INTRODUCTION AND APPROACH TO PERSONALITY

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INTRODUCTION AND APPROACH TO PERSONALITY

• Office Management

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CONTENT

• Definition of personality
• Shaping of personality
• Genetic influences
• Environmental influences
• Cultural influences
• Continuity of personality
• Consequences of personality
• Approach in understanding personality

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PERSONALITY

• Definition
• Personality traits are enduring patterns of
  perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the
  environment and oneself, and are exhibited in a
  wide range of important social and personality
  context.
• (American Psychiatric Association, 1987)

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PERSONALITY

• The characteristic patterns of thought, emotion
  and behavior that define an individuals personal
  style and influence his/her interactions with the
  environment.

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SHAPING OF PERSONALITY
Environmental influences
Genetic influences
Cultural influences
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GENETIC INFLUENCE

• Research shows that reliable differences can be
  observed among infants beginning at about 3
  months of age.

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GENETIC INFLUENCE

• Such characteristics are activity level,
  attention span, adaptability to changes in the
  environment general mood.

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GENETIC INFLUENCE

• Such mood related personality characteristics,
  called temperament are building blocks for the
  individuals later personality.

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GENETIC INFLUENCE

• The early appearance of such characteristic
  suggests that they are determined in part by
  genetic factors and are inherited from the
  parents.

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ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCE

• Most psychological theories of development
  assumes that forces acting early in life have
  more influence in shaping our personalities than
  do later forces.

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ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCE
Attachment

• Children differ from one another in the degree
  to which they form secure attachments to their
  primary caregivers in the 1st year of life.

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ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCE

• Those who form such attachments are observed in
  later childhood to approach difficult problems
  with enthusiasm and persistence, to be
  self-directed and eager to learn to be social
  leaders among their peers.

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ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCE

• In contrast, children who are less securely
  attached at the end of their first year are more
  easily frustrated, are more dependent on adults
  and tend to be socially withdrawn

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ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCE

• The failure to form secure attachments in the
  early years has been related to an inability to
  develop close personal relationships in
  adulthood.

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ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCE

• Childrearing practice
• Accepting/Responsive/Child centered Rejecting/Un
  responsive/Parent- centered
• Demanding
• Controlling
• Undemanding
• Not controlling

Authoritative Authoritarian
Indulgent Neglecting
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ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCE

• Types of childrearing Individual (child)
  personality
• practices
• 1. Authoritative Increase level of control,
  warmth able to use 2-way communication
• 2. Authoritarian Competent capable individual
  BUT might lack of spontaneity
  social withdrawal.
• 3. Indulgent Accepting, responsive, have
  positive mood BUT too much indulgent
  will create immature individual, lack of
  impulse control, lack of social
  responsibility self-reliance.
• 4. Neglecting Neurotic, abuse substances

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CULTURAL INFLUENCE

• Western culture
• independent
• self-assertive
• motivated to achieve
• Non-Western culture
• Interdependence of persons with others in the
  community
• Children are encourage to be part of functioning
  community

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CULTURAL INFLUENCE

• Parents in non-Western culture punish wrong
  behavior do not explicitly praise or reward
  good behavior.

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CONTINUITY OF PERSONALITY

• Evidence for continuity
• 2 studies
• 1. Barkeley Guidance Study conducted at Inst. Of
  Human Dev. At U California.
• 2. Oakland Growth study
• Result
• 1. There was strong continuity of personality
  from early to later adolescence.
• 2. The strongest continuities related to
  intelligence intellectual interests.
• 3. Personality variables like extraversion,
  emotional stability impulse control are next.
• 4. Political attitude measures of self-opinion
  are last.

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CONSEQUENCES OF PERSONALITY

• Example
• Childhood ill-temperedness
• Poor education
• Low occupational status
• Erratic worklife

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Approaches To Personality

• A) Trait Approach
• B) Psychobiological Approach
• C) Social Learning Approach
• D) Psychodynamic Approach
• E) Humanistic Approach

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The Big Five(Trait Approach)

• The English vocabulary contains nearly 20,000
  trait terms. But there is a lot of redundancy
  among them (sociable, outgoing).
• Decades of research on similarities between
  traits have yielded five clusters
• Neuroticism
• Extroversion
• Openness
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness
• These tendencies mix in different proportions to
  create different personalities.

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Psychobiological Approach

• Focuses on the role of biology in determining
  personality.
• There are a number of ways to look at the role of
  biology in personality. One way is to look at
  the heritability of
• personality traits.
• Another way is to look at the effect of brain
  damage on personality.

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Nature vs. Nurture
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Optimum-Level Theory

• Some personality traits like extroversion and
  thrill seeking, produce behaviour that increases
  arousal.
• Could it be that such people are trying to raise
  their natural low level of arousal to an optimal
  level?
• Optimal Level Theory states that
• There is an optimal level of arousal for
  motivated action.
• When arousal is low, we feel bored and
  unmotivated.
• When arousal is very high, we feel tense and
  fearful.

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Social Learning Approach

• States that our personality is shaped by what we
  learn from our experiences.
• We develop expectations about the outcome of our
  behaviour in certain situations.
• One particularly interesting effect of such
  expectations is reflected in what is known as
  self-handicapping.

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Self-Handicapping

• Making excuses for ones performance before the
  act.
• Sometimes this is done by saying things that
  suggest that one is not at ones best (I have a
  headache, I slept terribly, etc.)
• At the extreme one may actually engage in
  behaviour that will
• handicap ones performance (getting drunk
  the night before a
• competition).
• Self-handicapping is an attempt to protect ones
  self-esteem.
• Research shows that people who self-handicap do
  not cope well with stress.

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Psychodynamic Approach

• According to this approach, diverse sources of
  psychic energy
• interact dynamically in each of us.
• Sigmund Freud is the most famous proponent of
  this view.
• Freuds psychoanalytic theory begins with the
  idea that the mind exists on two basic levels
  conscious and unconscious.
• Freud believed that the mind has three basic
  structures
• Id unconscious irrational source of primitive
  impulses.
• Ego conscious and realistic (respects reality
  principle)
• Superego both conscious and unconscious. Based
  on
• rules and prohibitions we have internalized.

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Defense Mechanisms

• The conflicts created by the ids strong impulses
  and the inhibitions imposed by the ego and
  superego can be very upsetting.
• Defense mechanism
• Repression
• Reaction Formation
• Projection
• Sublimation
• Rationalization
• Conversion

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Personality Disorders

• According to Psychodynamic theory, problems
  during early personality development can result
  in personality disorders in later life.
• Narcissism is a sense that others are there to
  serve the self.
• Narcissists love attention and praise, but
  respond to criticism with extreme anger.

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Humanistic Approach

• Humanism emphasizes the individuals potential
  for growth
• and change.
• Abraham Maslow proposed that personality is
  shaped by
• motivation to satisfy a hierarchy of needs
• Self-actualization
• Aesthetic needs
• Cognitive needs
• Esteem needs
• Attachment needs
• Safety needs
• Physiological needs
• Carl Rogers proposed that people seek to be fully
  functioning.

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Personality Assessment

• Projective tests such as the Rorschach Inkblot
  Test assess how people project unconscious
  conflicts in their responses to non-specific or
  ambiguous stimuli.

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Standardized Personality Tests

• Standardized Personality tests use a set of items
  and have been screened for psychometric
  properties such as reliability and validity.

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