Theories of Personality

Theories of Personality

Dr Nesif Al-Hemiary

Definition

The distinctive and characteristic pattern of thought , emotion and behavior that make up an individual’s personal style of interacting with the physical and social environment.
When we are asked to describe an individual’s personality, we are likely to use terms referring to personality traits( adjectives such as extraverted & conscientious).

The Psychoanalytic Theory

Sigmund Freud ,the creator of the psychoanalytic theory, is one of the towering intellectual figures of the 20th century.
The basic premise of psychoanalytic theory is that much of what we think and do is driven by unconscious processes.
Despite its shortcomings as a scientific theory, the psychoanalytic account of personality remains the most comprehensive and influential theory of personality ever created.

Freud compared the human mind to an iceberg. The small part that shows above the surface of the water consists of the conscious( or current awareness) and the preconscious (all the information that is not currently on our mind but that we could bring into consciousness if called upon to do so, for example the name of our president).
The much larger mass of the iceberg below water represent the unconscious , a storehouse of impulses ,wishes and inaccessible memories that affect our thought and behavior.
Freud believed that all thoughts ,emotions and actions have causes and also most of them are caused by unsatisfied drives and unconscious wishes.

Personality Structure

• Freud discovered that his iceberg model was too simple to describe the human personality ,so he went on to develop a structural model ,which divided personality into three major systems that interact to govern human behavior: the id, the ego, and the superego.
• The id : according to Freud, the id is the most primitive part of the personality & the part from which the ego and the superego later develop.
• It is present in the newborn infant and consist of the most basic biological impulses or drives: the need to eat, to drink, to eliminate wastes, to avoid pain and to gain sexual (sensual) pleasure.
• He also believed that aggression is a basic biological drive.
• In fact he believed that the sexual and aggressive drives were the most important instinctual determinants of personality throughout life.
• The id seeks immediate gratification of the impulses.


2. The ego :
Children soon learn that their impulses cannot always be gratified immediately. Hunger will not be alleviated until someone provides food .Relief of bladder or bowel pressure must be delayed until the bathroom is reached.
The ego obeys the reality principle: the gratification of impulses must be delayed until the situation is appropriate.
The ego thus is the executive of the personality: it decides which id impulses will be satisfied and in what manner.
The ego mediates among the demands of the id , the realities of the world , and the demands of the superego.

3. Superego :

the third part of the personality is the superego, which judges whether actions are right or wrong.
More generally ,the superego is the internalized representation of the values and morals of the society.
It is the individual’s conscience ,as well as his or her image of the morally ideal person( called the ego ideal).
The superego develops in response to parental rewards and punishments .
Violating the superego’s standards or even the impulse to do so produces anxiety – beginning with anxiety over loss of parental love.
According to Freud ,this anxiety is largely unconscious ,but may be experienced as guilt.

The three components of personality are often in conflict ; the ego postpones the gratification that the id wants immediately, and the superego battles with both the id and the ego because behavior often falls short of the moral code it represents.
In the well –integrated personality , the ego remains in firm but flexible control ; the reality principle governs.

Personality Dynamics

Conservation of Energy :
Freud believed that humans are closed energy system. There is a constant amount of psychic energy for any given individual ,which Freud called “libido”.
One corollary of the principle of conservation of energy is that if a forbidden act or impulse is suppressed ,its energy will seek an outlet somewhere else in the system ,possibly appearing in a disguised form.
The desires of the id contain psychic energy that must be expressed in some way, and preventing the expression of these desires does not eliminate them.
Aggressive impulses for example may be expressed in disguised form by racing sports cars ,playing chess or making sarcastic remarks.
Dreams and neurotic symptoms are also manifestations of psychic energy that cannot be expressed directly.


Anxiety & Defense :
Individuals with an urge to do something forbidden experience anxiety. One way of reducing this anxiety is to express the impulse in a disguised form that will avoid punishment either by the society or by its internal representative ,the superego.
Freud and his daughter Anna described several defense mechanisms .
Defense mechanisms are strategies for preventing or reducing anxiety.
We all use defense mechanisms at times .They help us over the rough spots until we can deal with stressful situations more directly.
Defense mechanisms are maladaptive only when they become the dominant mode of responding to problems.
Defense mechanisms include the following types: repression, rationalization, reaction formation, projection , denial, displacement & intellectualization.

Personality Development

• Freud believed that during the first 5 years of life ,the individual progresses through several developmental stages that affect his or her personality.
• Applying a broad definition of sexuality , he called these periods psycho-sexual stages.
• During each stage the pleasure seeking impulses of the id focus on a particular area of the body and on activities connected with that area.
• These stages are:
• Oral stage (1st year of life): pleasure from nursing & sucking.
• Anal stage ( 2nd year of life): pleasure from withholding & expelling feces.
• Phallic stage (3-6 years of life): pleasure of fondling genitals.
• Latency period (7-12 years) : children become less concerned with their bodies and turn their attention to the skills needed for coping with their environment.
• Genital stage (adolescence & puberty): the mature phase of adult sexuality and functioning.

At age 5-6 years ,a boy’s sexual impulses are directed toward his mother. this leads him to perceive his father as a rival for his mother’s affection.
Freud called this situation the Oedipal conflict.
Freud also believed that the boy’s fears that his father will retaliate against these sexual impulses by castrating him.
He labeled this fear castration anxiety.
In normal case of development the boy simultaneously reduces this anxiety and gratifies his feelings towards his mother by identifying with his father.
Resolution of Oedipal conflict ends the phallic stage.
Freud believed that special problems at any stage could arrest , or fixate, development and have a lasting effect on personality.


The Behavioral Theory
This approach emphasizes the importance of environmental or situational determinants of behavior.
So, behavior is the result of a continuous interaction between personal & environmental variables.
The environment shapes behavior through learning.
To predict behavior ,we need to know how the characteristics of the individual interact with those of the situation.

Social learning and conditioning

• Operant conditioning:
• Reinforcement and punishment can influence behavior.
• Operant conditioning is a type of learning that occurs when we learn the association between our behavior and certain outcomes.
• Learning can occur by two ways:
• By direct experience : rewards and punishments.
• By observing other people :noting the result.

Reinforcement

• Reinforcement can occur through many ways:
• Direct : tangible rewards, social approval or disapproval, alleviation of aversive conditions.
• Vicarious : observation of someone receiving reward or punishment.
• Self-administered : evaluation of one’s own performance with self praise or self reproach.

Classical conditioning

To account for emotions or affect , behaviorists add the classical conditioning.
Classical conditioning is a type of learning that occurs when specific situations become associated with specific outcomes.
When a child is punished for a forbidden behavior ,he will elicit physiological responses that we associate with guilt or anxiety.
Subsequently, the child behavior itself will elicit these responses , so the child feel guilty when engaging in a forbidden behavior.
Unconditioned stimulus (punishment) guilt and anxiety.


Conditioned stimulus (forbidden behavior guilt & anxiety.

Individual Differences

• Personality psychologists seek to specify both the variables on which individuals differ from one another & the general process of personality functioning.
• Behavioral theory concentrated on processes & giving little attention to individual differences.
• Evaluation of behavior theory :
• Pays little attention to biological determinants of behavior & focuses on environmental factors.
• Passive quality of personality( highly modified by environment). This view is changed by the social learning theory of cognitive approach.
• It made good contribution to clinical psychology & theory of personality.

The Cognitive Theory

Cognitive approach is a general empirical approach and a set of topics related to how people process information about themselves and the world.
For cognitive theorists : differences in personality stem from differences in the way individuals mentally represent information.

Social-cognitive theory

Bandura , one of the leading contemporary theorists in this area, has taken this approach even further, developing what he calls social-cognitive theory.

He emphasizes the reciprocal determinism in which external determinants of behavior (rewards, punishments) and internal determinants ( beliefs, thoughts and expectations) are part of a system of interacting influences that affect both behavior and other parts of the system.


Social-cognitive theory
Bandura notes that people use symbols and forethoughts in deciding how to act. When they encounter a new problem ,they imagine possible outcomes and consider the probability of each. Then they set goals and develop strategies for achieving them. This is quite different from the notion of conditioning through rewards and punishments.
Bandura also points out that most behavior occurs in the absence of external rewards and punishments. Most behavior stems from internal processes of self-regulation. As he expresses it “ anyone who attempted to change a pacifist into aggressor or a devout religionist into an atheist would quickly come to appreciate the existence of personal sources of behavioral control”.
The personal sources of control develop by observing the behavior of others or by reading or hearing about it.

Individual differences and social learning theory

• Another prominent social –learning theorist, Walter Mischel, has attempted to incorporate individual differences into social learning theory by introducing the following set of cognitive variables:
• Competencies: what can you do? Competencies include intellectual abilities, social and physical skills, and other special abilities.
• Encoding strategies: how do you see it? People differ in the way they attend to information, encode (represent) events and group the information into meaningful categories.

• Expectancies :what will happen? Expectations about the consequences of different behaviors will guide the individual’s choice of behavior.
• Subjective values: what is worth? Individuals who have similar expectancies may choose to behave differently because they assign different values to the outcomes.
• Self-regulatory systems and plans: how can you achieve it ? People differ in the standards and rules they use to regulate their behavior, as well as their ability to make realistic plans for reaching a goal.
• All of these person variables ( referred to as cognitive social-learning person variables) interact with the conditions of a particular situation to determine what an individual will do in that situation.

Self-Schemas

A schema is a cognitive structure that helps us perceive ,organize ,process and utilize information.
Through the use of schemas , each individual develops a system for identifying what is important in his or her environment while ignoring everything else.
Schemas also provide a structure within which we organize and process information. For example most people have developed a mother schema. When asked to describe their mother, it is easy for them because the information is organized into a well-defined cognitive structure.
Schemas are relatively stable over time and therefore result in stable ways of perceiving and utilizing information.


They differ from one individual to another, causing people to process information differently and to behave in different ways.
They thus can be used to explain differences in personality.
Perhaps the most important schema is the self-schema ,which consists of “cognitive generalizations about the self, derived from past experience, that organize and guide the processing of self-related information.
The resulting self-schema is made up of the aspects of our behavior that are more important to us, and it plays a central role in the way we process information and interact with the world around us.

The Humanistic Theory

During the first half of the 20th century ,the psychoanalytic & behaviorist approaches were dominant in psychology.
In 1962 ,however ,a group of psychologists founded the Association of Humanistic Psychology.
They saw humanistic psychology as a “third force” ,an alternative to the other two approaches.

Carl Rogers

Like Freud , Carl Rogers (1902-1987) based his theory on work with patients or clients in a clinic.
Rogers believed that the basic force motivating the human organism is the actualizing tendency.
Actualizing tendency :a tendency toward fulfillment or actualization of all the capacities of the organization.
A growing organism seeks to fulfill its potential within the limits of its heredity.
A person may not always clearly perceive which action lead to growth & which do not. But once the course is clear, the individual chooses to grow.
Rogers did not deny that there are other needs ,some of them biological ,but he so them as subservient to the organism’s motivation to enhance itself.

The Self

The central concept in Rogers’s theory of personality is the self or self-concept ( he uses them interchangeably).
The self or real self: consist of all the ideas ,perceptions and values that characterize “I” or “Me” ;it includes the awareness of “What I am ?” and “What I can do?” .
This perceived self, in turn, influences both the person’s perception of the world and his or her behavior.
For example a woman who perceives herself as strong and competent perceives and acts upon the world quite differently than a woman who considers herself weak and ineffectual.
The self concept does not necessarily reflect reality: A person may be highly successful and respected but still view himself or herself as a failure.


According to Rogers ,the individual evaluates every experience in relation to his or her self-concept.
People want to behave in ways that are consistent with their self image ,and experiences and feelings that are not consistent are threatening and may be denied entry into consciousness.
The more areas of experience a person denies because they are inconsistent with his or her self concept , the wider the gap between the self and reality and the greater the potential for maladjustment.
Rogers also proposed that each of us has an ideal self ,our conception of the kind of person we would like to be.
The closer the ideal self is to the real self , the more fulfilled and happy the individual becomes.

A large discrepancy between the ideal self and real self results in unhappy ,and dissatisfied person.
Thus two kinds of inconsistency can develop: between the self & the experience of reality and the real self and ideal self.
Rogers believed that people are likely to function more effectively if they are brought up with unconditioned positive regard (being given the sense that they are valued by parents and others even when their feelings ,attitudes, and behaviors are less than ideal).
If parents offer only conditioned positive regards (valuing the child only when he or she behaves , thinks ,or feels correctly)- the child’s self concept is likely to be distorted.

Abraham Maslow

The psychology of Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) overlaps with that of Carl Rogers in many ways.
Abraham Maslow ,proposed that there is a hierarchy of needs ,ascending from the basic biological needs to the more complex psychological motivations that become important only after the basic needs have been satisfied .
The needs at one level must be at least partially satisfied before those at the next level become important motivators of action.
When food and safety are difficult to obtain ,efforts to satisfy those needs will dominate a person’s actions ,and higher motives will have little significance.

Only when basic needs can be satisfied easily will the individual have the time and energy to devote to aesthetic and intellectual interests.
Artistic and scientific endeavors do not flourish in societies in which people must struggle for food, shelter, and safety.
The highest motive – self actualization – can be fulfilled only after all other needs have been satisfied.

The Evolutionary Approach

One of the newest and most controversial theories in personality is really an application of a very old theory that is the Evolutionary Theory of Darwin(1859).
The basic premise of evolutionary psychology is that behaviors that increase the organism’s chances of surviving and leaving descendants will be selected for over evolutionary history and thus would become aspects of human’s personalities.
A good deal of research on the application of the evolutionary psychology to personality has focused on mate selection.
Mating involves competition ,males compete with males and females compete with females.

What is being competed for differs between the sexes, however because males and females have different roles in reproduction.
Because females carry their offspring for 9 months and then nurse and care for them after birth ,they have a greater investment in each offspring and can produce fewer offspring in their lifetimes than men can.
This puts a premium for the female on the quality of the genetic contribution of the males with whom she reproduces, as well as, on signs of his ability and willingness to help care for his offspring.
In contrast, the optimal reproductive strategy for males is to reproduce as often as possible , and they will primarily be looking for females who are available and fertile.

Some evolutionary psychologists have investigated personality differences between males and females and hypothesized that they are the result of differences in reproductive strategies.
They reasoned that women who are interested in mating should emphasize their youth and beauty, because these are signs of their fertility, but should be choosier than men about what partners they mate with.
In contrast ,men who are interested in mating should emphasize their ability to support their offspring and should be less choosy than women about their mating partners.
This theory is controversial ,however , because of its social implications and for the difficulty of refuting arguments derived from this theory.

Genetics & Personality

We end with another controversial and relatively recent approach to understanding the origins of personality (the argument that personality traits are largely determined by genes an individual was born with.
Some of the best evidence that genes play a role in personality comes from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart.
These studies revealed that twins reared apart are just as similar to each other across a wide range of personality characteristics as twins reared together, permitting us to conclude with greater confidence that identical twins are more similar to each other on personality characteristics than fraternal twins because they are more similar genetically.


Genetics & Personality
Evidence from twin studies suggests that genetic factors substantially influence personality traits.
In shaping personality ,genetic and environmental influences do not act independently but are intertwined from the moment of birth.
Because a child’s personality and his or her home environment are both a function of the parent’s genes, there is a built-in correlation between the child’s genotype (inherited personality characteristics) and that environment.

Interaction between personality and environment

• Three dynamic processes of personality-environment interaction are:
• Reactive interaction: different individuals exposed to the same environment experience it, interpret it ,and react to it differently.
• Evocative interaction :an individual’s personality evokes distinctive responses from others.
• Proactive interaction: individuals select or create environments of their own.
• As the child grows older, the influence of proactive interaction becomes increasingly important.