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Personality

ARISHA AYAZ
What is Personality?
 More or less stable, internal factors that make
one person’s behavior consistent from one time
to another, and different from the behavior other
people would manifest in comparable situations.
 Stable
Remains relatively constant & unchanging overtime
 Internal
Lieswithin us, but our behavior is determined in part by
personality
 Consistent
People behave in relatively consistent ways
 Different
Individual differences
 Personality
 Personality refers to individual differences in
characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling
and behaving.

 Personality is made up of the characteristic

patterns of thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors that make a person unique. It
arises from within the individual and remains
fairly consistent throughout life.
Approaches to Personality
 Psychoanalytic
 sees personality as an aspect of self which is developed
by childhood experiences and unconscious motivations
 Trait
 sees personality as a set of characteristics inherited from
parents
 Humanist
 sees personality as developed from a set of individual
needs and motivation
 Behaviorist
 sees personality developing primarily due to the effects
of conditioning or reinforcement
 Social-Cognitive
 influence of environment
Some Terms
 Personality
 A person’s internally based characteristic way of
acting and thinking
 Character
 Personal characteristics that have been judged or
evaluated
 Temperament
 Hereditary aspects of personality, including sensitivity,
moods, irritability, and distractibility
 Personality Trait
 Stable qualities that a person shows in most situations
 Personality Type
 People who have several traits in common
Example of Personality Type 10
Psychoanalytic
Perspective
Psychoanalytic Perspective
 Presented by Freud
 First comprehensive theory of
personality
 Sees personality as the action
of internal structures of the
mind (psyche)
 Overt behavior results from the
interaction of these internal
structures and external events
Freudian Theory

 Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory

grew out of his therapeutic work with clients
and emphasized the importance of the
unconscious

 Freud divided personality structure into three

components: the id, ego and superego.
Freudian Theory
Structures of Personality Levels of Consciousness
 Id  Conscious
 Operates according to  What we’re aware of
the “pleasure principle”  Subconscious
 Ego  Memories etc. that can
 Operates according to be recalled
the “reality principle”  Unconscious
 Superego  Wishes, feelings,
 Operates according to impulses that lies
the “morality principle” beyond awareness
Structure of Personality
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Id
 Innate biological instincts and urges; self-
serving & irrational
 Totally unconscious
 Works on Pleasure Principle: Wishes to have
its desires (pleasurable) satisfied NOW ,
without waiting and regardless of the
consequences
Ego
 Executive; it directs id energies
 Partially conscious and partially unconscious
 Works on Reality Principle: Delays action
until it is practical and/or appropriate
Superego
 Judge or censor for thoughts and actions
 Focuses on how we have to behave;
represents internalized social rules
 Guilt comes from the superego
 Two parts
 First part of the superego: reflects actions for
which a person has been punished (e.g., what we
shouldn’t do or be)
 Second part of the superego: reflects behavior
one’s parents approved of or rewarded (e.g., what
we should do or be)
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Personality Development
“Personality forms during the first few years of
life, rooted in unresolved conflicts of early
childhood”
Psychosexual Stages

 Freud proposed that children evolve through

five stages of psychosexual development:
the oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital
stages.

 Certain experiences during these stages can

shape subsequent adult personality.
Psychosexual Stages

 Oral (0-18 months) - centered on the mouth

 Anal (18-36 months) – cleanliness, toilet
training.
 Phallic (3-6 yrs) - Identification & Gender Identity
 Latency (6-puberty) - sexuality is undeveloped
 Genital (puberty on) - intimate feelings toward
others
Defense Mechanisms
 When the inner war gets out of hand, the
result is Anxiety
 Ego protects itself via Defense Mechanisms
 A process used by the ego to protect a person
from anxiety
Common Defense Mechanisms
 Rationalization (making excuses): Reframing unpleasant events
as actually good, justifiable or rational
 Repression: Forgetting painful or upsetting
thoughts/feelings/events
 Regression: Returning to a more juvenile way of thinking or acting
 Reaction formation: Presenting your ideas/feelings as the
opposite of what they really are
 Projection: Attributing your own undesirable
characteristics/motives to someone else
 Denial: Refusing to acknowledge an unpleasant event/thought
 Displacement: Diverting your thoughts/impulses from their actual
target to a less threatening target
 Sublimation: Transforming sexual or aggressive energies into
more acceptable, pro-social behaviors
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Trait Theory
Trait Theory

 According to the trait theory, personality is

made up of a number of broad traits
 A trait is basically a relatively stable
characteristic that causes an individual to
behave in certain ways.
 Trait personality theories suggest that a
person can be described on the basis of
some number of personality traits
Food for Thought

Are you honest?

If you were given a chance to steal would you

steal?

If you were given a chance to lie and get away

with it, would you lie?
Trait-Situation Controversy
 One important notion embedded in trait theory is
the notion that personality is consistent and
stable. This has been an explicit or implicit
assumption of trait theorists
 A sample study
 Hartshorne & May (1928): Grade-school children were
given chances to cheat, steal, and lie (unobtrusively) in
different school settings. Children who were dishonest
in one situation were not necessarily dishonest in other
settings.
 This study implied that the cross-situational consistency
of behavior is weak, and behavior may be quite
variable from situation to situation (contrary to what
dispositionalists claim).
 The Big 5 Basic Traits
It describes the five fundamental factors of our personality
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Humanistic
Perspective
Humanistic Perspective
People are basically good
with actualizing tendencies.

 Embraces human freedom, and forces of

self-actualization
 Given the right environmental conditions, we
will develop to our full potentials
Maslow’s Theory
 Humans are born healthy & undamaged
 Human beings need to experience meaning and
a sense of purpose in life
 The meaning of any person’s life is found in the
choices that person makes and the responsibility
they take for those choices
 He spoke of personality in terms of
human uniqueness and & the need
for self actualization
Maslow’s Need Hierarchy
Desires to reach one’s full potential, to
Self-Actualization become every thing one is capable of
Needs becoming as a human being.

Esteem Needs Needs for power and status.

Desires to interact and affiliate with

Social Needs others and to feel wanted by others.

Desires for security, stability, and

Safety Needs the absence of pain.

Basic physical needs for water,

Physiological Needs food, clothing, and shelter.
Roger’s Theory
 His theory is structured around the concept of self
 The Self
 The perceptions individuals have of themselves & of
their relationships to other people & to various aspects
of life
 The self concept is how people
see their own behavior & internal
characteristics
 People actively seek higher
development & engage in process
of fulfilling their potential
Development of Personality
 Need for positive regard by others
 Unconditional positive regard
 Conditional positive regard

 Positive self regard

 Positive development leads to a fully-

functioning person
Roger’s Personality Theory
 Individuals have a concept of self & of ideal self
 Ideal self
 The self a person would ideally like to be
 Many people experience discrepancy between
the ideal self and the real self
 The real self contains a person’s true or real
qualities, including the actualizing tendency
 Incongruence
 The experience of conflict between the real self and
the ideal self
 Ideal Self Real Self

Trustworthy Joyful
Joyful Insecure
Sociable Lonely
Adventurous Incongruence Honest
Intelligent Trustworthy
Fun Loving Smart
Joyful
Trustworthy
Insecure
Joyful
Lonely
Sociable
Honest
Adventurous
Trustworthy
Intelligent
Smart
Fun Loving
Moving toward Congruency
Social-Cognitive
Perspective
Social-Cognitive Perspective
 Most of behavior is learned from the society –
family, friends & culture

 A person develops adequate personality if they

are provided adequate stimuli, reinforced
appropriately, and exposed to good models

 Our capacity to process language and images

and other sensory stimuli in our minds have an
effect on how we behave, how we develop our
personality traits, and thus, how we affect our
environment.
Social-Cognitive Perspective

Behavior learned through

conditioning & observation

What we think about our situation

affects our behavior
Interaction of
Environment & Intellect
Reciprocal Determinism
 Individual’s behavior & the environment
continually influence one another
 Internal World + External World = US
Locus of Control
Involves the extent to which individuals believe
that a reinforcement or outcome is contingent on
their own behavior or personal characteristics

VS

the extent to which they believe that a

reinforcement or outcome is a function of luck,
chance or fate or simply unpredictable
Locus of 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