PERSONALITY

Raihana Sharmin
Lecturer
North South University
 Personality
• Personality is the pattern of enduring
characteristics that produce consistency and
individuality in a given person.

• Personality encompasses the behaviours

that make each of us unique and that
differentiate us from others.

• Personality also leads us to act consistently

in different situations and over extended
periods of time.
 Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality

• Psychodynamic approaches to personality are based on the

idea that personality is primarily UNCONSCIOUS and
motivated by inner forces and conflicts about which people
have little awareness.

• Pioneer: SIGMUND FREUD, an Austrian physician in early

1900.
Unconscious
• A part of the personality that contains the memories, knowledge,
beliefs, feelings, urges, drives, and instincts of which the individual
is not aware.

• Contents in unconscious cannot be observed directly.

• Interpret clues to the unconscious—slips of the tongue, fantasies,

and dreams—to understand the unconscious processes that direct
behaviour.

Preconscious
• Contains material that is not threatening and is easily brought to
mind.
 Structure of Personality

Personality consists of three separate but

interacting components:

• id (pleasure principle)

• Ego (reality principle)

• Superego (morality principle)

The id

• Instinctual and unorganized part of personality.

• From the time of birth, the id attempts to reduce tension
created by primitive drives related to hunger, sex, aggression,
and irrational impulses.
• Operates according to the pleasure principle in which the goal
is the immediate reduction of tension and the maximization of
satisfaction.
The ego
• Rational and logical part of personality
• Attempts to balance the desires of the id and the realities of the
objective, outside world. It starts to develop soon after birth.
• Operates according to the reality principle in which instinctual
energy is restrained to maintain the individual’s safety and to help
integrate the person into society.
• “Executive” of personality: It makes decisions, controls actions,
and allows thinking and problem solving of a higher order than
the id’s capabilities permit.
The Superego
• Harshly judges the morality of our behaviour. It represents the
rights and wrong of society as taught and modelled by a
person’s parents, teachers, and other significant individuals.

• The superego includes the conscience, which prevents us from

behaving in a morally improper way by making us feel guilty if
we do wrong.
 Defense Mechanism

• Freud believed that people develop a range of ways to deal

with anxiety, which he called defense mechanisms.

• Defense mechanisms are unconscious strategies that people

use to reduce anxiety by distorting reality and concealing the
source of the anxiety from themselves.
• Repression occurs when the ego pushes unacceptable or
unpleasant thoughts and impulses out of consciousness but
maintains them in the unconscious.

• Repression is the most direct method of dealing with anxiety;

instead of handling an anxiety-producing impulse on a
conscious level, we simply ignore it.

• For example, a woman is unable to consciously recall that she

was raped.
• Displacement is the expression of an unwanted feeling or
thought is redirected from a more threatening powerful
person to a weaker one.

• For example, husband is angry at wife after being scolded by

his boss at office.
• Denial is when people refuse to accept or acknowledge an
anxiety producing piece of information.

• Sublimation is when people divert unwanted impulses into

socially approved thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.
• Rationalization is when people provide self-justifying
explanations in place of the actual, but threatening, reason
for their behavior.
• Projection
People attribute unwanted impulses and feelings to someone
else.

For example, a woman who is unfaithful to her husband and

feels guilty suspects that her husband is unfaithful.
• Reaction Formation
Unconscious impulses are expressed as their opposite in
consciousness.

For example, a young boy who bullies a young girl because, on a

subconscious level, he's attracted to her.
 Evaluation of Freud’s Theory

Strengths Limitations

Freud’s emphasis on the unconscious Lack of compelling scientific data

has been partially supported by
current research on dreams and
implicit memory
Freud’s conception of personality is
built on unobservable abstract
Cognitive and social psychologists concepts.
have found evidence that Difficult to predict how an adult
unconscious processes help us think will display certain developmental
about and evaluate our world, set difficulties.
goals, and choose a course of action
Freud made his observations and
derived his theory from a limited
population.
 Trait Approach

• Traits are consistent, habitual personality

characteristics and behaviours that are
displayed across different situations.

• Trait theory seeks to identify the basic traits

necessary to describe personality.

• Trait theorists propose that all people possess

a set of traits, but the degree to which a
particular trait applies to a specific person
varies and can be quantified.
 The Big 5 Personality Traits
• For the last two decades, the most influential trait approach
• 5 traits or factors—called the “Big Five”—lie at the core of
personality
• Independent
Openness to
• Imaginative
experience
• Preference for variety
• Careful
Conscientiousness
• Disciplined
• Sociable • Organized
Extraversion • Talkative •Sympathetic
• Fun-loving Agreeableness •kind
•Appreciable
• Stable
Neuroticism • Calm
• Secure
 Evaluating Trait Approaches

Strengths Limitations

Clear & straightforward Question validity of trait

explanations of people’s conceptions of personality
behavior consistencies
Allow to compare one person Traits do not provide explanations
with another for behaviour; they merely label it.

Labelling personality traits is not an

explanation of how those traits
developed in a person nor of how
they function to determine
behaviour.
 Learning Approaches to Personality

• B.F. Skinner

• Personality is a collection of learned behaviour

patterns.

• Less interested in the consistencies in

behaviour across situations than in ways of
modifying behaviour. Humans are infinitely
changeable through the process of learning
new behaviour patterns.
 Social Cognitive Approaches to Personality

• Albert Bandura
• Social cognitive approaches to personality emphasize the
influence of cognition—thoughts, feelings, expectations, and
values—as well as observation of others’ behaviour, on
personality.

• People can foresee the possible outcomes of certain behaviours

in a specific setting without actually having to carry them out.

• This understanding comes primarily through observational

learning—viewing the actions of others and observing the
consequences.
 Evaluating Learning Approaches

Strengths Limitations
Objective, scientific venture by Oversimplifying personality too
focusing on observable behaviour much by excluding thoughts &
and the effects of the feelings.
environments
Share highly deterministic view
of human behavior
 Biological and Evolutionary Approaches

• Biological and evolutionary approaches to personality suggest

that important components of personality are INHERITED.

• Personality is determined at least in part by our genes.

• Evolutionary perspective assumes that personality traits that

led to our ancestors’ survival and reproductive success are
more likely to be preserved and passed on to subsequent
generations.
 Humanistic Approaches to Personality

• Emphasize people’s inherent goodness and their tendency to

move toward higher levels of functioning.

• It is this conscious, self-motivated ability to change and

improve, along with people’s unique creative impulses, that
humanistic theorists argue make up the core of personality.

• Major proponent: Carl Rogers (1971).

• A conflict may grow between people’s actual life experiences

and their self-concept if people place importance on others’
opinions.
• Self concept is the set of beliefs people hold about their own
abilities, behaviour, and personality. If the discrepancies between
one’s experience and one’s self-concept are great, they will lead
to psychological disturbances in daily functioning.

• Rogers suggests that one way of overcoming the discrepancy is

through the receipt of unconditional positive regard from another
person.

• Unconditional positive regard refers to an attitude of acceptance

and respect on the observer’s part, no matter what a person says
or does.
 Evaluating Humanistic Approaches

Strengths Limitations
Highlighting the uniqueness of Difficulty of verifying basic
human beings assumptions approach & whether
unconditional positive regard
leads to greater personality
development or not is unclear

Guiding the development of People are basically good- this

Humanistic therapy designed to assumption is unverifiable
alleviate psychological difficulties
 Assessing Personality
• Psychological tests, standard measures devised to assess
behaviour objectively.
• Psychologists can help people better understand themselves
and make decisions about their lives.

1. Self-Report Measures

People are asked questions about their own behaviour and

traits. This sampling of self-report data is then used to infer the
presence of particular personality characteristics.
2. Projective Methods

In projective personality tests, people are shown an ambiguous,

vague stimulus and asked to describe it or to tell a story about it in
order to infer information about their personality.

Responses are considered to be “projections” of the test-taker’s

personality, and they are scored and interpreted using a
standardized scoring method.
3. Behavioral Assessment

Direct measures of an individual’s behaviour designed to describe

characteristics indicative of personality.

Behavioural assessment is carried out objectively and quantifies

behaviour as much as possible.

Behavioural assessment is particularly appropriate for observing—

and eventually remedying—specific behavioural difficulties.