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1. The consistency paradox refers to the observation that personality
ratings across time and different observers are consistent, while
behavior ratings of a person across situations are not consistent
2. Paradox refers to levels of analysis, the use of specific vs. summary
types of data, rather than to actual consistency
3. Different situations are more or less likely to “allow” expression of
traits, with those situations most likely to influence behavior occurring
when:
a) Situations are novel
b) Situations are ill-defined, offering multiple alternatives but
without guidelines on propriety
c) Situations are stressful or challenging
4. Forced definition of traits in a more precise manner resulted in the
observation that personality is not about behavioral consistency,
rather it is a matter of patterns of behavioral coherence
E. Evaluation of Type and Trait Theories
1. Criticism based on fact that these theories do not generally explain
how behavior is generated, or how personality develops; they only
identify and describe characteristics correlated with behavior
2. Trait theories typically portray a static (or at least stabilized) view of
personality structure, as it currently exists
III. Psychodynamic Theories
A. Common to all psychodynamic personality theories is the assumption that powerful inner
forces shape personality and motivate behavior
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B. Freudian Psychoanalysis
1. Freud’s theory attempts to explain:
a) Origins and course of personality development
b) Nature of mind
c) Aspects of abnormal personality
d) Ways personality can be changed by therapy
2. Presumes the core of personality to be the events within a person’s
mind (intrapsychic events) that motivate behavior
3. Freud presumed all behavior was motivated, that so-called chance or
accidents did not cause behavior, but were determined by motives
4. Drives and Psychosexual Development
a) Postulating a common biological basis for behavioral patterns
observed in his patients, Freud ascribed motivational source
to psychic energy within each individual
b) Individuals presumed to have inborn instincts or drives that
were tension systems
c) Freud originally postulated two basic drives:
(i) Self-preservation, associated with the ego
(ii) Eros is related to sexual urges and preservation of the
species, and is used with the term libido to identify
source of energy for sexual urges
d) After World War I, Freud added Thanatos, the concept of the
death instinct
e) Eros operates from birth, and is evident in infants’ pleasure in
stimulation of erogenous zones, leading Freud to posit that
the physical source of sexual pleasures changed in an orderly
progression (i.e., five stages of psychosexual development)
5. Psychic determinism: Assumption that all mental and behavioral
reactions are determined by earlier experiences, leading to belief in
unconscious processes
a) Freud believed behavior has both manifest and latent content
(i) Manifest content of behavior refers to what one says,
does, and perceives (indicating awareness)
(ii) Latent content includes neurotic symptoms, dreams,
slips of the pens and slips of the tongue at the
unconscious level of and information-processing
6. The Structure of Personality
a) Id: Storehouse of fundamental drives, operating irrationally
and on impulse, pushing for expression and immediate
gratification; governed by the pleasure principle
b) Superego: Storehouse of individual’s values, including moral
values; corresponds roughly to the notion of conscience
(i) The inner voice of “oughts” and “should nots”
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(ii) Includes ego ideal, the individual’s view of the kind
of person he/she should strive to become
(iii) Often in conflict with the id
c) Ego: Reality-based aspect of the self, arbitrating conflict
between id’s impulses and superego’s demands and choosing
actions that gratify id without undesirable consequences
(i) Governed by the reality principle
(ii) When id and superego conflict, ego arranges a
compromise both can live with
7. Repression and Ego Defense
a) Repression is the psychological process that protects the
individual from experiencing extreme anxiety or guilt about
impulses, ideas, or memories that are unacceptable and / or
dangerous to express. Ego’s most basic defense against being
overwhelmed by id and superego
b) Ego defense mechanisms are mental strategies used by the ego to
defend itself in the daily conflict between id impulses that
seek expression, and the superego’s demand to deny them
c) Anxiety is an intense emotional response, triggered when
<br /> repressed conflict is about to emerge into consciousness.
Signals that repression is not working, and a second line-ofdefense
to relieve anxiety is required
C. Evaluation of Freudian Theory
1. Bases for criticism
a) Conceptually vague and not operationally defined, making
scientific evaluation of the theory difficult
b) Freudian psychoanalytic theory is “good history, but bad
science”
(i) Unreliable predictive power
(ii) Is applied retrospectively
(iii) Typically involves historical reconstruction, rather
than scientific construction of probable actions and
predictable outcomes
(iv) Directs focus away from current stimuli that may be
inducing and maintaining the behavior
c) Psychoanalytic theory is a developmental theory, but never
included studies of children
d) Minimizes traumatic experiences by reinterpreting memories
of them as fantasies
e) Male-as-norm model makes theory androcentric
2. Modifications and improvements
a) Ongoing research reveals much of daily experience is shaped
by processes outside of awareness
b) Freud’s theory is the most complex, compelling, and
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comprehensive view of both normal and abnormal
personality functioning, even when its predictions are wrong
3. Like any theory, Freud’s theory must be treated as unconfirmed until it
can be confirmed, element by element
D. Post-Freudian Theories
1. Intellectual descendants of Freud made several changes in the
psychoanalytic view of personality
a) More emphasis on ego functions
b) Social variables viewed as playing a more significant role in
shaping of personality
c) Less emphasis on importance of libidinal energy
d) Extension of personality development beyond childhood,
including the entire life span
2. Alfred Adler
a) Alfred Adler rejected the significance of Eros and the pleasure
principle
b) Adler believed personality structured around striving to
overcome feelings of inferiority
3. Karen Horney
a) Challenged Freud’s phallo-centric emphasis
b) Placed greater emphasis on cultural factors
c) Focused on present character structure rather than on
infantile sexuality
4. Carl Jung expanded the conception of the unconscious to include the:
a) Collective unconscious: the fundamental psychological truths
shared by the entire human race
b) Archetype: a primitive, symbolic representation of a particular
experience or object, associated with the instinctive tendency
to feel, think about, or experience the object in a special way.
(i) Animus, the male archetype
(ii) Anima, the female archetype
(iii) Mandala, the archetype of the self
c) Jung’s view of personality as a constellation of compensating
internal forces, in dynamic balance, resulted in analytic
psychology
IV. Humanistic Theories
A. Humanistic approaches to personality are characterized by concern for integrity of the
individual’s personal and conscious experience and growth potential
B. Features of Humanistic Theories Include:
1. Some humanists believed motivation for behavior derived from the
individual’s unique tendencies, both innate and learned, to develop
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and change in a positive direction
2. Self-actualization, a constant striving to realize one’s inherent potential,
to develop one’s own capacities and talents
a) Drive for self-actualization sometimes conflicts with need for
approval from the self and others, especially when the
individual feels certain obligations or conditions must be met
to gain approval, as in:
b) Rogers’ mandate of unconditional positive regard in child-
rearing
c) Horney’s idea that people have a “real self” that requires
favorable environment to be actualized
3. Humanistic theories have also been described as holistic,
dispositional, phenomenological, and existential
a) Holistic: explain individuals’ separate acts in terms of their
entire personalities
b) Dispositional: focus on innate qualities within the individual
that exert a major influence over the direction behavior will
take
c) Phenomenological: emphasize the individual’s frame of
reference and subjective view of reality, rather than the frame
of an observer or a therapist
d) Existentialist: focus on higher mental processes
C. Evaluation of Humanistic Theories
1. Criticisms
a) Concepts are fuzzy, and difficult to explore empirically
b) Traditionally, did not focus on particular characteristics of the
individual
c) Theories were more about human nature and qualities shared
by all people, than about individual personality or the basis of/>
difference among individuals
d) Emphasis of the role of the self as source of experience and
action neglects environmental variables that also influence
behavior
2. Contemporary research emphasizes psychobiography, “the systematic
use of psychological theory to transform a life into a coherent and
illuminating story”
V.Social-Learning and Cognitive Theories
A. Introduction
1. Learning theory orientation looks to environmental circumstances that
control behavior
2. Personality is viewed as the sum of overt and covert responses that are
reliably elicited by the individual’s reinforcement history
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3. Learning by social imitation is by observation of others’ behavior,
without actual performance of the response
4. Contemporary theories emphasize importance of both cognitive and
behavioral processes
B. Mischel’s Cognitive-Affective Personality Theory
1. Posits that response to a specific environmental input depends on a
person’s:
a) Encoding strategies, the way incoming information is
processed:
(i) Selective attending
(ii) Categorization
(iii) Making associations
b) Expectancies and beliefs: anticipation of likely outcomes for
given actions in particular situations
c) Affects: your feelings and emotions, including physiological
responses
d) Goals and values: outcomes and affective states valued by the
individual
e) Competencies and self-regulatory plans, rules developed by the
individual for guiding performance, setting goals, and
evaluating effectiveness
2. Nature of variables for a given individual result from history of
observations and interactions with others and with inanimate aspects
of the physical environment
3. Beliefs about others’ personalities comes from tracking the way
different situations bring out different behaviors
C. Bandura’s Cognitive Social-Learning Theory
1. Combines principles of learning with an emphasis on human
interactions in social settings
2. Stresses the cognitive processes involved in acquiring and
maintaining patterns of behavior and, thus, personality
3. Critical constructs
a) Reciprocal determinism: the examining of all components if one
wishes to understand human behavior, personality, and
social ecology completely
/> b) Observational learning: the process by which the individual
changes his or her behavior, based on observations of another
individual’s behavior
c) Self-efficacy: the belief that one can perform adequately in a
particular situation. Self-efficacy judgments include:
(i) Vicarious experience
(ii) Persuasion
(iii) Monitoring of emotional arousal when thinking
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about a task
4. Self-efficacy acknowledges the importance of the environment,
including perceptions of supportiveness or unsupportiveness of that
environment
D. Cantor’s Social Intelligence Theory
1. Social intelligence refers to the expertise the individual brings to his or
her experience of life tasks
2. Three types of individual differences are defined:
a) Choice of life goals
b) Knowledge relevant to social interactions
c) Strategies for implementing goals
3. Social intelligence offers a new perspective on how personality
predicts consistency
E. Evaluation of Social-Learning and Cognitive Theories
1. One set of criticisms points out that theories generally overlook
emotion as an important component of personality
a) Emphasize rational, information-processing variables
b) Emotions are perceived as by-products of thoughts and
behavior, instead of being assigned specific, independent
importance
c) Theories do not fully recognize the impact of unconscious
motivation on both behavior and affect
2. A second set of criticisms focuses on vague explanations relative to
creation of personal constructs and competencies
a) Cognitive theories focus on the individual’s perception of
current behavior setting serves to obscure the individual’s
history
b) Kelly’s theory is more a conceptual system than a theory, as it
focuses on structure and processes, saying little about content
of personal constructs
VI. Self Theories
A. William James was the earliest advocate of theories addressing how each individual
manages his or her sense of self. James identified three components of the self-experience:
1. Material me: the bodily self, along with surrounding physical objects
2. Social me: the individual’s awareness of how others view him or her
3. Spiritual me: the self that monitors private thoughts and feelings
B. Dynamic Aspects of Self-Concepts
1. Self-concept is a dynamic mental structure that motivates, interprets,
organizes, mediates, and regulates intrapersonal and interpersonal
behaviors and processes
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2. Components of self-concept include
a) Memories about one’s self
b) Beliefs about one’s traits, motives, values, and abilities
c) Ideal self: the self that one would most like to become
d) Possible selves that one contemplates enacting
e) Positive or negative evaluations of one’s self (self-esteem)
f) Beliefs about what others think of one’s self
3. Self-concept includes schemas about the self, self-schemas, that allow
one to organize information about one’s self and influence the way
one processes information about others
4. Possible selves are “the ideal selves that we would very much like to
become,” and are also “the selves we could become and the selves we
are afraid of becoming”
C. Self-Esteem and Self-Presentation
1. Self-esteem is a generalized evaluation of the self, influencing thoughts,
moods, and behavior
a) Low self-esteem may be characterized (in part) by less
certainty about the self and may include the feeling that one
does not know much about one’s self
b) Doubt in one’s ability to perform a task may see engagement
in self-handicapping behavior, in which one deliberately
sabotages one’s own performance, for purposes of
(i) Having a ready-made excuse for failure that does not
imply lack of ability
(ii) Failure can be blamed on low effort, without finding
out if one really had the ability to make it
2. Self-presentation is an aspect of self-esteem, explaining behavioral
differences between individuals with high and low self-esteem
a) Individuals with high self-esteem present themselves to the
world as ambitious, aggressive risk takers
b) Individuals with low self-esteem present themselves as
cautious and prudent
c) Both of these presentations are for public consumption
d) Self-monitoring, a personality trait related to the individual’s
habitual style of self-presentation, is the tendency to regulate
behavior to meet social demands or to create a desired social
impression
D. The Cultural Construction of Self
1. Individualistic cultures encourage independent construals of self
2. Collectivist cultures encourage interdependent construals of self
E. Evaluation of Self-Theories
1. Self theories succeed at capturing the individual’s concept of their
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own personality and how they wish to be perceived by others
2. Critics of self theory approach to personality argue against its limitless
boundaries. Because many issues are relevant to the self and to the
self-concept, it is not always clear which factors are most important for
predicting behavior
3. Emphasis on the self as a social construct is not entirely consistent
with evidence that some facets of personality may be heritable
VII. Comparing Personality Theories
A. The Five Most Important Differences in Assumptions about Personality
1. Heredity versus Environment
a) Trait theories are split on this issue
b) Freudian theory depends heavily on heredity
c) Humanistic, social-learning, cognitive, and self theories
emphasize either
(i) Environment as a determinant of behavior
(ii) Interaction with environment as a source of
personality development and differences
2. Learning Processes versus Innate Laws of Behavior
a) Trait theories are (still) divided
b) Freudian theory favors inner determinant view
c) Humanists posit change as a result of experience
d) Social-learning, cognitive, and self theories posit that behavior
and personality change as a result of learned experiences
3. Emphasis on Past, Present, or Future
a) Trait theories emphasize past causes
b) Freudian theory stresses past events of early childhood
c) Social-learning theories focuses on past reinforcements and
present contingencies
d) Humanistic theories emphasize present phenomenal reality
or future goals
e) Cognitive and self theories emphasize past and present (and
future, in the instance of goal-setting)
4. Consciousness versus Unconsciousness
a) Trait theories pay little attention to this distinction
b) Freudian theory emphasizes unconscious processes
c) Humanistic, social-learning, and cognitive theories
emphasize conscious processes
d) Self theories are unclear
5. Inner Disposition versus Outer Situation
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a) Trait theories emphasize dispositional factors
b) Social-learning theories emphasize situational factors
c) All others allow interaction between person-based and
situation-based variables
B. Theoretical Contributions to Understanding of Human Personality
1. Trait theories provide a catalog, describing parts and structures
2. Psychodynamic theories add a powerful engine and fuel to get the
vehicle moving
3. Humanistic theories put the person in the driver’s seat
4. Social-learning theories supply the steering wheel, directional signals,
and other regulation equipment
5. Cognitive theories add reminders that the way the trip is planned,
organized, and remembered will be affected by the mental map the
driver selects for the journey
6. Self theories remind the driver to consider the image his or her driving
ability projects to back-seat drivers and pedestrians
VIII. Assessing Personality
A. Objective Tests
1. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), developed
using empirical strategy, is most frequently used personality inventory
a) Items included on scales only if they clearly differentiated
between two groups
b) Each item demonstrates its validity by being answered
similarly by members within each group, but differently
between groups
c) Ten clinical scales, each differentiating a different clinical
group
d) Validity scales detect suspicious response patterns
e) Major revision over the last ten years, resulting in the MMPI-2,
added fifteen new content scales
2. The NEO-Personality Inventory (NEO-PI)
a) Measures the five-factor model of personality. The five
dimensions are:
(i) Neuroticism
(ii) Extraversion
(iii) Openness
(iv) Agreeableness
(v) Conscientiousness
b) A new inventory based on the five-factor model, The Big Five
Questionnaire (BFQ), is designed to have validity across
cultures
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B. Projective Tests
1. Basics
a) Projective tests have no predetermined range of responses, but
use ambiguous stimuli
b) Among the assessment devices most commonly used by
psychological practitioners
c) Used more frequently outside the U.S. than are objective tests
because they are less sensitive to language variation
2. Specifics
a) The Rorschach test, developed by Hermann Rorschach, uses
ambiguous stimuli that are symmetrical inkblots, with
responses scored on three major features:
(i) Location or part of the card mentioned in the
response—does respondent refer to the whole
stimulus or only part of