Chapter 13 Personality Personality a person s characteristic pattern of thinking feeling and acting Psychodynamic Theories Psychodynamic theories experience Freud s Psychoanalytic Perspective focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood o Physician from Vienna specializing in disorders with neurological basis Glove anesthesia o Used techniques of dream analysis and free association o Psychoanalysis actions to unconscious motives and conflicts Freud s personality theory that attributes thoughts and o Personal Development Personality arises from conflict among interacting systems Odeipus complex during phallic stage boy s sexual desires towards mother jealousy and hatred towards father castration anxiety father fear of mother girl s development of penis envy attachment to Electra complex Freud s Psychoanalytic Perspective o Personality Development Resolve Oedipus or Electra complex identify with same sex parent and Fixation develop gender identity psychosexual stage in which conflicts are unresolved lingering focus of pleasure seeking energies in earlier o Defense Mechanisms Ego s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality Repression underlies all others Neo Freudian and Psychodynamic Theories o Agreement with Freud Presence of id ego and superego Importance of unconscious Shaping of personality during childhood Use of defense mechanisms to deal with anxiety o Disagreement with Freud Importance of consciousness Sex and aggression aren t everything Evaluating Freud s Psychoanalytic Perspective o Modern Research Contradicts Many of Freud s Ideas Development doesn t stop in childhood Underestimated peer influence Gender identity develops before age 5 6 Alternative explanations for dreams and slips of tongue No evidence that suppressed sexuality causes psychological disorders o Modern Research Challenges the Idea of Repression People more often remember and remember vividly traumatic events that Freud predicted should be repressed Humanistic Theories thoughts and feelings about who we are Focus on healthy people s drive for self determination and self realization Self concept Maslow s Self Actualizing Person o Hierarchy of needs o Studied healthy people to determine common traits of self actualization Rogers Person Centered Perspective o Three characteristics of growth promoting climate Genuineness transparency with feelings Acceptance offer unconditional positive regard total acceptance of another person Empathy share and mirror others feelings Compare ideal and actual self Evaluating Humanistic Theories o Bias in Maslow s conceptualization of what self actualization is o Heavy emphasis on individualism which may lead to self indulgence etc o Underemphasizes the bad in people and situations Trait Theories Trait Exploring Traits characteristic pattern of behavior or disposition to feel and act o Trait theories first described by Gordon Allport More concerned with describing behaviors than explaining them o Factor Analysis o Eysenck s Major Personality Factors statistical analysis used to identify clusters of traits Extraversion Neuroticisim Psychoticism e g sociable lively active assertive etc e g anxious depressed moody tense e g aggressive egocentric creative cold The Big Five Factors o Stability o Heritability Emotional instability extraversion openness decrease in early and middle adulthood Agreeableness conscientiousness increase About 50 of your personality traits come from your parents Predictive of other behavioral attributes Evaluating Trait Theories Person Situation Controversy Behavior is interaction of inner disposition and environment Measure their different personality traits at two different points in time o o Evaluating Trait Theories o Person Situation Controversy Traits are relatively stable but specific behaviors often change To get better sense of personality average over many situations Personality tests are weak predictors of behaviors Formal vs informal situations Social Cognitive Theories Social cognitive perspective including thinking and social context o First proposed by Albert Bandura behavior is influenced by interaction between traits Reciprocal Influence o Reciprocal Determinism cognition and environment interacting influences of behavior internal Different people choose different environments Personalities shape how we interpret and react to events Personalities create situation to which we react Personal Control o The extent to which we perceive control over our environment o Internal vs external locus of control External locus of control perception that our fate is controlled by chance or outside forces that are beyond our personal control Internal locus of control perception that we control our own fate Achieve more in school act more independently feel less depressed lower hypertension and less obesity o Depleting and Strengthening Self Control Self control gratification for greater long term rewards ability to control impulses and delay short term Predicts good adjustment better grades social success Practicing self control can make you tired and make it harder to practice self control again before a rest period o Learned Helplessness vs Personal Control Learned helplessness hopelessness and passive resignation of an animal or a human when you discover that you are unable to avoid repeated aversive events Lack of control leads to lower morale and higher stress Too much choice can have negative consequences could be crippling o Optimism vs Pessimism Optimists generally believe they can accomplish things and have a higher perception of self control Excessive optimism Some pessimism helps motivate people to plan for negative events Blindness to one s own incompetence Don t know what we don t know until someone points it out to us Until them we re confident in what we do know