Personality

"She's outgoing and street smart." "He's quiet and book smart." We hear descriptions like this all the time. What makes a person exhibit a certain personality? Can someone's personality change? Psychology seeks to answer all these questions. In this unit, you will learn how to define and assess personality from various perspectives. You will also explore various theories that seek to explain the basis of personality. Understanding this topic will give you a better understanding of yourself and help you understand those around you.

Essential Questions

What is psychodynamic theory, and how does it affect psychology today?
What is the Humanistic Perspective on the development of personality?
How does the Trait Perspective explain personality?
How does the Social-Cognitive Perspective explain the development of personality?

Key Words

Personality - an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting
Psychodynamic Theory (aka psychoanalytic theory) - Freud's theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts
Unconscious - according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories
Id - according to Freud, a person's basic sexual and aggressive drives that work through the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification
Ego - according to Freud, the largely conscious "executive" part of the personality that mediates among the demands of id, superego, and reality; it operates through the reality principle, noting what is realistically possible based on the environment and most likely to satisfying the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain
Superego - according to Freud, the part of personality that is a conscience or "father figure," always desiring to do the right thing
Freud's Psychosexual stages - the childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id's pleasure‐seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
Oedipus Complex - according to Freud, a boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father
Identification - the process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents' values into developing superegos
Fixation - according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved
Defense mechanisms - in psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
Regression - psychoanalytic defense system in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where psychic energy remains fixated
Repression - in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness
Reaction formation - psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are opposite of their anxiety‐arousing unconscious feelings
Projection - psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
Rationalization - defensive mechanism that offers justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions
Displacement - psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet
Free association - in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing
Projective test - a personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics
Thematic Apperception Test - a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes
Rorschach Inkblot Test - the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots
Manifest Content - the obvious storyline
Latent Content - the hidden meaning
Self Actualization - according to Maslow, the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self - esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one's potential
Unconditional Positive Regard - according to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person
Self Concept - all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question "Who am I?"
Trait - a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports
Personality Inventory - a questionnaire (often with true‐false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits
Myers-Briggs - a personality assessment based on trait theory; measures four tendencies in a person - extroversion, intuition, emotionality, and propensity to judge
Social-Cognitive Theory - views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons (and their thinking) and their social context
Reciprocal Determinism - the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors

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