Personality 14 - Wiley-Blackwell

1 CHAPTER OUTLINELEARNING OBJECTIVESINTRODUCTIONWHAT IS Personality ?PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES FREUD AND BEYONDF reud s models of the mindIn the wake of FreudHUMANISTIC THEORIES INDIVIDUALITYThe drive to fulfil potentialUnderstanding our own psychological worldTRAIT THEORIES ASPECTS OF PERSONALITYC attell s 16 trait dimensionsEysenck s supertraitsFive factors of personalityTrait debatesBIOLOGICAL AND GENETIC THEORIES THE WAY WE ARE MADEI nhibition and arousalGenetics vs. environmentSOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORIES INTERPRETING THE WORLDE ncodings or how we perceive eventsExpectancies and the importance of self-efficacyAffects how we feelGoals, values and the effects of rewardCompetencies and self-regulatory plansFINAL THOUGHTSSUMMARYREVISION QUESTIONSFURTHER 1/2/05 3:42 pm Page 292 Learning ObjectivesBy the end of this chapter you should appreciate that:npersonality theorists are concerned with identifying generalizations that can be made about consistent individualdifferences between people s behaviour and the causes and consequences of these differences;nSigmund Freud developed a psychoanalytic approach that emphasized the role of the unconscious in regulatingbehaviour.

2 NRaymond Cattell and Hans Eysenck proposed traits as descriptors that we use to describe Personality and thathave their origins in everyday language;nbiological theories of Personality attempt to explain differences in behaviour in terms of differences in physiology,particularly brain function;nresearch in behavioural genetics has permitted the examination of both genetic and environmental factors inpersonality;nsocial cognitive theories of Personality examine consistent differences in the ways people process socialinformation, allowing us to make predictions about an individual s behaviour in particular do not need to be a psychologist to speculateabout Personality . In our everyday conversationswe refer to the Personality traits of people weknow.

3 Novels, playwrights and filmmakers makeconstant use of the Personality of key figures intheir stories, and this is one of the great attrac-tions of popular fiction. The term Personality isnow part of everyday language, and theories ofpersonality are generated by all of us every timewe answer the question, What is she or he like? As a branch of psychology, Personality theorydates back to the beginning of the twentieth cen-tury and the psychoanalytic approach of SigmundFreud. During the last century a number of differ-ent approaches have developed:ntrait approaches ( Allport, 1937; Cattell,1943; Eysenck, 1947);nbiological and genetic approaches (Eysenck,1967, 1990; Plomin, 1986; Plomin et al.)

4 ,1997);nphenomenological approaches (Kelly, 1955;Rogers 1951);nbehavioural and social learning approaches(Bandura, 1971; Skinner, 1953); andnsocial cognitive approaches (Bandura, 1986;Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Mischel, 1973).This chapter focuses on trait, biological andgenetic, and social cognitive approaches, provid-ing a representative account of current researchactivity. We will also look at psychoanalytic andhumanistic approaches for an insight into thebeginning and history of Personality 1/2/05 3:42 pm Page 293294294 Personalitywe can predict how our friends will behave, and we expect themto behave in a recognizably similar way from one day to the (1968) includes consistency (within an individual) anddifference (between individuals) in his definition, and Allport(1961) refers to characteristic patterns of behaviour within anindividual.

5 These are also important considerations. So personal-ity is what makes our actions, thoughts and feelings consistent (orrelatively consistent), and it is also what makes us different fromone the early years of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud(1856 1939) had begun to write about psychoanalysis, whichhe described as a theory of the mind or Personality , a method ofinvestigation of unconscious process, and a method of treatment (1923/62).Central to a psychoanalyticapproach is the concept ofunconscious mental processes the idea that unconsciousmotivations and needs have arole in determining our behaviour. This approach also emphasizesthe irrational aspects of human behaviour and portrays aggres-sive and sexual needs as having a major impact on S MODELS OF THE MINDF reud developed a numberof hypothetical models toshow how the mind (or whathe called the psyche) works:na topographic model ofthe psyche or how themind is organized;nastructural model of thepsyche or how person-ality works; andna psychogenetic model ofdevelopment or howpersonality model of the psycheFreud (1905/53b) argued that the mind is divided into the con-scious, the preconscious and the to Freud, the conscious is the part of the mind thatholds everything you are currently aware of.

6 The preconsciouscontains everything you could become aware of but are not currently thinking about. The unconscious is the part of the mind that we cannot usually become aware of. Freud saw thePSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES FREUD AND BEYONDIn 400 BC, Hippocrates, a physician and a very acute observer,claimed that different Personality types are caused by the balanceof bodily fluids. The terms he developed are still sometimes usedtoday in describing Personality . Phlegmatic (or calm) people werethought to have a higher concentration of phlegm; sanguine (oroptimistic) people had more blood; melancholic (or depressed)people had high levels of black bile; and irritable people had highlevels of yellow views about the biological basis of Personality areechoed in contemporary theories that link the presence of brainchemicals such as noradrenaline and serotonin to mood how do we define Personality ?

7 Within psychology twoclassic definitions are often used: Personality is a dynamic organisation, inside the person, of psy-chophysical systems that create the person s characteristic pat-terns of behaviour, thoughts and Allport, 1961 More or less stable, internal one person s beha-viour consistent from one time to another, and different from thebehaviour other people would manifest in comparable , 1968 Both these definitions emphasize that Personality is an internalprocess that guides behaviour. Gordon Allport (1961) makes thepoint that Personality is psychophysical, which means both phys-ical and psychological. Recent research has shown that biologicaland genetic phenomena do have an impact on Personality . Child(1968) makes the point that Personality is stable or at least rela-tively stable.

8 We do not change dramatically from week to week,WHAT IS Personality ?Figure Personality changes are, thankfully, extremely mental processespro-cesses in the mind that people are notnormally aware oftopographic model of the psycheFreud s model of the structure of themindstructural model of the psycheFreud smodel of how the mind workspsychepsychoanalytic term meaning mind psychogenetic model of develop-ment Freud s model of Personality 1/2/05 3:42 pm Page 294 Psychoanalytic Theories295295unconscious as holding all the urges, thoughts and feelings that might cause us anxiety, conflict and pain. Although we areunaware of them, these urges, thoughts and feelings are con-sidered by Freud to exert an influence on our model of the psycheAlongside the three levels of consciousness, Freud (1923/62, 1933)developed a structural model of Personality involving what hecalled the id, the ego and the superego (figure ).

9 According to Freud, the id functions in the unconscious and isclosely tied to instinctual and biological processes. It is the prim-itive core from which the ego and the superego develop. As thesource of energy and impulse it has two drives:Eros a drive for life, love, growth and self-preservationThanatos a drive foraggression and deathThese drives, or instincts, arerepresented psychologicallyas wishes that need to be or internal stimulation creates tension, which the idseeks to reduce immediately. This is called the pleasure prin-ciple the idea that all needs have to be satisfied immediately,avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, regardless of external condi-tions. The id is directly linked to bodily experience and cannotdeal effectively with reality.

10 As such it is limited to two forms ofresponse reflex responses to simple stimuli ( crying withpain), or primary process thinking (hallucinatory images ofdesired objects), which provides a basic discharge of to Freud, primary process thinking does not actuallymeet the fundamental need of the organism just as dreaming ofwater does not satisfy thirst so a second structure, the ego,focuses on ensuring the id s impulses are expressed effectively inthe context of the real world. The ego, as a source of rationality,conforms to the reality principle delaying the discharge ofenergy from the id until an appropriate object or activity can befound. The ego engages in secondary process thinking. It takesexecutive action on the part of the ego to decide which actionsare appropriate, which id impulses will be satisfied, how the ego has no moral sense, only practical sense.