What is Personality?
PSYC 1301
Ever since the discipline of psychology began, psychologists have been attempting to define those characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that persist over time and that distinguish one person from another. Personality is a person' s unique psychological signature; it characterizes the person's unique pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is the relatively enduring characteristics that differentiate people - those behaviors that make each individual unique.
Are we born with personality? Do we inherit personality?
Researchers using biological approaches argue that personality is determined in part by particular combinations of genes in much the same way that height is determined. Studies of twins have been done to determine genetic factors. At the University of Minnesota in 1988, Auke Tellegen and colleagues examined pairs of twins who were genetically identical but raised apart. Each of the twins was given a battery of personality tests, including one that measured eleven key personality traits. The results indicated that in major respects, the twins were similar in personality despite having been raised apart from an early age. Certain traits were more influenced by heredity than others.
Have you ever commented on how different siblings are in the same family? Since there was a great deal of age difference between my sister and myself, I had wanted to have children close together in ages so they would be close. However, they are so different in personalities that they are not as close as I had hoped. This is because it is becoming increasingly clear that the roots of adult personality emerge at birth. Infants are born with a particular temperament, a basic, innate disposition. Temperament is consistent from infancy into adulthood.
Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner, and Carl Rogers were three of the most influential personality theorists. We have studied all three in prior chapters. Each took as his aim a greater understanding of human nature, although each adopted a distinct perspective on personality. Out of these various approaches have come four major categories of personality theories. These categories are as follows:
All three theories saw a link between personality and maladjustment. Freud is the best known and most influential psychodynamic theorist. He saw personality as conflicts among unconscious desires. Rogers thought it was the interruption or stunting of actualization processes due to receiving only conditional regard from others and ourselves. Skinner thought the environment caused maladaptive behaviors such as when undesirable behaviors are reinforced or there is a history of excessive punishment.
Sigmund Freud
All psychodynamic theorists share the sense that personality is primarily determined by unconscious processes. For Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, our personality is rooted in all the ideas, thoughts, and feelings of which we are normally unaware. Freud identified sexual and aggressive instincts as the primary unconscious drives that determine human behavior. In other words, people are driven by sexual and aggressive impulses. According to Freud, personality is made of three structures. The id, the only personality structure present at birth, operates in the unconscious according to the pleasure principle, meaning it tries to obtain immediate pleasure and avoid pain. The ego, the id's link to the real world, controls all conscious thinking and reasoning activities and operates according to the reality principle. It tries to delay satisfying the id's desires until it can do so safely and effectively in the real world. The superego acts as the person's moral guardian or conscience and helps the person function in society. It also compares the ego's actions with an ego ideal of perfection. Freud believed the ideas, thoughts, and feelings of which we are currently unaware are in the conscious mind. Freud called energy generated by the sexual instinct libido. As an infant matures, his or her libido becomes focused on different sensitive parts of the body. A fixation occurs if a child is deprived of pleasure or allowed too much pleasure from the part of the body that dominates one of the five developmental stages and some sexual energy may remain permanently tied to that part of the body. Freud described the inner turmoil among the id, ego, and superego as intrapsychic or psychodynamic conflict and believed the number, nature, and scope of these conflicts shape each person's personality. Normal development depends on resolution of the psychosexual stages.
Freud's Five Developmental Stages
0 - 2 years Oral stage
2 - 4 years Anal stage
4 - 7 years Phallic stage
7 - Preadolescence Latency stage
Adolescence - death Genital stage
Strong attachment to the parent of the opposite sex and jealousy of the parent of the same sex — which develops during the phallic stage — is termed Oedipus complex in boys (remember the myth: To Laius, King of Thebes, an oracle foretold that the child born, to him by his queen, Jocasta, would slay his father and wed his mother) and Electra complex in girls.
Freud's ideas, especially those concerning infantile sexuality and the Oedipus and Electra complexes, created instant controversy. Even many of his followers disagreed with him. Some of these are referred to as neo-Freudian because they maintained many of his basic ideas. Others are known as ego-psychologists because their theories focus more on the ego than the id.
Karen Horney
Karen Horney (pronounced horn eye) believed that social factors are the most important factors in shaping personality. She believed that a person's reaction to real or imagined dangers or threats, which she defined as anxiety, is a stronger motivating force than the sexual drive, or libido. She believed that there are several neurotic trends or strategies that people use to cope with emotional problems and that these strategies are reflected in personality types which are the compliant type of personality, whose strategy is to move toward others (submission); the aggressive type of personality, whose strategy is to move against others (aggression); and the detached type, whose strategy is to move away from others (detachment). Horney emphasized that culture and not anatomy determines many of the personality traits that differentiate women from men.
Carl Jung
Carl Jung (pronounced Yung) was the next to split with Freud. Collective unconscious was Jung's most original concept, which is comprised of memories and behavior patterns inherited from past generations. He argued that people are born with a general life force that includes a drive for creativity, for growth-oriented resolution of conflicts, and for the productive blending of basic impulses with real world demands.
Jung did not identify specific stages in personality development, but he believed that the unconscious consists of two distinct components: the personal unconscious, which contains an individual's repressed thoughts, forgotten experiences, and undeveloped ideas; and the collective unconscious, a subterranean river of memories and behavior patterns flowing to us from previous generations.
According to Jung, the human mind has, over time, developed certain thought forms, called archetypes, which give rise to mental images or mythological representations. The persona, one of the many archetypes Jung described, is that part of our personality by which we are known to other people. The persona is the only part of our personality that we show others — it is like a mask we put on to go out in public. Two other important archetypes are the anima, the expression of female traits in a man, and the animus, the expression of male traits in a woman.
Jung also believed that people generally exhibit one of two attitudes toward the world: Extroverts are interested in other people and the world at large, whereas introverts are more concerned with their own private worlds. Jung further divided people into rational individuals, who regulate their behavior by thinking and feeling, and irrational individuals, who base their actions on perceptions, whether sensual or intuitive.
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The Hero: From world leaders to mythic gods to giant sandwiches, the hero represents someone who rises to the occasion to conquer and vanquish with great might. Often the hero is a relatively weak individual, but one who connects to powerful internal forces. Herein lies a blueprint for the development of one's own sense of individuality. Great Mother: "Mother Earth," myths and legends of motherhood, are all reflections of our archetype of one who nurtures us. |
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The Trickster: This archetype is often seen as a collective shadow figure representing the underdeveloped or inferior traits of individuals. In mythology (such as Native American folktales), the trickster is often dull-witted but someone who typically provides positive outcomes. Charlie Chaplin's "The Tramp" is a modern example of the trickster. |
Transformation: Journeys to the self, whether in mythology, dreams, or symbols, represent transformation. From Diogenes' search for an honest person to someone's life-altering revelation, transformation plays a role in human development and growth.
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Mandala: The archetype of order. Examples of this are plentiful both within and across cultures. Circles, squares, swastikas, wheels, yin-yang, crosses, and numbers are a few examples. To the right is an example of a Hindu swastika. |
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Both Freud and Jung emphasized the role of the unconscious in determining human behavior. If you are interested in a more detailed account of Carl Jung's theory, click on http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/jung.html
Adler believed that people possess innate positive motives and strive toward personal and social perfection. He originally proposed that the main shaper of personality is compensation, the individual's attempt to overcome actual physical weakness. He later modified his theory to stress the importance of feelings of inferiority. When people become so fixated on their feelings of inferiority that they become paralyzed by them, they are said to have an inferiority complex. Later still, Adler concluded that strivings for superiority and perfection, both in one's own life and in the society in which one lives, are crucial to personality development. For a more in-depth explanation of Adler's views, go to http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/adler.html
Adler's notion of the individual's perpetual striving for perfection laid the groundwork for humanistic personality theory.
Carl Rogers
For Rogers, people develop their personalities in the service of positive goals. The biological push to become whatever it is that we are capable of becoming is called the actualizing tendency. In addition to trying to realize our biological potential, we attempt to fulfill our conscious sense of who we are, which Rogers called the self-actualizing tendency. A fully functioning person is someone whose self-concept closely matches his or her inborn capabilities. Fully functioning people are usually raised with unconditional positive regard, or the experience of being valued by other people regardless of their emotions, attitudes, and behaviors. Often children are brought up with conditional positive regard, that is, with parents and others who accept and value only certain aspects of their individuality. These people tend to deviate from their inborn capacities to construct a personality more in line with how other people see them.
Trait theorists insist that each person possesses a unique constellation of fundamental personality traits that can be inferred from how the person behaves.
Psychologists disagree about the number of different personality traits. Gordon Allport argued that possibly several thousand words could be used to describe human personality traits.
Raymond Cattell
Identified 16 basic traits using a statistical technique called factor analysis.
Eysenck argued that personality could be reduced to three basic dimensions: emotional stability, introversion-extroversion, and psychoticism.
The Big Five
Recently, considerable research has focused on the importance of five basic personality traits. Included in the Big Five are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and culture or openness. The big five traits are universal across cultures, and some evidence suggests they may have, in part, a physiological basis.
Evaluating Trait Theories
Trait theories are primarily descriptive. They provide a way of classifying personalities, but they do not explain why a person's personality is what it is. But trait theories do have the advantage of being rather easy to test experimentally, and research does support the value of the five-factor model in pinpointing personality.
However, such correlations do not provide evidence for personality assessment. Psychologists use four different methods to assess personality: the personal interview, direct observation of behavior, objective tests, and projective tests.
Objective Tests
Objective tests of personality, such as the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), are given and scored according to standardized procedures. These tests are inexpensive to use and easy to score, but rely on people's self-report of their behavior.
Projective Tests
Psychodynamic theorists are more likely to use projective tests, which consist of ambiguous stimuli that can draw out an unlimited number of responses and are thought to tap the unconscious. The results of projective tests must be interpreted. One of the earliest projective tests is the Rorschach test. The Rorschach test has 11 inkblots that the subject interprets. Rorschach inkblots can help diagnose depression, reveal unconscious motives, and reveal warning signs of suicide. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) asks subjects to make up stories about 20 pictures.
Questionnaires
The most common way of measuring personality is by interviewing an individual asking him/her to summarize behavioral tendencies by means of questionnaires.
