What is Personality?

• Personality = long-lasting patterns of thinking, feeling, motivation and behaviour across situations.
• Built from:
  • Structures & processes in the mind/brain
  • Nature + nurture (genes + environment)
  • Past experiences + how we interpret the present + imagine the future
• Contrast with social psychology:
  • Social psych → how most people act in a situation
  • Personality psych → what stays consistent about a person across situations

Key questions:

• Are there basic building blocks of personality?
• Is personality stable over time?
• How is it organised – do parts work together?
• What shapes it → genes vs environment?
• How do we explain individual differences?
• Is personality more than just “traits”?

Three Main Research Approaches

Table: Approaches to Studying Personality

Approach	Focus	Methods	Strengths	Weaknesses
Clinical	Whole person in depth	Case studies, observation, interviews, self-report	Rich, detailed, captures complexity & unconscious material	Hard to verify, replicate, or generalise; researcher bias
Correlational	How traits/variables relate	Questionnaires, rating scales, factor analysis	Cheap, large samples, numeric scores; finds trait patterns	Correlation ≠ causation; relies on self-report; poor for unconscious
Experimental	Cause–effect	Lab experiments, variable manipulation	Strongest for causality; reduces self-report bias	Artificial; demand characteristics; hard to include whole person/unconscious

Temperament

• Temperament = inborn, early-appearing behavioural style (how we do things, not what we do).
• Mostly genetic, shows up in infancy.

Common temperament dimensions:

• Inhibition to unfamiliar
• Reactivity (emotional intensity)
• Impulsivity
• Energy/vigour
• Speed & rhythm of responding

Inhibition to the Unfamiliar

• ~10% of children.
• Shy, cautious, anxious in new situations; cry more; slow to warm up.
• Kagan: fairly stable from infancy → childhood.
• Parenting matters:
  • Supportive, gently encouraging → can grow in confidence.
  • Overprotective → maintains anxiety.
• Long-term links:
  • More risk for stress, illness, depression in adulthood if not supported.

Impulsivity

• Low impulse control, thrill-seeking, boredom easily, risk-taking.
• Driven strongly by limbic system; dopamine & serotonin involved.
• Improves as prefrontal cortex matures (into adulthood).
• Risk factors:
  • Addictions, antisocial behaviour, aggression.
• BUT can also mean:
  • Bold, inventive, trail-blazing personalities → “double-edged sword”.

Heritability of Personality

• Heritability = how much differences between people are due to genes, not how “genetic” you personally are.
• Studied with twin studies:
  • Compare identical twins together vs apart.
  • Similarity still high when raised apart → strong genetic influence.
• Rough pattern from many studies:
  • Traits are about 1/3–2/5 genetic, rest environment.
  • Higher heritability: Openness, intelligence
  • Moderate: Extraversion, Neuroticism
  • Lower: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness
• Newer genomic studies often find smaller genetic effects than classic twin studies → environment is huge.

Traits & Trait Approaches

• Trait = an enduring characteristic that helps explain consistent behaviour (e.g., extraversion, trust, orderliness).
• Trait theories assume:
  • Everyone has traits.
  • Traits are reasonably stable over time.
  • Traits are normally distributed (most people in the middle).
  • We can measure them via self-report scales.

Major Trait Models

• Cattell → 16 basic personality factors.
• Eysenck (PEN model):
  • Psychoticism (tough-minded / antisocial tendencies)
  • Extraversion–Introversion
  • Neuroticism (emotional instability)
  • Linked traits to arousal systems (ARAS).
• Five Factor Model (Big Five / OCEAN):
  • Openness to Experience
  • Conscientiousness
  • Extraversion
  • Agreeableness
  • Neuroticism

Nomothetic vs Idiographic

Approach	Focus	Methods
Nomothetic	Universal traits; compares people on same dimensions	Large samples, questionnaires, statistics
Idiographic	Unique individual, personal story	Case studies, interviews, observations

Self-Report Personality Measures

Strengths

• Quick, cheap, easy for big groups.
• Supports nomothetic comparisons (age, culture, clinical groups).
• Many tools show good reliability and are useful clinically/research-wise (e.g., NEO, MMPI).

Limitations

• Needs self-insight; people don’t always know themselves well.
• Answers shift with mood, stress, situation.
• Items can be interpreted differently across cultures/languages.
• Validity issues → some tests don’t actually measure what they claim.
• Various biases:
  • Social desirability (“good girl/boy” answers)
  • Fatigue or patterned responding
  • Intentional faking (job applications, insurance, etc.)
• Best used alongside interviews, observation, informant reports, and real behaviour.

Psychodynamic / Freud

Freud’s Main Models

1. Topographic model – levels of mind
   • Conscious – what you’re aware of now
   • Preconscious – easily accessible memories
   • Unconscious – hidden wishes, fears, memories influencing you
2. Drive model
   • Libido (life/sex/pleasure drive)
   • Thanatos (death/aggression/self-destruction drive)
   • Behaviour = compromise between drives and social rules.
3. Structural model
   • Id – instinctual, wants immediate pleasure
   • Ego – reality-based “manager”
   • Superego – moral rules, conscience
   • Conflict between them → anxiety → defence mechanisms.
4. Psychosexual stages
   • Oral (0–18m) – mouth; feeding & dependency
   • Anal (2–3) – toilet training; control & order
   • Phallic (4–6) – genitals; Oedipus/Electra conflicts
   • Latency (7–11) – social skills, school, friendships
   • Genital (12+) – mature intimacy and work

Defence Mechanisms

• Repression – push painful stuff out of awareness.
• Denial – refuse to accept reality.
• Projection – see your own feelings in others.
• Displacement – take feelings out on a safer target.
• Sublimation – channel impulses into something positive (art, sport).
• Rationalisation – make excuses that sound logical.
• Reaction formation – act opposite to what you feel.
• Regression – revert to childish behaviour.
• Identification – copy someone stronger to feel safe.
• Intellectualisation – focus on facts, avoid feelings.
• Compensation – overdo one area to cover up another.
• Undoing – try to “cancel out” a bad act.
• Isolation of affect – describe trauma with no feeling.
• Passive aggression – indirect hostility.
• “Stockholm” type reactions / reversal – emotionally align with abuser; turn attraction into disgust etc.

Object Relations & Inner Representations

• Builds on Freud but focuses on early relationships, especially caregivers.
• We internalise “objects” – mental images of self and others.
• These become inner working models (Bowlby) or schemas/scripts:
  • “Am I lovable?”
  • “Can I trust others?”
  • “Where do I belong?”

Five features of inner representations

1. Many self-parts (can be integrated or fragmented).
2. Emotionally loaded.
3. Motivated by wishes/fears.
4. Exist from conscious → unconscious levels.
5. Include self, others, and patterns of relating.

When these are coherent → better mental health.
When they’re conflicting/rigid → vulnerabilities to disorders.

Psychoanalytic Methods

• Word association test – first word that comes to mind → hints at conflicts.
• Life history / case studies – deep dive into whole life.
• Projective tests – Rorschach, TAT; interpret ambiguous images.
• Transference analysis – how clients treat therapist as parent/other; reveals patterns.
• Hypnosis & dream interpretation – early tools to access unconscious.
  • Manifest = surface story; latent = hidden meaning.

Social-Cognitive Theories

Core Ideas

• Personality built through learning + cognition:
  • Operant conditioning (consequences)
  • Classical conditioning (associations)
  • Social learning (watching others) – Bandura
• Personality stored as:
  • Beliefs, expectations, memories, schemas, scripts in associative neural networks.

Neural network metaphor

• Frequently used connections = clear “paths” (automatic responses).
• Rarely used = fade.
• “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”

Bandura

• People learn by observing & imitating, even without direct rewards.
• Cognitive steps:
  • Attention
  • Retention (remembering)
  • Reproduction (can do it)
  • Motivation (want to do it)
• Outcome expectancies – “If I do X, Y will happen.”
• Self-efficacy – belief you can succeed in a specific task → predicts effort & persistence.
• Learning doesn’t always equal performance (may know but not show).

Schemas & Scripts

• Schema – mental framework for a concept/person/yourself.
• Script – schema for how an event unfolds over time (e.g., restaurant script).
• Activation can be:
  • Conscious → deliberate thinking.
  • Primed/implicit → automatic biases.

Maladaptive Schemas & Schema Therapy

Common early maladaptive schemas (Young):

• Abandonment – “Everyone leaves.”
• Mistrust/Abuse – “People will hurt or use me.”
• Emotional Deprivation – “My needs won’t be met.”
• Social Isolation – “I don’t belong.”
• Defectiveness/Shame – “I’m broken.”
• Failure – “I’m incompetent.”
• Subjugation – “My needs don’t matter.”
• Entitlement – “I’m special, rules don’t apply.”

Schema Therapy

• Long-term (2–3+ years); often for personality disorders.
• Aim: notice, challenge, and replace old schemas with healthier beliefs & behaviours.

Humanistic & Existential Approaches

Humanism

• Emerged 1950s–60s as a more positive, growth-focused view.
• Focus: subjective experience, meaning, authenticity, potential.

Carl Rogers

• Person-centred therapy:
  • Core conditions: empathy, genuineness, unconditional positive regard.
• Self-concept = organised view of who I am.
• True self vs false self vs ideal self:
  • Big gap between self-concept & ideal self → distress.
• Self-actualisation = basic drive to realise our potential; being open, real, and growth-oriented.

Existentialism, Sartre

• “Existence precedes essence”: no fixed, pre-given personality.
• We are continually choosing and becoming; responsible for creating meaning.

Social-Cognitive vs Humanistic Theories

Aspect	Social-Cognitive	Humanistic
Main focus	Learning, cognition, schemas, neural networks	Meaning, self, growth, authenticity
View of person	Information-processor shaped by environment & modelling	Active, free, striving to realise potential
Methods	Experiments, measurable constructs	Interviews, phenomenological reports, therapy
Strengths	Testable; applicable to behaviour change; integrates learning & cognition	Emphasises personal meaning, dignity, and the “whole person”; powerful in therapy
Weaknesses	May downplay deep emotion & unconscious motives	Hard to test scientifically; sometimes idealistic or vague