All together now – "My psychology instructor is a kind, wonderful, and benevolent person for providing me with this very outline." Yes, let’s say it all together now! Joking aside, I hope that this outline is of great utility to you. Good luck! Remember, though, that this is just an outline – it doesn’t cover in great depth everything in the chapter or in my lectures. Use it as a guide, but please, don’t use it as your only resource for study!

Let’s begin.

• Person’s unique and relatively stable behavior patterns.
• Combination of talents, attitudes, values, likes, dislikes, etc.
• It is what makes a person "unique"
• According to personality theory, behavior needs to be pretty much consistent to be considered part of someone’s personality.
• Not the same thing as character
• Character => personal characteristics or qualities that can be evaluated.
• Ex: that person is friendly, that person is unfriendly.
• Differs from temperament
• You’re born with it, feeds into the later dev of pers
• Babies have it
• Irritability, mood, & sensitivity
• Usually solidified by age 30, begins to cement during the 20’s.

• Behavioral characteristic a person shows in most situations
• Ex: someone who is shy all the time, loud, talkative, etc.
• Used to predict future behavior
• If this person is outgoing at a party, she may also be outgoing at a bar
• Traits imply consistency

• A group of traits can form a type
• Concept first really advanced by Jung
• Jung introduced the types of introvert & extrovert
• Introvert
• Shy, oriented inward. The book says "self-centered" – this does not mean these people are all egotistical and stuck on themselves. Don’t think that!
• Would rather engage in solo activities (ex: rather read than be the party animal)
• Ex: the shy bookworm over in the corner that prefers to keep to herself
• Extrovert
• Bold & out-going (like your instructor)
• Enjoys socializing with lots of people
• Tends to be a very social creature
• Ex: the television persona portrayed by Tom Green on his show
• Sometimes named a person as a certain type paints a skewed picture of reality – easily can turn into an insufficient description of an individual’s personality.
• Ex: I’m really extroverted, Ms. Sohr is very introverted. Makes us sound like very different people, yet we are very similar when you get to know us – similar sense of humor, enjoy similar things, both love the Beatles & Monty Python
• Just because you’re a certain type doesn’t mean you have to act that way all the time
• Introverts can have particularly social days & extroverts can have days where they prefer to be left be.

1. How do you sum up your own personality, what personality traits do you think you have?
2. Your idea of who you are
3. Can run into problems when your self-concept is inaccurate – ex: you think you’re a failure despite your recent successes in the occupational & academic realms.
4. Includes both the good & bad things that we think about ourselves

Self-esteem – how you sum up your worth. Does the good or bad predominate? Some peoiple have high self-esteem: "I can accomplish things, I’m a good person, If I asked that girl out I would have a good chance she would say yes." Some people have low self-esteem: "I’ll never get anything accomplished, I’m a lame-o loser and nobody likes me."

• Trait theories
• Psychoanalytic Theories
• Psychodynamic theories
• Learning Theories
• Humanistic Theories

Important folks advancing trait theories: Allport, Cattell, Costa & McCrae.

Trait approach tries to identify traits that best describe a person. Traits can be used to describe & predict behavior.

1. Gordon Allport, trait theorist
1. Went through the unabridged English dictionary to find 18,000 traits (wow!)
1. Common traits – traits shared by most members of a culture
1. Ex: in the U.S., autonomy could be considered a common trait
2. Individual traits – define a person’s unique qualities
1. Are you curious, are you kind?
1. Cardinal traits – traits that define someone’s personality so well that the person exemplifies that trait in everything that they do
1. Very rare
2. Ex: Mother Theresa: kindness & compassion
2. Central traits – core traits that describe a person
1. Table 15.1
3. Secondary traits – superficial traits that aren’t always consistent
1. Ex: political preferences, what you like to wear, etc.

• Cattell narrowed the 18,000 down to 16 using factor analysis (aren’t statistics grand?)
• Identified source traits
• Source traits can only be identified through factor analysis
• Create the real structure underlying personality
• Interact to produce surface traits
• The visible aspects of personality
• Appeal to the commonsense observer bc correspond w/ things we can observe
• Designed the 16PF scale – see page 486

• Costa & McCrae
• Mnemonic: OCEAN
• Assert that 5 dimensions can adequately describe personality
• Extroversion
• just like we talked about before
• how introverted or extroverted are you?
• Neuroticism
• affectionately referred to by yours truly as the "Graduate student dimension"
• these people are nervous, nervous, nervous
• very anxious, irritable, emotional, melancholic
• on the other end of the continuum, you would be considered stable - calm
• Conscientiousness
• Did you remember to sign up for advising? That may have something to do with how conscientious you are!
• This dimension encompasses responsibility, punctuality, organization, etc.
• Very highly correlated with school grades (positive correlated, for that matter). Isn’t that terribly interesting? Makes you think…..
• Or are you pretty irresponsible?
• Agreeableness
• Friendliness, caring for others
• Your instructor epitomizes this, correct?
• Or are you cold?
• Openness to experience
• How open are you to new ideas, creative, curious
• Or maybe you’re not too open-minded when it comes to new experiences
• Check out page 486 – good graphical representation

Trait theorists content that traits are pretty much consistent across situations. However, this isn’t universally agreed upon. There is a belief in an interaction btw individual traits and situational determinants.

Do We Inherit Personality?

1. Animal & ppl studies seem to indicate that yes, behaviors can be inherited
2. Behavioral genetics – field dedicated to investigating this particular conundrum
3. Some personality, just like intelligence, can be inherited in homo sapiens!
4. How do we know this? Remember our friend to twin study from chapter 12? The same rationale applies in the study of traits as it does in the study of intelligence
1. Minnesota Twin Study
1. Many striking similarities found. Your text highlights an example
5. Heredity responsible for one quarter to one half of the variation in personality (amazing!)

• Considered to be the 1^st comprehensive personality theory to be developed. Many following it were developed in reaction to it. Said pers formed by age 6. ***Adult pers determined by childhood. ***
• Basic vocabulary to contend with:
• Psyche – in Freudian theory, pretty analogous to our conceptualization of pers
• Libido – has a broader meaning than what most people consider – encompasses more than just sexual energy. Libido is psychic energy
• Eros – the life instinct
• Thanatos – the death instinct
• The Structure of Personality
• Id
• Houses instincts & urges, the raw biological part of us. The animal.
• Operates according to the pleasure principle - wants immediate satisfaction
• Id provides the energy for the psyche
• Babies are all id
• Id is unconscious
• Ego
• Conscious
• Directs rational behavior, tries to control the impulsive behavior of the id
• Operates according to the reality principle – delaying actions by thinking things out, planning things first; delay until socially appropriate outlet can be found
• Superego
• Moral component of pers. Incorporates social standards
• Ego-ideal – comes from all the things your parents rewarded – act in accord w/ it, feel pride
• Conscience – all the things you’ve been punished for, go against it, feel guilt
• Dynamics of personality
• Ego mediates the struggle btw id & superego. When the struggle is too great, anxiety results
• Neurotic anxiety – id pressures too great
• Moral anxiety – superego pressures to great
• To defend itself, ego employs defense mechanisms
• Levels of awareness
• Conscious – everything you’re aware of at a particular time
• Unconscious – stuff we aren’t aware of. Despite well below conscious awareness, can still exert strong influence on behavior
• Preconscious – not aware of it currently, but could easily be
• Conceptualized much like an iceberg
• Personality development
• Proceed through psychosexual stages
• In each stage, there is a different erogenous zone
• E.Z. – a source of pleasure (different than how most ppl usu think about it)
• If don’t resolve a conflict in a stage, can become fixated, or stuck
• Psychosexual Stages
• Oral stage
• Until age 1, approximately
• Pleasure is derived from the mouth (therefore, it’s the E.Z.)
• 2 fixations
• Child is overindulged – oral dependent – gullible, will swallow anything
• Oral aggressive – biting, sarcastic, ex: Dennis Leary’s sense of humor
• Over eating, smoking, nail biting could be explained by fixations in the oral stage
• Anal stage
• Apprx ages 1-3
• Attention is on the process of feces elimination
• The e.z. is the anus
• Child can gain approval or rebel by expelling at either an appropriate time or an inappropriate time, respectively
• 2 fixations
• anal retentive – stingy, clean, tight, orderly; too strict potty training
• ex: Felix on the Odd Couple
• anal expulsive – too lenient potty training; messy, disorderly, cruel
• ex: Oscar on the Odd Couple
• Phallic stage
• E.Z. – genitals – learns that genital stimulation results in pleasure
• Child is interested in the opposite sex parent
• Oedipus conflict – in little boys. Males are attracted to their mommies.
• Lil’ boy feels rilvary btw him & his dad for his mom’s affection
• Feels dad by find out and punish him by castrating him – castration anxiety
• If I can’t beat him, I’ll join him! Boy identifies with dad, rivalry ends, boy takes on the beliefs & moral of dad, resulting in the formation of his superego (awwww, isn’t it a sweet story?)
• Elektra conflict – in little girls. Girls are attracted to their daddies
• Since females are anatomically different, they can’t experience castration anxiety. (aw, darn)
• Latency stage
• 6 until puberty
• dormant stage in psychosexual development
• Genital stage
• Sexual energies re-emerge
• Unresolved conflicts from earlier experiences can be brought up again. A person has to get past that business in order to become a functioning adult (ever thought about why adolescence can be such a darned difficult time to live through?)
• In the end, able to form adult, loving relationships

Jung (yoong)

• The persona – the mask that ppl wear
• Personal unconscious – your "stuff" – your memories, feelings, etc. pretty analogous to the Freudian conceptualization of the unconscious
• Collective unconscious – the evolutionary residue that all humans share – inherit it from our ancestral past, experiences of humans over multitudes of generates accumulate to form this
• Archetypes – thought forms w/ universal meaning
• Ex: good mother, the hero
• Anima – the feminine side
• Animus – the masculine side
• Particularly important to Jung was the concept of unity, completeness, balance
• Ex: circles, mandala (see page 494)

Horney

• Rejected the Freudian assertion that anatomy is destiny
• Males are dominant to females??? That’s poppycock!
• Anxiety doesn’t come from this id/ego/superego conflict business. Oh no! Basic anxiety is the result of feeling isolated and alone in the world.
• As a result, children settle on a mode of interacting
• Problems result when a person relies too much on any particular mode
• Moving toward ppl – dependence; depending on others for love & support
• Moving away from people – Simon & Garfunkle’s "I am a rock." Withdrawing from others, trying to be entirely independent
• Moving against people – antagonism, seeking power over others

Adler

• Said Freud overemphasized the biological. Adler concetrated on social urges
• Striving for superiority – drive to adapt and master life’s challenges
• We want to over come our weaknesses
• Use compensation to overcome feelings of inferiority – these behaviors contribute to the style of life
• Emphasized the creative self – you play a hand in your life through your choices & behaviors

Emphasize the learned or conditioned aspects of personality. Concerned w/ situational deteriminants, not traits

• Habits – learned patterns of responding
• Drive – the internal stimulus powerful enough to elicit a response
• Cue – external stimulus that clues you in as to whether or not you will be reinforced
• Response – what you do
• Reward

Rotter is important. Felt 3 concepts important:

• Psychological situation – how you perceive your situation
• Expectancy – whether or not you think reinforcement will follow a response
• Reinforcement value – whether or not you actually value a reward as rewarding

Self-reinforcement has been acknowledged – rewarding yourself for your accomplishments

• Miller & Dollard agree w/ Freud that childhood is important for pers dev
• They didn’t focus on psychosexual stages. Instead, they devoted their attention to 4 critical situations.
• Feeding – were your feeding needs met? Will determine whether you take an active or passive orientation toward the world
• Toilet or cleanliness training – really harsh training has negative effects on personality
• Aggression – how permissive parents are w/ aggressive acts by small children will affect attitudes about aggression in adulthood
• Sex training – begins w/ observing & learning male & female typical behaviors
• Imitation plays a big role in this. Boys imitate daddy, girls imitate mommy.
• Identification is important

• Big names: Carl Rogers & Abraham Maslow
• Sometimes sarcastically referred to as "Barney Psychology" – I love you, you love me.
• Very different from the personality theories that preceeded it. Psychoanalytic – very deterministic, behaviorism – very "mindless". Humanism actually considered the person – imagine that!
• Emphasized internal experiences such as feelings and thoughts!!!!!!!
• How YOU feel about an incident is the most important thing
• My personality results from the unique way I perceive my world
• Free will was very important – I am who I choose to be.
• Really emphasized the subjective experiences of individuals

Rogers

• Based out of his clinical experience
• Important is the individual’s ability to become a fully functioning person – in harmony w/ oneself, comfortable w/ your own abilities & desires
• Also important is the self-image – how you sum up & judge your body, your personality, etc. I am tenacious! I am athletic! I am intelligent!
• Concerned w/ the match between a person’s self-image and her actual experiences in life
• Bad match: incongruence. – your beliefs and your experiences don’t match up that well
• Good match: congruence – good match btw your beliefs & reality
• Unconditional positive regard – show this to other people. Don’t set some sort of standard for a person to achieve before you give them affection & respect. Like unconditional love.

Maslow

• Like Rogers, believed that people are basically good!
• Humans express a natural tendency toward self-actualization
• Inborn need to develop your talents, live up to your potential
• Involves accepting yourself & others
• Page 499

Read Personality Theories – Overview & Comparison on your own

Read Personality Assessment on Your Own

Most modern personality tests are objective (remember that term from Chapter 12?)

However, some are projective. (Think Freudian ego defense mechanisms here)

The client projects their unconscious aspects of their personality onto the ambiguous stimuli that are presented to them. Since the stimuli are ambiguous, they have no inherent meaning. Meaning has to be given to them by the person.

Ex: The Rorschach Inkblot test. See page 509 – not terribly reliable or objective (remember those terms from chapter 12?) Consists of inkblots of differing shapes, sizes, and colors.

What do you see in this image?

Ex: The Thematic Apperception Test. See page 509 – uses illustrations, not inkblots. The client will tell a story about what is happening in the picture.

Read about shyness & self-monitoring.

YES! You are done with this outline of chapter 15. I bet you are currently thinking, "Why, yes, my instructor is so terribly kindhearted and marvelous! O! How kind she is for preparing this outline!"