UNDERSTANDING PSYCHOLOGY

10TH EDITION
By Robert Feldman
Powerpoint slides by Kimberly Foreman
Revised for 10th Ed by Cathleen Hunt

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
PERSONALITY

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 MODULE 40:
Psychodynamic Approaches to
Personality
 How do psychologists define and use the
concept of personality?

 What do the theories of Freud and his

successors tell us about the structure and
development of personality?

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 MODULE 40:
Psychodynamic Approaches to
Personality
 Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality
› Based on the idea that personality is motivated by
inner forces and conflicts about which people
have little awareness and over which they have
no control

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
Mapping the Unconscious Mind
 Psychoanalytic Theory
› Sigmund Freud
› Unconscious
 Part of the personality that contains memories,
knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, drives, and
instincts of which one is not aware
 Motivates much of our behavior
› Preconscious
 Holds material easily brought to mind
5

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
Mapping the Unconscious Mind
 Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, & Superego
› Id
 Raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality
 Holds primitive drives
 Pleasure principle

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
Mapping the Unconscious Mind
 Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, & Superego
› Ego
 Strives to balance the desires of the id and the
realities of the objective, outside world
 Reality principle
 “Executive” of personality

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
Mapping the Unconscious Mind
 Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, & Superego
› Superego
 Represents the rights and the wrongs of society as
taught and modeled by one’s parents, teachers,
and other significant individuals
 Includes the conscience

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
Mapping the Unconscious Mind
 Developing Personality: Psychosexual
Stages
› Individuals encounter conflicts between the
demands of society and their own sexual urges
› Failure to resolve conflicts at any stage can result
in fixation

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
Mapping the Unconscious Mind
 Developing Personality: Psychosexual
Stages
› Oral stage
 Baby’s mouth is focal point of pleasure
 Weaning is main conflict
 Fixation could include:
 Eating
 Talking
 Smoking
 Other oral interests 10

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Psychosexual Stages

11

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
Mapping the Unconscious Mind
 Developing Personality: Psychosexual
Stages
› Anal stage
 Major source of pleasure is the anal region
 Children obtain pleasure from both retention and
expulsion of feces
 Fixation may result in:
 Rigidity
 Orderliness
 Punctuality
 Disorderliness 12

 Sloppiness
Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011
 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
Mapping the Unconscious Mind
 Developing Personality: Psychosexual
Stages
› Phallic stage
 Focus is on genitals
 Oedipal conflict
 Castration anxiety
 Identification

13

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
Mapping the Unconscious Mind
 Developing Personality: Psychosexual
Stages
› Latency period
 Lasts until puberty
 Sexual interests become dormant
› Genital stage
 Extends until death
 Focus is on mature, adult sexuality (sexual
intercourse) 14

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
Mapping the Unconscious Mind
 Defense Mechanisms
› Unconscious strategies
that people use to
reduce anxiety by
concealing its source
from themselves and
others
 Repression

15

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts:
Building on Freud
 Jung’s Collective Unconscious
› Common set of ideas, feelings, images, and
symbols that we inherit from our relatives, the
whole human race, and even nonhuman animal
ancestors from the distant past
 Archetypes
 Universal symbolic representations of a particular
person, object, or experience

16

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts:
Building on Freud
 Horney’s Neo-Freudian Perspective
› Women’s issues
› Suggested that personality develops in the
context of social relationships and depends
particularly on the relationship between parents
and child

17

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts:
Building on Freud
 Adler and the Other Neo-Freudians
› Alfred Adler
› Proposed that the primary human motivation is
striving for superiority in a quest for self-
improvement and perfection
 Inferiority complex
 Describes situations in which adults have not been able
to overcome the feelings of inferiority they developed as
children
› Erik Erikson 18

› Anna Freud
Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011
 MODULE 41: Trait, Learning, Biological,
Evolutionary, and Humanistic Approaches
to Personality

 What are the major aspects of trait, learning,

biological, evolutionary, and humanistic
approaches to personality?

19

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Trait Approaches:
Placing Labels on Personality
 Trait Theory
› Seeks to explain, in a straightforward way, the
consistencies in individuals’ behavior
 Traits
 Consistent personality characteristics and behaviors
displayed in different situations

20

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Trait Approaches:
Placing Labels on Personality
 Allport’s Trait Theory: Identifying Basic
Characteristics
› Cardinal trait
 Single characteristic that directs most of a person’s
activities
› Central trait
 Major characteristics of an individual
› Secondary trait
 Affect behavior in fewer situations 21

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Trait Approaches:
Placing Labels on Personality
 Cattell and Eysenck: Factoring Out Personality
› Factor analysis
 Statistical method of identifying associations among a
large number of variables to reveal more general
patterns
 Factors
 Combinations of traits
› Cattell
 Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF)
› Eysenck
 3 major dimensions:
22
 Extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Trait Approaches:
Placing Labels on Personality
 The Big Five
Personality Traits
› Openness to experience
› Conscientiousness
› Extraversion
› Agreeableness
› Neuroticism

23

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Learning Approaches:
We Are What We’ve Learned
 B. F. Skinner’s Behaviorist Approach
› States that personality is a collection of learned
behavior patterns

24

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Learning Approaches:
We Are What We’ve Learned
 How much consistency exists in personality?
› Walter Mischel
 Personality is variable from one situation to
another
 Situationism
 Cognitive-affective processing system theory
(CAPS)
 People’s thoughts and emotions about themselves and
the world determine how they view, and then react, in
situations
25

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Learning Approaches:
We Are What We’ve Learned
 Self-esteem
› The component of personality that encompasses
our positive and negative self-evaluations
 Relationship harmony

26

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Biological and Evolutionary Approaches:
Are We Born with Personality?
 Suggest that important
components of
personality are
inherited
› Temperament
 Innate disposition

27

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Humanistic Approaches:
The Uniqueness of You
 Emphasize people’s inherent goodness and
their tendency to move towards higher levels
of functioning

 Carl Rogers
› Self-actualization
 Self-concepts
› Unconditional positive regard
28
› Conditional positive regard
Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011
 Comparing Approaches to
Personality

29

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 MODULE 42: Assessing Personality:
Determining What Makes Us Distinctive

 How can we most accurately assess

personality?

 What are the major types of personality

measures?

30

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Psychological Tests

 Standard measures devised to assess

behavior objectively
› Reliability
 The measurement consistency of a test
› Validity
 When a test measures what it is designed to
measure

31

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Self-Report Measures of
Personality
 Self-Report Measures
› Asks people about a relatively small sample of
their behavior
 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory -2
(MMPI-2)
 Test standardization

32

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Projective Measures

 Projective Personality
Tests
› People are shown
ambiguous stimulus and
asked to describe it or
tell a story about it
 Rorschach test
 Thematic Apperception
Test (TAT)

33

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Behavioral Assessment

 Direct measures of an individual’s behavior

designed to describe characteristics
indicative of personality

34

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011

 Assessing Personality
Assessments
 Understand what the test claims to measure

 Base no decision only on the results of any

one test

 Remember that test results are not always

accurate
35

Copyright McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2011