Traits
Traits: durable dispositions to behave in a particular way across a variety of situations.
100s of traits.
Core traits: 5 - 10 traits identified with self.
Personality
person’s unique constellation of consistent behavioural traits.
Temperament
Physiological dispositions in response to the environment.
- Infants differ in temperament:
- Reactivity, soothability, positive & negative emotionality.
- Not due to prenatal influences (nutrition, drugs, pregnancy).
- Stable over time.
Psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud)
Mental illness: unexpressed sexual and aggressive urges in the unconscious.
Personality results from:
- Early childhood experiences.
- Unconscious motives & conflicts.
- Coping strategies.
Criticized by contemporaries:
- Unconscious: not masters of oura minds.
- Personality shaped by childhood: not masters of our destinies.
- Vulgarity of sex and aggression.
Structure of Personality: ID
primitive instinctive component.
- Pleasure principle: immediate gratification of biological urges.
- Primary process thinking: irrational & fantasy oriented.
Structure of Personality: Ego
Decision-making component.
- Reality principle: delay gratification until appropriate outlet and situation located.
- Secondary process thinking: rational & realistic; considers norms and rules in society.
- Both id and ego want to maximize gratification; ego wants to avoid negative consequences.
Structure of Personality: Superego
morality component (3 to 5 years).
- Internalization of norms and rules.
Levels of Awareness: Conscious
Content we are aware of.
- Current train of thought.
- Content of working memory
Levels of Awareness:
Content beneath awareness, easy to access.
- Current physiological state.
- Long term memory storage.
Levels of Awareness: Unconscious
Content well beneath awareness, difficult to access.
- Dangerous thoughts, memories, desires.
“Evidence” for the unconscious:
- Freudian slips: reveal a person’s true feelings.
- Dreams express hidden desires.
- Psychoanalysis revealed previously unknown conflicts.
Conflict and Anxiety
Life is a series of conflicts between the id and the ego/superego.
- Most conflicts resolved quickly; those that linger play out in the unconscious.
Anxiety: conflicts building up in the unconscious begin to appear in the preconscious/conscious.
Conflicts about sexual and aggressive urges are powerful because they are thwarted more regularly.
Psychosexual Development
Developmental periods with a characteristic sexual focus that influences adult personality.
- Sexual urges (physical pleasure) shift as children progress through early life.
Fixation: failure to progress to later stages.
- Excessive gratification of sexual urges.
- Excessive frustration of sexual urges.
- Affect adult personality (determined by age 5).
Psychosexual Stages & Personality (0-1 year):
Oral Stage
- Fixation can lead to obsessive eating or smoking as adult.
Psychosexual Stages & Personality (2-3 years)
Anal Stage
- Punitive training can lead to hostility toward the trainer and be generalized to others later.
- Tendency towards neatness, organization, and detail.
Psychosexual Stages & Personality (4-5 years)
Phallic Stage
- Oedipal complex: erotic desires for opposite-sex parent and hostility towards same-sex parent.
- Boys resent father as a competitor.
- Girls resent mother for physical deficiency (penis envy).
- Resolution of oedipal complex: purge desire for opposite-sex parent and identify with same-sex parent (formation of superego).
- Failure to resolve complex leads to personality disturbances.
Carl Jung
- Swiss Psychiatrist and follower of Freud until 1913.
- Lived 1875 - 1961.
- Felt Freud was too dogmatic.
- Analytical Psychology: unconscious composed of two layers.
Alfred Adler
- Austrian ophthalmologist and follower of Freud until 1911.
- Lived 1870 - 1937.
- Felt Freud too obsessed with sexual urges.
- Individual Psychology: people strive for superiority.
Jung’s Analytical Psychology
Unconscious determines personality.
Personal unconscious: thoughts, memory, & desires that have been repressed or forgotten.
Collective unconscious: storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from people’s ancestral past.
- Shared spiritual heritage of humankind.
- Archetypes: emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning.
- Symbols from different cultures show unexpected similarity.
First to describe extroverted (outer-directed) and introverted (inner-directed) personality types.
Adler’s Individual Psychology: Striving for superiority
Striving for superiority: universal drive to adapt, improve oneself, and master life’s challenges.
- Not dominance over others.
- Derives from childhood inferiority.
First to suggest birth order affected personality:
Firstborns & later-borns live in different environments.
Adler’s Individual Psychology: Compensation
Compensation: effort to overcome real or imagined inferiority through self-improvement.
- Inferiority complex: exaggerated feelings of inferiority resulting from parental pampering or neglect.
- Overcompensation: attempts to hide feelings of inferiority from self and others.
- Attain power, status, and material goods.
- Flaunt achievements.
Adler’s Individual Psychology: Birth Order
First to suggest birth order affected personality:
- Firstborns & later-borns live in different environments.
Criticisms and contributions to psychodynamic perspectives
Criticism:
- Poor testability: too vague and subjective to test empirically.
- Inadequate evidence: based primarily on case studies.
- Retrospective accounts require memory, which is fallible.
- Sexist: tend to be male-oriented.
Important contributions:
- Unconscious influences of personality.
- Internal conflicts contribute to psychological distress.
- Childhood experiences contribute to adult personality.
- Defense mechanisms.
Humanistic Perspective
Response to behaviourist & psychodynamic explanations of behaviour (1950s).
- Critical of Freud for emphasizing primitive animalistic urges.
- Relating too many animal’s basic behaviour to humans
- Don’t believe in free will
Humanism: humans are unique in having free-will and the potential for growth.
- Humans control biological urges.
- Humans are rational and conscious; unconscious has little effect.
- Phenomenological Approach: must understand each individual’s subjective experiences to explain behaviour.
