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Brett Pino

November 6, 2018

Psych-2250

Salt Lake Community College

Theories paper

Introduction:

The purpose of this paper will be focused towards 3 personality theories to compare and evaluate

my own personality and how these techniques may be used when analyzing personality in

psychology. The idea behind incorporating personality theories into the study of psychology is to

provide a model for better comprehension of human thoughts, behaviors and emotions.

Personality theories are heavily studied and used by pursuers of psychology to analyze behavior

to eventually make predictions about the future behaviorisms.

Personality Analysis:

Albert Bandura affirmed the relevance of social learning, which means to learn through

observation of surroundings. In other words, behaviors are learned through conditioning. The

social learning theory constructed, supported through Bandura’s famous Bobo doll experiments,

represented how easily children are molded by example, which can be clearly witnessed through

just the footage of the experiments. The children react to the doll based off previous

representative examples of treatment towards the doll. Later in Bandura’s research, he

highlighted the role of conscious thoughts, such as his work with self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is

believing in our own capabilities.

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Biologically speaking it’s already a common knowledge that children have a critical timeframe

to learn specific skills. For example, sensory pathways, language and higher cognitive functions

are the first basic neutral connections that form in the child’s first year. Safe to say that children

are sponges, I can relate behaviorisms from my past and some now that have to do with my

observational learning. My mom used to take shots with her friends and I copied the behavior by

taking shots of pickle juice. My Observational learning would be solely based upon how to

blend, get attention and favoritism from the world. All I’m doing as an adult is absorbing the

learned behaviors that gets me ahead in life.

The importance of conscious thoughts with self-efficacy can be recalled to a moment I wanted to

change qualities about someone, with a perspective change, I realized I can have standards but

can’t try to change someone because what’s the point of knowing someone if you want them to

be different. Having conscious thoughts improved my quality of life. If I’m having a positive

experience with self-efficacy that will reflect on how I perform the task ahead.

Erik Erikson built his contrasted views from Freud’s psychosexual theory, Erikson believed the

development was constructed throughout an entire lifespan. He described eight crucial stages:

Trust vs Mistrust, Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt, Initiative vs Guilt, Industry vs Inferiority,

Identity vs Confusion, Intimacy vs Isolation, Generativity vs Stagnation and Integrity vs Despair.

I trusted my caregivers and I’m naïve about the trust I give out. According to the stage Trust and

Mistrust that would suggest I was provided responsive care between birth and two years. I feel

sometimes very uncomfortable in my environments and suffer from extreme guilt; however, I

can relate the feeling of purpose between 3-6 that I wanted to have a sense of humor, be genuine

and inventive. Industry and inferiority are challenging right now in life, when I don’t succeed or

try new things, I stay complacent. The collection of information just on dating and dealing with
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other people has been making me feel I’m heading in the right direction and that I’m going to

learn a lot about relationships right now.

Carl Jung Also built off Freud’s consciousness theory. Mainly differs for his focus on the

collective unconscious believing it’s derived from psychological inheritance. Jung introduced the

Persona how we deliver ourselves, the Shadow animalistic tendencies, the Anima or Animus the

masculine and feminine characteristics and the Self achieve cohesiveness.

My persona will be influenced heavily on my mood and what I want to portray to others based

on my personality. I’m adaptable to different situations which I would bet is a direct correlation

to behave in a socially acceptable way. My shadow would be my resentments and how

occasionally I allow them to create a negative vision of my life that I want to just let go of. The

Animus in me is what subjects I choose to coexist with in daily life. For example, I prefer slot

cars, video games, sports, beer and raunchy jokes. I grew up around my six boy cousins and my

step dad and uncle being boys and I connected because I felt the interactions were more

entertaining and wanted to play a part in them. The Self archetype, my personality strives to feel

that my progress is meaningful and doing my best work.

Reflective Conclusion:

I decided to choose Bandura, Erikson and Jung’s theories to analyze my personality because I

find their work the most interesting, naturally began to use their concepts and match the

explanations to my own experiences and choices I make daily. I helped me connect some dots

about a concept and myself, it didn’t totally help me to understand my personality thoroughly. I

do think it’s helpful to understand predictable behaviors based off a person’s personality.

Personality theory might be slightly useful because I’m going into cognitive neuroscience
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References:

https://www.verywellmind.com/personality-perspectives-2795950

https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/inbrief-science-of-ecd/