Overview of Personality Theorists

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Over-view of Personality Theorists
2
Personality Theorists

• This will come up on the exam paper under the
  Intrapersonal Communication which is generally
  the second section on the paper.
• You will be asked how your intrapersonal
  communication your personality affects your
  communication with other people.
• You will need to use specific personality
  theories to look at how this might happen.
• There are good sample essays on all Personality
  theorists on the VLE.

3
Four approaches

• Psychoanalytic - Freud and Jung
• Trait - Eysenck, Adorno and Pinker
• Humanist - Rogers and Maslow
• Social Learning Skinner, Bandura

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Summary of approaches

• Psychoanalytic sees personality as an aspect of
  self which is developed by childhood experiences
  (Freud and Jung)
• Trait sees personality as a set of
  characteristics inherited from parents (Eysenck
  and Cattell)
• Humanist sees personality as developed from a
  set of individual needs and motivation (Maslow
  and Rogers)
• Social learning sees personality as developed
  because of positive and negative
  conditioning.(Skinner and Bandura)

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Psychoanalytic approach

• Freud
• Sigmund Freud was a medical doctor and founder of
  psychoanalysis. He was born on May 6, 1856, in
  Freiberg, Moravia.
• Freud attended medical school at the University
  of Vienna where he studied biology for six
  years,. In 1881, Freud received his medical
  degree and initially sought work at Vienna
  General Hospital before setting up a private
  practice in the treatment of psychological
  disorders.
• In 1885, Freud went to Paris where he became
  familiar with the technique of hypnosis.
• In his studies of child development, Freud
  concluded that between the ages of three and five
  children reached a turning point where they felt
  a strong attraction to the parent of the opposite
  sex.
• As a scientist, Freud was interested in seeing
  how the human mind affected the body particularly
  by studying paranoia, hysteria, and other mental
  illnesses. As a theorist, he explored basic
  truths about how personalities are formed.
• Jung
• Carl Gustav Jung was a psychiatrist. Carl Jung
  was born July 26, 1875. He studied medicine at
  Basel, and worked at the Burgholzli mental clinic
  in Zurich. He met Freud in Vienna in 1907, became
  his leading collaborator, and was president of
  the International Psychoanalytic Association from
  1911-1914. He became increasingly critical of
  Freud's approach and developed his own theories,
  which he called "analytical psychology' to
  distinguish them from Freud's psychoanalysis and
  Adler's individual psychology.

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Trait Theorists

• A trait is a genetically determined
  characteristic or condition
• Hans J. Eysenck was born and raised in Germany
  Eysenck was appointed to be the director of the
  Psychology Department of Maudsley Hospital's new
  institute of Psychiatry. He was also a professor
  of psychology at the University of London.
• He supports a model of personality characterized
  by types and traits because he firmly beliefs
  that the most fundamental personality
  characteristics are inherited. His equally strong
  belief that both heredity and environment
  determine behavior.
• Raymond Cattell was born in Staffordshire,
  England, on March 20, 1905. He earned his
  undergraduate degree in chemistry and his Ph.D.
  in psychology from the University of London in
  1929. He taught college and worked in a
  psychological clinic in London until 1937.
• He thinks personality is concerned with all
  behavior, including what is concrete and
  observable. Personality is made up of traits.

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Individual theories of personality

• Adorno and Laing interested in particular
  individual personality types
• Adorno the Authoritarian personality what
  makes people into dictators
• Laing the Schizophrenic personality what
  causes people to have a split personality

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Freud Key Facts

• Freud believed that conflicts between our drives
  (for pleasure etc) and our experience affect our
  behaviour and communication as adults and
  determine our personality
• Three parts to our minds what are they? Dont
  click until you have named them
• Id unconscious mind (were not aware) which
  controls our innate (born with)drives for sex,
  aggression etc
• Ego conscious mind (we are aware of it) which
  is the rational, realistic bit of our mind which
  controls our behaviour in the light of our real
  experiences
• Super Ego our conscience and sense of right and
  wrong which will control our behaviour based on
  our principles regardless of experience.
• Examples? How might these bits of our
  intrapersonal communication affect how we
  communicate verbally and non-verbally with other
  people?

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Freud further facts

• Because there are constant conflicts between Id,
  ego and super-ego, we protect our self image by
  using some behaviour or communication within
  ourselves and to others they are called Defence
  Mechanisms.
• Name five of them.
• Repression
• Displacement
• Projection
• Denial
• Intellectualisation
• Can you give me examples of how non-verbal and
  verbal communication might change if someone was
  using these defence mechanisms in an interaction
  with someone else? Remember what Freud says about
  slip ups in language being an intrusion of the
  unconscious into the conscious we are thinking
  it and it comes to the surface by accident.

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Freud continued

• Freud felt that personality was also formed by
  psychosexual stages which everyone goes through
  as they grow up but sometimes people get stuck in
  a particular stage there are five name them.

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Freud Personality Types

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Eysenck and Cattell

• Trait Theory we all have key traits to our
  personality which make us either Extrovert or
  Intravert.
• Eysenck believed these traits were inherited
  from our parents
• Traits were measurable and could be used to
  predict behaviour and hence communication
  tendencies.

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Eysenck and Cattell

• Trait Theory we all have key traits to our
  personality which make us either Extrovert or
  Intravert.
• Eysenck believed these traits were inherited
  from our parents
• Traits were measurable and could be used to
  predict behaviour and hence communication
  tendencies.

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Eysenck and Cattell
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Eysenck and Cattell

• Eysenck and Cattell felt that since personality
  traits could be measured, and people then
  assigned to Introvert or Extravert, their
  behaviour could be predicted.
• How might someone being extravert or introvert
  affect their communication with others?

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Laing

• Worked with schizophrenic personalities people
  whose relationship and communication with the
  world is divided.
• Engulfment fear of being overwhelmed by others
  so love might be a threat behaviour?
• Implosion fear that the world will come
  crashing in and destroy identity
• Petrification/Depersonalisation fear of being
  brainwashed behaviour or communication?

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Adorno The Authoritarian Personality

• Made link between certain kinds of personality
  and prejudice against others and also links
  between personality and certain beliefs or
  values
• Name three of the personality traits he said were
  included
• Not liking people who were considered below or
  beneath them
• Sucking up to people they think are of higher
  status than them
• Despising, looking down on weakness
• Stubborn and inflexible unwilling to change
  mind or behaviour
• Not tolerant of uncertainty everything has to
  be certain
• Unwilling to face feelings
• Believing in traditional values and ways of life
  women in the home, no sex before marriage etc.
• How might someone with this personality behave
  towards others? How might this show in their
  verbal and non-verbal communication?