PSYCHOLOGY:

PERSONALITY DEFINED

Personality is the consistent, enduring, and unique

characteristics of a person

Personality traits are characteristic behaviors and feelings

that are consistent and long lasting

Personality States are temporary patterns of

behavior and feelings that may arise in a specific situation
 PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES
• Emphasize the unconscious (part of the mind that contains material
we are unaware of but that strongly influences behavior)

• Unconscious feelings as children = impact

adulthood

• Main ideas developed by Sigmund Freud

FREUD’S ID, EGO, SUPEREGO
Freud used the Id, Ego, and Superego to try to explain
how the mind functions and personality is shaped
 Id

• instinctual & biological urges

• lustful, impulsive, fun – pleasure principle
• completely unconscious
• Seeks immediate gratification of impulses (what
feels good)
• Ignores consequences

Following the pleasure principle (ID) leads to conflict with

others (parents) and results in the development of the EGO in the
2nd and 3rd year of life.
 Ego
• Rational & thoughtful

• Based on the reality principle, the awareness that

gratification of impulses has to be delayed in order
to accommodate the demands of the real world.
 Superego
• Responsiblefor society’s rules of behavior
(moral standards). Feels guilty if rules are
disobeyed.

• Based on morality principle, must follow

moral standards and rules and breaking them
causes guilt.
 ID – What you WANT TO DO

EGO – What you CAN DO

SUPEREGO – What you SHOULD

DO

ID & SUPEREGO are

frequently in conflict. Ego must
satisfy both.

Rather than feel conflict or frustration when the ID’s desires &
SUPEREGO’s rules cannot be satisfied, humans distort reality
using DEFENSE MECHANISMS
Freud’s techniques for exploring the Unconscious
• Freud believed that information in the unconscious
emerges in slips of the tongue, jokes, dreams, illness
symptoms, etc. These are called Freudian Slips.

• Dream interpretation, or analyzing

dreams

• Psychoanalysis
 Freud’s Theory of
Psychosexual Development

Freud believed that all children

are born with powerful sexual
and aggressive urges. In learning
to control these impulses,
children acquire their personality.
Freud divided this development
into stages.
 FREUD’S LEGACY
• 1ST Person to propose unified theory to understand and explain
human behavior

• No theory more complete, complex, or controversial

• Some criticize his theory for being impossible to test

• Freud’s psychoanalytic theory was the predecessor of all later

personality theories
 IN FREUD’S FOOTSTEPS….
OTHER PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES

Carl Jung
• Freud’s personal successor before relationship ended because
Jung disagreed with Freud’s emphasis on sexual urges

• The Collective unconscious (part of the mind that contains

inherited instincts, urges, and memories common to all people)
holds Archetypes (an inherited idea based on experiences of
one’s ancestors, which shapes one’s personality)

• Jung believed we fit our personalities to our Archetypes

 ALFRED ADLER
• Believed people are driven to overcome feelings of inferiority

• Inferiority Complex – when a person continually tries to

compensate for his weakness and avoid feelings of inadequacy

•Believed in people’s drive for perfection.

 Adler: a single "drive" or motivating force lies behind all our
behavior and experience.
 Adler: called that motivating force the striving for perfection.
 Striving for perfection: the desire we all have to fulfill our
potentials, to come closer and closer to our ideal.
 Striving for perfection: similar to the more popular idea of self-
actualization
 CARL ROGERS
• Two sides to each person (What they value and what they believe
others value in them)

• Self – one’s image of oneself (who they are) developed through

interaction with others

• Everyone wants Positive regard – viewing oneself in favorable

light due to supportive feedback from others

• People may reject parts of their person if they don’t receive

positive regard

• The self and the person are often different but accepting your
person results in becoming a fully functioning individual
 TRAIT THEORIES

• Try to explain consistency and normal, healthy

behavior in different situations

• Trait - relatively stable and enduring tendency to

behave in a particular way

• Traits apply to all people.

• Can quantify traits (scale 1-10 how nice are you)
 BIG FIVE TRAIT THEORY
Current popular belief; all personality traits derive from five
basic personality traits

EXTRAVERSION
AGREEABLENESS

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS

OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE

NEUROTICISM
O C E A N
 How/When do personality traits change?

• Longitudinal studies show that…

• Many consistencies in traits between ages 3 and 18
• Major changes to emotional traits during adolescence
• Between 20 & 30 – become less emotional, less
likely to seek thrills….. More mature
• Most changes to personality occur before age 30
 PERSONALITY TESTS – WHY?

Personality Tests ASSESS an individual’s CHARACTERISTICS

and IDENTIFY PROBLEMS. They can help PREDICT future
behavior.
 OBJECTIVE PERSONALITY TESTS
A limited- or –forced choice test in which a person
must select on of several answers

MMPI-2 – Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

(MMPI) –
• Most widely used objective test
• 567 questions divided into groups. People answer true, false,
cannot say.
• Originally to help diagnose mental disorders
MBTI - Myers-Briggs Test –
• Rate personality on four scales
• Extraversion vs. Introversion
• Intuition vs. Sensing
• Feeling vs. Thinking
• Judging vs. Perceiving
 PROJECTIVE PERSONALITY TESTS
Require subjects to respond to pictures and phrases
that can be interpreted in many different ways.

Rorschach Test – series of ten

inkblots that subjects look at and
determine what they see. Most
widely used.

(TAT) Thematic Apperception Test –What do you see

series of pictures containing a variety of in this picture?
vague but suggestive scenes. 2nd most
widely used
 RELIABILITY vs. VALIDITY

Reliability: Test consistency; its ability to yield the same

result under a variety of similar circumstances.

Validity: Test measures what it is intended to measure.

 How/When do personality traits change?

• Longitudinal studies show that…

• Many consistencies in traits between ages 3 and 18
• Major changes to emotional traits during adolescence
• Between 20 & 30 – become less emotional, less
likely to seek thrills….. More mature
• Most changes to personality occur before age 30
 PERSONALITY TESTS – WHY?

Personality Tests ASSESS an individual’s CHARACTERISTICS

and IDENTIFY PROBLEMS. They can help PREDICT future
behavior.
 OBJECTIVE PERSONALITY TESTS
A limited- or –forced choice test in which a person
must select on of several answers

MMPI-2 – Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

(MMPI) –
• Most widely used objective test
• 567 questions divided into groups. People answer true, false,
cannot say.
• Originally to help diagnose mental disorders
MBTI - Myers-Briggs Test –
• Rate personality on four scales
• Extraversion vs. Introversion
• Intuition vs. Sensing
• Feeling vs. Thinking
• Judging vs. Perceiving