What two scientific goals do personality psychologists try to accomplish?

One goal is to characterize individual differences in people’s typical patterns of observable behavior. The other is to understand the inner workings of the mind. Personality psychologists’ scientific understanding of the mind can help explain the individual differences in personality that they observe.

What aspects of personality are structures and processes meant to account for?

Personality structures are meant to account for people’s enduring, consistent personality qualities. Personality processes explain variations in a person’s thoughts and emotions that occur across relatively brief periods of time.

What tool enables personality psychologists to study people scientifically?

Psychologists rely on personality assessment, which refers to a structured procedure for learning about the distinctive psychological qualities of an individual.

According to Freud, what are the three main structures of the mind?

Freud proposed that the mind contains three structures that are inherently in conflict: the id, ego, and superego. The id seeks immediate release of mental energy; the superego tries to adhere to social norms, and the ego attempts to devise realistic strategies to cope with the demands of the superego and id.

According to Freud’s “iceberg” metaphor, at what levels of consciousness does each structure of the mind reside?

In Freud’s iceberg model, the id is entirely unconscious, whereas the ego and superego are partly conscious.

What are the two basic types of mental energies according to Freud’s theory?

One is life energies, which motivate people to preserve their own lives and to reproduce. The other is energies associated with death, often expressed as aggression.

According to Freud, how can experiences in childhood stages of development have lifelong effects?

Freud believed that early life experiences create fixations specific to the childhood stage of development at which the experiences occur. Later in life, people relive the emotions, motivations, and conflicts of that developmental stage.

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How, according to Freud, do individuals keep themselves from experiencing excessive anxiety or expressing socially unacceptable behavior?

People use defense mechanisms, which are mental strategies that protect against anxiety by blocking unacceptable ideas and impulses, or by distorting them so that the socially unacceptable desire ends up being expressed in a socially acceptable manner.

According to Freud, why is the free association method the best way to assess personality?

According to Freud, if something pops into mind during free association, it must have been due to the action of an inner mental structure that caused it to come to mind, so if a person just let his or her mind “run free,” the ideas that come to mind will reveal its inner workings.

What kinds of outcomes should projective tests be able to predict if they are valid? Do they?

A projective test such as the Rorschach inkblot test should predict important life outcomes, such as who develops a psychological disorder, or who performs well under stress on the job. Research, however, reveals that Rorschach test scores commonly fail to accurately predict real-life psychological outcomes.

How did the ideas of the neo-Freudian personality theorists differ from those of Freud?

Alfred Adler (1927) believed that Freud underestimated the importance of social motives—in particular, the motivation to compensate for inferiority. Carl Jung (1939) judged that Freud underestimated the role that evolution played in shaping the mind—in particular, the collective unconscious. Erik Erikson (1950) expanded Freud’s theory of development to the years beyond early childhood. He also sought to incorporate the conflicts or crises that people experience in their interactions with others throughout the life span.

What disadvantages of Freud’s theory call into question its usefulness?

The theory cannot be easily tested. Likewise, the energy model of mind and its three mental structures may not explain the full range of variability in human social behavior.

What does humanistic theory emphasize, in contrast to psychoanalysis?

Humanistic theory, unlike psychoanalysis, emphasizes people’s desire for freedom and their capacity to reflect on their lives, as well as individuals’ personal, subjective, conscious experiences of themselves.

What is “the self” and why did Rogers emphasize it in his theory of personality?

The self, in Rogers’s theory, is an organized set of self-perceptions of how we really are. It is the central personality structure through which people make sense of their daily experiences.

What is the source of our emotions according to humanistic theory?

People possess an ideal self—that is, the conception of how they ideally would like to be—and they become distressed when their actual experiences fall short of this ideal.

What is the fundamental human motive according to Rogers?

The fundamental human motive is self-actualization, a motivation to enhance one’s psychological state, to achieve personal meaning in life, and to attain a state of psychological maturity.

How can our relationships with others foster or hinder self-actualization?

Relationships in which you experience unconditional positive regard allow you to freely explore and develop your true self-concept. Relationships in which people establish conditions of worth can force you to deny aspects of your true self, which hinders self-actualization.

How can we measure self-concept?

Self-concept can be measured through procedures such as the Q-sort, a personality assessment method in which people are asked to describe multiple aspects of their views of themselves. As you learned in Research Toolkit, aspects of the self-concept can also be gauged using implicit measures, such as the IAT.

In what way does Rogers’s theory improve upon Freud’s?

Rogers, unlike Freud, revealed the importance of conscious thinking processes and interpersonal relationships to personality and also showed the changes in personality that can occur in therapy. Rogers highlighted positive aspects of human nature that were largely overlooked by Freud.

In what way is Rogers’s theory limited as a theory of personality?

A limitation of Rogers’s theory is that it says little about the biological side of personality.

What characterizes the measurement of personality in trait theory?

Trait theory is known for the efficiency and reliability of its measures of personality.

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What scientific method do trait theorists use to reduce thousands of traits in our language into the Big Five (or Six)?

Trait psychologists rely on factor analysis, a statistical tool that searches for patterns in large sets of correlations, such as correlations among measures of different personality traits. Factor analysis enables psychologists to determine whether some of the characteristics go together so frequently that they should be considered different aspects of one basic trait.

What does Eysenck’s research suggest is the biological basis of the trait extraversion?

Eysenck’s research suggests that individual differences in cortical activity in response to environmental stimulation are the basis of individual differences in extraversion. Extraverts have relatively low levels of cortical response and thus seek out more stimulation from the environment. Introverts have high levels of response and are prone to becoming overstimulated in some environments.

How can Eysenck’s work link structures to processes in trait theory?

Eysenck’s analysis of cortical arousal and extraversion identifies brain processes that come into play as people encounter situations featuring low and high levels of stimulation. Extraverts need lower levels of stimulation to experience cortical arousal.

How do trait theorists assess personality and what outcomes can be predicted by these assessments?

Trait theorists assess personality by using questionnaires in which people report their typical preferences and personal tendencies. Individual differences in questionnaire responses have been shown to predict real-life outcomes, including everyday behaviors (such as the style of one’s personal spaces) and long-term life outcomes (such as longevity).

What are some strengths and weaknesses of trait theory?

Trait theory provides a simple method for assessing individual differences and spurs research into the connection between psychology and biology. However, it fails to address in detail the psychological processes through which traits express themselves in behavior, and it does not fully explain fluctuations in a person’s behavior from one situation to another. Furthermore, as described in This Just In, the technique of network analysis suggests that trait theory’s central assumption—that people’s responses to items on trait questionnaires are caused by their traits—may not be supportable. Network analysis indicates that their responses to items are caused by their responses to other items.

What did social-cognitive theory’s two most prominent theorists—Bandura and Mischel—emphasize in their conceptualization of personality?

Both Bandura and Mischel emphasize that personality consists of interconnected beliefs and skills that people develop as they interact with the social world. The theory and research of both underscore the fact that your personal development is not determined merely by inherited qualities outside of your personal control. Rather, you have a capacity for self-control. In addition, both theorists highlight the importance of social context.

What defines each of the three different types of personality structures within social-cognitive theory: self-referent cognition, skills, and affective systems?

Self-referent cognition refers to the thoughts people have about themselves as they interact with the world and reflect on their experiences. Skills are abilities that are developed through experience and that enable people to act in an effective manner. Affective systems are the moods and emotions that influence and are influenced by a person’s style of thinking.

According to research by Bandura, through what process do individuals acquire skills?

People acquire skills through modeling, that is, the observation of others who display those skills. Bandura’s research on the modeling of aggression showed that children quickly learn aggressive behavior patterns that are displayed in the media. In general, people can learn both negative and positive behaviors through modeling.

According to research by Mischel and colleagues, through what strategies can individuals control their emotions and impulses?

People can control their emotions and impulses by distracting themselves, in particular, by directing their attention away from some enticing object that they are trying to avoid.

What does it mean to assess cognition and behavior “in context”?

To assess cognition and behavior “in context” is to measure not only people’s thoughts and actions, but also the situation they were in when thinking and acting.

What are the strengths and limitations of social-cognitive theory?

The strengths of social-cognitive theory include its extensive and diverse research base, which involves both basic and applied research methods. Other strengths are its comprehensiveness and its focus on the relationship between social contexts and personality. A limitation of social-cognitive theory is that it says little about exactly how unconscious motives are expressed in people’s actions, emotions, and psychological distress.

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Does research on the brain support the idea that thinking can occur unconsciously?

Yes. Research shows, for example, that activity in one region of the brain can predict the decision a person makes a few seconds before the person is even aware of having made it.

How have researchers studied the brain and people’s ability to think about themselves, or self-reflect?

In brain-imaging research, people have been asked to reflect on their own characteristics, as well as those of others. Findings show that there are distinctive areas of the brain, known as cortical midline structures, that are particularly active when people think about themselves.