Personality

Lecturer
Saima Azad
Air University Islamabad
 Topics
– Definition of Personality
– The Psychoanalytic perspective
– The Humanistic perspective
– The Social-Cognitive Perspective
– Exploring The Self
 Personality
A set of behavioral, emotional, and
cognitive tendencies that people
display over time and across
situations and that distinguish
individuals from one another
 Psychodynamic Approaches
to Personality

• Psychodynamic approaches to personality

• personality is motivated by inner forces and
conflicts about which people have little
awareness and over which they have no
control
 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
Mapping the Unconscious Mind

• Psychoanalytic theory: According to Freud’s theory,

unconscious forces act as determinants of personality

• Unconscious: A part of the personality that contains

the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges,
drives are hidden from conscious awareness because
of the conflicts and pain they would cause if they were
part of our everyday lives.
• Slip of the tongue, fantasies, and dreams are
used to understand the unconscious processes
that direct behavior.

• A slip of the tongue (sometimes termed a

Freudian slip ) may be interpreted as
revealing the speaker’s unconscious sexual
desires.
 Freud's Early Exploration into the
Unconscious

• Used hypnosis and free

association (relax and say
it all) to delve (reach
inside) into unconscious.
• preconscious, which contains material that is
not threatening and is easily brought to mind.
Conscious

Preconscious

Unconscious
 STRUCTURING PERSONALITY: ID, EGO, AND SUPEREGO

• Freud developed a comprehensive theory

that held that personality consists of three
components:
• id
• ego
• superego.
Freud's Personality Structure
• Ego

• Superego

• Id
• The id is the raw, unorganized, inborn part of
personality.

• The id operates according to the pleasure principle in

which the goal is the immediate reduction of tension
and the maximization of satisfaction.
• The ego strives to balance the desires of the id and the realities of the
objective, outside world.

• Ego operates according to the reality principle in which goal is to maintain

the individual’s safety and to help integrate the
person into society.

• The ego is the “executive” of personality: it makes decisions, controls

actions, and allows thinking and problem solving.
• The superego, the final personality structure to develop in
childhood, represents the rights and wrongs of society as taught and
modeled 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.

• The superego helps us control impulses coming from the id, making
our behavior less selfish and more virtuous.
• Both the superego and the id are unrealistic in that they do
not consider the practical realities imposed by society.

• The superego, would create perfectionists unable to make

the compromises that life requires.

• id would create a pleasure-seeking, thoughtless individual

seeking to fulfill every desire without delay.

• As a result, the ego must mediate between the demands of

the superego and the demands of the id.
 Definitions
• Id: The raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality whose
purpose is to reduce tension created by primitive drives related to
hunger, sex, aggression, and irrational impulses.

• Ego: The part of the personality that provides a buffer between

the id and the outside world.

• Superego: it represents the rights and wrongs of society as

handed down by a person’s parents, teachers, and other
important figures.
 DEVELOPING PERSONALITY: PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES

• Psychosexual stages (def) : developmental periods that children pass through during which
they encounter conflicts between the demands of society and their own sexual urges.

• According to Freud, failure to resolve the conflicts at a particular stage can result in fixations.

• Fixations (def) : conflicts or concerns that persist beyond the developmental period in which
they first occur.

• Such conflicts may be due to having needs ignored or being overindulged during the earlier
period.

• It explains how experiences and difficulties during a particular childhood stage may predict
specific characteristics in the adult personality.
• Oral stage: (12-18 months)

• mouth is the primary site of a kind of sexual pleasure and that weaning represents
the main conflict during the oral stage.

• If infants are either overindulged (perhaps by being fed every time they cry) or
frustrated in their search for oral gratification, they may become fixated at this stage.

• Fixation at the oral stage might produce an adult who was unusually interested in oral
activities—eating, talking, smoking—or who showed oral interests such as
(“swallowing” anything).
• Anal stage: (12 to 18 months until 3 years )

• a period when the emphasis is on toilet training.

• If toilet training is particularly demanding, fixation

might occur.

• Fixation during the anal stage might result in unusual

rigidity, orderliness, punctuality—or extreme
disorderliness in adulthood
• phallic stage: (3-6 years)

• a child’s pleasure focuses on the genitals.

• most important hurdles of personality development at this stage is Oedipal conflict.

• Oedipal conflict A child’s sexual interest in his or her opposite-sex parent, typically resolved through identification with
the same-sex parent.

• male unconsciously begins to develop a sexual interest in his mother, starts to see his father as a rival. female
unconsciously begins to develop a sexual interest in her father, starts to see her mother as a rival.

• In order to avoid the conflict he/she develops identification.

• Identification: The process of wanting to be like another person as much as possible, imitating that person’s behavior
and adopting similar beliefs and values.

• At this point, the Oedipal conflict is said to be resolved, and Freudian theory assumes that both males and females move
on to the next stage of development.
• Latency period (6 – 12 years)
According to Freud, the period between the phallic
stage and puberty during which children’s sexual
concerns are temporarily put aside.

• Genital stage (12 year onwards)

according to Freud, the period from puberty until
death, marked by mature sexual behavior.
 DEFENSE MECHANISMS

• Defense mechanisms
In Freudian theory, unconscious strategies that
people use to reduce anxiety by
distorting reality and concealing the
source of the anxiety from themselves.
 Repression
• Motivational
forgetting
• Thought or events
are kept away from
conscious awareness
• E.g., forgetting an
appointment with a
person you dislike.
Regression
• When faced with
anxiety the person
retreats to a more
infantile stage.
• Thumb sucking on the
first day of school.
• Dropping one’s mature
behavior and acting in
immature childish
ways.
 Reaction Formation
• Ego switches
unacceptable impulses
into their opposites.
• e.g., Being mean to
someone you have a
crush on.
• e.g., you dislike someone
but instead ‘’smothering’’
him with love
Projection
• Disguise your own
threatening impulses
by attributing them to
others.
• Thinking that your
spouse wants to cheat
on you when it is you
that really want to
cheat.
 Rationalization
• Offers self-
adjusting • e.g., forgetting that
explanations in he/she had
place of real, more
threatening performed poorly on
reasons for your an examination
actions. because he did not
• e.g., You don’t get study and blaming
into a college and
say, “I really did
the wording of test
not want to go questions.
there it was too
far away!!”
Displacement
• Shifts the
unacceptable
impulses towards a
safer outlet.
• Instead of yelling at
a teacher, you will
take anger out on a
friend.
 Sublimation
• Re-channel their
unacceptable impulses
towards more
acceptable or socially
approved activities.
 SOCIAL COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO PERSONALITY

• social cognitive approaches to personality: Theories that emphasize the

influence of a person’s cognitions— thoughts, feelings, expectations, and values
—as well as observation of others’ behavior, in determining personality.

• It focuses on observational learning —viewing the actions of others and

observing the consequences.

• According to social cognitive approaches, personality develops through repeated

observation of others’ behavior.

• Self-efficacy: the belief that we have the personal capabilities to master a

situation and produce positive outcomes.
• People with high self-efficacy are highly
motivated to attain goals and ultimately achieve
greater success than those with lower self-
efficacy.

• Direct reinforcement and encouragement from

others also play a role in developing self-efficacy.
 Social-Cognitive Perspective
Bandura (1986, 2001,
2005) believes that
personality is the
result of an interaction
that takes place
between a person and
their social context.

Albert Bandura
 SELF-ESTEEM

• Self-esteem: the component of personality that encompasses our positive and negative self-evaluations.

• We may see ourselves positively in one domain but negatively in others. For example, a good student
may have high self-esteem in academic domains but lower self-esteem in sports.

• Self-esteem is strongly affected by culture. For example, in Asian cultures, having high relationship
harmony —a sense of success in forming close bonds with other people—is more important to self-esteem
than it is in more individualistic Western societies .

• Although almost everyone goes through periods of low self-esteem (for instance, after an undeniable
failure), but some people are chronically low in self-esteem. For them, failure seems to be an inevitable
part of life. In fact, low self-esteem may lead to a cycle of failure in which past failure causes future
failure.
 Personal Control
Social-cognitive psychologists emphasize our
sense of personal control, whether we control
the environment or the environment controls
us.
External locus of control refers to the perception
that chance or outside forces beyond our personal
control determine our fate.

Internal locus of control refers to the perception

that we can control our own fate.
 Biological and Evolutionary Approaches: Are We Born with Personality?

• Biological and evolutionary approaches to personality: suggest that important

components of personality are inherited.

• Biological and evolutionary approaches to personality seek to explain the

consistencies in personality that are found in some families.

• The 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.
• Twin studies illustrate the importance of genetic factors in
personality. For instance, researchers examined the personality
traits of pairs of twins who were genetically identical but were
raised apart from each other.

• In the study, 11 personality characteristics were measured.

• The results of the personality tests indicated that in major respects

the twins were quite similar in personality, despite having separated
at an early age.
• More important, genes interact with the environment.. For one
thing, genetically determined characteristics may not be
expressed if they are not “turned on” by particular
environmental experiences.

• Furthermore, behaviors produced by genes may help to create

a specific environment. For instance, a cheerful, smiley
baby may lead the parents to smile more and be more
responsive, thereby creating a supportive, pleasant
environment. In contrast, the parents of a choosy baby may be
less inclined to smile at the child; in turn, the environment in
which that child is raised will be less supportive and pleasant.
 Humanistic Approaches:
The Uniqueness of You

• Humanistic approaches to personality: Theories that emphasize people’s

innate goodness and desire to achieve higher levels of functioning.

• ROGERS AND THE NEED FOR SELF-ACTUALIZATION:

• Rogers maintains that all people have a fundamental need for self-
actualization (a state of self-fulfillment in which people realize their
highest potential, each in a unique way).
• He further suggests that people develop a
need for positive regard that reflects the
desire to be loved and respected.

• Because others provide this positive regard,

we grow dependent on them. We begin to see
and judge ourselves through the eyes of other
people.
• According to Rogers, placing importance on
others’ opinions may produce conflict between
people’s experiences and their self-concepts (the
set of beliefs they hold about what they are like
as individuals).

• If the discrepancies are minor, so are the

consequences. But if the discrepancies are great,
it will lead to anxiety.
• Rogers suggests that one way of overcoming the discrepancy
between experience and self-concept is through the receipt of
unconditional positive regard from another person—a friend, a
spouse, or a therapist.

• Unconditional positive regard (refers to man attitude of

acceptance and respect on the observer’s part, no matter
what a person says or does).

• For example when you confided in someone, revealing

embarrassing secrets because you knew the listener would still
love and respect you even after hearing the worst about you.
• In contrast, conditional positive regard
depends on your behavior. In such cases,
others withdraw their love and acceptance if
you do something of which they don’t
approve.

• The result is a discrepancy between your true

self and what others wish you would be,
which leads to anxiety and frustration
 EVALUATING HUMANISTIC APPROACHES

• Critics argue whether unconditional positive regard

lead to greater personality adjustment.

• Humanistic approaches have also been criticized for

making the assumption that people are basically
“good”—a notion that is unverifiable.
 Exploring the Self
Research on the self has a long history because the
self organizes thinking, feelings, and actions and is a
critical part of our personality.

1. Research focuses on the different selves we

possess. Some we dream and others we dread.
2. Research studies how we overestimate our
concern that others evaluate our appearance,
performance, and blunders.
 Benefits of Self-Esteem
Maslow and Rogers argued that a successful
life results from a healthy self-image (self-
esteem). The following are two reasons why
low self-esteem results in personal problems.

1. When self-esteem is deflated, we view

ourselves and others critically.
2. Low self-esteem reflects reality, our failure in
meeting challenges, or surmounting
difficulties.