Personality

Introduction: What is
Personality?
Personality derives from the Latin word
persona, which translates into English
as “mask.
A person’s general style of interacting
with the world
 What is Personality?
An individual’s unique and relatively
consistent patterns of thinking, feeling,
and behaving
Personality – an attempt to describe and
explain how people are similar, how they
are different, and why every individual is
unique?
Tries to explain the whole person
 Personality
Four major perspectives on Personality

Psychoanalytic - unconscious motivations

Trait - specific dimensions of personality
Humanistic - inner capacity for growth
Social-Cognitive - influence of environment
The Psychoanalytic
Perspective

From Freud’s theory

which proposes that
unconscious
motivations
influence personality
 Psychoanalytic Approach
Rational, Information
planful, in your
mediating Conscious immediate
dimension Ego awareness
of personality
Superego Preconscious Information
which can
Moralistic, easily be
judgmental, made
Unconscious conscious
perfectionist
dimension of
personality Id
Thoughts,
feelings,
urges, and other
Irrational, information
illogical, that is difficult
impulsive to bring to
dimension of conscious
personality awareness
 Psychoanalytic Approach
Conscious
Conscious - Ego

all things Superego Preconscious

we are
aware of at Unconscious

any given Id

moment
 Psychoanalytic Approach
Preconscious - Ego
Conscious

everything that
Superego Preconscious
can, with a little
effort, be Unconscious
brought into Id
consciousness
 Psychoanalytic Approach
Unconscious - Ego
Conscious

inaccessible
Superego Preconscious
warehouse of
anxiety- Unconscious
producing Id
thoughts and
drives
 Psychoanalytic
Divisions of the Mind
Id - instinctual drives present at birth
does not distinguish between reality and fantasy
operates according to the pleasure principle

Ego - develops out of the id in infancy

understands reality and logic
mediator between id and superego

Superego
internalization of society’s moral standards
responsible for guilt
 Defense Mechanisms
Ego Id
When the inner war
gets out of hand, the
result is Anxiety

Ego protects itself via

Defense Mechanisms
Super
Ego
Defense Mechanisms reduce/redirect
anxiety by distorting reality
 The Trait Perspective on
Personality
The trait approach to personality focuses primarily on
describing individual differences
Trait theorists view the person as a unique combination of
personality characteristics or attributes, called traits
A relatively stable, enduring predisposition to behave in a
certain way

Trait theory is a theory of personality that focuses on

identifying, describing, and measuring individual differences
 Personality Structure:
The “Big Five” Personality Factors*
(Each factor is a continuum of many related traits)

Adjustment
(Stable, confident, effective) (Nervous, self-doubting, moody)

Sociability
(Gregarious , energetic, self-dramatizing) (Shy, unassertive, withdrawn)

Conscientiousness
(Planful, neat, dependable) (Impulsive, careless, irresponsible)

Agreeableness
(Warm, tactful, considerate) (Independent, cold, rude)

Intellectual Openness
(Imaginative, curious, original) (Dull, unimaginative, literal-minded)
 The Humanistic Perspective
Maslow’s Roger’s
Self-Actualizing Person-Centered
Person Perspective

“Healthy” rather than “Sick”

Individual as greater than the sum of test scores
 Maslow & Self-Actualization
Self-Actualization
the process of fufilling our potential

• Studied healthy, creative people

• Abe Lincoln, Tom Jefferson &
Esteem
Eleanor Roosevelt
• Self-Aware & Self-Accepting Love Needs
• They love to perform
• Loving & Caring Safety
• Problem-Centered not Self-Centered
Physiological
 Roger’s Person-Centered
Perspective
People are basically good
with actualizing tendencies.

Given the right environmental

conditions, we will develop
to our full potentials

Genuineness, Acceptance, Empathy

Self Concept - central feature
of personality (+ or -)
Social-Cognitive Perspective
Behavior learned through
conditioning & observation

What we think about our situation

affects our behavior

Interaction of
Environment & Intellect
 Reciprocal Determinism
Personal/
Cognitive
Factors

Environment
Behavior
Factors
Internal
InternalWorld
World++External
ExternalWorld
World==Us
Us
 Personal Control
Internal Locus of Control
You pretty much control your own destiny

External Locus of Control

Luck, fate and/or powerful others control your destiny

Methods of Study
• Correlate feelings of control with behavior
• Experiment by raising/lowering people’s sense of
control and noting effects
 Self-Efficacy

Belief Greater
you will do effort &
well persistence

Success
 Self-Efficacy

Belief Less
you will do effort &
poorly persistence

Failure
THANK YOU