Chapter 12: Theories of Personality

Psychodynamic Theories of Personality

• Freud’s theories were psychodynamic: explanations of behavior and personality in terms of energy dynamics within the individual.
  • Today’s psychodynamic theories differ from Freudian theory, but emphasize unconscious processes and that adult personality stems from childhood experiences.
  • Freud’s theory:
    • Three major systems: id, ego, superego
      • id: primitive motives to obtain pleasure and avoid pain
      • ego: a referee between what instinct wants and what society demands
        • Slows down id’s desire for sex and aggression until a suitable / socially appropriate outlet can be found
      • superego: voice of conscience, learned sense of morality
        • Judges activities of the id
        • Partly conscious but largely unconscious
    • Healthy personality means keeping these three systems in balanced
  • Defense mechanisms according to Freud:
    • Repression
      • Like repressing a memory
    • Projection
      • Projecting your feelings on someone else
    • Displacement
      • Taking out your anger on someone / something
      • Sublimation: transforming “bad” urges into positive or productive activities
    • Regression
      • Reverting to a previous state of psychological development
    • Denial
      • Refusing to admit that something unpleasant is happening / they have a problem / they are feeling a forbidden emotion
  • Psychodynamic theories are lacking in multiple ways:
    • Impossible to confirm or disconfirm (violating principle of falsifiability)
    • They draw universal principals from the experiences of a few atypical patients
    • They base theories of personality development on the retrospective accounts of adults
  • Freud was not an impartial scientist, and ignored evidence disconfirming his ideas.
  • However, Freud welcomed women into the profession, recognized society’s suppression of female sexuality, and argued that homosexuality was nothing to be ashamed of.
  • Carl Jung argued that human beings share a vast collective unconscious, containing universal memories and stories, including symbols (archetypes).

The Modern Study of Personality

• Personality tests need validity (they measure what they’re supposed to) and reliability (consistency) to be scientific.
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test does not have reliability, and its results don’t predict a person’s behavior on the job or in relationships.
• Factor analysis: identifying clusters (for example, in personality traits).
• Big Five (“robust factors” of personality):
  • Openness
  • Conscientiousness
  • Extraversion
  • Agreeableness
  • Neuroticism

Genetic Influences on Personality

• Babies are born with a genetically influenced temperament (including reactivity and soothability).
• Animals (even like octopi) have discernible personalities.

Environmental Influences on Personality

• People can have a core set of stable traits but their behavior can vary across situations.
  • Reciprocal determinism: the two-way interaction between the environment and personality traits.
• Nonshared environment: any unique and chance experiences that are not shared with other family members.
  • e.g. being in school play; being bullied
• What parents do profoundly affects the quality of their relationship with their children (whether children feel loved, secure, valued, or humiliated, frightened, worthless).
• However, parents have less influence on a child’s personality than one may assume.
  • Also, because of reciprocal determinism, children also affect parents.
• Usually, peers’ views win out over parents’ views.

Cultural Influences on Personality

• Cultural background influences who you are.
  • Individualist cultures: independence of the individual takes precedence over the needs of the group, and the self is defined as a collection of personality traits.
  • Collectivist cultures: group harmony takes precedence over the wishes of the individual, the self is defined in the context of relationships and the community.
• Americans tend to value “being true to yourself” and having a “core identity”, while other cultures perceive their sense of self changing 90-99% depending on the situation.

The Inner Experience

• Humanist psychology: a movement to replace psychoanalysis and behaviorism with an approach that emphasizes our uniquely human capacity to determine our own actions and futures.
• Maslow thought that psychology ignored positive experiences of life.
• Carl Rogers (clinician) said that we need unconditional positive regard (unconditional love and support for the people we are) to become fully functioning people.
  • Conditional positive regard: “I will love you if you behave well, and I won’t love you if you behave badly.”
    • Adults often treat each other like this.
• Existentialism: philosophical approach that emphasizes the inevitable dilemmas and challenges of human existence.
  • European philosophy brought to America by Rollo May.
• Humanist theories have not received much attention from laypeople in society at large.