11. Personality

Define personality and the contributions of Freud and neo-Freudians to personality theory

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• Define personality and describe early theories about personality development

• Describe the assumptions of the psychodynamic perspective on personality development, including the id, ego, and superego

• Define and describe the defense mechanisms

• Define and describe the psychosexual stages of personality development

• Summarize the contributions of Neo-Freudians to personality theory, including Adler's inferiority complex and Erikson's psychosocial stages

• Explain Carl Jung's contributions to personality theory

Describe and differentiate between personality theories

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• Describe the behavioral and social-cognitive perspectives on personality (including the concepts of reciprocal determinism, self-efficacy, and locus of control)

• Explain the contributions of humanists Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers to personality development

• Explain biological approaches to understanding personality, including the findings of the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, heritability, and temperament

• Discuss personality differences of people from collectivist and individualist cultures and the varying approaches to studying personality (the cultural-comparative approach, the indigenous approach,and the combined approach)

Explain various personality trait systems

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• Discuss the early trait theories of Cattell and Eysenck

• Describe the Big Five factors and categorize someone who is high and low on each of the five factors

• Explain the person-situation debate

• Describe the stability and instability of personality over time

Explain the use and purpose of common personality tests

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• Describe different types of personality tests, including the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and common projective tests

• Describe the process and challenges of developing personality assessments

• Explain the importance of validity and the ways that it is measured

Essential Concepts

Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality

Personality has been studied for over 2,000 years, beginning with Hippocrates. More recent theories of personality have been proposed, including Freud’s psychodynamic perspective, which holds that personality is formed through early childhood experiences. Other perspectives then emerged in reaction to the psychodynamic perspective, including the learning, humanistic, biological, trait, and cultural perspectives.

Sigmund Freud presented the first comprehensive theory of personality. He was also the first to recognize that much of our mental life takes place outside of our conscious awareness. Freud also proposed three components to our personality: the id, ego, and superego. The job of the ego is to balance the sexual and aggressive drives of the id with the moral ideal of the superego. Freud also said that personality develops through a series of psychosexual stages. In each stage, pleasure focuses on a specific erogenous zone. Failure to resolve a stage can lead one to become fixated in that stage, leading to unhealthy personality traits. Successful resolution of the stages leads to a healthy adult.

The neo-Freudians were psychologists whose work followed from Freud’s. They generally agreed with Freud that childhood experiences matter, but they decreased the emphasis on sex and focused more on the social environment and effects of culture on personality. Some of the notable neo-Freudians are Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, and Karen Horney. The neo-Freudian approaches have been criticized, because they tend to be philosophical rather than based on sound scientific research. For example, Jung’s conclusions about the existence of the collective unconscious are based on myths, legends, dreams, and art. In addition, as with Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, the neo-Freudians based much of their theories of personality on information from their patients.

Explaining Personality

Behavioral theorists view personality as significantly shaped and impacted by the reinforcements and consequences outside of the organism. People behave in a consistent manner based on prior learning. B. F. Skinner, a prominent behaviorist, said that we demonstrate consistent behavior patterns, because we have developed certain response tendencies. Mischel focused on how personal goals play a role in the self-regulation process. Albert Bandura said that one’s environment can determine behavior, but at the same time, people can influence the environment with both their thoughts and behaviors, which is known as reciprocal determinism. Bandura also emphasized how we learn from watching others. He felt that this type of learning also plays a part in the development of our personality. Bandura discussed the concept of self-efficacy, which is our level of confidence in our own abilities. Finally, Rotter proposed the concept of locus of control, which refers to our beliefs about the power we have over our lives. He said that people fall along a continuum between a purely internal and a purely external locus of control.

Humanistic psychologists Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers focused on the growth potential of healthy individuals. They believed that people strive to become self-actualized. Both Rogers’s and Maslow’s theories greatly contributed to our understanding of the self. They emphasized free will and self-determination, with each individual desiring to become the best person they can become.

Some aspects of our personalities are largely controlled by genetics; however, environmental factors (such as family interactions) and maturation can affect the ways in which children’s personalities are expressed. The culture in which you live is one of the most important environmental factors that shape your personality. Western ideas about personality may not be applicable to other cultures. In fact, there is evidence that the strength of personality traits varies across cultures. Individualist cultures and collectivist cultures place emphasis on different basic values. People who live in individualist cultures tend to believe that independence, competition, and personal achievement are important. People who live in collectivist cultures value social harmony, respectfulness, and group needs over individual needs. There are three approaches that can be used to study personality in a cultural context: the cultural-comparative approach, the indigenous approach, and the combined approach, which incorporates both elements of both views.

Personality Traits

Trait theorists propose that personality can be understood through characteristic ways of behaving, such as being sociable or shy, optimistic or pessimistic. Early trait theorists categorized personality traits into cardinal (dominant), central (defining), and secondary (contextual) traits. Raymond Cattell narrowed down traits to 16 factors, while the Eysencks focused on extroversion/introversion and neuroticism/stability dimensions. The Five Factor Model (Big Five) is the most widely accepted theory today, encompassing openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Another model, HEXACO, includes honesty-humility, emotionality, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience as broad traits.

The person-situation debate in psychology challenges the belief in consistent personality traits across different situations. Walter Mischel argued that behavior is influenced by specific, psychologically meaningful features of the situation and individuals’ unique perception and abilities. While there is evidence of average stability and changes in personality traits with age, it is recognized that individuals can respond and adapt to their environments, suggesting the possibility of personality change and transformation. Overall, both personal factors and situational factors are considered important in understanding behavior.

Measuring Personality

Personality tests are techniques designed to measure one’s personality. They are used to diagnose psychological problems as well as to screen candidates for college and employment. There are two types of personality tests: self-report inventories and projective tests. The MMPI is one of the most common self-report inventories. It asks a series of true/false questions that are designed to provide a clinical profile of an individual. Projective tests use ambiguous images or other ambiguous stimuli to assess an individual’s unconscious fears, desires, and challenges. The Rorschach Inkblot Test, the TAT, the RISB, and the C-TCB are all forms of projective tests.

Validity refers to the extent to which a test accurately measures what it intends to measure. Different types of validity, such as convergent validity (comparing results with similar traits), discriminant validity (comparing results with dissimilar traits), criterion validity (comparing results with real-world outcomes), and predictive validity (assessing if results predict behavior), are used to evaluate the validity of a test.

Personality Cheat Sheet from Lumen One Introduction to Psychology, Lumen Learning, https://lumenlearning.com/, CC BY.

Psychology, 2e, OpenStax, https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/, CC BY.

David Wiley