theories of personality

• Trait Theories


  -          personality traits are ‘enduring patterns of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and oneself that are exhibited in a wide range of social and personal context’

  -          the least controversial dimension, observed as far back as the ancient greeks, is simply extraversion vs introversion

  -    extraversion, for a person who is outgoing and oriented through physical stimulation

  introversion, the opposite of extraversion who manifests behavior like being quiet and has adverse physical stimulation
• Trait Theories


  -          Gordon Allport delineated different kinds of traits, which he also called dispositions

  -    categorized central traits as the basis to an individual’s personality, while secondary traits are more peripheral

  -    common traits are those recognized within culture and thus, may vary from culture to culture

  -    cardinal traits are those by which an individual may be strongly recognized
• Trait Theories


  -          Raymond Cattel propagated a two tiered personality structure with sixteen ‘primary factors’ popularly known as the 16 personality factors and five secondary factors

  -    use oblique
• Trait Theories


  -          Hans Eysenck who believed that just three traits; extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism were sufficient to describe human personality

  -    extraversion (sociable, lively, active and assertive)

  -    neuroticism (anxious, depressed, guilt feelings, low self esteem)

  -    psychoticism (aggressive, cold, egocentric, impulsive)
• Trait Theories


  -          Lewis Goldberg, he developed the theory and nicknamed it as the ‘big five’ or OCEAN

  -    openness to experience (open to new ideas vs traditional and oriented towards routine)

  -    conscientiousness (dutiful, organized, and orderly vs laidback, spontaneous, and unreliable)

  -    extraversion (outgoing and stimulation oriented vs quiet and stimulation avoiding)

  -    agreeableness (affable, friendly, conciliatory vs aggressive, dominant, disagreeable)

  -    neuroticism (emotional reactive, prone to negative emotion vs calm, imperturbable, optimistic)
• Type Theories


  -          personality type refers to the psychological classification of different types of people

  -    differ from personality traits in different levels or degrees
• Type Theories


  -          Carl Jung, constructing the Myers-Briggs type indicator

  -    later elaborated further by David Keirsey

  ›           extraversion vs introversion

  ›           intuition vs sensing (where trust in conceptual/abstract models of reality vs concrete sensory oriented facts)

  ›           thinking vs feeling (considers thinking as the prime mover in decision making vs feelings as the prime mover in decision making)

  ›           perceiving vs judging (desire to perceive events vs desires to have things done so judgements can be made)
• Psychoanalytic Theories


  -          describes development as primarily unconscious and heavily colored by emotion

  -          behavior is merely a surface characteristic and the symbolic workings of the mind have to be analyzed to understand behavior

  -          emphasis is given to the early experiences that the child had with his/her parents
• Psychoanalytic Theories


  -          Sigmund Freud considered as the father of psychoanalysis

  -    explained human behavior in terms of the interaction of various components of personality

  -    drew in the physics of his day (thermodynamics) to coin the term psychodynamics

  -    proposed that psychic energy could be converted into behavior
• Psychoanalytic Behavior


   

  -    id is considered to be the savage desires and raw urges, and to be the source of sexual energy (pleasure seeking principle)

  -    ego is the reality testing structure that helps the id in expressing itself as it emerges in order to realistically meet the wishes and demands of the id in accordance with the outside world (reality principle)

  -    superego is considered as the model arm of personality, exercises moral judgement and societal rules in keeping the ego and id in check
• Psychoanalytic Theory


  -          as Freud believe that humans are sexual throughout childhood he made the psychosexual stages:

  -    oral stage (birth to one year old), located in the mouth

  -    anal stage (2 years old), primarily in the anus

  -    phallic stage (3 to 6 years old), oedipus and electra complex is present

  -    latency period (7 years old to puberty), repression of sexual interest and social and intellectual skills are developed

  -    genital stage (puberty onwards), sexual reawakening and the source of sexual pleasure with someone outside the family
• Psychoanalytic Theory


  -          if the person is uncapable to overcome crises, then he resorts to the use of defense mechanisms

  -    defense mechanisms are unconscious strategies people utilize in order to reduce the level of anxiety arousing from the situation that they are into

  -    necessary to reduce anxiety by concealing its source from themselves and others
• NeoFreudian Theory


  -          Alfred Adler believed that birth order may influence personality development

  -    oldest was the one that set high goals to achieve to get attention back that the lost when the younger siblings were born

  -    middle child were competitive and ambitious possibly so they are able to surpass the first born’s achievements but were not as much concerned about the glory

  -    last born would be dependent and sociable but be the baby

  -    only children love being the center of attention and mature quickly, but in the end fail to become independent
• Neo Freudian Theory


  -          Heinz Kohut, narcissism as a model of how we develop our sense of self

  -    narcissism is the exaggerated sense of one self in which is believed to exist in order to protect one’s low self esteem and sense of worthlessness

  -    he introduce what he call the self object transferences of mirroring and idealization

  ›           children need to idealize and emotionally ‘sink into’ and identify with the idealized competence of admired figures such as parents or older siblings
• Neo Freudian Theory


  -          Karen Horney, development of the real self and ideal self and that all people have these two views of their own self

  ›           real self is how you really are with regards to personality, values, and morals

  ›           ideal self is a construct you apply to yourself to conform to social and personal norms and goals
• Neo Freudian Theory


  -    object relations theory, the object is the aim of ‘relational needs’ in human development

  ›           Freud who coined the term ‘object’ to refer to the target that an infant uses to satisfy his or her needs

  ›           these objects are most often people, such as mother or the primary caretakers

  ›           in young children include objects like a blanket, favorite toy, pacifiers, etc.

  ›           the child becomes fixated to the object because it provides pleasure for the child
• Behaviorist Theories


  -          behaviorists explain personality in terms of reactions to external stimuli

  -          emphasizes the mutual interaction of the person or ‘the organism’ with its environment

  -          believes that children do bad things in order to get the attention that they crave

  -    these are known as the stimulus, response, and consequence

  ›           the stimulus is the child being ignored

  ›           the response is the child acting out

  ›           the attention that child gets is the consequence

  -    people’s behavior is formed by process such as operant conditioning
• Behaviorists Theories


  -          Ivan Pavlov is well known for his classical conditions experiments utilizing a dog that led him to discover the foundation of behaviorism as well as classical conditioning
• Behaviorists Theory


  -          John B Watson the father of american behaviorism, made four major assumptions about radical behaviorisms

  -    evolutionary continuity, the laws of behavior are applied equally to all living organisms

  -    reductionism, all behaviors are linked to physiology

  -    determinism, animals do not respond freely they respond in a programmed way to external stimuli

  -    empiricism, only our actions are observable evidence of our personality and psychology should involve the study of observable behavior
• Cognitive Theories


  -          behavior is explained as guided by cognitions or expectations about the world, especially those about other people

  -    emphasize cognitive processes such as thinking and judging
• Cognitive Theories


  -          Albert Bandura, suggested that the forces of memory and emotions worked in conjunctions with environmental influences

  -    was known mostly for his studies involving his ‘bobo doll’

  ›           he called this study and his findings observational learning or modeling

  ›           bandura showed a video tape of a college student kicking and verbally abusing a bobo doll to a class of kindergartens who were getting ready to go out to play

  when they enter the playroom they saw bobo dolls and some hammer, the people observing these children at play saw a group
• Cognitive Theories


  -          self efficacy work, dealing with confidence people have in abilities to do tasks (Bandura, 1997)
• Cognitive Theories


  -          locus of control theory, dealing with different beliefs people have about whether their worlds are controlled by themselves or external factors (Lefcourt, 1966; Rotter 1966)
• Cognitive Theories


  -          attributional style theory (Abramson, Seligman Teasdale, 1978) dealing with different ways in which people explain events in their lives

  -    this approach builds upon locus of control, but extends it by stating that we also need to consider whether people attribute to stable causes or variable causes and to global causes of specific causes
• Cognitive Theories


  -          Walter Mischel defended the cognitive approach to personality

  -    his works refers to as ‘cognitive affective units’ and encoding of stimuli affect goal setting and self regulatory beliefs considered as a factor in the development of personality
• Cognitive Theories


  -          Albert Ellis, considered as the grandfather of cognitive behavioral therapy developed the rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), which later came to be known as Rational Therapy (RT)

  -    REBT required that the therapist helps the client understand and act on the understanding that his personal philosophy contains common irrational beliefs that lead to his own emotional pain

  -   he believes that the thoughts we have become our emotions and the emotions we have becomes our thoughts
• Cognitive Theories


  -          Homburger Erikson, believed that personality develops in a series of stages and describes the impact of social experience across the whole lifespan

  -    he gave emphasis on the development of ego identity, this is the conscious sense of self that we develop through social interaction

  ›           our ego identity constantly changes due to new experience and information that we acquire in our daily interactions with other individuals in our environment
• Humanistic Theories


  -          it is emphasized that people have free will and that they play an active role in determining how they behave

  -          focuses on subjective experiences of persons as opposed to forced, definitive factors that determine behavior
• Humanistic Theories


  -          Abraham Maslow developed his concept of what he calls ‘self actualizing persons’ those who are ‘fulfilling themselves and doing the best that they are capable of doing’
• Humanistic Theories


  -    characteristics of self actualizers include four key dimensions:

  ›           awareness, maintaining constat enjoyment and awe of life as these individuals often experienced a ‘peak experience’

  ›           reality and problem centered, have the tendency to be concerned with ‘problems’ in their surroundings

  
  

  ›           acceptance/spontaneity, accepts their surroundings and what cannot be changed

  ›           unhostile sense of humor/democratic, those who do not like joking about others which can be viewed as offensive
• Humanistic Theories


  -    Maslow collaborated with carl rogers and emphasized a view of the person as an active, creative, experiencing human being who lives in the present and subjectively responds to current perceptions, relationships and encounters

  ›           they view humanistic theories as positive optimistic proposals which recognize the tendency of the human personality towards growth and self actualization
• Biopsychological Theories


  -          neuroscience introduced powerful brain analysis like electroencephalography (EEG), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to this study

  -    it was in the 1990s that neuroscience entered the domain of personality psychology
• Biopsychological Theories


  -          Richard Davidson, one of the founders of this area of brain research of the university of Wisconsin-Madison

  -    his research focused on the role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and amygdala in manifesting human personality

  ›           this research has looked at hemispheric asymmetry of activities in these regions