UNIIT SIX

PERSONALITY
 Defining Some Terms
• Personality: A person’s unique and relatively
stable behavior patterns; the consistency of who
you are, have been, and will become
• Character: Personal characteristics that have
been judged or evaluated
• Temperament: Hereditary aspects of
personality, including sensitivity, moods,
irritability, and adaptability
• Personality Trait: Stable qualities that a person
shows in most situations
• Personality Type: People who have several traits
in common
 6.1. Meaning of Personality

 Personality has been defined in many different ways,

but psychologists generally view personality as :-the
unique pattern of enduring thoughts, feelings, and

actions that characterize a person.

 Cont.
Personality- can be defined as the distinctive and
characteristic patterns of thought, emotion,
and behavior that make up an individual’s
personal style of interacting with the physical
and social environment.
Personality - A relatively stable set of
characteristics that influences an individual’s
behavior
 Cont.
• Personality is the pattern of enduring
characteristics that produce consistency and
individuality in a given person.
• It encompasses the behaviors that make each of
us unique and that differentiate us from others.
• It is also personality that leads us to act
consistently in different situations and over
extended periods of time.
 6.2. Theories of Personality

 Psychoanalytic Theory

Trait Theory

Humanistic Theory
 6.2.1. The psychoanalytic theory of personality
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality: Mapping
the Unconscious Mind
• Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician, developed
psychoanalytic theory in the early 1900s.
• According to Freud’s theory, conscious experience is
only a small part of our psychological makeup and
experience.
• He argued that much of our behavior is motivated by
the unconscious, a part of the personality that
contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings,
urges, drives, and instincts of which the individual is
not aware.
 Cont.
• According to Freud, personality is formed
within ourselves, arising from basic
inborn needs, drives, and characteristics.
• Psychodynamic Theories: Focus on the
inner workings of personality, especially
internal conflicts and struggles
• He argued that people are in constant
conflict between their biological urges
(drives) and the need to tame them.
 STRUCTURING PERSONALITY

• In Freud's view, personality has three parts

which serves a different function and develops at
different times:
I. Id - Unconscious
II. Ego - unconscious, preconscious, conscious
III. Superego - unconscious, preconscious, conscious

According to Freud, the way these three parts of

personality interact with one another determines
the personality of an individual.
 Psychoanalytic Personality Structure
 Freud’s “iceberg”
idea of the mind’s
structure
 Abstract concepts
Preconscious
for understanding
the mind’s conflicts
between pleasure-
seeking and social
restraint
 Freud’s Psychoanalysis: The Id
• Operates according to the pleasure principle
• Present from birth
• Unorganized, inborn part of personality
whose purpose is to immediately reduce
tensions relating to primitive impulses
such as hunger, sex, aggression
• competing instincts:
• Life (sexual) - libido
• Death (aggressive)
• Unconscious
 Freud’s Psychoanalysis: The Ego

Operates according to the reality principle

 Arises in first 3 years of life
 Mediates between Id and Superego
 Rational part of mind
 you can’t always get what you want
 Floats between all 3 levels of
consciousness (Conscious, pre-conscious
& unconscious)
 Freud’s Psychoanalysis: The Superego
Moral Conscience
 Develops around age 5
• At end of Phallic Stage
Stores and enforces rules
• Inner voice that tells you not to do
something or that what you did was wrong
 subsystems:
• Ego Ideal = parents approve/value
• Conscience = parents disapproval
DEVELOPING PERSONALITY: PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES
• Freud also provided us with a view of how
personality develops through a series of five
psychosexual stages, during which individuals
encounter conflicts between the demands of society
and their own sexual urges (in which sexuality is more
about experiencing pleasure and less about lust).
• According to Freud, failure to resolve the conflicts at a
particular stage can result in fixations, conflicts or
concerns that persist beyond the developmental
period in which they first occur.
• Such conflicts may be due to having needs ignored or
(conversely) being overindulged during the earlier
period. 14
• The sequence Freud proposed is noteworthy
because it explains how experiences and difficulties
during a particular childhood stage may predict
specific characteristics in the adult personality.
• This theory is also unique in associating each stage
with a major biological function, which Freud
assumed to be the focus of pleasure in a given
period.
• In the first psychosexual stage of development,
called the oral stage, the baby’s mouth is the focal
point of pleasure.
• During the first 12 to 18 months of life, children
suck, eat, mouth, and bite anything they can put
into their mouths. 15
• To Freud, this behavior suggested that the mouth is
the primary site of a kind of sexual pleasure, and that
weaning/ discouraging (withdrawing the breast or
bottle) represents the main conflict during the oral
stage.
• If infants are either overindulged (perhaps by being
fed every time they cry) or frustrated in their search
for oral gratification, they may become fixated at this
stage.
• For example, fixation might occur if an infant’s oral
needs were constantly gratified immediately at the
first sign of hunger, rather than if the infant learned
that feeding takes place on a schedule because eating
whenever an infant wants to eat is not always 16
• Fixation at the oral stage might produce an adult
who was unusually interested in oral activities—
eating, talking, smoking—or who showed
symbolic sorts of oral interests: being either
“bitingly” sarcastic such as fingernail biting or very
gullible (“swallowing” anything).
• From around age 12 to 18 months until 3 years of
age—a period when the emphasis in Western
cultures is on toilet training—a child enters the
anal stage.
• At this point, the major source of pleasure
changes from the mouth to the anal region, and
children obtain considerable pleasure from both 17
• If toilet training is particularly demanding, fixation
might occur.
• Fixation during the anal stage might result in unusual
rigidity, orderliness, punctuality, over neatness—or
extreme disorderliness or sloppiness/ messy, dirtiness
—in adulthood.
• At about age 3, the phallic stage begins. At this point
there is another major shift in the primary source of
pleasure for the child.
• Now interest focuses on the genitals and the pleasures
derived from fondling/ manipulating them.
• According to Freudian theory, as children focus
attention on their genitals, the differences between
male and female anatomy become more salient/ 18
• During this stage the child/ boy must also
negotiate one of the most important hurdles of
personality development: the Oedipal conflict.
• According to Freud, at this time the male
unconsciously begins to develop a sexual interest
in his mother, starts to see his father as a rival,
and harbors a wish to kill his father—as Oedipus
did in the ancient Greek tragedy.
• But because he views his father as too powerful,
he develops a fear that his father may retaliate
drastically by removing the source of the threat:
the son’s penis.
19
• The fear of losing one’s penis leads to castration
anxiety, which ultimately becomes so powerful
that the child represses his desires for his mother
and identifies with his father.
• Identification is the process of wanting to be like
another person as much as possible, imitating
that person’s behavior and adopting similar
beliefs and values.
• By identifying with his father, a son seeks to
obtain a woman like his unattainable mother.

20
• For girls, the process is different. Freud reasoned
that girls begin to experience sexual arousal
toward their fathers & hate their mothers(Electra
complex) and begin to experience penis envy.
• They wish they had the anatomical part that, at
least to Freud, seemed most clearly “missing” in
girls.
• Blaming their mothers for their lack of a penis,
girls come to believe that their mothers are
responsible for their “castration.” (This aspect of
Freud’s theory later provoked accusations that
he considered women to be inferior to men.)
21
• Like males, though, they find that they can resolve
such unacceptable feelings by identifying with the
same-sex parent, behaving like her and adopting
her attitudes and values.
• In this way, a girl’s identification with her mother
is completed.
• At this point, the Oedipal conflict is said to be
resolved, and Freudian theory assumes that both
males and females move on to the next stage of
development.
• If difficulties arise during this period, however, all
sorts of problems are thought to occur, including
improper sex-role behavior and the failure to 22
• After the resolution of the Oedipal and Electra
conflicts, typically at around age 5 or 6, children
move into the latency period, which lasts until
puberty.
• During this period, sexual interests become
dormant, even in the unconscious.
• Then, during adolescence, sexual feelings
reemerge, marking the start of the final period,
the genital stage, which extends until death.
• The focus during the genital stage is on mature,
adult sexuality, which Freud defined as sexual
intercourse.
23
 Freud’s Psychoanalysis: Defense mechanisms
 Defense mechanism reduce/redirect anxiety by distorting reality
1. Denial:- Most primitive; refusing to believe, denying reality;
usually occurs with death and illness.
- claiming and believing that something which is actually true
is false.

2. Repression : - pushing unacceptable and anxiety-producing

thoughts into the unconscious; involves intentional forgetting but not

consciously done; repressed material can be memories or unacceptable

impulses.
3. Projection :- attributing one’s own unacceptable feelings or beliefs
to others;
Example :- An employee at a store, tempted to steal some merchandise,
suspects that other employees are stealing.
 Cont.
4. Rationalization : -Justifying personal actions by giving
“rational” but false reasons for them
5. Reaction Formation: Impulses are repressed and the opposite
behavior is exaggerated.
- replacing an anxiety-producing feeling with its exact opposite,
typically going overboard; repressed thoughts appear as mirror
opposites.
6.Regression: involves reverting to immature behaviors that have
relieved anxiety in the past.
-acting in ways characteristic of earlier life stages of personality
Example: a girl/a boy who has just entered school may go back
to sucking her/his thumb or wetting the bed.
 Cont.
7. Displacement: -expressing feelings toward a
person who is less threatening than the person
who is the true target of those feelings.
Example:- A husband, angry at the way his boss
treated him, screams at his children.
8. Sublimation: substitute socially acceptable
behavior for unacceptable impulses.
Playing video games instead of getting in a fight.
 6.2.2. The trait theory of personality

Trait Theory - understand individuals by breaking down

behavior patterns into observable traits
The trait approach to personality makes three main
assumptions:
1. Personality traits are relatively stable, and therefore
predictable, over time.
2. Personality traits are relatively stable across
situations.
3. People differ in how much of a particular personality
trait they possess; no two people are exactly alike on all
traits. The result is an endless variety of unique
personalities.
 The “Big Five” Personality Factors
• Openness to Experience
• Conscientious
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism
 The five-factor model / the Big Five theory (OCEAN)

1. Openness to experience:- refers to a person‘s

willingness to try new things and be open to new
experiences
• Open = Curiosity, imaginative, creative
• Resistant = Conforming, predictable
2. Conscientiousness :- refers the tendency to control
impulse and act in socially acceptable ways
 Conscientious = Responsible, persevering, self-disciplined
 Impulsive = Quick to give up, fickle, careless
3. Extroversion:- divided into two personality types
• Extroversion = Outgoing – talkative, sociable,
adventurous
• Introversion = Shy – silent, reclusive, cautious
 Cont.
4. Agreeableness:-refers to the basic emotional style of a
person.
• Agreeable = Good-natured, cooperative, secure
• Antagonistic = Irritable, abrasive, suspicious, jealous
5. Neuroticism:- refers to emotional instability or stability.
• Neurotic = anxious, impulsive, worrier, emotionally
negative
• Emotionally stable = only has those feelings when the
circumstances dictate
 6.2.3. Humanistic theory of personality
(Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow )

Humanistic Theories: Focus on private,

subjective experience and personal growth
Humans are free and basically good.
Humans are inner-directed.
Everyone has the potential for healthy
growth.
Health growth involves Self actualization:
Given the right environmental conditions,
we can reach our full potential
 Cont.
Congruence :- this is displayed by fully
functioning people and is a harmony between
the image they project to others and their true
feelings or wishes.
To become fully functioning we need:
Unconditional positive regard
 A situation in which the acceptance and
love one receives from significant others is
unqualified, no strings attached
 Cont.
• Fully Functioning Person: Lives in harmony with
his/her deepest feelings and impulses
• Self: Flexible and changing perception of one’s
identity
• Self-Image: Total subjective perception of your body
and personality
• Incongruence: Exists when there is a discrepancy
between one’s experiences and self-image
• Positive Self-Regard: Thinking of oneself as a good,
lovable, worthwhile person
• Unconditional Positive Regard: Unshakable love and
approval
 Components of the self-concept
Self-concept: our image or perception of
ourselves.

1. The real self (one‘s actual perception of

characteristics, traits, and abilities that form the
basis of the striving for self-actualization) and

2. The ideal self (the perception of what one

should be or would like to be). e.g. From parents.
 Cont.

Incongruence occurs when there is a mismatch between any of

these three entities: the ideal self (the person you would like to be),
self-image (the person you think you are), and
the true self (the person you actually are). Self-esteem suffers
when there is a large difference between one’s ideal self and self-
image. Anxiety and defensiveness are common when the self-
image does not match the true self.