent Content.

34. Getting into the Unconscious • Hypnosis • Dream Interpretation • Free Association (having them just randomly talk to themselves…and then interpreting the conversation). • Projective Tests (and test that delves into the unconscious). • Examples are TAT and Inkblot (Rorschach)Tests.

35. TAT TestThematic Apperception Test • Giving the subject a picture that is ambiguous (can have several meanings) and ask them what is occurring. • Their answers reveal the Manifest content. • They can then discover the Latent Content.

39. Rorschach Inkblot Test • The most widely used projective test • A set of ten inkblots designed to identify people’s feelings when they are asked to interpret what they see in the inkblots. • Arguments between some as to the validity and reliability of these tests. Some argue that it is a good diagnostic tool and others disagree.

45. Modern Research and the Unconscious • Modern researchers see the unconscious as an information processing area that occurs without our awareness. • Research has supported freud’s idea of defense mechanisms • Freud’s Projection-----today—false consenus effect • Reaction formation • Terror-management Theory: theory of death-related anxiety. • -explores our emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of our impending deaths.

46. Trait Theories of Personality (module 58) • They believe that we can describe people’s personalities by specifying their main characteristics (traits). • Traits like honestly, laziness, ambition, outgoing are thought to be stable over the course of your lives.

47. Eysenck and Eysenck: Factor Analysis • Extraversion/introversion • Emotional stability/instability • Eysencks believed that these factors are genetically influenced and research supports this.

48. ASSESSING TRAITS • Validity of trait tests? • Personality inventories: longer questionnaires that assess several traits at once • MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory—assesses abnormal personality tendencies. Empirically derived. Objective scoring

49. The Big Five Inventories • Today’s researchers have expanded the sets of factors • Big Five Personality Test: • Extraversion • Agreeableness • Conscientiousness • Openness to experience • Emotional Stability Factor Analysis is used to see the clusters and score these tests.

50. Trait Theory Criticism: Person-Situation controversy • Do NOT take into account the importance of the situation.