1. Personality
Our
characteristic
ways of
thinking,
feeling, and
acting

2. Chapter Objectives
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
 Describe Freud’s view of personality structure in terms of
the id, ego, and superego.
 Identify Freud’s psychosexual stages of development, and
describe the effects of fixation on behavior.
 Discuss how defense mechanisms serve to protect the
individual from anxiety.
 Describe the humanistic perspective on personality in terms
of Maslow’s focus on self-actualization and Rogers’
emphasis on people’s potential for growth.
 Identify the Big Five trait dimensions.
 Describe the social-cognitive perspective.
 Discuss some evidence for self-serving bias.

3. Overview
 Psychoanalytic theory
 Humanistic perspective
 Trait perspective
 Social-cognitive perspective
 The self

4. The Psychoanalytic Perspective
 “Nothing is ever accidental”
 Unconscious
 Free association

5. Personality Structure

6. Personality Development

7. Defense Mechanisms
 Repression
 Regression
 Reaction formation
 Projection
 Rationalization
 Displacement
 Sublimation

8. Neo-Freudians
 Supported
 New concepts

9. Assessing Unconscious Processes

10. Evaluating the Psychoanalytic
Perspective
 Theory rests on only a few objective
observations & has produced few hypotheses
to accept or reject
 Supporters
 Today

11. Review
 Freud believed that we block unacceptable
thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories
from our consciousness. He called this
process of blocking
a. free association b. repression
c. anxiety d. reaction formation
 Freud called the conscience, or the part of
the personality that internalizes ideals,
a. the ego. b. the superego.
c. the reality principle. d. repression.

12. The Humanistic Perspective
 More positive view
 Focus on the ways “healthy” people strive for
self-determinism & self-realization
 From self-reports

13. Self-Actualization (Maslow)

14. Person-Centered Perspective (Rogers)
 We are primed to reach our potential if we are
given a growth promoting environment
 Genuine
 Accepting
 Unconditional positive regard
 Empathetic
 Self concept

15. Review
 Rogers believed that we can help people
reach their full potential by providing an
environment of total acceptance, which he
called
a. self-esteem.
b. unconditional positive regard.
c. self actualization.
d. the “ideal self.”

16. The Trait Perspective
 Personality
 Trait
 Trait factors

17. OCEAN

18. The Social-Cognitive Perspective
 Do the personality traits we express change
from one situation to another?

19. Behavior
 The person
 The situation
 The interaction
 Reciprocal determinism

20. Review
 Trait theory often describes personality in
terms of clusters of characteristic behaviors,
or traits that tend to occur together. These
clusters are called:
a. lobe areas b. axes
c. factors d. dimensions
 Social-cognitive theory concerns how
people’s traits and thoughts affect, and are
affected by, their
a. genes b. behaviors
c. emotions d. situations

21. The Self
 Self image
 Possible selves
 Spotlight effect
 Self esteem
 Self Serving Bias
 Self handicapping
 Self efficacy

22. Culture & The Self

23. Review
 People tend to accept responsibility for their
successes and to blame circumstances or
bad luck for their failures. This is an
example of
a. defensive self-esteem.
b. secure self-esteem.
c. self-serving bias.
d. possible selves.