Professor George Bishop

In certain respects, each of us is:

Like all other people Like some other people Like no other people

Personality: the distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that characterise a persons responses to life situations

Ways of understanding what people are really like Theories of personality as models of human beings
Key differences are found in:
Hypothesized sources of motivation Assumptions about human nature Sources of data used to draw conclusions

Freuds Psychoanalytic Theory: Personality is an energy system

Instinctual drives generate psychic energy, which constantly seeks release

Conscious: mental events in current awareness Preconscious: memories, feelings, and thoughts that we are currently unaware of but that can be recalled easily Unconscious: a dynamic realm of wishes, feelings, and impulses that lies beyond our awareness

 The

Structure of Personality:

Three separate but interacting structures:

Id Ego Superego

Id: the innermost core of the personality

Id is the only structure present at birth Source of all psychic energy Exists totally within the unconscious mind Pleasure Principle: seeks immediate gratification and release, regardless of rational considerations and environmental realities

Ego: has direct contact with reality

Develops second, after the id Operates primarily at the conscious level Reality Principle: tests reality to decide when and under what conditions the id can safely satisfy its needs Executive of Personality

Superego: the moral arm of personality

Last to develop Contains the traditional values and ideals of family and society Strives to control the impulses of the id Blind quest for moral perfection

Constant struggle between the ids impulses and the counterforces of the ego and superego Anxiety results when the ego confronts impulses that threaten to get out of control

Defense Mechanisms: unconscious mental operations that minimise anxiety by denying or distorting reality
Almost everyone uses these at times; maladjusted people use them excessively

Repression: the ego uses energy to prevent anxiety-arousing memories, feelings, and impulses from entering consciousness
Primary defense mechanism

Psychosexual Stages: periods of development in which the ids pleasure-seeking tendencies are focused on specific pleasure-sensitive areas of the body (the erogenous zones) Fixation: a state of arrested psychosexual development in which instincts are focused on a particular theme
Too much or too little stimulation of erogenous zone

Oral Stage: infancy

Satisfaction from activities related to the mouth Fixation on oral themes of self-indulgence or dependence as an adult

Anal Stage: ages 2 3

Satisfaction from elimination (toilet training) Fixation can produce compulsions, obsessive cleanliness, orderliness, and rigidity OR extreme messiness and disorganisation

Phallic Stage: 4 5 years

Children develop erotic feelings for their oppositesex parent Causes hostility toward the same-sex parent
Resulting guilt and fear is resolved through identification with the same-sex parent
Boys: castration anxiety Girls: anger over lack of a penis

Phallic Stage (Continued):

Oedipus Complex: conflictual situation involving love for the mother and hostility toward the father Electra Complex: female counterpart of the Oedipus Complex

Latency Stage: 6 12 years

Dormant sexual interest Focus is on school and peer activities

Genital Stage: 12 years adulthood

Focus is on normal, healthy adult sexuality

Difficult to study psychoanalytic concepts in a controlled laboratory setting

Concepts are ambiguous and difficult to define operationally

Little empirical support Difficult to disprove - does not allow clear behavioral predictions

Research has vindicated Freuds belief in unconscious psychic events Childhood experiences are influential in the development of adult personality

Phenomenology: emphasis on the primacy of immediate experience

Focuses attention on the present instead of the past

Humanists generally embraced a positive view of humanity

Emphasises the individuals creative potential and inborn striving toward personal growth

Carl Rogers: Theory of the Self

Believed that our natural forces will direct us toward self-actualisation, the highest realisation of human potential The Self: an organized, consistent set of perceptions of and beliefs about oneself
It is an object of perception (the self-concept) It is an internal entity that directs behaviour

Develops as children begin to distinguish between me and not me Self-Consistency: an absence of conflict among self-perceptions Congruence: consistency between selfperceptions and experience
Continues to develop in response to life experiences

Inconsistent experiences evoke threat (anxiety)

Well-adjusted individuals can modify the selfconcept Unhealthy individuals choose to deny or distort experiences Degree of congruence between the self-concept and experience defines ones adjustment level
Can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies

Need for Positive Regard: an inborn need for acceptance, sympathy, and love from others Unconditional Positive Regard: communicates that the person is inherently worthy of love, regardless of accomplishments or behaviour Conditional Positive Regard: dependent on how the child behaves

Conditions of Worth: conditions that dictate the circumstances under which we approve or disapprove of ourselves
Can cause incongruence between the self and experience Can foster a need to deny or distort important aspects of experience

Fully Functioning Persons: individuals who are close to achieving self-actualisation

Sense of inner freedom and self-determination No fear of behaving freely and creatively Ability to accept inner and outer experiences as they are

Self-Esteem: how positively or negatively we feel about ourselves

Higher self-esteem is fostered when parents:

Communicate unconditional acceptance and love Establish clear guidelines for behaviour Reinforce compliance while giving the child freedom to make decisions and express opinions

Humanistic perspective relies to heavily on individuals reports of their personal experiences Theory can be measured and tested
Rogerss work on ideal self vs. perceived self

Goals of Trait Theorists:

Personality Traits: relatively stable cognitive, emotional, and behavioural characteristics of people that help establish their individual identities and distinguish them from others

Describe the basic classes of behaviour that define personality Devise ways of measuring individual differences in personality traits Use these measures to understand and predict behaviour

Lexical Approach: proposing traits on the basis of words or concepts from our everyday language Factor Analysis: a statistical tool used to identify clusters of behaviours that are highly correlated with one another, but not with behaviours in other clusters
Clusters reflect a basic factor (a trait)

Cattells 16 Personality Factors: utilised factor analysis to identify 16 basic behaviour factors
16 Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) developed by Cattell to measure individual differences on each of his dimensions

The Five Factor Model: proposes that five higher-order factors capture the basic structure of personality
Openness to Experience Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism

Question comes up as to how consistent a persons behaviour actually is. Walter Mischel argues that there is more inconsistency than consistency in peoples behaviour
Primary variability is between situations rather than between people

Is the trait approach essentially an example of the Fundamental Error of Attribution in action?

Factors that reduce situational consistency:

Personality traits interact with other traits, as well as with characteristics of different situations Influenced by how important a given trait is for a person Differences in the tendency to tailor behaviour to a given situation
Self-monitoring: people who are attentive to situational cues and adapt behaviour to what they think would be most appropriate

Focuses attention on the value of identifying, classifying, and measuring stable, enduring personality dispositions Need to focus on how traits interact with each other Focuses only on description, not explanation

Social-Cognitive Theories: combine the behavioural and cognitive perspectives into an approach that stresses the interaction of a thinking human with a social environment that provides learning experiences Reciprocal Determinism: the person, the persons behaviour, and the environment all influence on another in a pattern of two-way causal links

Self-Efficacy (Albert Bandura): a persons beliefs concerning their ability to perform the behaviours needed to achieve desired outcomes Four determinants:
Previous performance expectancies in similar situations
Shape our beliefs about our capabilities Specific to particular situations

Four determinants (continued)

Observational learning: a similar person achieving a goal increases your self efficacy to achieve the same goal Verbal persuasion (whether or not people believe in us) Emotional arousal that is interpreted as anxiety or fatigue can decrease self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is a strong predictor of future performance and accomplishment

Being able control stress may enhance self-efficacy

Cognitive-Affective Personality System (CAPS): Mischel and Shoda:

An organised system of five variables that interact continuously with one another and with the environment, generating the distinctive patterns of behaviour that characterise the person

Encodings and Personal Constructs:

People differ in how they encode (mentally represent, categorise, and interpret) situations Encodings determine how we respond to situations

Expectancies and Beliefs:

Behaviour-Outcome Expectancies: represent the if-then links between alternative behaviors and possible outcomes Includes self-efficacy and locus of control

Goals and Values:

Guide our behaviour Cause us to persist in the face of barriers Determine the outcomes and situations we seek and our reactions to them

Affects (Emotions):
Color our perceptions and influence behaviour Can raise or lower outcome expectancies

Competencies and Self-Regulatory Processes:

Cognitive problem-solving methods Ability to exert personal control over thoughts, emotions, and behaviours
Self-Reinforcement Processes: internal, selfadministered rewards and punishments

Reconciling Inconsistency:

Many factors affect behaviour People behave similarly in situations that, to them, have important characteristics in common

Behavioural Signatures: consistent ways

Outward manifestation of personality

They may behave inconsistently in situations that evoke different responses by the CAPS

of responding in particular classes of situations

Strong scientific base Brings together cognitive and behavioural approaches Helps to explain trait-behaviour inconsistencies