Chapter 13: Personality
Chapter Summary
Personality is defined as an individual's relatively stable patterns of thoughts, emotions, and actions. Psychologists describe and explain personality differences according to different theoretical orientations.
I. TRAIT THEORIES - Trait theorists believe personality consists of relatively stable and consistent characteristics.
A. Early Trait Theorists - The focus of early theorists was identifying the actual traits people possess and the degree to which they pervade the overall personality. Allport focuses on arranging the most important traits at the top of a hierarchy and the least important at the bottom. Cattell reduced the number of traits with a statistical technique called factor analysis. Eysenck believes personality can be described along three dimensions: introversion extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism.
B. The Five-Factor Model - Proponents of the Five-Factor Model (FFM) explain personality in terms of a “Big Five” model - openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
C. Evaluating Trait Theories –Critics point out three weaknesses: lack of explanation, the stability of these traits, and the effects of the situation on personality.
Research Highlight: Do Nonhuman Animals Have Personality? – Comparative psychologists like Roger Fouts make a case for the proposition that chimpanzees hare many characteristics in common with humans including personality. Three dimensions that have cross-species generality include extraversion, neuroticism, and agreeableness.
II. PSYCHOANALYTIC/PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES
A. Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory - The psychoanalytic approach to personality was founded by Freud. Freud emphasized the power of the unconscious and believed that the mind (or psyche) functioned on three levels, the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. In Freud's theory, personality has three distinct parts, the id, ego, and superego. The ego struggles to meet the demands of the id and superego, and when these demands are in conflict the ego may resort to defense mechanisms to relieve the resultant anxiety. According to Freud, all human beings pass through five psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. How the conflicts at each of these stages are resolved is important to personality development. Anxieties arising from these early experiences are often avoided or distorted through defense mechanisms.
B. Neo-Freudian/Psychodynamic Theories - Followers of Freud, who later revised his theory, are known as neo-Freudians. Three of the most influential were Adler, Jung, and Horney. While they generally agreed with many of Freud's theories, they broke away because they emphasized different issues, such as, the formation of personality in the first five years and the role of social and cultural forces. Adler emphasized the "inferiority complex" and the compensating "will-to-power." Jung introduced the "collective unconscious" and "archetypes." Horney stressed the importance of "basic anxiety" refuting Freud's "penis envy," replacing it with "power envy."
C. Evaluating Psychoanalytic Theories - Critics of the psychoanalytic approach, especially Freud's theories, argue that it is difficult to test, overemphasizes biology and unconscious forces, has inadequate empirical support, is sexist, and lacks cross-cultural support. Despite these criticisms, Freud remains a notable pioneer in psychology.
III. HUMANISTIC THEORIES - Humanistic theories emphasize internal experiences, thoughts, and feelings that create the individual's self-concept.
A. Rogers’ Theory - Carl Rogers emphasized the concepts of self-esteem and unconditional positive regard. People with low self-esteem generally have poor congruence between their self concept and life experiences.
B. Maslow’s - Maslow emphasized the basic goodness of human nature and a natural tendency toward self-actualization which is innate and motivates all of human behavior.
C. Evaluating Humanistic Theories - Critics of the humanistic approach argue that these theories are based on naive assumptions, and have poor scientific testability and inadequate empirical evidence. In addition, their focus on description, rather than explanation, makes them narrow.
IV. SOCIAL-COGNITIVE THEORIES
A. Bandura’s and Rotter’s Approaches - Bandura’s social-cognitive approach focuses on self-efficacy and reciprocal determinism, while Rotter’s locus of control theory emphasizes a person’s internal or external focus as a major determinant of personality.
B. Evaluating Social-Cognitive Theory - The social/cognitive theories emphasizes the interaction between the environment and the individual, and meets the standards for scientific research by offering testable and objective hypotheses as well as operationally defined terms. critics argue that social/cognitive theories are too narrow, ignore unconscious and emotional components of personality, and overlook developmental aspects.
V. BIOLOGICAL THEORIES
A. Three Major Contributors – Biological theories emphasize the role of the brain, neurochemistry, and genetics on personality. Recent research suggests that certain brain areas may account for certain traits such as sociability (extroversion) and shyness (introversion). Along these same lines, certain neurotransmitters that affect the level of arousal may be the source of some personality traits. Studies show a strong influence of hereditary factors on personality, but further research is needed before we have a cohesive biological theory of personality.
B. Biopsychosocial Model – Research on specific traits, such as extroversion and sensation seeking, support the biological approach. The biopsychosocial/interactionist approach suggests that the major theories overlap and each contributes to our understanding of personality.
VI. PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT
A. How We Measure Personality - Psychologists use several methods to measure or assess personality, including interviews, observations, self-report inventories, and projective techniques. The strengths and weaknesses of each are discussed. Reliability and validity are the two major criteria for assessing personality assessment techniques.
1. Interviews - Interviews may be either structured (specific questions and a set procedure) or unstructured (informal and random questions).
2. Observational Methods - During observations, psychologists look for specific behaviors and follow a set of evaluation guidelines.
3. Objective Tests - Personality is most commonly measured through objective tests (such as the MMPI-2), which ask test-takers to respond to paper-and-pencil questionnaires or inventories. These tests provide objective standardized information about a large number of personality traits. But they have been criticized for the possibility of deliberate deception and social desirability bias, diagnostic difficulties, and inappropriate use.
4. Projective Tests - Projective tests are the second major category of personality assessment. They ask test-takers to respond to ambiguous stimuli (such as the Rorschach "inkblot" or the TAT pictures). These tests are said to provide insight into unconscious elements of personality. Critics, however, contend that these tests have unacceptably low levels of reliability and validity.
B. Are Personality Measurements Accurate? – Interviews and professional training and the actual implementation. Objective tests (such as the MMPI) provide specific, objective information in a short period of time, but they have been criticized for deliberate deception and social desirability bias, diagnostic difficulties, and inappropriate use. Projective tests are believed to offer unique opportunities for accessing the unconscious, but, critics object to the expense and time required to administer and interpret them, and the relatively low reliability and validity.
Critical Thinking/Active Learning: Why Are Pseudo Personality Tests So Popular? – Problems with “pseudo” personality tests are discussed including the: Barnum effect, fallacy of positive instances, and self-serving bias.
Gender and Cultural Diversity: How Individual and Collectivist Cultures Affect Personality - Most theories of personality are biased toward Western individualistic cultures and their perception of the “self.” Recognizing and understanding this bias helps keep our study of personality in perspective.