Personality ­ Relatively stable and enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions • Assessing Personality:

  • Interviews
    • Structured­ every person gets same set of predetermined questions
    • Unstructured­ interviewer is free to ask different question of each person

 Not as useful for researcher

 Give you a lot of information about that person

  • Advantage­ deeper information • Disadvantage­ can’t compare to others
  • Observation­ draw inferences from their behavior
    • Needs to be methodical and use operational definitions
    • Objective tests/Inventories­ standardized questionnaires that require written responses: MC/TF

Minnesota Multiphastic Personality Inventory­ MMPI­

most widely researched/clinically used for self­report personality tests

(550 items)

  • Hypochondrias­ extreme body/health concerns
  • Depression­ sadness, lack of self worth
  • Hysteria­ physical complaints to avoid responsibility
  • Psychopathic Deviate­ complete and extreme disregard for social/moral rule o They know they are wrong, don’t care
  • Masculine­Feminine­ how well you accept extreme stereotypes/gender roles
  • Paranoia­ OCD thoughts and behaviors
  • Schizophrenia­ lack of connection between thoughts and emotions
  • Hypomania­ over excitable, over activity
  • Social Introversion­ socially withdrawn

 MMPI has 3 scales to identify response sets

  • Lie score­ indicates you are lying in order to make yourself look good/socially acceptable
  • Validity score­ indicates a careless or random response pattern
  • Correction Score­ indicates the examinee is either trying to “fake good” or “fake bad” (mental health)

Empirical method for item inclusion­ items were chose not based on theory, but based on their ability to discriminate among different psychiatric and normal populations (groups not theory)

  • Projective tests of personality­ these tests include ambiguous stimuli that are intended to get a wide range of responses from examinees that must be interpreted
  • Roschach Inkblot test­ 10 bilaterally symmetrical inkblots

 Scoring is very complex

 Disagreement over what parts of examines responses are most important

 Look for commonalities

 Lacks reliability and validity

  • Thematic Apperception Test­TAT­ 31 ambiguous pictures, ~10 are presented to examinee

 Asked to make up a story to explain the picture

 Difficult of administer and interpret

 Lack reliability and validity

 Theories of Personality:

  • Trait­ a relatively stable/consistent characteristic that can be used to describe someone o Early Trait Theories
    • Gordon Alport­ best way to understand personality was to study an individual and arrange their personality traits into a hierarchy with most important on top
    • Raymond Catell­ condensed list of traits to 30­35 traits using factor analysis

Factor analysis­ statistical procedure for determining the most basic units or factors in a large array of data

  • Hans Eysneck­ personality is a relationship between 3 traits

Extroversion­Introversion

Neuroticism­ how much you control you have over emotional state

Psychotism­ how much in touch with reality you are

  • The “Big Five” Model­ Costat­McCrae­ most influential today
    • Extraversion/Surgency­ talkative, energetic, assertive
    • Agreeableness­ sympathetic to needs to other people, kind, affectionate
    • Conscientiousness­ organized, thorough, planful, dependable (intellect or culture)
    • neuroticism­ tense, moody, anxious

 Sometimes reversed and called Emotional stability

  • Criticisms of trait theories:
    • Lack of explanation­ theories describe people but don’t tell you why they are that way/the development
    • Stability Vs change­ personality is relatively stable after 30, but theorists haven’t told us which characteristics are stable and which are transient
    • Situational determinants­ some researchers believe you just cannon predict what people can do in any given situation­ traits are meaningless
  • Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory o Levels of consciousness­ awareness of our own personality
    • Conscious­ thoughts/motives person is currently aware of or is remembering right now (WM)
    • Preconscious­ thoughts/motives that one can become aware of easily (long term memory)
    • Unconscious­ thoughts/motives that lie beyond a person’s normal awareness

 Can be made available through psychoanalysis

 Can’t become easily aware of having these

  • Personality structure
    • The ID­ most primitive part of personality

 Pleasure principle­ maximize pleasure, minimize pain  Superego­ standards of right/wrong, morality principle, conscience  2 parts:

  • Conscience­ punitive, negative and critical part
  • Ego Ideal­ positive aspirations, more abstract

 Psychosexual Stages of Development ­ Freud

  • Oral stage­ birth to 12­18 months o Autoerotic­ Babies spend a lot of time sucking their thumbs and fingers
    • Fixation­ idea that you are frustrated in some way at a particular level

 You have either been under/overindulged in a particular stage

 Remain somewhat obsessed with pleasures of that stage

  • Regression­ idea that you move past a particular stage of development then something traumatic happens then you regress back to pleasure of an earlier stage

 EX­ mom has new baby and older child wants bottle back

  • Anal Stage­ 12­18 months to 3 years o Child is occupied with retaining and/or expelling feces
    • Battles of the toilet bowl­ toilet training o Anal expulsive (disorganized)­ fight back by deliberately soiling themselves o Anal compulsive/retentive (structured)­ kids whose parents over praised them during this stage
  • Phallic Stage­ 3­6 years­source of pleasure is genitalia o Boy’s Oedipal Crisis­ experimenting with penis
    • Freud says that sometimes during this stage, a young boy wants to have sex with mom but knows that his father has sex with mom and dad would be very

angry and cut off penis leading to Castration anxiety o Castration anxiety­ formation of superego

  • Overcomes fear of father cutting off penis by spending time with his father and forms his superego to keep feelings at bay
  • Girl electra complex­ feels incomplete because she doesn’t have a penis
    • Wants to sexually posses her father
    • Penis envy­ weaker superego (no castration anxiety)
  • Latency stage­ 6 to puberty­ “putting down” urges/impulses o Repression of sexual urges
  • Genital stage­ puberty onward­ reawakening of sexual impulses
  • Criticisms of Freud’s Psychoanalytic theories o A lot of these are difficult to test­ not good science
    • Overemphasis on biology and unconscious forces­ not enough societal and cultural forces
    • Inadequate evidence
    • Sexism­ Freud’s theories were very sexist
    • Lack of cross­cultural support­ don’t’ see a lot of these concepts in non­Western society

 Non­Freudian Theorists

  • Adler’s Individual Psychology­each of us born into world with a sense of inferiority reinforced by our infancies o Striving for superiority
    • Inferiority Complex­ feelings of inferiority develop from early childhood experiences of helplessness/incompetence
    • Birth Order
      • First born­ important until other siblings arrive, King of the Hill

 Often have greatest number of problems as they get olderdepression, anxiety

  • Middle born­ dethrone first born, get a lot of attention from parents

 High need for superiority they attain through healthy competition

  • Youngest­ least amount of power
  • Only child­ tend to spend a lot of time around adults which can lead to higher intellectual ability

 May be timid, passive, withdrawn

  • Carl Jung’s Analytic Psychology­ thought there was more to unconscious that Freud theorized o Freud/Eros­ impulses to build and create VS Thanantos­ impulses to destruct, decay o Fears, behaviors, thoughts children and adults exhibit are remarkably similar across time and culture
    • Collective unconscious­ inherited unconsciousness all humans share o Archetypes­ “stock characters”, images or patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behavior
      • Reside in collective unconsciousness

Animus­ masculine side of female

Anima­ feminine side of male

Shadow­ unconscious dark side, dark part of who we are

  • Horney’s Feminine Psychology­ big influence of feminism of 1970s, thought Freud was incredibly sexist o Countered Freud’s Penis envy with Womb envy­ man’s envy of woman’s ability to bear children
    • Said that it wasn’t biology and genital structure, but a societal/cultural explanation of gender differences

 Humanistic Theories

  • Carl Rogers­ most important aspect of personality is SELF
    • Self­ part of experience that a person comes to identify early in life as I or Me o Self­concepts­ all the information and beliefs individuals have about their own nature, qualities, and behavior
    • Poor Mental health occurred when there was a difference between our self­concepts and our actual life experiences
      • Anorexia EX o Unconditional positive regard­ positive behavior towards a person with no contingencies attached
      • “I like you…period” EX
    • Abraham Maslow­ focused on people’s roads to self actualization­ complete understanding of self
    • Criticism:
      • Naïve assumptions­ not everyone is striving to be best they can
      • Poor testability and inadequate evidence

Narrowness­ describe different aspects of personality without explaining how it develops or came to be