Chapter 12 – Personality

Define what personality is.

 Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that examines personality and its
variation among individuals. It aims to show how people are individually different
due to psychological forces.

Describe what personality traits are and describe the elements of the five-factor model of
personality and outcomes associated with the dimensions.
 Personality Trait
o A disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations
 The 5 Factor Mod of Personality
o Agreeableness vs Antagonism
 Sympathetic (warmth), trusting (forgiving), cooperative (not
stubborn), modest (not show off), straightforward (not demanding)
o Conscientiousness (constraint) vs Impulsiveness
 Diligent (thorough), self-disciplined (not impulsive), organized,
punctual, reliable, dependent, efficient, not careless, not lazy
o Openness to Experience vs Closed to Experience
 Curious, flexible, imaginative, artistic, unconventional attitudes
 Tolerant of ambiguity, artistic, feelings (excitable), wide range of
interests
o Extraversion (positive emotionality) vs Introversion
 Outgoing, sociable, upbeat (energetic, active), friendly, assertive
o Neuroticism (negative emotionality) vs Emotional Stability
 Anxious (tense), hostile (irritable), self-conscious, insecure, vulnerable
(not self-confident), depression (not content), impulsive (moody)

Describe the psychodynamic perspectives of personality developed by Freud and Adler,

including identification of defence mechanisms.
 Freuds Psychoanalytic Theory on Personality
o Belief that personality results from conflict between internal forces
 Little to no awareness or control
 Conflicts are rooted in childhood experiences
 Defence Mechanisms
o Repression
 When a threatening idea, memory, or emotion is blocked from
consciousness
o Projection
 When a person’s own unacceptable or threatening feeling are
repressed and then attributed to someone else
o Displacement
  When people direct their emotions toward people, animals, or
objects that are not the real object of their feelings
o Regression
 When a person reverts to a previous phase of psychological
development
o Denial
 When a person refuses to admit that something unpleasant is
happening
o Identification
 Bolstering one’s self-esteem by forming imaginary or real alliance
with some person or group
 E.g., join an exclusive group or club
o Sublimation
 Unconscious, unacceptable impulses are directed into socially
acceptable behaviours
 E.g., aggressive impulses – play a high-contact sport
 Seen as a relatively healthy defence mechanism (adaptive way
of dealing with unacceptable impulses)

Describe the behavioural perspectives of personality (Skinner’s theories, Bandura’s Social

Cognitive Theory).
 Radical Behaviorism
o According to skinner, people’s characteristics response tendencies
(personality) are shaped by the consequence that follow behaviour
o E.g., your joking leads to attention and compliments, so your tendency to be
witty and humorous will be strengthened (reinforcement)
o If no one laughs at your jokes, frown, or say you they are not funny, you will
stop making jokes (punishment)
o Behaviour is fully determined by conditioning; no role for thought/conscious
participation
 Social Cognitive Theories
o Albert Bandura
 Personality shaped by learning (conditioning) but people actively
think about their experiences and environments and try to influence
their lives and both choose change their environments
o Proposed model of reciprocal determinism
 Internal mental events, externa; environmental events, overt
behavior influence one another
 E.g., someone who is outgoing chooses to be in a social environment
and has a history of finding social interactions rewarding
 Socializing with others reinforces the behavior as well as the
belief and expectations that being with ithers will be enjoyable
 Describe the humanistic perspectives of personality developed by Rogers and Maslow.
 Humanistic View of Personality
o Carl Rogers
 Personality grounded in our self-concept: collection of beliefs about
our own nature, typical behavior and unique qualities
 Self-concept is how you view yours
 The words you identify as “like you” represent your self-
concept
 Personality will develop fully and normally given the right
environment
 Incongruence occurs when self-concept and actual
experience/reality are very different
o Causes anxiety
o People distort reality, make excuses, ignore and deny
feedback that threatens their self-concept
o Rogers’s theory of development posits that conditional love leads to a need
to distort experiences, which fosters an incongruent self-concept.
Incongruence makes one prone to recurrent anxiety, which triggers
defensive behaviour which fuels more incongruence
 Maslow’s Theory of Self-Actualization
o According to Maslow, human needs are arranged in a hierarchy and people
must satisfy their basic needs before they can satisfy higher needs.
o Higher levels in the pyramid represent progressively less-basic needs
o Individuals progress upward in the hierarchy when lower needs are satisfied
reasonably well, but may regress back to lower if basic needs are no longer
satisfied
 Maslow’s Healthy Personality
o Studied people who exhibited mental health (the healthiest 1% of a group of
college students) and admired historical figures to investigate the
characteristics of people with superior adjustments
 Presented a picture of self-actualized people who have healthy
personalities marked by continued personal growth

Describe the evidence for a biological basis of personality.

 Sympathetic Nervous System (associated levels of cortical arousal to demonstrate
neuroticism links)
 Brain imaging studies (brain damage produced changes)
 Twin studies
 Genetic Heritability
Explain the two approaches to personality assessment and discuss pros and cons of each
 Self-Report Inventories
o People complete a series of question about themselves
 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
 10 personality traits that, at extremes, are thought to be
symptoms of disorders
 Yields personality profiles
 16 PF and NEO Personality Inventory
 Basic dimensions of normal personality
 NEO inventory (by Costa & McCrae) assesses big-five traits
o Pros
 Easy to administer and score
 Relies on sources that knows you best – yourself
o Cons
 Deliberate deception
 Social desirability bias
 Response set
 Projective Test
o Respond to ambiguous stimuli that are said to reveal inner feelings, thoughts &
traits
o Not easily faked to be “good” because subject doesn’t know what is “right” or
“wrong” but may respond in a way to present self as mentally ill
o Complicated scoring
o Poor validity
o Pros
 Difficult to “fake good” or manage impressions
 Sensitive to unconscious features of personality
o Cons
 Inconsistent scoring, poor reliability, prone to cultural bias, do not predict
outcomes