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Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

LESSON 16

PERSONALITY

In psychology, personality is a description of consistent emotional, thought, and behavior patterns in a

person. The several theoretical perspectives on personality involve different ideas about the relationship

between personality and other psychological constructs as well as different ideas about the way personality

doesn't develop.

Personality theories are mainly concerned with the structure of the human mind or psyche, which subsumes

explaining how individual psychological processes are organized and made coherent. As such, personality

theories serve as the basis and synthesizing element for many other fields in psychology.

Personality psychology, also known as personology, is the study of the person, that is, the whole human

individual. Most people, when they think of personality, are actually thinking of personality differences -

types and traits and the like. This is certainly an important part of personality psychology, since one of the

characteristics of persons is that they can differ from each other quite a bit. But the main part of

personality psychology addresses the broader issue of "what is it to be a person."

Personality psychologists view their field of study as being at the top (of course) of a pyramid of other fields

in psychology, each more detailed and precise than the ones above. Practically speaking, that means that

personality psychologists must take into consideration biology (especially neurology), evolution and

genetics, sensation and perception, motivation and emotion, learning and memory, developmental

psychology, psychopathology, psychotherapy, and whatever else might fall between the cracks.

Since this is quite an undertaking, personality psychology may also be seen as the least scientific (and most

philosophical) field in psychology. We have dozens and dozens of theories, each emphasizing different

aspects of personhood, using different methods, sometimes agreeing with other theories, sometimes

disagreeing.

Like all psychologists - and all scientists - personality psychologists yearn for a unified theory, one we can all

agree on, one that is firmly rooted in solid scientific evidence. Unfortunately, that is easier said then done.

People are very hard to study. We are looking at an enormously complicated organism (one with "mind,"

whatever that is), embedded in not only a physical environment, but in a social one made up of more of

these enormously complicated organisms. Too much is going on for us to easily simplify the situation

without making it totally meaningless by doing so.

Classifying Personality Theories

Psychodynamic

The Freudians and neo-Freudians, who for the most part, attribute significance to unconscious processes.

Freud: Role of Unconsciousness

Freud didn't exactly invent the idea of the conscious versus unconscious mind, but he certainly was

responsible for making it popular. The conscious mind is what you are aware of at any particular moment,

your present perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, what have you. Working closely with the

conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious, what we might today call "available memory:"

anything that can easily be made conscious, the memories you are not at the moment thinking about but

can readily bring to mind. Now no-one has a problem with these two layers of mind. But Freud suggested

that these are the smallest parts!

The largest part by far is the unconscious. It includes all the things that are not easily available to awareness,

including many things that have their origins there, such as our drives or instincts, and things that are put

there because we can't bear to look at them, such as the memories and emotions associated with trauma.

According to Freud, the unconscious is the source of our motivations, whether they be simple desires for

food or sex, neurotic compulsions, or the motives of an artist or scientist. And yet, we are often driven to

deny or resist becoming conscious of these motives, and they are often available to us only in disguised

form. These factors influence personality.

Jung: Influence of collective unconsciousness

Jung's theory divides the psyche into three parts. The first is the ego, which Jung identifies with the

conscious mind. Closely related is the personal unconscious, which includes anything which is not presently

conscious, but can be. The personal unconscious is like most people's understanding of the unconscious in

that it includes both memories that are easily brought to mind and those that have been suppressed for

some reason. But it does not include the instincts that Freud would have it include.

Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

But then Jung adds the part of the psyche that makes his theory stand out from all others: the collective

unconscious. You could call it your "psychic inheritance." It is the reservoir of our experiences as a species,

a kind of knowledge we are all born with. And yet we can never be directly conscious of it. It influences all

of our experiences and behaviors, most especially the emotional ones, but we only know about it indirectly,

by looking at those influences.

There are some experiences that show the effects of the collective unconscious more clearly than others:

The experiences of love at first sight, of deja vu (the feeling that you've been here before), and the

immediate recognition of certain symbols and the meanings of certain myths, could all be understood as the

sudden conjunction of our outer reality and the inner reality of the collective unconscious. Grander

examples are the creative experiences shared by artists and musicians all over the world and in all times, or

the spiritual experiences of mystics of all religions, or the parallels in dreams, fantasies, mythologies, fairy

tales, and literature. The collective unconscious influences the personality of a person therefore.

Adler: Feelings of inferiority

Alfred Adler postulates a single "drive" or motivating force behind all our behavior and experience. By the

time his theory had gelled into its most mature form, he called that motivating force the striving for

perfection. It is the desire we all have to fulfill our potentials, to come closer and closer to our ideal. It is, as

many of you will already see, very similar to the more popular idea of self-actualization.

The last phrase he used, before switching to striving for perfection, was striving for superiority. His use of

this phrase reflects one of the philosophical roots of his ideas: Friederich Nietzsche developed a philosophy

that considered the will to power the basic motive of human life. Although striving for superiority does

refer to the desire to be better, it also contains the idea that we want to be better than others, rather than

better in our own right. Adler later tended to use striving for superiority more in reference to unhealthy or

neurotic striving. This striving for superiority influences a person's personality.

Behavioristic

Focus on careful observation of behavior and environment and their relations. Behaviorists include Hans

Eysenck, B. F. Skinner, and Albert Bandura.

Watson: external reinforcements

J.B. Watson is regarded by many as the founder of the school of behaviourism. Watson taught that

psychology should ignore consciousness and concentrate on concrete facts: psychology. According to

Watsonian behaviourism, behaviour can be studied in terms of stimulus-response patterns. This means, that

a stimulus is received by organism and it responds. For example, when someone touches a hot object, he

immediately withdraws his hand from the object. In other words, the hotness of the object serves as the

stimulus while the withdrawing action of the individual is his or her response to the stimulus. Watson

therefore stated that there is nothing mysterious in this action and reaction and all of it could be explained

in simple physiological terms. Further, it could be said that external reinforcements force the person to

behave in a particular manner which therefore determines his r her personality. Watson further proclaimed

that by controlling the environment of an organism we could control and predict its behaviour. This is

known as environmentalism, that organism is affected by its environment.

Bandura: Contingent factors, role models

Behaviorism, with its emphasis on experimental methods, focuses on variables we can observe, measure,

and manipulate, and avoids whatever is subjective, internal, and unavailable -- i.e. mental. In the

experimental method, the standard procedure is to manipulate one variable, and then measure its effects on

another. All this boils down to a theory of personality that says that one's environment causes one's

behavior.

Bandura found this a bit too simplistic for the phenomena he was observing -- aggression in adolescents --

and so decided to add a little something to the formula: He suggested that environment causes behavior,

true; but behavior causes environment as well. He labeled this concept reciprocal determinism: The world

and a person's behavior cause each other. Later, he went a step further. He began to look at personality as

an interaction among three "things:" the environment, behavior, and the person's psychological processes.

These psychological processes consist of our ability to entertain images in our minds, and language. At the

point where he introduces imagery, in particular, he ceases to be a strict behaviorist, and begins to join the

ranks of the cognitivist. In fact, he is often considered a "father" of the cognitivist movement!

Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

Humanistic/Existential

Focus on phenomenological methods and believe that the answers are to be found in consciousness or

experience.

Rogers: Realize ones potential

Roger's theory is a clinical one, based on years of experience dealing with his clients. He has this in

common with Freud, for example. Also in common with Freud is that his is a particularly rich and mature

theory -- well thought-out and logically tight, with broad application.

The entire theory is built on a single "force of life" he calls the actualizing tendency. It can be defined as

the built-in motivation present in every life-form to develop its potentials to the fullest extent possible.

We're not just talking about survival: Rogers believes that all creatures strive to make the very best of their

existence. If they fail to do so, it is not for a lack of desire.

Rogers captures with this single great need or motive all the other motives that other theorists talk about.

He asks us, why do we want air and water and food? Why do we seek safety, love, and a sense of

competence? Why, indeed, do we seek to discover new medicines, invent new power sources, or create new

works of art? Because, he answers, it is in our nature as living things to do the very best we can!

Maslow: Self actualization

One of the many interesting things Maslow noticed while he worked with monkeys early in his career, was

that some needs take precedence over others. For example, if you are hungry and thirsty, you will tend to

try to take care of the thirst first. After all, you can do without food for weeks, but you can only do without

water for a couple of days! Thirst is a "stronger" need than hunger. Likewise, if you are very very thirsty,

but someone has put a choke hold on you and you can't breath, which is more important? The need to

breathe, of course. On the other hand, sex is less powerful than any of these. Let's face it, you won't die if

you don't get it!

Maslow took this idea and created his now famous hierarchy of needs. Beyond the details of air, water,

food, and sex, he laid out five broader layers: the physiological needs, the needs for safety and security, the

needs for love and belonging, the needs for esteem, and the need to actualize the self, in that order.

The five levels of needs are: Physiological needs, safety needs, belonging needs, esteem needs and self-

actualization. The last level is a bit different. Maslow has used a variety of terms to refer to this level: He

has called it growth motivation (in contrast to deficit motivation), being needs (or B-needs, in contrast to D-

needs), and self-actualization.

The self-actualizers also had a different way of relating to others. First, they enjoyed solitude, and were

comfortable being alone. And they enjoyed deeper personal relations with a few close friends and family

members, rather than more shallow relationships with many people. Each level of motivation has its own

impact on personality of a person.

Five Traits of Personality Related To Op

Personality researchers have proposed that there are five basic dimensions of personality. Evidence of this

theory has been growing over the past 50 years, beginning with the research of D. W. Fiske (1949) and later

expanded upon by other researchers including Norman (1967), Smith (1967), Goldberg (1981), and McCrae

& Costa (1987).

The "big five" are broad categories of personality traits. While there is a significant body of literature

supporting this five-factor model of personality, researchers don't always agree the exact labels of each

dimension. However, these five categories are usually described as follows:

· Extroversion: This trait includes characteristics such as excitability, sociability, talkativeness,

assertiveness, and high amounts of emotional expressiveness.

· Agreeableness: This personality dimension includes attributes such as trust, altruism, kindness,

affection, and other pro-social behaviors.

· Conscientiousness: Common features of this dimension include high levels of thoughtfulness, with

good impulse control and goal-directed behaviors.

· Neuroticism: Individuals high in this trait tend to experience emotional instability, anxiety, moodiness,

irritability, and sadness.

· Openness: This trait features characteristics such as imagination and insight, and those high in this trait

also tend to have a broad range of interests.

Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

These dimensions represent broad areas of personality. Research has demonstrated that these groupings of

characteristics tend to occur together in many people. For example, individuals who are sociable tend to be

talkative. However, these traits do not always occur together. Personality is a complex and varied and each

person may display behaviors across several of these dimensions.

REFERENCES

Goldberg, L. R. (1981) Language and individual differences: The search for universals in personality

lexicons. In L. Wheeler (Ed.), Review of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 2. Beverly Hills, CA:

Sage.

McCrae, R.R., & Costa, P.T. (1987) Validation of the five-factor model of personality across

instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 81-90.

McCrae, R.R., & Costa, P.T. (1997) Personality trait structure as a human universal. American

Psychologist, 52, 509-516.

Personality Theories: psychology: http://brainmeta.com/personality

Erik Erikson in Personality Synopsis at ALLPSYCH Online:

http://allpsych.com/personalitysynopsis/erikson.html

FURTHER READING

Personality Psychology - Wikipedia: Overview of the branch of psychology that studies personality

traits and individual differences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_psychology - 78k - Cached -