Personality:
Vive la Difference!
What is Personality?
•	A set of characteristics
•	Consistent across time
•	Consistent across situations
•	Distinguishes individuals from each other
•	Study of individuals or individual differences?
•	Are traits descriptive or dispositional?
Personality:
Traits or Situations?
•	Trait view
•	We think and behave consistently across situations
•	Situationist view
•	Our thoughts and behaviors change with the situation
•	Interactionist view
•	Both traits and situations affect thoughts and behavior
The Mischel critique
•	Walter Mischel 1977
•	Behavior is not consistent across situations
•	Typically low correlations
•	And trait measures do not predict behavior very well
•	Situations control behavior
Subsequent Mischel
•	People do have fairly consistent goals
•	And fashion behavior to meet them
•	Have a clear sense of what behaviors will work in what situations
•	The “if…then…” model
•	Therefore have to understand cognition and planning
Cervone & Shoda
•	Big Five do not predict consistency over situations
•	People’s descriptions of important traits and features do not match classic trait models
•	But self-designated traits are consistent across important (self-defined) situations
•	Inconsistent with idea that it’s useful to think everyone has the same traits in varying degrees
Trait Theories
•	How many traits do we need?
•	Different numbers of factors
•	Nearly all have extraversion and neuroticism
•	Useful for conceptualizing personality
•	Not very effective in predicting behavior
•	The importance of cognitive processes
What’s wrong with the Mischel approach?
•	Predicting behavior is better when aggregate across situations
•	“if..then” model is not very practical
•	Still need to predict behavior of people grossly
•	And map people onto the same dimensions
•	Individuality is nice, but…
The Big Five:
Superfactors of Personality
The Three-Factor 
Theory of Personality
Measuring Personality:
Interviews and Observation
•	Interviews
•	Structured set of questions (can be modified)
•	Focuses on specific thoughts and behaviors
•	Hard to generalize beyond interview
•	Observation
•	Focuses on behaviors, not thoughts
•	Works best if judge knows participant

Measuring Personality:
Inventories
•	Questionnaires (paper or computer)
•	Produce a personality profile
•	Easy to score and statistically analyze
•	Generally no hidden agendas
Measuring Personality: Projective Tests
•	Include Rorschach and TAT
•	Concerns about validity and reliability
The Brain and Personality
•	Certain biological tendencies may affect personality
•	Extraverts are less arousable than introverts
•	Neuroticism may be related to the sensitivity of emotional parts of the brain
•	Underarousal of nervous system may be related to risk taking or criminal behavior
Temperament
•	Innate tendencies to behave in certain ways
•	Correlation between temperament at infancy and adulthood
•	An example: sensation seeking
•	Tendency to engage in risky behavior
•	Related to levels of blood chemicals

A Genetic Link
•	Minnesota Twin Studies
•	Identical and fraternal twins
•	Raised together or apart
•	Calculate heritability of personality traits
•	Significant effect of heritability on traits

Freud: Consciousness
•	Conscious mind
•	Normal awareness
•	Preconscious mind
•	Easily brought to consciousness
•	Unconscious mind
•	Hidden thoughts and desires
Freud: Structural Model
•	The id
•	Present at birth
•	Home to sexual and aggressive drive
•	Governed by the pleasure principle
•	Think Homer Simpson

Freud: Structural Model
•	The superego
•	Develops in childhood
•	Home to morality and conscience
•	Governed by the ego ideal
•	Think Ned Flanders
Freud: Structural Model
•	The ego
•	Develops in childhood (before superego)
•	Acts as a referee between id and superego
•	Governed by the reality principle
Freud: 
Personality Development
•	We must pass through psychosexual stages successfully
•	Each stage focuses on how we receive pleasure
•	Failure to pass through a stage leads to fixation
•	In times of stress, we regress to that stage
Freud: Stages
•	Oral stage (birth to 1½ years)
•	Anal stage (1½ to 3 years)
•	Phallic stage (3 to 6 years)
•	Oedipus complex
•	Latency period (6 to puberty)
•	Genital stage (puberty onward)
Freud: Defense Mechanisms
•	Unconscious attempts to silence the id
•	Denial
•	Intellectualization
•	Projection
•	Rationalization
•	Reaction formation
•	Repression
•	Sublimation
•	Undoing
Critiques of Freud
•	Not scientific
•	Hard to test
•	Too broad 
•	Hard to falsify claims
•	Based on limited sample
•	Female patients
•	Upper class
•	19th-century Vienna

Humanistic Theories
•	Humanists believe people try to improve
•	Desire to become self-actualized
•	Response to Freud’s theory of conflict
•	Think Stuart Smalley
Cognitive Theory
•	You are what you expect
•	Locus of control
•	Self-efficacy
•	Self-regulation
•	Reciprocal determinism
Personality and Birth Order
Personality and Gender
Female
•	More empathic
•	More neurotic
•	Greater social connectedness
Male
•	Greater individuality
•	More aggressive
•	More assertive
Personality and Culture
•	Difficult to compare personality across cultures
•	Collectivism
•	Focus on the group
•	Chinese, African, Latin American, Arab cultures
•	Individualism
•	Focus on needs of the individual
•	United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia