© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic Theories Trait Theories Humanistic Theories Social-cognitive Theories

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

• Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic Theories• Trait Theories• Humanistic Theories• Social-cognitive Theories• Biological Theories• Personality Assessment


Things You’ll Learn in Chapter 11Q1

Are some people with highly negative attitudes toward gay people repressing their own sexual desires?

Q2 Can personality traits predict the type of music we like?

What parenting skills are also associated with increased marital satisfaction?

Does helping parents prepare a meal increase a child’s preference for healthy foods?

Can our genes predict how much we will give to charity?

Why do people from different states vary in their entrepreneurial spirit?

Q3

Q4

Q5

Q6

• Personality = a unique and relatively stable pattern of thoughts, feelings, and actions

Personality


PSYCHOANALYTIC/PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES


• Freud said the mind (the “psyche”) contains three levels of consciousness or awareness:

• Conscious = thoughts or motives that a person in currently aware of or is remembering

• Preconscious = Freud’s term for thoughts, motives, or memories that exist just beneath the surface of awareness and can be called to consciousness when necessary

• Unconscious = Freud’s term for part of the psyche that stores repressed urges and primitive impulses

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory


• The unconscious contains our most primitive, instinctual motives and anxieties

• These are blocked from normal awareness but still have extraordinary impact on our behavior

• Because these thoughts and motives are unacceptable and threatening, they are repressed (held out of awareness) unless they are unintentionally revealed in dreams and slips of the tongue

• Most psychological disorders come from repressed memories and sexual/aggressive instincts; psychoanalysis was created to treat these disorders

Freud’s unconscious


• Id = according to Freud, the primitive, unconscious component of personality that operates irrationally and acts on the pleasure principle – Pleasure principle = seeking immediate gratification

• Ego = the rational, decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle (“ego” = “I”)– Reality principle = seeks to delay gratification of the id’s impulses until

appropriate outlets can be found

• Superego = represents internalization of society’s values, standards, and morals; the conscience or moral personality component that incorporates parental and societal standards

Personality structure


• The ego is faced with satisfying both the id (biological drives) and the superego (society’s expectations). When it fails, anxiety slips into conscious awareness

• To diminish anxiety, we use defense mechanisms = the ego’s protective method of reducing anxiety by self-deception and distorting reality

Personality structure


• Much of Freud’s theory is controversial• Freud believed strong biological urges push children

through five psychosexual stages = five developmental periods (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital) during which particular kinds of pleasures must be gratified if personality development is to proceed normally

• If child’s needs aren’t met, he or she could become fixated, or stuck, at that stage

Freud’s theory, continued


• Adler – theory of individual psychology: that we are motived by our goals in life, especially goals to achieve security and overcome feelings of inferiority– Inferiority complex = Adler’s idea that feelings of

inferiority develop from early childhood experiences of helplessness and incompetence

Psychodynamic/Neo-Freudian Theories


• Jung – developed analytic psychology, believing the unconscious contains positive and spiritual motives as well as sexual and aggressive forces. Two forms of the unconscious mind:– Personal unconscious = created from our individual experiences– Collective unconscious = the part of the individual’s unconscious that is

inherited, evolutionarily developed, and common to all members of the species

• Archetypes = universal, inherited, primitive, and symbolic representations of a particular experience or object that reside in the collective unconscious

• Archetypes cause us to react in certain predictable ways, such as gender roles: anima (feminine) and animus (masculine) aspects of personality



• Horney – said Freud’s theory was based on male bias and misunderstanding of women

• Women’s everyday experience with inferiority led to power envy, not penis envy

• Believed adult personality is shaped by childhood relationship with parents and how people respond to basic anxiety

• Basic anxiety – feelings of helplessness and insecurity that adults experience because as children they felt alone and isolated in a hostile environment



Major criticisms of psychoanalytic theories• Inadequate empirical support• Overemphasis on sexuality, biology, and unconscious forces• Sexism

Evaluating Psychoanalytic Theories


• People who identify as heterosexual but show a strong attraction to same-sex people in psychological tests also report more homophobic attitudes and greater hostility toward gay people (Weinstein et al., 2012)

• How does Freud’s theory suggest these negative attitudes spring from unconscious repression of same-sex desires?

Q1Are some people with highly negative attitudes toward gay people repressing their own sexual desires?

TRAIT THEORIES


• Trait = a relatively stable personality characteristic that can be used to describe someone

• Allport was the first to attempt to arrange a person’s unique traits into a hierarchy

• Cattell used factor analysis to condense a large list of traits into 16 source traits

Early Trait Theorists


• Five-factor model (FFM) = a comprehensive descriptive personality system; informally called the Big Five

• These five traits emerge, even when different tests are used

Modern Trait Theory


• Big Five is the first to successfully achieve the goal of trait theories: to describe and organize personality traits using the smallest number of traits

• Cross-cultural support for the Big Five

Evaluating Trait Theories


• Extroverts prefer upbeat music like rap and hip-hop, while people open to experience prefer complex, rebellious music like classical and rock

Q2 Can personality traits predict the type of music we like?

HUMANISTIC THEORIES


• Humanistic theories emphasize each person’s internal feelings, thoughts, and sense of basic worth

• Self-actualization = the humanistic term for the inborn drive to realize one’s full potential and to develop all one’s inherent talents and capabilities

Humanistic Theories


• Self-concept = a person’s relatively stable self-perception, or mental model, based on life experiences, particularly the feedback and perception of others

Rogers’s Theory


• To help children develop their fullest potential and life potential, adults must create atmosphere of unconditional positive regard = Roger’s term for love and acceptance with no contingencies attached

What parenting skills are also associated with increased marital satisfaction?

Q3

Maslow’s Theory


• Humanistic theories play a major role in modern counseling and psychotherapy

• Humanistic theories have been criticized for:– Naïve assumptions – unduly optimistic and

overlook negative aspects of human nature– Poor testability and inadequate evidence –

primary terms difficult to operationalize and test– Narrowness – describes personality but doesn’t

explain it

Evaluating Humanistic Theories


SOCIAL-COGNITIVE THEORIES


• Self-efficacy = Bandura’s term for a person’s learned expectations of success in a given situation; also, another term for self-confidence

Bandura’s and Rotter’s Approaches


• Children who helped parents with meal preparation reported higher self-efficacy for selecting and eating healthy foods (Chu et al., 2013)

Does helping parents prepare a meal increase a child’s preference for healthy foods?

Q4

• Reciprocal determinism = Bandura’s belief that a complex reciprocal interaction exists among the individual, his or her behavior, and the environmental stimuli, and that each of these components affects the others



• Rotter’s theory says learning experiences create cognitive expectancies that guide behavior and influence the environment

• Your behavior or personality is determined by 1. what you expect to happen following a specific action and 2. the reinforcement value attached to specific outcomes

• Locus of control (Chapter 3) helps explain your personality



Benefits of social-cognitive theories• Testable, objective hypotheses and operationally defined

terms, rely on empirical data• Emphasize how the environment affects and is affected

by individuals• Mischel says personalities change according to situationCritics say ….• social-cognitive theorists focus too much on the

situation and don’t adequately address the stability of the personality

Evaluating Social-Cognitive Theories


BIOLOGICAL THEORIES


• Eysenck: personality traits are biologically based

• Brain imaging shows specific areas of the brain correlate with trait impulsiveness, risk-aversion, risk-seeking personalities, shyness, and sociability

• Neurochemistry also influences personality, specifically MAO and dopamine

Three Contributors to Personality


• Behavioral genetic is a relatively new field that determines the extent to which behavioral differences are due to genetics as opposed to the environment

Behavioral Genetics


• Participants with the “niceness gene” reported higher levels of prosocial behavior like giving blood or engaging in volunteer work

Can our genes predict how much we will give to charity?

Q5

• Personality traits are never the result of a single biological process

• There is a strong inherited basis for personality, but the environment cannot be discounted

Evaluating Biological Theories


PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT


• Psychologists use interviews to evaluate personality: – Unstructured interviews allow greater free

exploration of personality– Structured interviews use specific questions to

objectively evaluate responses and compare to others

• Psychologists directly and methodically observe behavior

Interviews and Observation


• Objective tests are preferred method of assessment because they can be administered to many people and can be evaluated in standardized way

• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) = the most widely researched and clinically used self-report personality test– Primarily designed to diagnose psychological disorders

• NEO Personality Inventory-Revised assesses the Five- Factor model

Objective Tests


• Projective tests = a method of personality assessment in which an individual is presented with a standardized set of ambiguous stimuli, such as inkblots or abstract drawings, that allow the test taker to project his or her unconscious unto the test material; the individual’s responses are assumed to reveal inner feelings, motives, and conflicts

• Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Projective Tests


• Interviews and observations are time consuming and expensive; little agreement between raters

• Objective tests incur three major criticisms:– Deliberate deception and social desirability bias– Diagnostic difficulties– Cultural bias and inappropriate use

Are Personality Measurements Accurate?


• A study of over 500,000 people in the U.S. found greater entrepreneurial spirit in western states, perhaps reflecting America’s historical migration patterns of people moving from east to west (Obschonka et al., 2013)



Why do people from different states vary in their entrepreneurial spirit?

Q6

• Projective tests have weak reliability and validity, but proponents say their open nature allow subjects to discuss sensitive topics

• Because each method has its limits, psychologists often combine methods

• Beware of pop-culture personality quizzes or horoscopes – they may be entertaining, but they aren’t based on science and shouldn’t be used to make important decisions




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© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic Theories Trait Theories Humanistic Theories Social-cognitive Theories