Personality: What it is and How it is measured

Your personality is different from anyone else’s and expresses itself pretty consistently across
settings - at home, in the classroom, and elsewhere.

Definition:
Personality is an individual’s characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling.

People don’t usually strive for a personality, one seems to develop naturally as we travel
through life.

Describing and Explaining Personality

What people are like

Personality is often in the eye of the beholder.

What people are the way they are

Researchers interested in events that happen prior to our behavior delve into our subconscious
and into our circumstances and interpersonal surroundings as well as studying our biology and
brains.
Explanations of personality differences:
- Prior events that can shape an individual’s personality
- Anticipated events that might motivate the person to reveal particular personality
characteristics
=> understanding of the life of any person depends on insights into the interaction between the
past and future -> know how one’s history may have shaped one’s motivations

Measuring Personality

The Trait Approach: Identifying Patterns of Behavior

The trait approach to personality uses trait terms to characterize differences among individuals.
2 challenges:
- Narrowing down the almost infinite set of adjectives
- Answering the more basic questions of why people have particular traits - whether they
arise from biological and hereditary foundations
Traits as Behavioral Dispositions and Motives
Gordon Allport (1937) - trait theorist
Personality can best be understood as a combination of traits.
Trait: a relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way
-> This trait consistently manifests itself in a variety of settings.

2 ways in which a trait explains our behaviors:

- It may be a preexisting disposition of the person that causes the person’s behavior
- It may be a motivation that guides the person’s behavior

The Search for Core Traits

Classification Using Language

Different factor analysis techniques have yielded different views of personality structure.
The Big Five Dimensions of Personality
The Big Five are the traits of the five-factor model: conscientiousness, agreeableness,
neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion

It is now widely preferred for several reasons:

- Modern factor analysis techniques confirm that this set of five factors strikes the right
balance between accounting for as much variation in personality as possible while
avoiding overlapping traits
- In a large number of studies using different kinds of data—people’s descriptions of their
own personalities, other people’s descriptions of their personalities, interviewer
checklists, and behavioral observation—the same five factors have emerged
- Perhaps most important, the basic five-factor structure seems to show up across a wide
range of participants, including children, adults in other cultures, and even among those
who use other languages, suggesting that the Big Five may be universal (John &
Srivastava, 1999)
=> Research showing that self-reports on the Big Five are associated with predictable patterns
of behavior and social outcomes

Research on the Big Five has shown that people’s personalities tend to remain stable through
their lifetime, scores at one time in life correlating strongly with scores at later dates, even later
decades (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005).
Some variability is typical in childhood, with less in adolescence and then greater stability in
adulthood.
Traits as Biological Building Blocks
Many trait theorists have argued that immutable brain and biological processes produce the
remarkable stability of traits over the life span.

Brain damage certainly can produce personality change.

The administration of antidepressant medication and other pharmaceutical treatments that
change brain chemistry can also trigger personality changes, making people, for example,
somewhat more extraverted and less neurotic (Bagby, Levitan, Kennedy, Levitt, & Joffe, 1999;
Knutson et al., 1998).

Genes, Traits, and Personality

The Real World: Do Different Genders Lead to Different Personalities?

The Psychodynamic Approach: Forces that lie

beneath Awareness?
(Sigmund Freud)
Freud looked for personality in the details - the meanings and insights revealed by careful
analysis of the tiniest blemishes in a person’s thought and behavior.
*blemish

Working with patients with disorders that did not seem to have any physical basis -> interpret
the origins of their common mindbugs, errors that are called “Freudian slips”
Unconscious Motives
The term “psychoanalysis” refers both to his theory of personality and his method of treating
patients.
Basic idea: personality is a mystery to the person who “owns” it because we can’t know our own
deepest motives.
=> psychodynamic approach: personality is formed by needs, strivings, and desires largely
operating outside of awareness - motives that can produce emotional disorders
- Motives that guide even the smallest nuances of our behavior develop in our early
relationships and conflicts with caregivers.

Freud made a strong distinction between the conscious and unconscious mind
=> 3 levels of mental life: preconscious, conscious, and unconscious
- Conscious aspects of mental life are those in awareness at any given moment
- Preconscious aspects are outside awareness but that could easily enter consciousness
- Unconscious aspects have great psychological significance as though it were an agent
or a force -> the level that most strongly influences personality
=> Dynamic unconscious: an active system encompassing a lifetime of hidden moments, the
person’s deepest instincts and desires, and the person’s inner struggle to control these forces.

Dynamic unconscious
The power of the unconscious comes from its early origins - experiences that shaped the mind
before a person could even put thoughts and feelings into words.
It can be embarrassing, unspeakable, and even frightening because they operate without any
control by consciousness.
Psychoanalysis psychotherapy makes use of a number of indirect techniques (dream
interpretation or word association) to assess the workings of the unconscious mind.

The Structure of the Mind: Id, Ego, and Superego

The mind consists of 3 independent, interacting, and often conflicting systems - the id, the ego,
and the superego.

The id (most basic):

- Definition: The part of the mind containing the drives present at birth. The source of our
bodily needs, wants, desires, and impulses, particularly sexual and aggressive drives
- Reflects our true psychic reality before the impact of the outside world with its restraints
- Operates according to the pleasure principle -> wish
The pleasure principle: the psychic force that motivates the tendency to seek immediate
gratification of any impulse.

The ego:
- During the first 6 to 9 months of life
- Definition: the component of personality, developed through contact with the external
world, that enables us to deal with life’s practical demands
 - Operates according to the reality principle
Reality principle: the regulating mechanism that enables the individual to delay gratifying
immediate needs and function effectively in the real world
- Functions: logical thought, problem solving, creativity, attention, and decision making
- Serves the id

The superego:
- Between the ages of 3 and 6
- Definition: the mental system that reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly
learned as parents exercise their authority
- Consists of a set of guidelines, internal standards, and other codes of conduct that
regulate and control our behaviors, thoughts, and fantasies
- Acts as a kind of conscience, punishing us when it finds we are doing or thinking
something wrong -> producing guilt or other painful feelings
- Rewarding us for living up to ideal standards -> feeling of pride or self-congratulation
- Is not equipped to differentiate between a thought or fantasy and actual behavior in the
real world -> will punish or reward regardless of whether we actually do something (bad/
good) or merely think about it

Dealing with Inner Conflict

According to Freud
Which system is usually dominant -> determine an individual’s basic personality structure
- The id force of personal needs
- The superego force of social pressures to quell those needs
- The ego force of reality’s demands
=> constant controversy

Anxiety as a Driving Force

The dynamics between the id, ego, superego are largely governed by anxiety (an unpleasant
feeling that arises when unwanted thoughts or feelings occur - when the id seeks a gratification
that the ego thinks will lead to real-world dangers or the superego sees as eliciting punishment)

Anxiety is a primary emotional reaction that has adaptive value as a signal that something is
wrong.
While fear can be created by specific threats in the outside world, anxiety more often arises
when the threats are ambiguous or even the product of imagination.

The degree to which the ego anticipates danger depends on the person’s early childhood
experiences with the id’s basic drive states.
Example: someone was harshly punished for shows of anger or aggression as a child -> feel
anxious over any upsurge of aggression in adulthood, even if that aggression is appropriate and
understandable.
=> without any actual looming cement struck in sight, inner struggles can create profound
anxiety

Defense mechanisms
When the ego receives an “alert signal” in the form of anxiety -> it launches into a defensive
position to ward off the anxiety -> repression
Repression: a mental process that removes painful experiences and unacceptable impulses
from the conscious mind, sometimes referred to as “motivated forgetting”
=> this form of mental control may involve decreased activation of the hippocampus (a region
that is central to memory)
Repression is not enough to keep unacceptable drives from entering consciousness
-> employ other means of self-deception - defense mechanism
Defense mechanism: unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce anxiety generated by threats
from unacceptable impulses

(Anna Freud) identifying a number of defense mechanism

Rationalism:
- Definition: a defense mechanism that involved supplying a reasonable -sounding
explanation for unacceptable feelings and behavior to conceal (mostly from oneself)
one’s underlying motives or feelings
- we tell ourselves a story to explain our behavior instead of facing its real but less
comfortable meaning

Reaction formation:
- Definition: a defense mechanism that involves unconsciously replacing threatening inner
wishes and fantasies with an exaggerated version of their opposite
- Example: being excessively nice to someone you dislike, being cold and indifferent
toward someone to whom you are strongly attracted

Projection:
- Definition: a defense mechanism that involves attributing one’s own threatening feelings,
motives, or impulses to another person or group
- Offers comfort: It’s not so bad to have unacceptable qualities if someone else has them
too

Regression:
- Definition: a defense mechanism in which the ego deals with internal conflict and
perceived threat by reverting to an immature behavior or earlier stage of development (a
time when things felt safer and more secure
- Example: the use of baby talk, teddy bear cuddling, watching cartoon in response to
something distressing
Personal experience

Displacement:
 - Definition: a defense mechanism that involves shifting unacceptable wishes or drives to
a neutral or less threatening alternative
- Example: slamming the door or throwing a book across the room when you were angry
at your boss

Identification
- Definition: a defense mechanism that helps deal with feelings of threat and anxiety by
enabling us unconsciously to take on the characteristics of another person who seems
more powerful or better able to cope
- Sometimes involves the phenomenon “identification with the aggressor”, in which anxiety
is reduced by becoming like the person posing the threat
=> a child whose parent bullies or severely punishes her may later take on the
characteristics of that parent and begin bullying others

Sublimation:
- Definition: a defense mechanism that involves channeling unacceptable sexual or
aggressive drives into socially acceptable and culturally enhancing activities
- Sports may be construed as culturally sanctioned and valued activities that channel our
aggressive drives. Art, music, poetry, and dance may be considered vehicles that
transform and channel id impulses (sexual and aggressive) into valued activities of
benefit to society
- Benefit: at some level the drive is satisfied and discharged while not being too
threatening for the ego or superego

Defense mechanisms are useful mindbugs

- Help us overcome anxiety
- Help us engage effectively with the outside world
The ego’s capacity to use defense mechanisms in a healthy and flexible fashion may depend on
the nature of early experiences with caregivers, the defense mechanism they used, and
possibly some biological and temperamental factors.
Our characteristic style of defense becomes our signature in dealing with the world, and an
essential aspect of our personality.

Psychosexual Stages and the Development of Personality

Freud believed that a person’s basic personality is formed before 6 years of age during a series
of sensitive periods, or life stages, when experiences influence all that will follow.
=> psychosexual stages: distinct early life stages through which personality is formed as
children experience sexual pleasures from specific body areas and caregivers redirect or
interfere with those pleasures.
-> As a result of adult interference with pleasure-seeking energies, the child experiences
conflict.
At each stage, a different bodily region, or erotogenic zone, dominates the child’s subjective
experience.
Example: during the oral stage, pleasure centers on the mouth
-> Each region represents a battleground between the child’s id impulses and the adult external
world.

Problems and conflicts encountered at any psychosexual stage will influence personality in
adulthood.
Conflict resulting from a person’s being deprived or overindulged at a given stage could lead to
that person’s pleasure-seeking drives become stuck, or arrested, at that psychosexual stage
(fixation)

Freud believed that the most significant aspects of personality development occur during the
first three psychosexual stages (before the age of 5 years).

1. The oral stage (the first year and a half of life): during which experience centers on the
pleasures and frustrations associated with the mouth, sucking, and being fed
- Infants who are deprived of pleasurable feeding or indulgently overfed may develop an
oral personality
- their lives will center on issues related to fullness and emptiness (what they can take in
from others and the environment)
- When angry, they may express themselves with “biting” sarcasm and “mouth off” at
others (oral aggression)
=> Personality traits associated with the oral stage include depression, lack of trust,
envy, and demandingness
 2. The anal stage (between 2 and 3 years of age): during which experience is dominated
by the pleasures and frustrations associated with the anus, retention, and expulsion of
feces and urine, and toilet training
- the toddler sees the soiling of one’s diapers is a wonderful convenience but sooner or
later caregivers begin to disagree, and their opinions are voiced more strongly as the
child gets older
- Individuals who have difficulty negotiating this conflict may develop a rigid personality
and remain preoccupied with issues of control of others and of themselves and their
emotions.
- They may be preoccupied with their possessions, money, issues of submission and
rebellion, and concerns about cleanliness versus messiness.

3. The phallic stage (between the ages of 3 and 5 years): during which experience is
dominated by the pleasure, conflict, and frustration associated with the phallic-genital
region as well as coping with powerful incestuous feelings of love, hate, jealousy, and
conflict
- the child may touch their parents’ genitals in public or explore masturbation and may be
curious about the parents’ genitals
- parental concerns about the child’s developing awareness of the genital region set off
the conflict
Boys struggle with a tumultuous emotional experience that called the Oedipus conflict
- Oedipus conflict: a developmental experience in which a child’s conflicting feelings
toward the opposite-sex parent is (usually) resolved by identifying with the same-sex
parent
=> Children go through painful struggles as they experience both loving and hostile
feelings toward their parents during development.
- In dealing with the love triangle and balancing the wish for an exclusive loving
relationship with one parent against the possibility of jeopardizing the relationship with
the other, the child comes to realize that he/ she is the odd one out.
- They must give up their Oedipal desires so they can move on and build a life with a
partner in the future.
=> The anxiety engendered by this conflict is controlled through repression (of the sexual
longings) and identification (with the same-sex parent)
=> This marks the final development of the superego - the internal representation of parental
authority
The personality styles that can arise from fixation at this stage involve morality and sex-role
identity
- Individuals who get stuck in the phallic period and are unable to resolve the Oedipus
conflict tend to be unusually preoccupied with issues of seduction, jealousy, competition,
power, and authority.
- For men, this may include issues of competitiveness, being macho and powerful, and
overvaluing success and potency.
- For women, this may result in exaggerated expressions of femininity: seductiveness,
flirtatiousness, and jealousy.
 4. The latency stage (between the ages of 5 and 13): in which the primary focus is on the
further development of intellectual, creative, interpersonal, and athletic skills
- This stage being relatively undisturbed by conflicts of the earlier stages is a sign of
healthy personality development

5. The genital stage: the time for the coming together of the mature adult personality with a
capacity to love, work, and relate to others in a mutually satisfying and reciprocal
manner
- The degree to which the individual is encumbered by unresolved conflicts at the
earlier stages will impact whether he/ she will be able to achieve a genital level of
development
- People who are fixated in a prior stage fail in developing healthy adult sexuality
and a well-adjusted adult personality.

On the other hand, the psychoanalytic theory of psychosexual stages offers an intriguing picture
of early family relationships and the extent to which they allow the child to satisfy basic needs
and wishes.

However, critics argue that psychodynamic explanations are too complex and tend to focus on
after-the-fact interpretation rather than testable prediction.
The psychosexual stage theory offers a compelling set of story plots for interpreting lives once
they have unfolded but has not generated the kinds of clear-cut predictions that inspire
research.

The Humanistic-Existential Approach: Personality as

Choice
In the 1950s and 1960s, psychologists began to try to understand personality from a viewpoint
different from trait theory’s biological determinism and Freud’s focus on unconscious drives from
unresolved child experiences.
These new humanistic and existential theorists focus on how humans make healthy choices that
create their personality

Proponents: The ability to consider the future is a core aspect of the human experience that
elevates us above our animal nature -> the freedom to choose our actions through the exercise
of will
Humanistic psychologists emphasize a positive view of human nature -> people’s inherent
goodness and their potential for personal growth
Existentialist psychologists focus on the individual as a responsible agent who is free to create
and live his/ her life while negotiating the issue of meaning and the reality of death.
-> the humanistic-existential approach focuses on how a personality can become optimal
Human Needs and Self-actualization
Self-actualizing tendency: the human motive toward realizing our inner potential
- This is a major factor in personality
- Example: the pursuit of knowledge, the expression of one’s creativity, the quest for
spiritual enlightenment, the desire to give to society
- (Hierarchy of needs) Only when the basic needs are satisfied, you can pursue higher
needs, culminating in self-actualization.
- When people are fully engaged in self-actualizing activities, they occasionally have peak
experiences. (chapter 8 - such experiences alter states of consciousness -> people lose
sense of time and feel in touch with a higher aspect of human existence)
-> (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - 1990) that engagement in tasks that exactly match one’s
abilities creates a mental state of energized focus (flow)
Tasks that are below our abilities cause boredom, those being too challenging cause
anxiety, those being “just right” lead to the experience of flow.
-> people report being happier at these times than at any other times
=> Humanists believe that such peak experiences (or states of flow) reflect the
realization of one’s human potential and represent the height of personality development

Conditions for Growth

(Humanist psychologist)
Individual personality differences arise from the various ways that the environment facilitates, or
blocks, attempts to satisfy psychological needs.
Individuals growing up in an arid social environment can fail to develop his/ her unique potential.

(Humanist psychotherapist - Carl Rogers)

Healthy personality development requires unconditional positive regard.
Unconditional positive regard: an attitude of nonjudgmental acceptance toward another person
- Children must be shown that they are loved and valued and this positive regard will not
be withdrawn regardless of how the child behaves (even if it is not accepted or valued)
- It is necessary for people to experience the fullness of their being and their inherent
goodness and to develop their potential and accept what they cannot become.
- It is crucial for the development of an authentic self that can be in genuine contact with
others

Personality as Existence
Existentialists agree with humanists about many of the features of personality but focus on
challenges to the human condition that are more profound than the lack of a nurturing
environment.

Rollo May (1983) and Victor Frankl (2000)

Specific aspects of the human condition, such as awareness of our own existence and the
ability to make choices about how to behave, have a double-edged quality:
 - They bring an extraordinary richness and dignity to human life
- They also force us to confront realities that are difficult to face, such as the prospect of
our own death.
=> The existential approach: personality as governed by an individual’s ongoing choices and
decisions in the context of the realities of life and death

According to the existential perspective, the difficulties we face in finding meaning in life and in
accepting the responsibility of making free choices provoke a type of anxiety called angst (the
anxiety of fully being)
- You may have experienced angst if you’ve ever contemplated the way even a small
decision can alter your life course.
- The human ability to consider limitless numbers of goals and actions is exhilarating, but
it can also open the door to profound questions such as, “Why am I here?” and, “What is
the meaning of my life?

Thinking about the meaning of existence also can evoke an awareness of its opposite—the
potential for nonexistence and death.
-> As we think about the inevitability of death, the resulting angst, terror, and fear (or dread) can
lead us to experience the heaviness of any given moment.
=> Rather than ruminate about death and meaning, people typically pursue superficial answers
that help them deal with the angst and dread they experience, and the defenses they construct
form the basis of their personalities (Binswanger, 1958; May, 1983)

Unfortunately, security-providing defense mechanisms can be self-defeating and stifle the

potential for personal growth.
- The pursuit of superficial relationships can make possible the avoidance of real intimacy
- More commonly, people find security from existential dread by devoting themselves to
upholding the values and standards of their culture or families, seldom questioning
whether these values fit with their own views
- Studies of mortality salience have shown that people defend themselves in this way
when they have been guided to think even briefly about their own death (Pyszczynski,
Solomon, & Greenberg, 2003)
-> Mortality salience has been found to prompt people to condemn critics of their
government, recommend tougher sentences for lawbreakers, disparage members of
other religious faiths, express prejudice toward other races and ethnicities, and become
defensive of their own worldviews
=> For existentialists, the solution is to face the issues square on and learn to accept and
tolerate the pain of existence. Indeed, being fully human means confronting existential realities
rather than denying them or embracing comforting illusions. This requires the courage to accept
the inherent anxiety and the dread of nonbeing that is part of being alive. Such courage may be
facilitated by developing supportive relationships with others who can supply unconditional
positive regard.
The Social Cognitive Approach: Personalities in
Situations
The social cognitive approach views personality in terms of how the person thinks about the
situations encountered in daily life and behaves in response to them
-> What it is like to be the person who tries to understand what to do in life’s many encounters
with people, events, and situations.
Including insights from: social psychology, cognitive psychology, and learning theory

(B. F. Skinner - behaviorist)

Differences in behavior patterns reflect differences in how the behaviors have been rewarded in
past situations.

(Lewin, 1951)
Because human “situations” and “reinforcements” are radically open to interpretation, social
cognitive psychologists focus on how people perceive their environments.
-> People think about their goals, the consequences of their behavior, and how they might
achieve certain things in different situations.

=> The social cognitive approach looks at:

- How personality and situation interact to cause behavior
- How personality contributes to the way people construct situations in their own minds
- How people’s goals and expectancies influence their responses to situations.

Consistency of Personality across Situations

The person - situation controversy: whether behavior is caused more by personality or by
situational factors

(Walter Mischel - 1968)

- Measured personality traits often do a poor job of predicting individuals’ behavior.
- Knowing how a person will behave in one situation is not particularly helpful in predicting
the person’s behavior in another situation.

=> It turns out that information about both personality and situation are necessary to predict
behavior.
Although people may not necessarily act the same way across situations, they often do act in a
similar manner within the same type of situation. (Mischel and Shoda, 1999)
-> Personality consistency appears to be a matter of when and where a certain kind of behavior
tends to be shown.
Social cognitive theorists believe these patterns of personality consistency in response to
situations arise from the way different people construe situations and from the ways different
people pursue goals within situations.
*construe: phân tích
Personal Constructs
Situations may exist “in the eye of the beholder” as personality.
=> George Kelly (1955)
Realized that these differences in perspective -> the perceiver’s personality
These different views arise through the application of personal constructs.
-> Personal constructs: dimensions people use in making sense of their experiences
Kelly proposed that different personal constructs (construals) are the key to personality
differences (different construals -> disparate behavior)
-> Social cognitive theory explains different responses to situations with the idea that people
see things in different ways

Personal Goals and Expectancies

Social cognitive theories also recognize that a person’s unique perspective on situations is
reflected in his or her personal goals, which are often conscious.

In fact, people can usually tell you their goals

-> reflect the tasks that are appropriate to the person’s situation (fit the person’s role and stage
of life)

People translate goals into behavior in part through outcome expectancies.

Outcome Expectancies: a person’s assumptions about the likely consequences of a future
behavior
-> We learn to perform behaviors that we expect will have the outcome of moving us closer to
our goals.
=> Outcome expectancies + Goals -> produce the person’s characteristic style of behavior
=> Our personalities largely reflect the goals we pursue and the expectancies we have about
the best ways to pursue them.

Locus of control:
Definition: A person’s tendency to perceive the control of rewards as internal to the self or
external in the environment
- People who believe they control their own destiny -> internal locus of control
=> tend to less anxious, achieve more, and cope better with stress
- People who believe that outcomes are random, determined by luck, or controlled by
other people -> an external locus of control
=> These beliefs translate into individual differences in emotion and behavior.

Personality - Goals - Perspective - Behavior

The Self: Personality in the Mirror

Self-recognition in mirrors:
 - Develops by 18 months of age
- Signals our amazing capacity for reflexive thinking, for directing attention to our own
thoughts, feelings, and action
-> An ability that enables us to construct ideas about our own personality.

Self-concept (what we think about ourselves) and self-esteem (How we feel about ourselves)
are critically important facets of personality:
- They reveal how people see their own personalities
- They also guide how people think others will see them.

Self-concept
(William James - 1890)
The self’s two facets:
- The I: the self that thinks, experiences, and acts in the world -> a knower
-> consciousness (a perspective on all experience)
- The Me: the self that is an object in the world -> be known
-> a concept of a person

Describing the Me:

- Physical characteristics
- Activities
- Personality traits
- Social roles
=> Self-concept: A person’s explicit knowledge of his or her own behaviors, traits, and other
personal characteristics
A person’s self-concept is developed from social experiences -> a profound effect on behavior
throughout life

Self-concept Organization
The knowledge of ourselves that we store in our autobiographical memory seems to be
organized naturally in two ways.
1. Self-narrative:
- a story that we tell about ourselves
- can be brief or very lengthy
- organizes the highlights (and low blows) of your life into a story in which you are the
leading character and binds them together into your self-concept (McAdams, 1993)
- reflect their fantasies and thoughts about core motives and approaches to existence

2. In terms of personality traits:

- Judge yourself on any number of traits
Hazel Markus (1977)
Each person finds certain unique personality traits particularly important for conceptualizing the
self
Markus called the traits people use to define themselves self-schemas, emphasizing that they
draw information about the self into a coherent scheme.

Causes and Effects of Self-concept

Self-esteem

Hot Science. Implicit Egotism: Liking Ourselves without knowing it

Where do you stand? Personality Testing For Fun and Profit