5

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Free Video Lectures for
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5
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-2
Psychology
Stephen F. Davis
Emporia State University
Joseph J. Palladino
University of Southern Indiana
PowerPoint Presentation by
Cynthia K. Shinabarger Reed
Tarrant County College

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5
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Edition
Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-3
Personality
Chapter 11
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-4
Analyzing Personality
Psychologists define personality as a
relatively stable pattern of thinking, feeling,
and behaving that distinguishes one
person from another.
Two important components of this
definition are distinctiveness and relative
consistency.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-5
Analyzing Personality
The methods psychologists use to
examine personality include case studies,
interviews, naturalistic observations,
laboratory investigations, and
psychological tests.
To be useful, a psychological test must
have three characteristics: reliability,
validity, and standardization.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-6
Analyzing Personality
Some of the best-known and most widely used
personality measures are self-report
inventories that require individuals to respond to
statements about themselves in the form of yes-
no or true-false answers.
Among the widely used self-report inventories of
personality are the Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the California
Psychological Inventory (CPI).
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-7
Analyzing Personality
The MMPI was designed to help diagnose
psychological disorders.
The CPI is used to assess personality in
the normal population.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-8
Analyzing Personality
Projective tests are assessment
techniques that require individuals to
respond to unstructured or ambiguous
stimuli.
The assumption underlying projective tests
is that people project their personality
characteristics onto the ambiguous stimuli.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-9
Analyzing Personality
One of the most
frequently used
projective tests is
the Rorschach
inkblot test.
Administering
and interpreting
projective tests
requires
extensive
training.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-10
Analyzing Personality
The Barnum effect is the tendency to
accept generalized personality
descriptions as accurate descriptions of
oneself.
The effect results from the use of
favorable personality descriptions that
apply to many people.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-11
Analyzing Personality
Walter Mischel advised psychologists to turn their
attention from the search for traits to the study of
how situations influence behaviors.
Some characteristics, such as intelligence,
emotional reactions, and physical appearance,
are consistent over time.
Although a number of studies have failed to
demonstrate consistency of behavior across
situations, there may be limitations in the methods
used to study consistency.

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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-12
Analyzing Personality
Epstein proposes that both sides of the
consistency issue are correct.
Behavior depends on the situation, but
there are consistent behavioral tendencies
across situations.
The situation also influences the likelihood
that a person will exhibit a specific
behavior.

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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-13
Trait Approaches
Traits are summary terms that describe
tendencies to respond in particular ways that
account for differences among people.
Psychologist Gordon Allport set out to compose a
list of traits, which he described as the building
blocks of personality.
After eliminating words that referred to temporary
moods, social evaluations, or physical attributes,
Allport found that 4,500 words remained.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-14
Trait Approaches
Raymond Cattell
proposed 16
source traits to
describe
personality and
make predictions
of future
behaviors.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-15
Trait Approaches
Cattell used the term surface traits to
describe traits that were easy to identify.
He assumed that these surface traits were
in turn directed by a smaller number of traits
called source traits.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-16
Trait Approaches
Eysenck said we can describe personality as consisting
of three basic traits: extraversion, neuroticism, and
psychoticism.
Extraversion has been associated with a number of
differences in everyday behavior.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-17
Trait Approaches
There is a growing consensus that personality
traits can be reduced to five basic ones,
although there is some disagreement about the
precise labels for the five.
The most common names for the Big Five are
1) openness to experience,
2) conscientiousness,
3) extraversion,
4) agreeableness, and
5) neuroticism.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-18
Trait Approaches
Advances in the technology of genetics and
neuroscience have led to an increase in the
ability to detect genetic and neurological bases
of complex behavior.
Recent assessments of the heritability of the Big
Five have concluded that all five traits are
moderately and equally heritable.
A growing body of research suggests that
personality traits have considerable long-term
stability.


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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-19
Trait Approaches
Gregory Hurtz and John Donovan completed
an extensive search for research that
investigated the relation between measures
of the Big Five factors and job or training
performance.
Their results showed that conscientiousness
had the highest correlation across
occupations with job performance criteria (r =
0.14), which was low to moderate but stable
across studies.


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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-20
Trait Approaches
Not everyone views the factors of the five-
factor model as capturing the essence of
personality.
Drew Westen and Jonathan Shedler are
psychotherapists and research
psychologists who dont think
questionnaire items address the deeper
organizing principles of personality.

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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-21
Trait Approaches
According to these psychologists, if we
use questionnaires to provide a glimpse of
personality, what we get is a description
on a selection of traits that are just
statistical entities and only skim the
personalitys surface.

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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-22
Biological Factors in Personality
The idea that physical and biological factors
hold a key to personality has a long history.
Trephining involves the opening of a hole in
the skull, leaving the membranes surrounding
the brain intact.
The main concept of the modern trepanation
movement lies in the word brainbloodvolume
(the amount of blood supplied to the brain).

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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-23
Biological Factors in Personality
Trepanation supposedly allows greater
flow of blood in the capillaries of the brain.
Most researchers and physicians do not
have a high opinion of the supposed
benefits of trepanation.

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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-24
Biological Factors in Personality
Hippocrates, a Greek philosopher and
physician, believed that the human body
contained four bodily humors or fluids:
black bile, blood, phlegm, and yellow bile.
The humor that predominated in a person
was believed to determine that persons
characteristics.

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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-25
Biological Factors in Personality
In the 1800s, phrenologists (phrenology
was an attempt to study a person by
analyzing bumps and indentations on the
skull) attempted to link personality with
features of the brain.
Eventually it became clear that any bumps
on the skull had no connection to personal
characteristics, and interest in phrenology
faded.

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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-26
Biological Factors in Personality
William Sheldon suggested a relationship
between body type and personality.
He developed a scheme consisting of
three body types: Endomorphs are round,
mesomorphs are rectangular, and
ectomorphs are thin.
Subsequent research demonstrated that
his findings were influenced by his
preconceptions.



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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-27
Biological Factors in Personality
Additional support for the belief that
biological factors influence personality is
found in the negative correlation between
sensation-seeking scores and levels of the
enzyme MAO.
A growing body of research points to the
importance of biological factors in several
personality characteristics.

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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-28
Biological Factors in Personality
The study of identical twins reared apart
allows researchers to identify the effects of
heredity independently of the influence of
environmental factors.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-29
Biological Factors in Personality
Evidence from such
studies indicates that
heredity plays a role
in a wide range of
personality
characteristics as
evidenced by
heritability estimates
between 20 and 50%.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-30
Biological Factors in Personality
The evolutionary perspective would predict that
those aspects of our personality that help us
adapt to environmental demands are passed
along to subsequent generations.
Researchers have generated considerable data
in support of the theory of psychologist David
Buss that evolution has had an impact on the
type of people that men and women choose as
dates and mates.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-31
The Psychodynamic Perspective
Three concepts form the backbone of
Freuds theory: psychic determinism,
instincts, and levels of consciousness.
Psychic determinism refers to the
influence of the past on the present.
Freud believed that much of our behavior,
feeling, and thinking is determined by
events that occurred earlier in our lives.


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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-32
The Psychodynamic Perspective
Freud believed we are driven by the
energy of certain instincts in much the
same way that a car is propelled by the
energy contained in gasoline.
He described two key instincts: eros for
lifegiving and pleasure-producing
activities, including sex, and thanatos for
aggression or destruction.

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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-33
The Psychodynamic Perspective
The third major concept in psychodynamic
theory is Freuds proposal that there are
various levels of consciousness.
Freud described three levels of
consciousness.
The conscious level refers to the thoughts,
wishes, and emotions you are aware of at
this moment.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-34
The Psychodynamic Perspective
The level just below consciousness is called the
preconscious; its contents are waiting to be
pulled into consciousness like fish from a pond.
The third and in Freuds theory the most
important level of consciousness (or
awareness) is below the preconscious and is
called the unconscious.
The unconscious consists of thoughts, wishes,
and feelings that exist beyond our awareness;
we can gain access to them only with great
effort.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-35
The Psychodynamic Perspective
According to Freuds comprehensive theory,
the mind consists of three separate but
interacting elements: the id, the ego, and the
superego.
This model compares the mind to an iceberg.
Just as most of an iceberg lies beneath the
surface of the water, much of what is truly
significant in psychodynamic theory lies below
conscious awareness.
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-36
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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-37
The Psychodynamic Perspective
The id represents the primitive biological
side of our personality.
This reservoir of pleasure-seeking and
aggressive instinctual energy aims to
reduce tension that builds up when our
wishes are thwarted.
Operating on the pleasure principle, it
impulsively seeks immediate gratification
of wishes through the ego.

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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-38
The Psychodynamic Perspective
The ego is sometimes called the executive
of the personality because it has a realistic
plan for obtaining what the id wants;
therefore it is said to operate on the reality
principle.
The superego, has two components: the
conscience and the ego ideal.

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Copyright Prentice Hall 2007 11-39
The Psychodynamic Perspective
The conscience, the moral part of the
superego, is like a little voice that tells us
when we have violated our parents and
societys rules.
The second component of the superego,
the ego ideal, represents the superegos
positive sidethe things that make us
proud.

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