Chapter 13: Self and Personality

Chapter 13 Overview: Big Questions
• How Do You Know Yourself?
• How Can You Understand Personality?
• How Does Biology Affect Personality?
• How Can Personality Be Assessed?

Chapter 13 Overview: Study Units
• 13.1 Your Sense of Self Is Who You Believe You Are
• 13.2 Self-Esteem Is How You Feel About Your Sense of Self
• 13.3 You Try to Create a Positive Sense of Self
• 13.4 Your Sense of Self Is Influenced by Cultural Factors
• 13.5 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious Conflicts
• 13.6 Humanistic Approaches Emphasize Goodness in People
• 13.7 Social Cognitive Approaches Focus on How Thoughts Shape Personality
• 13.8 Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics
• 13.9 Personality Has a Biological Basis
• 13.10 Personality Is Influenced by Genes
• 13.11 Temperament is Innate
• 13.12 Personality Stability Is Influenced by Biology and Situation
• 13.13 Several Methods Are Used to Assess Personality
• 13.14 Behavior Is Influenced by Personality and Situation
• 13.15 Assessment Can Reveal Cultural and Gender Differences in Personality

How Do You Know Yourself?
13.1 Your Sense of Self Is Who You Believe You Are
13.2 Self-Esteem Is How You Feel About Your Sense of Self
13.3 You Try to Create a Positive Sense of Self
13.3 Your Sense of Self Is Influenced by Cultural Factors

13.1 Your Sense of Self Is Who You Believe You Are (1)
Personality
• A person’s typical thoughts, emotional responses, and
behaviors that are relatively stable over time and
across circumstances
o Each of us has a notion of something we call the self, but
the self is difficult to define.
o For college students, the sense of self typically includes
 Gender
 Age
 Student status
 Interpersonal style (e.g., shy, friendly)
 Personal characteristics (e.g., moody, optimistic)
 Body image (e.g., positive, negative)

13.1 Your Sense of Self Is Who You Believe You Are (2)
Your sense of self includes your
self-schema
• Self-schema: An integrated
set of memories, beliefs,
and generalizations about the
self
o Researchers typically
observe activity in the
middle of the frontal lobes of
the brain when
people process information
about themselves.

13.1 Your Sense of Self Is Who You Believe You Are (3)
Working self-concept shows that
your sense of self can vary
• Working self-concept: The
immediate experience of the
self in the here and now
o Research respondents are
especially likely to mention
features such as ethnicity,
gender, or age if they differ in
these respects from other
people around them at that
moment.

13.2 Self-Esteem Is How You Feel About Your Sense of Self (1)
Self-esteem: How you feel about your sense of self
• Many theories propose that self-esteem is based on
how we believe others perceive us.
o This view is known as reflected appraisal.

13.2 Self-Esteem Is How You Feel About Your Sense of Self (2)
Your self-esteem depends on
social acceptance or rejection
• Self-esteem is a
sociometer, an
internal monitor of social
acceptance or rejection.
o When our sociometer indicates
a high possibility of rejection,
we experience low self-esteem.
o When our sociometer indicates
a low probability of rejection,
we tend to experience high
self-esteem.

13.2 Self-Esteem Is How You Feel About Your Sense of Self (3)
Self-esteem and life outcomes
• Evidence from psychology indicates that self-esteem
may be less important than is commonly believed.
o A review of several hundred studies found
that although people with high self-esteem
report being much happier than others, self-
esteem is weakly related to objective life
outcomes (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, &
Vohs, 2033, 2005).

13.2 Self-Esteem Is How You Feel About Your Sense of Self (4)
Narcissists have inflated self-
esteem.
• An analysis of many studies
found increasing narcissism
among American college
students between 1979 and
2006.
• Even though we might
encourage children to have high
self-esteem, there is a tendency
for self-esteem to fall during
adolescence and be at its lowest
for people, especially
young women, aged 18 to 22
years.

13.3 You Try to Create a Positive Sense of Self (1)
Better-than-average effect
• Statistically, it is impossible
for everyone to be above
average.

13.3 You Try to Create a Positive Sense of Self (2)
Most people have positive illusions about the sense of
self
• According to research, most people have positive
illusions—that is, overly favorable and unrealistic
beliefs—in at least three areas:
1. They continually experience the better-than-
average effect.
2. They have unrealistic beliefs about how much
they can control events.
3. They are unrealistically optimistic about
their personal future.

13.3 You Try to Create a Positive Sense of Self (3)
Social comparisons affect the sense of self
• Downward comparisons: Comparing oneself with
another person who is seen as less competent or in a
worse situation, which tends to protect a person’s
high self-esteem.
• Upward comparisons: Comparing oneself
with another person who is seen as more competent
or in a better situation, which tends to confirm a
person’s low self-esteem.
o Temporal comparison: in which people view their
current selves as better than their former selves.

13.3 You Try to Create a Positive Sense of Self (4)

13.3 You Try to Create a Positive Sense of Self (5)
The self-serving bias supports a positive sense
• Self-serving bias: The tendency for people to take
personal credit for success but blame failure on
external factors.
o For instance, students who do extremely well
on exams often explain their performance by
referring to their skills or hard work.
o Those who do poorly might describe the test as
an arbitrary examination of trivial details.

13.4 Your Sense of Self Is Influenced by Cultural Factors (1)
Collectivist and individualist cultures emphasize
different senses of self.
• Collectivist cultures emphasize connections to
family, social groups, and ethnic groups, and
conformity to societal norms.
o Include Japan, Greece, Pakistan, China, and
some regions of Africa
• Individualist cultures emphasize rights
and freedoms, self-expression, and diversity.
o Include northern and western Europe, Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, and the United States

13.4 Your Sense of Self Is Influenced by Cultural Factors (2)

13.4 Your Sense of Self Is Influenced by Cultural Factors (3)

How Can You Understand Personality?
13.5 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious Conflicts
13.6 Humanistic Approaches Emphasize Goodness in People
13.7 Social Cognitive Approaches Focus on How Thoughts Shape Personality
13.8 Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics

13.5 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious
Conflicts (1)
Freud believed hidden motives
influenced personality.
• The conscious level of our
mental activity consists of the
thoughts that we are aware of.
• The preconscious level consists
of content that is not currently
in our awareness but that could
be brought to awareness.
• The unconscious level contains
material that the mind cannot
easily retrieve.

1. Id: In psychodynamic theory, the component of personality that is
completely submerged in the unconscious and operates according
to the pleasure principle.
• Freud called the force that drives the pleasure principle the
libido. Today, the term has a specifically sexual connotation.
2. Superego: In psychodynamic theory, the component of
personality that reflects the internalization of societal and
parental standards of conduct
• It is a rigid structure of morality, or conscience
3. Ego: In psychodynamic theory, the component of personality that
tries to satisfy the wishes of the id while being responsive to the
superego.
• The ego operates according to the reality principle, which
involves rational thought and problem solving.
13.5 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious
Conflicts (2)

13.5 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious
Conflicts (3)

Conflicts between the id and the
superego lead to anxiety. The
ego then copes with the anxiety
through various defense
mechanisms.
• Defense mechanisms: In
psychodynamic theory,
unconscious mental strategies
that the mind uses to protect
itself from distress.
13.5 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious
Conflicts (4)

In each psychosexual stage, the libido is channeled on one of the
body’s erogenous zones, which include the mouth, the anus, and
the genitals.
The oral stage lasts from birth to 18 months.
When children are 2 to 3 years old, they enter the anal stage.
• From ages 3 to 5, children are in the phallic stage, which is
followed by a brief latency stage.
• In the genital stage, adolescents and adults attain mature
attitudes about sexuality and adulthood.
o Oedipus complex
13.5 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious
Conflicts (4)

• According to Freud, progression through these
psychosexual stages profoundly affects personality.
o For example, some people become fixated,
or stuck, at a stage during which they receive
either excessive parental restriction or
indulgence.
• Those fixated at the oral stage develop
oral personalities.
• Those fixated at the anal phase develop anal-
retentive personalities.
13.5 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious
Conflicts (5)

Psychodynamic theory today
• Contemporary neo-Freudians focus on
social interactions.
o According to object relations theory, our mind
and sense of self develop in relation to others
(“objects”) in our environment, and how we
relate to these others shapes our personality.
• Because Freud’s central premises cannot
be examined through accepted scientific
methods, psychologists have largely
abandoned psychodynamic theories.
13.5 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious
Conflicts (6)

13.6 Humanistic Approaches Emphasize Goodness in People (1)
Humanistic approaches
• Ways of studying personality that emphasize self-
actualization, where people seek to fulfill
their potential through greater self-understanding
o Carl Rogers introduced a person-
centered approach to understanding
personality and human relationships.

13.6 Humanistic Approaches Emphasize Goodness in People (2)
Personality is shaped by the
evaluations of others.
• Conditions of worth
• Unconditional positive regard

13.7 Social Cognitive Approaches Focus on How Thoughts
Shape Personality (1)
Social cognitive approaches
• Ways of studying personality that recognize the
influence of how people think
Expectancy theory explains how personality is learned.
• According to Rotter’s expectancy theory, our behaviors
are part of our personality.
• They result from how we think about two things:
o Our expectancies for reinforcement
o The values we ascribe to particular reinforcers

13.7 Social Cognitive Approaches Focus on How Thoughts
Shape Personality (2)
• Rotter proposed that
personalities are based on
locus of control.
o Locus of control refers to
people’s perception of
whether they control the
rewards and punishments
they experience (internal
locus of control) or not
(external locus of control).

Reciprocal determinism explains personality based on three
factors
• Albert Bandura argued that three factors influence how a
person acts:
1. Person’s environment
2. Person factors, which include the
person’s characteristics, self-confidence, and
expectations
3. Behavior itself
o Because personality is explained by the interaction of all
three factors, the model is called reciprocal determinism.
13.7 Social Cognitive Approaches Focus on How Thoughts
Shape Personality (3)

13.7 Social Cognitive Approaches Focus on How Thoughts
Shape Personality (4)

13.8 Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics (1)
Trait approaches
• Ways of studying personality
that are based on people’s
characteristics—their
tendencies to act in a certain
way over time and
across most situations
• Traits exist on a continuum.
o Most people fall somewhere
in the middle, and relatively
few are at the extremes.

13.8 Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics (2)
Eysenck’s trait theory
• Eysenck developed the biological trait theory.
• Eysenck initially proposed that personality traits had two major
dimensions:
1. How outgoing people were
2. Whether their emotions tended to be stable or unstable
• Introversion refers to how shy, reserved, and quiet a person is.
• Extraversion refers to how sociable, outgoing, and bold a person is.
• Eysenck also proposed a third dimension of personality traits.
Psychoticism reflects a mix of aggression, poor impulse control, self-
centeredness, and/or a lack of empathy, and is now called
constraint.

13.8 Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics (3)

13.8 Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics (4)
The five-factor trait theory
• This theory identifies five basic personality traits.
• Considerable evidence supports the five-factor theory.
o The Big Five personality traits emerge across cultures and
among adults and children, even when vastly different
questionnaires are used to assess the factors.

13.8 Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics (5)

How Does Biology Affect Personality?
13.9 Personality Has a Biological Basis
13.10 Personality Is Influenced by Genes
13.11 Temperament Is Innate
13.12 Personality Stability Is Influenced by Biology and Situation

13.9 Personality Has a Biological Basis
Research on the
neurobiological underpinnings
of personality has explored the
dimension of extraversion and
introversion.
• Reticular activating system
(RAS)

13.10 Personality Is Influenced by Genes
Research has shown that certain
genes can be linked with some
personality traits.
• Numerous studies have shown
that identical twins are more
similar than non-identical
twins in personality traits
described by the five-factor
theory.
• Further evidence for the genetic
basis of personality comes from
adoption studies.

13.11 Temperament Is Innate (1)
Temperament
• Biologically based tendency to feel
or act in certain ways
o Life experiences may alter
personality traits, but temperaments
represent the innate
biological structures of personality.
Three aspects of temperament
• Three personality characteristics
can be considered temperaments:
1. Activity level
2. Emotionality
3. Sociability

13.11 Temperament Is Innate (2)
Long-term effects of temperament
• Early childhood temperament appears to influence behavior and
personality significantly throughout a person’s development.

13.12 Personality Stability Is Influenced by Biology and
Situation (1)
Genetic makeup may predispose people to have certain
personality traits or characteristics.
• Whether personality is fixed or changeable depends
largely on how we define the essential features of
personality.

13.12 Personality Stability Is Influenced by Biology and
Situation (2)
Personality traits are generally
stable over time
• Cross-cultural findings
suggest that age-related
changes in personality
occur independently of
environmental influences and
therefore that personality
change itself may be based in
human biology.

Certain aspects of personality can change
over the life course
• Other evidence suggests that
some aspects of personality change in
response to life events.
o Basic tendencies: Personality traits
that are largely determined by biology
and are stable over time.
o Characteristic adaptations: Changes
in behavioral expression of basic
tendencies based on the demands of
specific situations.
13.12 Personality Stability Is Influenced by Biology and
Situation (3)

13.12 Personality Stability Is Influenced by Biology and
Situation (4)

How Can Personality Be Assessed?
13.13 Several Methods Are Used to Assess Personality
13.14 Behavior Is Influenced by Personality and Situation
13.15 Assessment Can Reveal Cultural and Gender Differences in Personality

13.13 Several Methods Are Used to Assess Personality (1)
Projective measures
• Personality tests that
examine
unconscious processes by
having people
interpret ambiguous stimuli
o Rorschach inkblot test
o Thematic Apperception
Test (TAT)

13.13 Several Methods Are Used to Assess Personality (2)
Self-report measures
• Personality tests that use
questionnaires to let people
respond to items that reveal
traits and behaviors
o NEO Personality
Inventory

13.13 Several Methods Are Used to Assess Personality (3)
Electronically recording information about personality
• Electronically activated record (EAR)
o People wear a device that unobtrusively tracks their real-
world moment-to-moment interactions, picking up snippets
of conversation and other auditory information.
o The EAR has shown that the five-factor theory traits predict
actual behavior.
 Individuals high on extraversion talk more and spend less
time alone.
 Individuals high on agreeableness swear less often.
 Students high on conscientiousness attend class more often.
 Individuals high on openness spend more time in
restaurants, bars, and coffee shops.

13.13 Several Methods Are Used to Assess Personality (4)
Observational methods
• How well do
observers’ personality
judgments predict others’
behavior?
o Our close acquaintances may
predict our behavior more
accurately than we do
ourselves.
o Research suggests that we
have blind spots
about various aspects of our
personality because we want
to feel good about ourselves.

13.14 Behavior Is Influenced by Personality and Situation (1)
Person/situation debate
• Mischel proposed that behaviors
are determined more by situations than
by personality traits.
o Situationism: The theory that
behavior is determined more by
situations than by personality traits.

13.14 Behavior Is Influenced by Personality and Situation (2)
Interaction of personality and
situation
• Personality psychologists
differentiate between
strong situations and weak
situations.
o Strong situations (e.g.,
elevators, religious services,
job interviews) tend to mask
differences in personality,
thanks to the power of the
social environment.
o Weak situations (e.g., parks,
bars, one’s house) tend to reveal
differences in personality.
o Interactionism: The idea that
behavior is determined jointly
by situations and underlying
traits.

13.15 Assessment Can Reveal Cultural and Gender
Differences in Personality (1)
Researchers found the five-factor theory personality
traits in 56 countries, but there were modest
differences across the countries.
• Women and men are much more similar
than different in terms of personality, but
the differences between them largely support
the stereotypes.

13.15 Assessment Can Reveal Cultural and Gender
Differences in Personality (1)