THEORIES OF

PERSONALITY

Dr. Anuradha Patel

1st year resident
Department of Psychiatry
Dr. M K Shah Medical college
The term personality is derived from the
Latin word “persona” meaning a MASK
 DEFINITIONS
 “Personality a dynamic organization within the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behavior and
thoughts.” (Gordon Allport)

 “The distinctive pattern of behavior (including thoughts & emotions)

that characterize each individual’s adaptation to the situations of his/her
life.” (Walter Mischel)

 “Personality is the sum total of individual’s characteristics which make

him unique.” (Hollander)

 American Psychological Society defines personality as: “individual

differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.”
 Character : value judgments of a person’s moral
and ethical behavior.

 Temperament : hereditary aspect of personality,

including sensitivity, moods, irritability, and
distractibility.
Theories of personality
 TYPES AND TRAIT APPROACHES

 DYNAMIC APPROACHIES

 LEARNING AND BEHAVIORAL APPROACIES

 HUMANISTIC APPROACES
 TYPES AND TRAIT
APPROACHES
 TYPE THEORIES
 focuses on people’s personal characteristics

 One of the 1st type theories was proposed by Hippocrates, he

divided people into 4 types:

 SANGUINE : cheerful, confidently optimistic

 MELANCHOLIC : depressed , morose
 CHOLARIC : short tempered
 PHLEMETIC : slow moving, calm, unexcitable
 Type is simply a class of individuals said to share a
common collection of characteristics;

 E.G. Introverts - shy, social withdrawal and

tendency not to talk much
 Extroverts – outgoing, friendly and talkative
Eysenck’s hierarchical theory
 Eysenck identified the major personality as a
small numbers of personality type.

 Each type is made up of a set of personality characteristics.

 Each one of these characteristics can be broken down into

certain habitual-response pattern.

 Each of these habitual-response pattern can be broken

down into specific responses into specific situations.
 He scooped up a massive amount of data from many tests
and measures administered to some 10,000 people.

 Applying factor analysis he identified typology as shown

below :
 Vertical dimensions shows people high in neuroticism at
upper end and people high in stability at lower end.
 The horizontal dimensions shows people high in
introversion at extreme of left people high in extroversion
at extreme of right.
 Trait theory
 Trait is a consistent, enduring way of thinking, feeling
or behaving. (psychology by Ciccarelli, 5 edition)
th

 Assumptions :
 Traits are relatively stable over time
 Traits differ among individual
 Traits influences behavior
 GORDON ALLPORT
 Allport described 3 different types of traits:

 1. cardinal traits : those which are so dominant that nearly all of individual’s
actions can be traced back to them.
 Often to the point that the person becomes known specifically for these traits.

 2. central traits : these are general characteristics that form the basic
foundation of personality. Terms such as intelligent, shy and anxious are
considered central traits.

 3. secondary traits : these are the traits that are related to attitudes/
preferences and often appear in certain situations or under specific
circumstances.
RAYMOND CATTELL
 Raymond Cattell believed that there were 2
basic categories of traits :
 Surface trait : features that make up the visible areas of
personality
 Source trait : underlying characteristics of a personality

 Cattell identified 16 basic traits by means of factor analysis .

 He developed 16PF to measure these traits.

MODERN TRAIT THEORY : THE BIG FIVE

 The Big Five theory of personality

represents five core traits that
interact to form human personality;

 Lewis Goldberg proposed a

five- dimension personality model, nicknamed the
Big five.
 Limitations of types and trait theories
 Critics have questioned whether these approaches gives a complete and
accurate picture of personality
 Methodological Questions :
 1. inter-judge reliability
 2. validity of trait assessment : some may try to ‘look good’ or look troubled
 3. consistency:
 Situationism: the view that behavior is more a product of particular situation
we find ourselves in than a product of enduring a person characteristics
 Philosophical Question:
 Some argued that personality is much more and it is best described not as a
set of traits or types but as set of processes by which people cope with life.
PSYCHODYNAMIC
APPROACHES

 Emphasize on a search for the processes by which

needs, motives, and impulses interact to produce
the individual’s behavior
PSYCHOANALYTICAL THEORY

 Psychoanalytic theories explain human

behavior in terms of interactions of
various components of personality.

 Sigmund Freud was the founder of this school.

 Based on the idea of converting heat into

mechanical energy, he proposed psychic energy
could be converted into behavior.
 Psychoanalytical theory has 3 major parts:

 1. a theory of structure of personality, in which id, ego and

superego are the principal parts

 2. a theory of personality dynamics in which conscious

and unconscious motivation and ego- defense mechanism
play a major role

 3. theory of psychosexual development

 PERSONALITY STRUCTURE
 1. ID :

 Most primitive part

 Primary process thinking
 Operates according to pleasure principal
 Storehouse of biologically based urges: the urge to eat, drink, eliminate,
sexually stimulated
 Managed by the EGO.
 Left to itself, id would satisfy its fundamental urges immediately as they
arouse, without regards to rules, realities and morals.
 2. EGO :

 Executive function
 Delays satisfying id motives and channels behavior into more
socially acceptable outcomes
 Working in the service of reality principle
 The ongoing tension between id and ego develop more and
more sophisticated thinking skills
 3. SUPEREGO:

 It consists mainly of prohibitions learned from parents and other

authorities
 Moral watchdog
 The superego may condemn as ‘wrong’ certain things which the
ego would otherwise do to satisfy the id
 Ego ideal : set of positive values and moral ideas that are
pursued because they are believed to be worthy
 Conscience : part of superego that produces guilt, depending on
how acceptable behavior is
 Personality dynamics & levels of consciousness

 Less controversial but equally novel was Freud’s notion of

unconscious processes.

 He used this concept to explain why people often act in

ways that seem irrational.

 Freud proposed 3 levels of awareness:

 Conscious
 Preconscious
 unconscious
 At the conscious level, we are aware of certain things around us
and of certain thoughts.

 At the preconscious level are memories or thoughts that are easily

available with a moment of reflection- for example what we had
for breakfast, our parent’s first names.

 Unconscious contains memories, thoughts and motives which we

can not easily call up.

 All of the id is unconscious, the ego and superego include

materials at all 3 levels of consciousness.
 Why do some ideas and feelings become
unconscious?

 There are several answers but one that became a centerpiece of

Freud’s theory is “repression”.

 We repress or banish from consciousness, ideas, memories,

feelings or motives that are especially disturbing or otherwise
unacceptable to us.

 The process of repression is itself unconscious and automatic.

 We do not choose to repress an idea or impulse- it just happens,

whenever idea/impulse is painful or anxiety arousing that we must
escape from it.
 Why bring the memories back?
 According to Freud’s theory, repressed materials does not remain
safely tucked away.

 Instead it continues to operate underground often converting

repressed conflicts into neurosis.- disturbed behavior involving
anxiety or defense against anxiety.

 Neurotic symptoms often bears a symbolic relationship to the

repressed material that is causing them.

 Repressed material is not dormant but active in unconscious,

often in a painful way.
 Unconscious processes also figured prominently in Freud's
ideas about dreams and "accidents."

 He saw dreams as disguised manifestations of id motives,

and he described dreams as "the royal road to the
unconscious.“

 He said, unconscious thoughts and forbidden impulses are

revealed by accidents and by slips of the tongue or the pen.
 Psychosexual stages of development

 Freud put heavy emphasis on biological development in general and

on sexual development in particular.
 Freud described a succession of stages revolving around body zones.

 Freud's idea was that from birth on. we have an innate tendency to
seek pleasure, especially through physical stimulation and particularly
through stimulation of parts of the body that are sensitive to touch: the
mouth, the anus, and the genitals.

 Freud referred to these parts of the body as erogenous zones.

 For babies, the most sensitive erogenous zone is the mouth.

 With advancing age, however. other body zones become especially
sensitive to stimulation. With each of these shifts in the focus of sexual
stimulation come parallel shifts in the dominant psychological issues
faced by the person. Thus Freud called each step in this process a
psychosexual stage.

 If a child's needs at one of the psychosexual stages were either

unsatisfied or over-satisfied, fixation would take place.
 The child would show continued attachment to an old stage even after
moving on to a new one.

 As a result, behavior patterns-and problems-from the fixated stage would

persist, often into adulthood.
Limitations of Freud’s theory
 Untestable : how can you measure objectively the
‘unconscious’?

 Did not allow for prediction of future behaviors

 Placed too much emphasis on early childhood experiences

in shaping personality

 ? Sample bias : almost all of his case studies were upper

class Austrian women
 Neo-Freudian Personality Theories
 At first Freud’s ideas were met with resistance and ridicule by the growing
community of doctors and psychologists.

 Eventually, a number of early psychoanalysts, objecting to Freud’s

emphasis on biology and particularly on sexuality, broke away from a
strict interpretation of psychoanalytic theory, instead altering the focus of
psychoanalysis to the impact of the social environment.

 At the same time, they retained many of Freud’s original concepts such as
the id, ego, superego, and defense mechanisms.

 These early psychoanalysts became the neo-Freudians, or “new”

Freudian psychoanalysts.
 CARL JUNG
 Carl Gustav Jung disagreed with Freud about
the nature of the unconscious mind.

 Jung believed that the unconscious held much more than personal
fears, urges, and memories.

 He believed that there was not only a personal unconscious, as

described by Freud, but a collective unconscious as well.

 According to Jung, the collective unconscious contains a kind of

“species” memory, memories of ancient fears and themes that seem
to occur in many folktales and cultures.
 These collective, universal human memories were called
archetypes by Jung.

 There are many archetypes, but two of the more well-known

are the anima/animus (the feminine side of a man/the
masculine side of a woman) and the shadow (the dark side of
personality, called the “devil” in Western cultures).

 The side of one’s personality that is shown to the world is

termed the persona
 ADLER’S INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY
 Adler (1954) developed the theory that as young, helpless
children, people all develop feelings of
inferiority when comparing themselves to the
more powerful, superior adults in their world.

 The driving force behind all human endeavors, emotions, and

thoughts for Adler was not the seeking of pleasure but the seeking
of superiority.

 The defense mechanism of compensation, in which people try to

overcome feelings of inferiority in one area of life by striving to
be superior in another area, figured prominently in Adler’s theory.
 Adler (1954) also developed a theory that the birth order of a child affected
personality.

 Firstborn children with younger siblings feel inferior once those younger
siblings get all the attention and often overcompensate by becoming
overachievers.

 Middle children have it slightly easier, getting to feel superior over the
dethroned older child while dominating younger siblings. They tend to be
very competitive.

 Younger children are supposedly pampered and protected but feel inferior
because they are not allowed the freedom and responsibility of the older
children.
KAREN HORNEY’S INTERPERSONAL THEORY

 Karen Horney disagreed with Freudian views

about the differences between males and
females and most notably with the concept of
penis envy.

 She countered with her own concept of

“womb envy,” stating that men felt the need to compensate for their
lack of child-bearing ability by striving for success in other areas.

 Rather than focusing on sexuality, Horney focused on the basic

anxiety created in a child born into a world that is so much bigger
and more powerful than the child.
 While people whose parents gave them love, affection, and security
would overcome this anxiety, others with less secure upbringings
would develop neurotic personalities and maladaptive ways of dealing
with relationships.

 Some children, according to Horney, try to deal with their anxiety by

moving toward people, becoming dependent and clingy.
 Others move against people, becoming aggressive, demanding, and
cruel.

 A third way of coping would be to move away from people by

withdrawing from personal relationships.
LEARNING & BEHAVIORAL
APPROACHES

 Emphasis the ways habits are acquired through

basic conditioning or learning processes
 Psychologists who build their theories on learning and behavioraI
principles share some important assumptions and practices.

 One shared assumption is that many of the behaviors that make up

personality are conditioned, or learned.

 This means. first, that many such behavior' originate somewhere in the
learning history of the individual, often as early as childhood.

 second assumption is that current conditions in the individual's

environment help maintain these behaviors.

 Thus learning theorists seek to understand people's behavior by studying

their learning history, their environment or both.
 DOLLARD & MILLER: EARLY LEARNING
THEORY

 Freud believed that neurotic disturbed behavior involves conflict

between id demands and ego/superego restraints. Dollard and Miller
drew an analogy between this conflict and the conflict between
approach and avoidance tendencies.

 They argued that we may act indecisive and "neurotic'' when we are
torn between approaching and avoiding a certain course of action.

 In such cases, the tendency to approach is often stronger than the

avoidance tendency at first: but the closer we get to the “moment of
truth." the more likely it is that the avoidance tendency will win out
and we will retreat from the planned action.
 They defined Freud's notion of repression in learning-
theory terms: Repression is a learned response of "not
thinking about" something that is anxiety-provoking.

 Dollard and Miller were not out to bury Freud or to

praise him, but rather to redefine him.

 Their aim was to engineer, if not a merger. at least a

bridge between the dynamic and learning perspectives
on personality.
SKINNER’S RADICAL BEHAVIORISM

 Skinner's views, like those of Dollard and

Miller, are derived from experiments.

 But Dollard and Miller borrowed from both the classical and
instrumental conditioning models, whereas Skinner's approach is
exclusively instrumental. or operant-that is, it deals only with the
processes by which reinforecement (reward) and punishment
influence the likelihood of behaviors.

 What, we might ask, is left to constitute the human personality?

For Skinner, the answer seems to be that what most people call
personality is actually a collection of reinforced responses.
 We are the persons that we are because we behave in certain ways,
and we behave in certain ways because of the reinforcement
contingencies we experience.

 In Skinner's view, there is really no need for a concept of

"personality" or for such "excess baggage" as traits and types.

 Skinner prefers to focus on the reinforcement that accompanies

behavior.

 With such accounts of people's behavior, described entirely in terms

of objectively observable events. Skinner generated what some
consider a 'personalityless" view of personality.
 Many are offended by Skinner's efforts to reduce
the richness of human personality to nothing more
than a set of responses strengthened by reinforcers.

 Others see Skinner's work a' refreshing because it is

an effort to be clear. precise. and parsimonious-that
is, to rely on the smallest possible number of
theoretical concepts and assumptions.
BANDURA & WALTERS: LATER SOCIAL
LAERNING THEORY

 Albert Bandura and Richard Walters saw

the animal-derived principles of
Dollard ,Miller, and Skinner as simply too
limited to account for important aspects of
real human behavior.
 They thought the animal experiments involved artificially "safe"
laboratory situations.
 In real life, they argued, people often do not have the luxury of
learning through instrumental or operant conditioning-trial-and-
error learning in a protected laboratory, where only “correct”
responses get rewarded.
 In real life, it is often too costly to risk "incorrect" responses.
 The approach that Bandura and Walters took focused on the highly
efficient form of learning known as observational learning or imitation.

 They viewed observational learning as requiring no direct

reinforcement to the learner.

 Observational learning generally takes place in a social situation

involving a model and an imitator.

 The imitator observe the model and experiences the model's behavior
and its consequences vicariously: this process is called vicarious
reinforcement.
 Bandura maintains that nearly all learning that can
take place directly with instrumental learning
procedures can also take place vicariously through
modeling.
 LIMITATIONS OF LEARNING &
BEHAVIOR APPROACHES
 Some argue that a strict learning-theory approach leads only to
an understanding of behavior in specific situations and that such
"situationism" ignores the consistencies that many people show
from one situation to the next.

 Others argue that focusing on behaviors one can observe

outwardly and emphasizing concepts such as "reinforcement"
seem to djminish the person in personality.
 HUMANISTIC THEORIES

 Emphasize on self and the importance of

individual’s subjective view of world
 A number of theorists have focused their work upon this entity
known as the self.

 The term self has two distinct sets of meanings.

 One set has to do with people's attitudes about themselves; their
picture of the way they look and act; the impact they believe they
have on others: and their perceived traits, abilities, foibles, and
weaknesses.

 This collection constitutes what is known as the self-concept, or

self-image, "attitudes, feelings, perceptions and evaluations of ...
self as an object“.
 The second set of meanings relates to the executive function -
processes by which the individual manages, copes, thinks,
remembers, perceives, and plans.

 These two meanings self as "object" and self as "process," are

seen in most theories involving the notion of self.
ROGER’S SELF THEORY

 Rogers emphasized the whole of experience, the

phenomenal field.

 This is the individual's subjective frame of reference: it

may or may not correspond to external reality.
 THE SELF
 Out of the phenomenal field, a self or self-concept gradually
develops.

 Rogers did not start out to make the self a central idea in his
theory, but he found that clients spontaneously- thought in such
terms. "It seemed clear… that the self was an important element
in the experience of the client, and that in some odd sense his
goal was to become his 'real self‘.

 Thus, in addition to the present self, there is also an ideal self, the
self the person would like to be. Trouble occurs when there are
mismatches or incongruences.
 Because we need self-esteem, we may distort our
perception of our experiences in self-serving ways.

 In doing this, we may use conditions of worth-

characteristics of our behavior that we learned in
childhood to associate with acceptance.

 This brings us to one of Rogers' key notions about

personality development.
PERSONALITY
DEVELOPMENT
 As children grow, parents , and others react to their
behavior, sometimes in a positive way and
sometimes with disproval.

 Children thus learn to regard some of their actions,

thoughts, and feelings as unworthy, and the often
react distorting or denying these unworthy aspects
of self.

 Rogers believes that in mature, adjusted people, there is
congruence between the total person and the self and that well-
adjusted people can accept the full range of their experiences
without distorting or avoiding them.

 He also helped to popularize the Q-sort technique, a method of

self-description, in personality research.

 In this technique, the individual is given a large number of

descriptions and is asked to sort them into categories from "least
characteristic" to "most characteristic."
. In support of his theory it has been found that people who are
seeking psychotherapy indicate more of a disparity between their
real and ideal selves than do people who are not seeking help.

. This disparity tends to shrink in the course of successful therapy.

. some findings have suggested that acknowledging a disparity

between one's real and ideal self may be a sign of maturity.
MASLOW’S SELF ACTUALIZATION THEORY

 Maslow "believed that each person has an

essential nature that "presses" to emerge,
like the "press" within an acorn to become
an oak tree.

 In his view, we all have higher-level growth needs-such as the

need for self-actualization and understanding of ourselves-but that
these higher needs only assume a dominant role in our lives after
our more primitive needs (physiological needs, safety needs,
needs for love and "belongingness," and self-esteem needs) are
satisfied.
 The growth needs, Maslow believed, help make us
distinctly human. Maslow stressed that ''the human being is
not a white rat" and emphasized that "man has a higher and
transcendent nature.

 He studied models of self-actualized people- people who

appeared to have fulfilled their basic potentialities.

 Maslow found that this group of "optimal" people shared

some distinguishing characteristics.
Peak Experiences
 A peak of insight, a mountaintop sunrise.

 During these highly focused, vivid moments, there is

often a disorientation in time and space. a feeling of
richness and unity.

 The accompanying emotional reaction ''has a special

flavor of wonder, of awe. of reverence, of humility
and surrender before the experience as before
something great.“
Limitations of Humanistic theories
 All of them share a view of personality that is focused on
people's internal perception.

 Psychologists have waxed and waned over in their acceptance of

personal reports based on such "inner experiences.”

 Both Rogers and Maslow can be faulted for the developmental

aspects of their theories, which have only the flimsiest research
foundations.

 Their evidence on the dynamics of the self concept is made up

mainly of case reports.
THANK YOU