CONTENTS

 Introduction

 Dimensions of Personality
 Theories of Personality
 INTRODUCTION

Personality is the distinctive and characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that
make up an individual’s personal style of interacting with the physical and social environment.

Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and

behaving. The study of personality focuses on two broad areas:
 One is understanding individual differences in particular personality characteristics, such as
sociability or irritability.

 The other is understanding how the various parts of a person come together as a whole.
 Personality psychology is a branch of Psychology which studies the
concept of personality and how it differs among people.
 This area of psychology looks at the overall psychological makeup of
people, the psychological differences among individuals and the
similarities found within human nature.
 The word personality has been derived from the Latin word ‘Persona.’ At first this word was

used for the mask worn by the actors (Roman and Greek) in ancient times, to indicate to the

audiences whether they played the villain’s or the hero’s role in a drama. Thus the mask gave the

actor his characteristic features.

 Personality includes the behavior patterns, a person shows across situations or the psychological

characteristics of the person that lead to those behavior patterns.

 Personality traits reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and

behaviors. Personality traits imply consistency and stability on a specific trait.

 Traits are known as the stable characteristics, they are consistent and long lasting.

 States are temporary behaviors or feelings that depend on a person’s situation and

motives at a particular time.

 POSITIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS

 Some personality traits are positive:

 Being honest and taking responsibility for your actions are admirable
qualities.

 Adaptability and compatibility are great traits and can help you get along
with others.

 Courage will help you do what’s right in tough situations

Here are a few more to consider:
• Adventurous

• Fearless

• Observant

• Independent

• Optimistic

• Intelligent

• Charming

• Encouraging

• Reliable
 NEGATIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS

Other personality traits are negative. For example:

• Lazy
• Dishonest
• Sarcastic
• Arrogant
• Cowardly
• Rude
• Quarrelsome
• Impulsive
• Self-centered
 DETERMINING PERSONALITY TYPES

 Your personality type can be determined by many factors. One way to

discover your personality type is to approach it scientifically, by testing
yourself and having a psychologist analyze you
 There are two types of tests done to determine personality, which are:
 Projective Personality Tests

 Objective Personality Tests

 PROJECTIVE TESTS

■ A projective test is a type of personality test in which an individual offers responses to

ambiguous scenes, words, or images.

■ The goal of such tests is to uncover the hidden or unconscious conflicts or emotions .

■ By interpreting the responses to ambiguous cues, psychoanalysts hope to uncover

these unconscious feelings that might be causing problems in a person's life.

■ Projective personality tests are : Thematic Apperception Test, Rorschach

PROJECTIVE TESTS
 OBJECTIVE PERSONALITY TEST

■ An objective personality test exposes subjects to a series of

questions with restricted answers, such as true/false or scale rating.

■ For example, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

(MMPI) is a psychological test that assesses personality traits and

psychopathology.
 TRAITS OF THE BIG FIVE
PERSONALITY TEST

 Five super ordinate factors have emerged and are referred to as

the Big Five Model of Personality or the Big Five Personality
traits or the Five-Factor Model.
 Numerous amounts of research have been carried out to determine
the basic personality traits. And the big five factor is supported by
most of them.
 Human resources professionals often use the Big Five personality dimensions to help place
employees.

 That is because these dimensions are considered to be the underlying traits that make up an
individual’s overall personality.

 5 Traits are:

 Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism or

OCEAN:
 Openness - People who like to learn new things and enjoy new experiences usually score high in
openness. Openness includes traits like being insightful and imaginative and having a wide variety
of interests.

 Conscientiousness - People that have a high degree of conscientiousness are reliable and prompt.
Traits include being organized, methodic, and thorough.

 Extraversion - Extraverts get their energy from interacting with others, while introverts get their
energy from within themselves. Extraversion includes the traits of energetic, talkative, and
assertive.
 Agreeableness - These individuals are friendly, cooperative, and compassionate. People
with low agreeableness may be more distant. Traits include being kind, affectionate, and
sympathetic.

 Neuroticism - Neuroticism is also sometimes called Emotional Stability. This dimension

relates to one’s emotional stability and degree of negative emotions. People that score
high on neuroticism often experience emotional instability and negative emotions. Traits
include being moody and tense.
 THEORIES OF
PERSONALITY
Psychoanalytic/Freudian perspective

Psychodynamic/Neo-Freudian perspectives

Behavioral perspectives
Humanistic perspectives
 PSYCHOANALYTIC/FREUDIAN
PERSPECTIVE

 The psychoanalytic approach focuses on the importance of the unconscious mind.

 In other words, psychoanalytic perspective dictates that behavior is determined by

your past experiences that are left in the Unconscious Mind (people are unaware of
them).

 This perspective is still based on Freud's psychoanalytic perspective about early

experiences being so influential on current behavior.
 Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality argues that
human behavior is the result of the interactions among three component
parts of the mind: the id, ego, and superego.
 This theory, known as Freud’s structural theory of personality, places
great emphasis on the role of unconscious psychological conflicts in
shaping behavior and personality.
Freud divided personality structure into three components:
the id, ego and superego.
 The id is the instinctive component that follows the
pleasure principle

 the ego is the decision making component that follows

the reality principle

 the superego is the moral component that follows the

morality principle.
 The Id, the most primitive of the three structures, is
concerned with instant gratification of basic physical
needs and urges. It operates entirely unconsciously
(outside of conscious thought).

 The Superego is concerned with social rules and

morals. It develops as a child learns what their
culture considers right and wrong.

 The Ego One of the three components of the

psyche, it is the part of the psyche that deals with
reality. Ego balances the demand of Id and Superego
in the practical context of reality.

 The Libido - Psychic energy derived from the sex

drive
 LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

According to Freud, there are three levels of consciousness:

 conscious (small): this is the part of the mind that holds what you are aware of. You can verbalize about your conscious experience and you

can think about it in a logical way.

 preconscious (small-medium): this is ordinary memory. So although things stored here are not in the conscious, they can be readily

brought into conscious.

 unconscious (enormous): Freud felt that this part of the mind was not directly accessible to awareness. In part, he saw it as a dump box for

urges, feelings and ideas that are tied to anxiety, conflict and pain. These feelings and thoughts have not disappeared and according to

Freud, they are there, exerting influence on our actions and our conscious awareness.
 Freud believed that life was built round tension and pleasure. Freud also believed that all
tension was due to the build up of libido (sexual energy) and that all pleasure came from
its discharge.

 In describing human personality development as psychosexual Freud meant to convey that

what develops is the way in which sexual energy accumulates and is discharged as we
mature biologically.
 PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES

Freud (1905) proposed that psychological development in childhood takes place in a series of fixed

psychosexual stages:

 oral,

 anal

 phallic

 latency

 genital
 Each of the psychosexual stages is associated with a particular conflict that must be
resolved before the individual can successfully advance to the next stage.

 Or possibly the person's needs may have been so well satisfied that he/she is reluctant to
leave the psychological benefits of a particular stage in which there is overindulgence.

 Both frustration and overindulgence (or any combination of the two) may lead to what
psychoanalysts call fixation at a particular psychosexual stage
)
 Oedipus Complex : The most important aspect of the phallic stage is the
Oedipus Complex. In the young boy, the Oedipus complex or conflict,
arises because the boy develops sexual (pleasurable) desires for his
mother.

 Electra Complex: The girl develops the pleasurable desire for the father.
 Penis envy is a theory in Freudian psychoanalytic theory that proposes that very young girls feel
deprived and envious that they do not have a penis. These feelings later lead to a desire for normal
heterosexual development.

 Castration anxiety is a Freudian concept in which a child is afraid their genitals will be harmed
by the parent of the same sex as they develop sexual feelings for the other parent. This can occur
in both males and females and presents itself during the phallic stage (occurring between the ages
of 3-5). For example, a son fears his father will damage his genitals because of his sexual feelings
towards his mother.
 The little boy then sets out to resolve this problem by imitating, copying
and joining in masculine dad-type behaviors and is how the three-to-five
year old boy resolves his Oedipus Complex.
 Similarly, a girl starts copying her mother, she resolves an Electra
Complex.
 DEFENSE MECHANISMS

In order to deal with conflict and problems in life, Freud stated that the ego employs a
range of defense mechanisms.

Defense mechanisms operate at an unconscious level and help ward off unpleasant
feelings (i.e. anxiety) or make good things feel better for the individual.
 We use defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from feelings of anxiety
or guilt, which arise because we feel threatened, or because our id or
superego becomes too demanding.

 With the ego, our unconscious will use defense mechanism protect us
when we come up against a stressful situation in life.
PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE
 CARL JUNG

A Swiss Psychiatrist who was the follower of Freud but he criticized on

Freud’s concept of Oedipus Complex.

 Jung agreed with Freud that a person’s past and childhood experiences
determined future behavior, he also believed that we are shaped by our
future too.
 He proposed that the unconscious consists of two layers.

 The first layer called the personal unconscious contains temporality forgotten information
and well as repressed memories.

 The other concept is the collective unconscious comprising latent memories from our
ancestral and evolutionary past.
Archetypes
 Archetypes are images and thoughts which have universal meanings across
cultures which may show up people, ideas, literature, art or religion.

 For Jung, our primitive past becomes the basis of the human psyche, directing
and influencing present behavior.
 Jung was one of the first people to define introversion and extraversion in
a psychological context.
 The introvert is focused on the internal world of reflection, dreaming and
vision.
 The extravert is focused on the outside world of objects, sensory
perception and action.
ALFRED ADLER
INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY
 ALFRED ADLER’S THEORY

 Adler’s individual psychology presents an optimistic view of people.

 He mainly focused on the social interest.
 Social interest is a way of life; it is an optimistic feeling of confidence in
oneself, and a genuine interest in the welfare and well-being of others.
He gave an idea of superiority and inferiority complex.

For example: If we are moving along, doing well, feeling competent, we can
afford to think of other but if we feel the sense of incompetency we may
develop an inferiority complex: become shy and timid, insecure, indecisive,
cowardly, submissive, compliant, and so on.
 A person with an inferiority complex tends to lack social interest; instead
they are self-interested: focused on themselves and what they believe to
be their deficiencies.
 They may compensate by working hard to improve in the skills at which
they lack, or they may try to become competent at something else, but
otherwise retaining their sense of inferiority .
 We may also develop a superiority complex, which involves covering up
our inferiority by pretending to be superior.

For example, If we feel small, one way to feel big is to make everyone else
feel even smaller! Bullies, big-heads, and petty dictators everywhere are the
prime example.
However, feelings of inferiority are not all bad. Adler suggested
that such feelings can motivate us to improve; this is referred to as
compensation.
 Striving for Superiority The one dynamic force behind people’s
behavior is the striving for success or superiority
According to Adler,
character traits and
behavior effects
personality including birth
order.
BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE
B.F. SKINNER (REINFORCEMENT SHAPES PERSONALITY)

ALBERT BANDURA’S THEORY (SOCIAL LEARNING AND SELF-

EFFICACY)
 BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE

 Behaviorists believe that personality is shaped by operant conditioning

principles. When we receive positive reinforcement such as attention or praise
for a behavior, we are likely to repeat that behavior. We will avoid negative
situations becoming negatively reinforced for avoiding, reducing or
terminating the painful stimulus.
 Over time these responses become Habit Patterns or Response Tendencies
known as personality by behaviorists
 SKINNER’S THEORY

 Skinner and other behaviorists believe all behavior is Learned,

Determined by what we have learned from our Environment. They
emphasize the importance of Environmental Factors.
 They believe that the environment may shape normal or abnormal
behavior but emphasize that "There is no such thing as an abnormal
person, only a normal person in an abnormal environment."
 BANDURA’S THEORY

 Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory posits that people learn

from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling by using
cognitive factors such as attention, memory, and motivation.
 It is the bridge between behavior and cognition.
 One of Bandura's most famous theories is his theory of self-efficacy. Self-
efficacy literally means the belief of a person that his or her actions are
effective or make a difference.
 The person with self-efficacy believes that his thoughts and actions will
have some influence over the outcome and it is related to motivation.
HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE
CARL ROGER’S THEORY

ABRAHAM MASLOW'S THEORY

 CARL ROGER’S THEORY

 Central to Rogers' personality theory is the notion of real-self or self-

concept. This is defined as "the organized, consistent set of perceptions
and beliefs about oneself".
 According to Rogers (1959), we want to feel, experience and behave in
ways which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we
would like to be like, our ideal-self.
The humanistic approach states that the self is composed of concepts unique to ourselves.
The self-concept includes three components:
 Self worth (or self-esteem) – what we think about ourselves

 Self-image – How we see ourselves, our body image, our inner personality. Self-image has
an effect on how a person thinks, feels and behaves in the world.

 Ideal self – This is the person who we would like to be. It consists of our goals and
ambitions in life.
 The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more
consistent or congruent we are and the higher our sense of self-worth.
 A person is said to be in a state of incongruence if a difference may exist
between a person’s ideal self and actual experience.
 According to Rogers, highly incongruent self concepts are prone to
recurrent anxiety.
 MASLOW’S THEORY

 Abraham Maslow proposed that human motives are organized into a hierarchy of

needs in which basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused.

 At the top is the self-actualization need which fulfill one’s potential so according to

Maslow, self actualizing people are with very healthy personalities marked by

continued personal growth.