Personality Notes

Read the following:

Identify Freud’s psychosexual stages of development, and describe the effects of fixation on behavior.

Freud maintained that children pass through a series of psychosexual stages during which the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct pleasure-sensitive areas of the body called erogenous zones.
• oral stage (0–18 months), pleasure centers on the mouth
• anal stage (18–36 months) on bowel/bladder elimination.
• phallic stage (3–6 years), pleasure centers on the genitals.
Boys experience the Oedipus complex, with unconscious sexual desires toward their mother and hatred of their father. They cope with these threatening feelings through identification with their father, thereby incorporating many of his values and developing a sense of gender identity.
• latency stage (6 years to puberty), in which sexuality is dormant (repression of desires)
• genital stage (puberty on) as youths begin to experience sexual feelings toward others.
maladaptive adult behavior results from conflicts unresolved during the oral, anal, and phallic stages. At any point, conflict can lock, or fixate, the person’s pleasure-seeking energies in that stage.

Describe the function of defense mechanisms, and identify six of them.
Defense mechanisms reduce or redirect anxiety in various ways, but always by distorting reality.
o Repression, which underlies the other defense mechanisms, banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts from consciousness;
o regression involves retreat to an earlier, more infantile stage of development;
o reaction formation makes unacceptable impulses look like their opposites.
o Projection attributes threatening impulses to others
o rationalization offers self-justifying explanations for behavior
o displacement diverts impulses to a more acceptable object.

Contrast the views of the neo-Freudians and psychodynamic theorists with Freud’s original theory.
The neo-Freudians accepted Freud’s basic ideas regarding personality structures, the importance of the unconscious, the shaping of personality in children, and the dynamics of anxiety and defense mechanisms.
However, in contrast to Freud, the neo-Freudians generally placed more emphasis on the conscious mind in interpreting experience and coping with the environment, and they argued that we have more positive motives than sex and aggression.
Unlike other neo-Freudians, Carl Jung agreed with Freud that the unconscious exerts a powerful influence. In addition, he suggested that the collective unconscious is a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history. Contemporary psychodynamic theorists and therapists reject the notion that sex is the basis of personality but agree with Freud that much of our mental life is unconscious, that we struggle with inner conflicts, and that childhood shapes our personalities and attachment styles.


Describe two projective tests used to assess personality, and discuss some criticisms of them.
Projective tests provide ambiguous stimuli that are designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.
o Thematic Apperception Test, people view ambiguous pictures and then make up stories about them. Presumably their accounts reflect their interests and inner feelings.
o The Rorschach Inkblot Test seeks to identify people’s inner feelings and conflicts by analyzing their interpretations of 10 inkblots. Critics question the validity and reliability of the tests. Nonetheless many clinicians continue to use them.

Summarize psychology’s current assessment of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis.

Critics contend that many of Freud’s specific ideas are implausible, unvalidated, or contradicted by new research, and that his theory offers only after-the-fact explanations. Recent findings question the overriding importance of childhood experiences, the degree of parental influence, the timing of gender-identity formation, the significance of childhood sexuality, and the existence of hidden content in dreams. Many researchers now believe that repression rarely, if ever, occurs. Nevertheless, Freud drew psychology’s attention to the unconscious and to our struggle to cope with anxiety and sexuality. Indeed, studies testing terror-management theory show that thinking about one’s mortality provokes enough anxiety to intensify prejudices. Freud also focused attention on the conflict between biological impulses and social restraints. Unquestionably, his cultural impact has been enormous.
The Humanistic Perspective

Summarize Abraham Maslow’s concept of self-actualization, and explain how his ideas illustrate the humanistic perspective.
According to Maslow, self-actualization is the motivation to fulfill one’s potential. It is the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved.


11. Discuss Carl Rogers’ person-centered perspective, and explain the importance of unconditional positive regard.
Carl Rogers agreed with Maslow that people are basically good and are endowed with self-actualizing tendencies. To nurture growth in others, Rogers advised being genuine, empathic, and accepting (offering unconditional positive regard). In such a climate, people can develop a deeper self-awareness and a more realistic and positive self-concept.

Explain how humanistic psychologists assessed personality.
Humanistic psychologists assessed personality through questionnaires on which people report their self-concept (who am I?). One questionnaire asked people to compare their actual self with their ideal self. Other humanistic psychologists maintained that we can only understand each person’s unique experience through interviews and intimate conversations.

State the major criticisms of the humanistic perspective on personality.
First, critics complain that the perspective’s concepts are vague and subjective. For example, the description of self-actualizing people seems more a reflection of Maslow’s personal values than a scientific description. Second, the individualism promoted by humanistic psychology may promote self-indulgence, selfishness, and an erosion of moral restraints. Third, humanistic psychology fails to appreciate the reality of our human capacity for evil. Its naive optimism may lead to apathy about major social problems.

The Trait Perspective

Cite the main difference between the trait and psychoanalytic perspectives on personality.
o trait theorists attempt to describe personality in terms of stable and enduring behavior patterns, or dispositions to feel and act.
o Some theorists use dominant traits and their associated characteristics to describe personality “types.”

Describe some of the ways psychologists have attempted to compile a list of basic personality traits.
One way has been to suggest traits, such as anxiety, that some theory regards as basic. A newer technique is factor analysis, a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of behaviors that tend to appear together. For example, through factor analysis, Hans and Sybil Eysenck reduced normal variations to two or three genetically influenced dimensions, including extraversion–introversion and emotional stability–instability. Brain activity scans suggest that extraverts and introverts differ in their level of arousal, with extraverts seeking stimulation because their normal brain arousal level is relatively low. Jerome Kagan maintains that heredity, by influencing autonomic nervous system arousal, also affects our temperament and behavioral style, which help define our
personality.

Explain how psychologists use personality inventories to assess traits, and discuss the most widely used of these inventories.
Psychologists assess several traits at once by administering personality inventories on which people respond to items designed to measure a wide range of feelings and behaviors.
o The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is the most widely used personality inventory. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders, this test is now used for many other screening purposes. The MMPI items were empirically derived—that is, from a large pool of items, the test developers selected those on which particular diagnostic groups differed. The objective scoring of the test does not guarantee its validity. For example, those taking the MMPI for employment screening may give socially desirable responses that create a good impression.

Identify the Big Five personality factors, and discuss some of the strengths of this approach to studying personality.
Researchers have isolated five distinct personality dimensions, dubbed the Big Five: emotional stability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. These traits appear to be stable in adulthood, largely heritable, common to all cultures, and good predictors of other personal attributes. Locating an individual on these five dimensions provides a comprehensive picture of personality.

Summarize the person-situation controversy, and explain its importance as a commentary on the trait perspective.
Although people’s traits seem to persist over time, critics of the trait perspective note that human behavior varies widely from situation to situation. Thus, traits are not good predictors of behavior. For example, being conscientious on one occasion is only modestly related to being conscientious on another occasion. Defenders of the trait perspective note that, despite these variations, a person’s average behavior across different situations is fairly consistent. We do have distinct personality traits. Moreover, research suggests that our traits are socially significant; they influence our health, our thinking, and our job performance.

Explain why psychologists are interested in the consistency of the trait of expressiveness.
In informal social situations, our expressive styles—our animation, manner of speaking, and gestures—are impressively consistent. Moreover, we can judge individual differences in expressiveness in a matter of seconds. Thus, we may form lasting impressions within a few moments of meeting someone. Research suggests people have little voluntary control over their expressiveness.