Personality Theory

Chapter Fourteen
Personality:
Who We Are
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

 Personality
 Psychoanalytic theory
 Behavioral and social learning theories
 Humanistic models
 Trait models
 Personality assessment

 Relatively enduring predispositions that influence our
behavior across many situations
 People’s typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving
 These traits account in part for consistencies in our

behavior across time and situations
 Introversion, extraversion, aggressiveness

Nomothetic Approach Idiographic Approach
Focuses on identifying general Focuses on identifying the unique

laws that govern the behaviour of configuration of characteristics
all individuals and life experiences within a
person
Studying similarities among Studying difference among
people people

 How do personality traits originate?
 Behavior-genetic methods attempt to disentangle the effects of

 Genetic factors
 Shared environmental factors

 Experiences that make individuals within the same family more
alike.
 Nonshared environmental factors

 Factors—experiences that make individuals within the same family
less alike.
 Use twin and adoption studies to do this

 Numerous personality traits are influenced by genetics – but all much
below a 1.0 correlation
 Demonstrates non-shared environmental influence
 Turns out that shared environment plays little to no role in adult

personality
 Supported by twin and adoption studies

First Born Second Born Last Born Only Child
Achievement Competitive High Mature
Achiever
 Traits develop as a result of early

social interactions/environmental
experiences
 Most research has failed to find link
between personality and order of
birth

 Yes, genes influence a variety of behaviours often associated with
personality traits
 Remember, genes code for proteins, not specific behaviors
 Genes have indirect influence on traits, while the environment

influences how these are displayed in our lives
 Twin studies vs. molecular genetic studies

 Twin studies tell little about what genes influence personality
 Molecular genetic studies allow researchers to pinpoint the influence

of genes and neurotransmitters on personality
 Link found between novelty seeking and dopamine system

 Viennese neurologist who
developed first comprehensive
theory of personality

 Developed by Sigmund Freud, rests on three primary assumptions
1. Psychic determinism
 The assumption that all psychological events have a cause.
 We are not free to choose our actions because we’re at the mercy of
powerful inner forces that lie outside of our awareness
2. Symbolic meaning
 All behaviour attributable to preceding mental causes, even if we
can’t always figure out what they are.
3. Unconscious motivation
 Our behaviour is driven by forces of which we are unaware

 Conscious
 sensations and experiences of which we are aware at any given
moment (limited)
 Preconscious
 Material of which we are not consciously aware, but that we can
easily summon into consciousness e.g. memories, perceptions
 Unconscious
 Material that is outside of conscious awareness (large)
 The focus of psychoanalytic theory

ID: Basic Instincts EGO: Principal Decision SUPEREGO: Sense of
Maker Morality
Reservoir of primitive The rational aspect of the Moral aspect of
instincts that drive personality personality
behaviour e.g. desires,
fantasies, wishes, needs
Contains the sexual drive; Strives to delay Contains sense of right &
libido gratification until it can wrong internalized by
find an appropriate outlet our interactions with
parents
Operates on pleasure Operates on reality
principle principle
Conflict between these cause distress (anxiety)

 Freud thought that our dreams reflected this unconscious struggle
 Royal road to the unconscious
 Believed dreams to be wish fulfillments: expressions of our Id
impulses, some of which were disguised
 Mentioned that dreams have 2 types of content :

 Manifest content: Actual dream events
 Latent content: Hidden and symbolic meaning

 Anxiety is a warning sign that something is amiss with the personality;
the ego is threatened by conflicts of everyday life
 The ego will try to minimize anxiety via defense mechanisms
 Characteristics
 Involves denial or distortion of reality
 Operate unconsciously
 Although essential for psychological health, Freud thought over

reliance on one or two could cause problems

 Freud believed that we pass through stages, each of which is focused
on an erogenous zone
 Erogenous zone: site of sexual pleasure
 Insisted that sexuality begins in infancy
 Individuals who get fixated on a stage and have difficulty moving on

 Birth to around the 1st or 2nd year of life.
 Infant’s principal source of pleasure – mouth (sucking, biting, swallowing)
 Dependent on caregiver for oral gratification – primary object of satisfaction
 Id is dominant
 Mother’s response to infant’s demands lead to their perceptions of the world

as good/bad
Oral Incorporative Behaviour Oral Aggressive Behaviour

(taking in) (biting/spitting out)
Excessively concerned with oral Pessimistic, hostile, aggressive
activities e.g. eating, smoking, kissing
Optimistic, dependent, gullible, Likely to be argumentative,
trusting manipulative and cruel to others
Oral receptive/oral passive personality Oral aggressive personality type
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 18 months to 3 years
 Toddler’s principal source of pleasure: the anus
 Society (parents) demands that the child control their inherent desire for
tension reduction – learning appropriate times for holding on and letting
go
 Toilet training and how it is dealt with by caregivers plays a role in
personality development (Excessively demanding/Harsh/Overindulgent
Anal Retentive Personality Anal Expulsive Personality

Personality characterized by holding Personality characterized by letting go
on tendencies (holding on or retaining tendencies (defecate wherever &
faeces) whenever)
Stubborn, stingy, emotionally Disorderly, wasteful, dirty/messy, tardy

restrictive, rigid, compulsively neat

 Ages 4-5
 Child’s principal source of pleasure: the genitals
 Conflict: objects of their sexual desire
 In boys
 Oedipus complex: Unconscious desire for the mother (major source of
gratification for his needs)
 Desire to replace or destroy the father
 Problem: father already has rights to mother
 Castration anxiety: Fear that his penis will be cut off by the father
 Resolve the complex by repressing desire for mother and hostile rivalry
toward father and instead identifying with

 Ages 4-5
 Child’s principal source of pleasure: the genitals
 Conflict: objects of their sexual desire
 In girls
 Electra complex: Unconscious desire for the father
 Hostility toward mother because she did not give her a penis
 Desire to replace or destroy the mother
 Turn their desires to father in hopes of sharing his phallus
 Penis envy: Envy of the male because of penis possession and a sense
of loss

 Age 5-11
 Not a psychosexual stage of development
 No new unfolding of sexuality
 No new personality development
 FIXATION CANNOT OCCUR HERE
 Time for ego development and learning the social rules of being a citizen
 The sex instinct is dormant, temporarily sublimated in school activities,
hobbies, and sports and in developing friendships with members of the same
sex.

 Adolescence-Adulthood
 Final stage of psychosexual development
 The libido reemerges – this time in the genitals
 The adolescent must now find appropriate objects for sex (love) and
aggression (work) – sublimation

Stage Approximate Age Primary Source of Sexual Fixation & Associated Traits;
Pleasure Other Characteristics
Oral Birth -12/18 mths. Mouth; sucking & drinking Dependent, drinking, smoking,
overeating
Anal 18 mths. – 3 yrs. Alleviating tension by Excessive neatness, stinginess,
expelling faeces and stubbornness|| wasteful,
messy
Phallic 3 – 6 yrs Genitals (penis or clitoris; Challenges forming healthy

object of their sexual desire relationships, narcissism,
insecurity
Latency 6-12 years Dormant Sexual Stage Time for ego development, school
activities, hobbies, sports and
forming interpersonal
relationships
Genital 12 years and Renewed sexual impulses in Sublimation of instincts;

beyond genitals emergence of mature romantic
relationships; work

Unfalsifiable Some concetps are difficult or impossible to
disprove
Failed Predictions Some aspects of his theory have not held up
well in research e.g. association btwn. harsh
toilet training and perfectionism
Questionable conception Does not provide evidence for existence of the
of unconscious unconscious
Unrepresentative Freud based his theories on atypical samples
Samples and generalized them to the rest of humanity;
lack generalizability
Emphasis on shared E.g. shared environments can cause similar
environment personality types
Behavior-genetic studies have shown that
shared environment plays little role in adult
personality
 Were thinkers who agreed with many of the fundamental tenets of
Freud's psychoanalytic theory but changed and adapted the approach
to incorporate their own beliefs, ideas, and opinions
 Differ from Freud’s theories in two key ways
 Less emphasis on sexuality, more on social drives

 More optimistic about personal growth

 Motivator of human personality is the striving
for superiority
 Drive to perfect ourselves and towards
wholeness/completion.
 To achieve this goal we construct a distinctive
style of life
 Character structure or pattern of
behaviours by which each of us strive for
perfection
 E.g. The sickly child may strive to increase
physical prowess by running or lifting
weights. These behaviours become part of
the style of life used to compensate for
feelings of inferiority.

Dominant
• Dominant/ruling attitude | Attacking, Sociopaths, Drug Addicts
Avoiding
• Ignores problems; avoids difficulties to avoid failure
Getting
• Dependent
Socially useful
• Cooperative; acts in accordance with others’ needs
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 All people experience inferiority feelings
 Necessary motivating force of behaviour
 Motivated to compensate/overcome feelings of inferiority feelings by

striving for higher levels of development
 Excessive pampering/neglect/physical defects (organic inferiority)

can cause inferiority complexes
Inferiority Complex Superiority Complex

Develops when a person is unable to Develops when a person
compensate for normal inferiority overcompensates for normal
feelings inferiority feelings
Low self-esteem; tend to Tries to dominate others; Boastful, self-

overcompensate for these feelings centered
 Placed greater emphasis on the role of the
unconscious than Freud
 Personal unconscious: Reservoir for
material that was once conscious but now
forgotten/suppressed due to being trivial or
disturbing
 Collective unconscious: shared storehouse

of memories that ancestors have passed down
to us across generations
 Archetypes: Images of universal experiences

 E.g. mother, the goddess, the hero
 Believed we have an innate/inevitable desire
to achieve wholeness and unity of the
personality
 Was against aspects of Freud’s theory that she
viewed as gender biased
 Safety need: High level need for security and

freedom from fear
 Normal personality development is dependent on
this
 Basic anxiety: Pervasive feeling of loneliness and

helplessness
 Foundation of neurosis

 Disagreed with Freud’s concept of penis envy
 Countered concept of penis envy with womb envy: The envy a male feels
toward a female because she can bear children and he cannot.
 Women’s sense of inferiority stems not from their anatomy, but their
excessive dependency on men, which society has ingrained in them
from an early age.
 Viewed the Oediplus complex as more of a symptom

 It is not inevitable, but rather arises only when the opposite-sex
parent is overly protective and the same-sex parent overly critical.

 Believe that differences in our personalities stem largely from our
learning histories
 Personalities are bundles of habits acquired by classical and

operant conditioning
 Reject the notion that the first few years of life are crucial in
personality development
 Do not believe that personality plays a role in causing behaviour

 Learning molds personality over the lifespan
 Instead, they believe that personality consists of behaviours (overt

and covert)

 View personality as under the control of genetic factors and contingencies
(reinforcers and punishers)
 Determinism & Free Will

 Determinists: believe that all of our actions are products of preexisting
causal influences.
 Free will is an illusion: we may think we are free to select our behaviours,
but this is because we tend to be unaware of the situational factors that
trigger them.
Unconscious Processing
 We are unconscious of the reasons for our behaviour because we are
often unaware of the external cause of this behaviour
 E.g. We may have had the experience of suddenly humming a song to

ourselves and wondering why we were doing so, until we realized that
this song had been playing softly on a distant radio

 Learning through association
 Form of learning in which animals come to respond to a previously neutral
stimulus, that was paired with another stimulus that elicits an automatic
response.
 Discovered by Pavlov, a Russian scientist through his research on digestion
in dogs.
________________________________________________________________
 Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): a stimulus that elicits an automatic

response
 Unconditioned response (UCR): the automatic, reflexive response elicited
 Neutral stimulus (NS): stimulus that procedures no specific response
 Conditioned response (CR): an automatic response established by
training to an ordinarily neutral stimulus.
 Conditioned stimulus (CS): previously neutral stimulus that comes to
elicit a conditioned response
 Learning controlled by the consequences of the organism’s behaviour
 The organism’s behaviour is shaped by what comes after it –
reward/punishment
 E.L. Thorndike
 Law of Effect: if a stimulus followed by a behaviour results in a
reward, the stimulus is more likely to give rise to the behaviour in
the future.

 B.F. Skinner
 Reinforcement: any outcome that strengthens the probability of a
response
 Positive reinforcement: when we administer a stimulus
 E.g. Giving a child a Hershey’s Kiss when he picks up his toys
 Negative reinforcement: when we take away a stimulus
 E.g. Ending a child’s time-out for bad behaviour once she’s
stopped whining

 B.F. Skinner
 Punishment: any outcome that weakens the probability of a

response
 Positive punishment: administering a stimulus that the organism
would rather avoid e.g. a spanking
 Negative punishment: removal of a stimulus that the organism
wishes to experience e.g. favourite toy or article of clothing.

 Saw learning as important, but believe thoughts play a crucial role in
behaviour as well
 Believed that how we interpret our environments affect how we react
to them
 E.g. if we perceive others as threatening, we’ll typically be hostile
and suspicious in return.
 Believed classical and operant conditioning to be cognitively
mediated
 As we acquire information in classical and operant conditioning,
we’re actively thinking about and interpreting what it means.

 Determinism
 Emphasize reciprocal determinism
 Tendency for people to mutually influence each other's behaviour
 E.g. Our high levels of extraversion may motivate us to introduce

ourselves to our introductory psychology classmates and thereby
make new friends. In turn, our newfound friends may reinforce our
extraversion, encouraging us to attend parties we’d otherwise skip.

 Focus on observational learning
 Much learning occurs by watching others
 Our parents and teachers can play significant roles in shaping our
personalities, because we acquire both good and bad habits by
watching and, later, emulating them
 Modeling: learning through imitation

 Focus on individuals’ locus of control
 Speaks to our sense of control over life events
 Juliet Rotter introduced the concept to describe the extent to
which we believe that reinforcers and punishers lie inside or
outside of our control
 People with an internal locus of control

 Believe that life events are due largely to their own efforts and
personal characteristics.
 E.g. what would a person with an internal locus of control
think if they did poorly on an exam?

 People with an external locus of control
 Believe that life events are largely a product of chance and fate
 Tend to praise or blame external factors
 E.g. what would a person with an external locus of control think

if they did poorly on an exam?

 Based on research, almost all forms of psychological distress,
including depression and anxiety are associated with an external
locus of control
 For ‘internals’ it is possible that they are less prone because

they feel as though they can remedy problems on their own
 For ‘externals’, it is possible that once these people experience

any form of emotional upset that they may feel as though their
lives are spiraling out of control
 When people in difficult circumstances obtain a measure of

control over their lives, their adjustment improves

 Placed psychology on firmer scientific footing
 However…
 Radical behaviorists’ ignoring of cognition is not supported by
research
 Social learning’s emphasis on shared environment is non
supported
 If we learn by modeling our parents’ behaviour, then we should
be just like them
 Behaviour-genetic studies have shown that the effects of shared
environment on adult personality are weak or non-existent.

 Rejected notion of determinism and embraced free will
 We’re perfectly free to choose either socially constructive or
destructive paths in life.
 Proposed self-actualization as core motive in personality

 The drive to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible
extent

 Best known humanistic theorist
 Used his personality theory to develop

an influential form of psychotherapy
 Believed that we could all achieve our

full potential for emotional fulfilment if
only society allowed it.

Three major components of personality:
1. The organism (innate, genetic blueprint)

 Similar to Freudian id but inherently positive and helpful toward
others.
2. The self (our self concept; set of beliefs about who we are)
3. Conditions of worth (expectations we place on ourselves for
appropriate/inappropriate behaviour
 Emanate from our parents & society and we internalize them
 Arise in children, where others make their acceptance of us
conditional only on certain behaviours

 Conditions of worth can result in incongruence
 Discrepancy between one’s self-concept and aspects of

experience
 We’re no longer our genuine selves, because we’re acting

in ways that are inconsistent with our underlying
potentialities.

 These people tend to be creative,
spontaneous, and accepting of
themselves and others
 Self-confident but not self-centered
 Focus on real-world and intellectual

problems and have a few deep Maslow believed
friendships rather than many superficial Mahatma Ghandi
ones. to be one of the
historical figures
who was self-
actualized
 Can come off as difficult to work with or aloof because they have
outgrown the need to be popular
 Prone to peak experiences: transcendent moments of intense

excitement and tranquility marked by a profound sense of connection
to the world.

 Theory of motivation in
psychology
 An arrangement of innate
needs, from strongest to
weakest that activates and
directs behaviour.
 Needs lower down in the

hierarchy must be satisfied
before individuals can attend
to needs higher up

 Comparative psychology (compares behaviour across the species)
challenges Rogers’ claim that our nature is entirely positive
 As humans we have the capacity for aggression
 His and Maslow’s research was not methodologically sound
 Many non-falsifiable assumptions

 Self-actualization may not be testable

 Interested primarily in describing and understanding the structure of
personality
 Trait theorists aim to pinpoint the major traits of personality
 It is important that we ignore the circular reasoning fallacy
 We might conclude that a child who kicks others on the playground is
aggressive. But in asking how we know that this child is aggressive,
we might respond “because he kicks other children on the
playground.”
 This is merely restating the same evidence we used to infer that the
child was aggressive
 To avoid this logical trap, we need to demonstrate that personality traits
predict behaviours in novel situations or correlate with biological or
laboratory measures.

 Gordon Allport mentioned that there are over 17,000 terms in the
English Language that refer to personality traits
 A statistical technique, factor analysis, is used reduce the enormous

diversity of traits to a much smaller number of underlying traits
 This method analyzes the correlations among responses on

personality measures to identify the underlying “factors” that give
rise to these correlations.

• Variables 1 – 3 correlate well with each other, as do variables 4-6
• Variables 1 -3: we may call this factor extraversion
• Variables 4-6: we may call this factor fearlessness

 Consists of five traits that have surfaced repeatedly in factor analyses of
personality measures.
 Uncovered using a lexical approach
 Crucial features of human personality are embedded in our language
 If a personality trait is important in our daily lives, it’s likely that we talk a lot
about it.
 The Big Five emerged from factor analyses of trait terms in dictionaries and
works of literature.
Trait Description
Openness to Intellectually curious and unconventional
Experience
Conscientiousness Careful and responsible
Extraversion Social and lively
Agreeableness Sociable and easy to get along with
Neuroticism Tense and moody.
 According to Big Five advocates each of us occupies some location
on all five of these dimensions.
 Predict many important real-world behaviors
 E.g. High Conscientiousness, low Neuroticism, and perhaps high
Agreeableness are associated with successful job performance
and grades in school
 Conscientiousness is positively associated with physical health and
even life span

 Other psychologist such as Hans Eysenck maintain that three
dimensions rather than five offer the most accurate model of
personality structure.
 The Big Five dimensions of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and

(low) Openness to Experience combine to form one larger dimension
of impulse control or fearfulness along with the dimensions of
Extraversion and Neuroticism.
 The “Big Three” model of personality structure is a worthy alternative

to the Big Five

 Traits do not tell the whole story of why we differ from each other
 Basic tendencies are underlying personality traits; characteristic
adaptations are their behavioral manifestations
 Same trait can manifest in very different ways

 For example, people can express tendencies toward risk taking and
danger seeking in either socially constructive (firefighting) or
destructive (crime) outlets

 Some variability prior to age 30, but little thereafter
 Some evidence for changing of personality

psychopharmacologically, but should we?
 E.g. mood-altering medications, like Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft
produce calmness and decreased shyness, even among people
without mental illness (Concar, 1994).
 Ethical or….?
 Many emotions serve important adpative functions e.g. anxiety
which warns us of danger

 Mischel’s argument concerning behavioral inconsistency
 Found low correlations among different behaviours presumed to
reflect the same trait (e.g. dishonesty)
 Students who steal are not more likely to also cheat
 Response was that traits are predictors of aggregate (e.g. on

average how persons will behave across may situations), not
isolated behaviors (e.g. lying & stealing)
 Primarily describe individual differences rather than what causes

them

 Attempts to explain personality development in terms of
understanding our thought processes.
 Thoughts are the primary determinants of emotions and behaviour
 A person can engage in abnormal behaviour because of particular
thoughts and behaviours that are often based upon their false
assumptions.

 ABC’s of personality
 A – e.g. rejection by a partner
 B – belief used to process the activating event
 These beliefs can be rational (e.g. the rejection was
unfortunate)
 These beliefs can be irrational (e.g. it is awful that I was
rejected; I must be unlovable)
 C- emotional and behavioural consequences of these thoughts
 Rational: normal feelings of sorrow or regret
 Irrational: depression, anxiety, hostility

 Individuals make themselves emotionally healthy or
emotionally sick by the way they think
 Irrational beliefs and dysfunctional attitudes
 Tend to be rigid, dogmatic, powerful demands usually
expressed in the words must, should, ought to, have
to and got to (musturbatory thinking)
 “I must get an A or else I am a failure/dumb/don’t
deserve to be at university”
 This way of thinking leads to highly unrealistic and
overgeneralized attributions (catastrophizing)
 “If I do not get an A then it is awful”, “I never get what I
want”, “I can’t bear it”
 Ellis believes that processing events using these
dysfunctional beliefs will inevitably lead to emotional
upset.
 Speaks about automatic thoughts: the thoughts
that pop up' or 'flash' in your mind without
conscious thought.
 When a person’s stream of thoughts are
negative, they can cause depressed feelings
 E.g. I’m never going to get this essay finished, my
girlfriend fancies my best friend, I’m getting fat, I have
no money, my parents hate me
 Cognitive Distortions: Thoughts that cause
individuals to perceive reality inaccurately

 Plagued by number of dubious methods
1. Phrenology (Franz Joseph Gall; head shape)

 Purported to detect people’s personality traits by measuring the
patterns of bumps on their skulls

 Plagued by number of dubious methods
2. Physiognomy (facial characteristics)

 Detecting personality characteristics based on facial features
 The term “lowbrow,” which today refers to someone who’s
uncultured, derives from the old belief that most non-intellectual
people have protruding foreheads and a low brow line.
 Falsified.
 However , research has found some truth. Example, in one study
observers accurately gauged men’s tendencies toward physical
aggressiveness by glancing briefly at their faces

 All previously mentioned methods lacked two key criteria – reliability
and validity
 Reliability: consistency of measurement

 Validity: the extent to which a test measures what it purports to measure.
 These are the two key criteria for evaluating all tests, including
personality tests.

3. Sheldon’s body types (William Sheldon)
 Drawing inferences about people’s personalities from their body
types
 Highly muscular (mesomorphs): assertive and bold
 Lean and skinny (ectomorphs): introverted and intellectual
 Rounded and soft (endomorph): relaxed, comfortable, extraverted
 All lacked two key criteria – reliability and©validity

Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Paper-and-pencil tests consisting of questions you respond to in one of
a few fixed ways
 Set response options e.g. true/false, Likert-type scale
 Advantages: relatively easy to administer and score; researcher can
collect data from many participants simultaneously
 The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is most

researched test
 567 true-false questions
 10 basic scales ; 8 of which measure mental disorders (e.g.
depression & schizophrena
 Used to detect symptoms of mental disorders
 Revised version: MMPI-2

 Developed using empirical method of test construction
 Researchers begin with two or more criterion groups such as a group of

people with a specific psychological disorder (depression) and a
group of people without any psychological disorder
 Researchers examine which items on the test distinguish both groups

 E.g. items on the MMPI depression scale will distinguish among these two
groups
 As a result of using the empirical method, the MPPI and MMPI-2 have low
face validity
 Extent to which respondents can tell what the items are measuring
 “I think new-born babies look very much like little monkeys”

 Items with low face validity are thought to be difficult to fake
 Contains three validity scales designed to detect various types of
distorted responses
 L (Lie) detects impression management

 Making ourselves look better than we really are
 F (Frequency) detects malingering
 Making ourselves appear psychologically disturbed
 K (Correction) measures defensive/guarded responding
 Distorted responses can diminish the validity of psychological tests

 Most scales of the MMPI are both reliable as
well as valid for differentiating among mental
disorders
 E.g. the MMPI-2 schizophrenia scale
distinguishes individuals with schizophrenia
from those with other severe disorders, like
clinical depression
 Problematic in several ways

 Redundant scales
 Not used for formal diagnosis: not because
the scale is elevated means there is a disorder
 Scales can be misused for the purpose of
diagnosis
 An offspring of the MMPI is the California
Psychological Inventory (CPI)
 Requires test developers to begin with a clear-cut conceptualization of
a trait and then write items to assess that conceptualization
 Items are created based on some theory related to the trait
 Some have strong reliability and validity (NEO PI-R) but others do not
(Myers-Briggs)
 NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R), a widely used measure
of the Big Five.
 The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), based largely on Jung’s
theory of personality

 Ask examinees to interpret or make sense of ambiguous stimuli (e.g.
inkblots, drawings or incomplete sentences).
 Influenced by psychoanalytic theory of personality, specifically

Freud’s notion of projection
 Based on projective hypothesis

 When interpreting ambiguous stimuli, people project aspects of
their personality onto them
 Test interpreters work in reverse to examine people’s answers for
clues containing their personality traits

 Freedom in responding, as there are no set response options
 Valuable because they have the ability to bypass conscious awareness

and defense mechanism to offer insight info an individual’s
unconscious conflicts
 Controversial, because reliability and validity are in dispute

 Consists of ten symmetrical inkblots, five in black-and-white and five
containing color
 Examiners ask respondents to look at each inkblot and say what it

resembles
 This supposedly tells you about personality traits of the respondent
 The Rorschach is one of the most commonly used of all personality

measures

 Unknown test-retest and problematic interrater reliability scores
 Little evidence that it detects features of mental disorders
 Lack of incremental validity

 Extent to which a test contributes information beyond other, more
easily collected, measures
 Takes a long time to administer and interpret
 There’s no evidence that the Rorschach exhibits incremental validity

beyond more easily collected data, such as life history information or
the MMPI

 Requires subject to construct a story based on
pictures
 Consists of 31 cards depicting ambiguous

situations, most of them interpersonal in nature
 Interpretation
 “Impressionistic”: inspect the content of the
examinee’s stories and analyze them using
clinical intuition alone
 Little evidence that impressionistic TAT

interpretations generate scores with adequate
reliability or validity

 Often failed to distinguish psychiatric patients,
such as people with clinical depression, from
non-patients, or to predict personality traits
 Lack of evidence for incremental validity
 The TAT is moderately valid for assessing
what psychologists call object relations—
perceptions of others, such as whether people
see others as helpful or harmful
 A system has also been developed to score
TAT measures on the need for achievement –
possess some amount of validity

 Human figure drawings require you to draw a person(s) in any way you
wish
 E.g. Draw-A-Person Test and House-Tree-Person Test
 Interpreted based on drawing ‘signs’ (e.g. big eyes in drawings may

mean suspiciousness)
 Low to non-existent correlations between personality traits and

drawing signs
 Poor test-retest reliabilities. Why?
 Confounded with artistic ability: persons may be considered

psychologically disturbed just because they draw poorly

 Graphology – analysis of handwriting – is another projective test
 Many firms in the United States and abroad use graphology to detect
potential employees who are prone to dishonest behaviour
 Many of the handwriting signs used by graphologists rely heavily on
the representativeness heuristic (because certain handwriting
features bear a superficial resemblance to certain traits,
graphologists assume they go together).
 For example, some graphologists maintain that individuals who
cross their t’s with lines resembling little whips are sadistic
 No scientific support for its use and claims

 Let’s say you completed a personality measure and this is the
interpretation you received:
 Some of your hopes and dreams are pretty unrealistic. You have a great deal
of unused potential that you have not yet turned to your advantage. Although
you sometimes enjoy being around others, you value your privacy.You prize
your independence and dislike being hemmed in by rules and restrictions.
You are an independent thinker and do not accept others’ opinions without
strong evidence.You sometimes have serious doubts about whether you have
made the right decision or done the right thing. Despite these doubts, you
are a strong person whom others can count on in times of trouble.
_____________________________________________________________________
 After reading your response is “This is so me!”, only to be told by the test
administer that this description is not based on your results, but instead it
is identical to one that all 100 previous participants have received.

 The PT Barnum effect and the tendency to accept high base rate
descriptors as accurate
 We may be convinced that the results of a personality test fit us to a T,

but that doesn’t mean the test is valid.
 Demonstrates that personal validation - the use of subjective

judgments of accuracy - is a flawed method of evaluating a test’s
validity.
 May help to explain astrological horoscopes
 Overall, personality assessment can be useful, but only if using valid,

reliable instruments

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Chapter Fourteen

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 Behavioral and social learning theories

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 People’s typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving

 These traits account in part for consistencies in our

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Focuses on identifying general Focuses on identifying the unique

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 Behavior-genetic methods attempt to disentangle the effects of

 Shared environmental factors

 Nonshared environmental factors

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 Turns out that shared environment plays little to no role in adult

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 Traits develop as a result of early

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 Remember, genes code for proteins, not specific behaviors

 Genes have indirect influence on traits, while the environment

 Twin studies vs. molecular genetic studies

 Molecular genetic studies allow researchers to pinpoint the influence

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 Mentioned that dreams have 2 types of content :

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 The ego will try to minimize anxiety via defense mechanisms

 Although essential for psychological health, Freud thought over

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 Erogenous zone: site of sexual pleasure

 Insisted that sexuality begins in infancy

 Individuals who get fixated on a stage and have difficulty moving on

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 Infant’s principal source of pleasure – mouth (sucking, biting, swallowing)

 Dependent on caregiver for oral gratification – primary object of satisfaction

 Mother’s response to infant’s demands lead to their perceptions of the world

Oral Incorporative Behaviour Oral Aggressive Behaviour

Anal Retentive Personality Anal Expulsive Personality

Stubborn, stingy, emotionally Disorderly, wasteful, dirty/messy, tardy

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 Child’s principal source of pleasure: the genitals

 Conflict: objects of their sexual desire

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 Child’s principal source of pleasure: the genitals

 Conflict: objects of their sexual desire

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 FIXATION CANNOT OCCUR HERE

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Phallic 3 – 6 yrs Genitals (penis or clitoris; Challenges forming healthy

Genital 12 years and Renewed sexual impulses in Sublimation of instincts;

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 Differ from Freud’s theories in two key ways

 Less emphasis on sexuality, more on social drives

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 Necessary motivating force of behaviour

 Motivated to compensate/overcome feelings of inferiority feelings by

 Excessive pampering/neglect/physical defects (organic inferiority)

Inferiority Complex Superiority Complex

Low self-esteem; tend to Tries to dominate others; Boastful, self-

 Collective unconscious: shared storehouse