Chapter Notes

Self and Personality

The study of self and personality helps us understand who we are, what makes us unique, and how we are similar to others. These two concepts are closely related, with the self being at the very core of personality. In psychology, "self" refers to our own ideas about who we are, while "personality" refers to the relatively stable patterns of behavior that make us different from others.

Concept of Self

From a young age, we think about who we are and what makes us different. This idea of 'self' is not something we are born with; it develops as we grow. Our understanding of ourselves is shaped by our interactions with important people in our lives like parents, friends, and teachers. Our experiences, and the meaning we give them, form the basis of our self.

The self is made up of different identities:

• Personal Identity: These are the attributes that make a person different from others. This includes your name (e.g., "I am Sanjana"), your qualities (e.g., "I am honest"), your abilities (e.g., "I am a singer"), or your beliefs (e.g., "I am a believer in God").
• Social Identity: These are the aspects of a person that link them to a social or cultural group. When someone identifies as a Hindu, a Muslim, a North Indian, or a Brahmin, they are referring to their social identity.

Together, these identities create the self, which is the total of an individual's conscious experiences, thoughts, and feelings about themselves.

Self as Subject and Self as Object

The self can be understood in two ways:

1. Self as a Subject: This is the self that acts, the "knower." When you say, "I am a dancer," you are describing the self as an entity that does something.
2. Self as an Object: This is the self that gets observed or affected, the "known." When you say, "I am one who easily gets hurt," you are describing the self as an entity that something is done to.

This dual status means the self is both the actor and the one being acted upon.

Kinds of Self

Our interactions with our environment help form different kinds of self.

• Personal Self: This leads to an orientation where one is primarily concerned with oneself. It focuses on personal freedom, responsibility, achievement, and comfort.
• Social Self: This emerges in relation to others and emphasizes cooperation, unity, affiliation, and sharing. This self values family and social relationships, so it is also called the familial or relational self.

Cognitive and Behavioural Aspects of Self

Psychologists have identified several key aspects of the self that influence our thoughts and actions.

Self-concept

Self-concept is the way we perceive ourselves and the ideas we hold about our own abilities and attributes. This view can be generally positive or negative. For example, a person might have a positive self-concept about their athletic skills but a negative one about their academic talents.

Self-esteem

Self-esteem is the value judgment a person makes about their own worth.

• High self-esteem: A person values themselves positively.
• Low self-esteem: A person values themselves negatively.

By the age of 6 or 7, children develop self-esteem in areas like academic competence, social competence, physical ability, and appearance.

• Children with high academic self-esteem tend to perform better in school.
• Children with high social self-esteem are often more liked by their peers.
• Low self-esteem is often linked to anxiety, depression, and antisocial behavior.

Self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is a person's belief that they have the ability to control their own life outcomes. It is based on Albert Bandura's social learning theory.

• A person with high self-efficacy believes they can master challenges and achieve their goals.
• A strong sense of self-efficacy allows people to select and influence their life circumstances, and they tend to feel less fearful.

Self-regulation

Self-regulation is our ability to organize and monitor our own behavior. People who can adapt their behavior to the demands of the environment are high on self-monitoring. A key part of this is self-control, which is the ability to delay or defer the gratification of needs. This is often called 'will power' and is crucial for achieving long-term goals.

Psychological techniques for self-control include:

• Observation of own behaviour: This helps you gather information to change or strengthen aspects of yourself.
• Self-instruction: You can instruct yourself to behave in a certain way to achieve your goals.
• Self-reinforcement: This involves rewarding yourself for behaviors that have positive outcomes. For instance, deciding to see a movie with friends after doing well on an exam.

Culture and Self

Culture plays a significant role in shaping our sense of self. There is a notable difference between Western and Indian cultural views.

• Western View (Individualistic): The boundary between the self and others is seen as fixed and clearly defined. The self and the group are two separate entities, and individuals maintain their individuality.
• Indian View (Collectivistic): The boundary between the self and others is shifting and flexible. The self can expand to include others or withdraw to focus on personal needs. The self is not separated from the group; they exist in harmonious co-existence.

Concept of Personality

The term personality comes from the Latin word persona, which was the mask used by actors in Roman theatre. In psychology, personality is not about external appearance but refers to the unique and relatively stable qualities that characterize an individual's behavior across different situations and over time.

Key Features of Personality:

• It has both physical and psychological components.
• Its expression in behavior is fairly unique to each individual.
• Its main features are generally stable over time.
• It is dynamic, meaning some features can change in response to situational demands.

Understanding someone's personality allows us to predict how they might behave and interact with them in more effective ways.

Personality-related Terms

• Temperament: A biologically based characteristic way of reacting.
• Trait: A stable, persistent, and specific way of behaving.
• Disposition: A person's tendency to react to a situation in a particular way.
• Character: The overall pattern of regularly occurring behavior.
• Habit: Overlearned modes of behaving.
• Values: Goals and ideals considered important and worthwhile to achieve.

Major Approaches to the Study of Personality

Psychologists use several approaches to understand why people have different personalities. The main approaches are type, trait, psychodynamic, behavioural, cultural, and humanistic.

Type Approaches

This approach tries to understand personality by categorizing people into broad types based on patterns of behavioral characteristics.

• Hippocrates (Greek Physician): Classified people into four types based on bodily fluids or "humour": sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, and choleric.
• Charak Samhita (Ayurveda): Classifies people into vata, pitta, and kapha based on three elements called tridosha. It also describes a typology based on three gunas: sattva (cleanliness, truthfulness, discipline), rajas (intense activity, desire, envy), and tamas (anger, depression, laziness).
• Sheldon: Proposed a typology based on body build and temperament:
  • Endomorphs: Fat, soft, and round; relaxed and sociable.
  • Mesomorphs: Strong musculature and body build; energetic and courageous.
  • Ectomorphs: Thin, long, and fragile; brainy, artistic, and introverted.
• Jung: Grouped people into introverts (prefer to be alone, shy) and extraverts (sociable, outgoing).
• Friedman and Rosenman: Classified people into:
  • Type-A Personality: High motivation, lack of patience, always in a hurry. More susceptible to hypertension and coronary heart disease (CHD).
  • Type-B Personality: The absence of Type-A traits; more relaxed.
  • Later additions include Type-C (cooperative, unassertive, patient, prone to cancer) and Type-D (prone to depression).

Trait Approaches

This approach focuses on identifying the basic "building blocks" of personality, known as traits. A trait is a relatively enduring attribute on which one individual differs from another. Traits are considered stable over time and consistent across situations.

• Gordon Allport's Trait Theory: Considered the pioneer of this approach. He categorized traits into three levels:
  1. Cardinal Traits: A highly generalized disposition around which a person's entire life revolves (e.g., Mahatma Gandhi's non-violence).
  2. Central Traits: General characteristics used to describe a person (e.g., warm, sincere, diligent).
  3. Secondary Traits: The least generalized characteristics, such as "likes mangoes."
• Raymond Cattell: Personality Factors: Used a statistical technique called factor analysis and identified 16 primary or source traits, which he considered the building blocks of personality. He developed the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) to assess these traits.
• H.J. Eysenck's Theory: Proposed that personality has a few broad, biologically based dimensions:
  1. Neuroticism vs. Emotional Stability: The degree to which people have control over their feelings.
  2. Extraversion vs. Introversion: The degree to which people are socially outgoing or withdrawn.
  3. Psychoticism vs. Sociability: A third dimension where a high score indicates hostility, egocentrism, and antisocial tendencies.

Five-Factor Model of Personality

Developed by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae, this is a highly influential modern trait model, often called the "Big Five." It identifies five broad factors:

1. Openness to Experience: Imaginative and curious vs. rigid.
2. Conscientiousness: Achievement-oriented and dependable vs. impulsive.
3. Extraversion: Socially active and fun-loving vs. shy.
4. Agreeableness: Helpful and cooperative vs. hostile and self-centered.
5. Neuroticism: Emotionally unstable and anxious vs. well-adjusted.

Psychodynamic Approach

This approach, pioneered by Sigmund Freud, focuses on the influence of unconscious emotional conflicts on personality. Freud used methods like free association and dream analysis to understand the mind's internal functioning.

• Levels of Consciousness:
  • Conscious: Thoughts, feelings, and actions we are aware of.
  • Preconscious: Mental activity we can become aware of if we pay attention.
  • Unconscious: A reservoir of instinctive drives and repressed ideas that we are unaware of. Freud believed most psychological conflicts originate here.
• Structure of Personality: Freud proposed three competing forces within the mind:
  • Id: The source of instinctual energy (libido). It operates on the pleasure principle, seeking immediate gratification of primitive needs, sexual desires, and aggressive impulses.
  • Ego: Develops from the id and operates on the reality principle. It seeks to satisfy the id's needs in realistic and socially appropriate ways.
  • Superego: The moral branch of personality. It internalizes parental and societal standards and tells the ego whether an action is ethical.
• Ego Defence Mechanisms: The ego uses these mechanisms to reduce anxiety by distorting reality. Common defence mechanisms include:
  • Repression: Pushing anxiety-provoking thoughts into the unconscious.
  • Projection: Attributing one's own unacceptable traits to others.
  • Denial: Refusing to accept a painful reality.
  • Reaction Formation: Adopting behaviors opposite to one's true feelings.
  • Rationalisation: Creating reasonable-sounding explanations for unreasonable behavior.
• Stages of Personality Development (Psychosexual Stages): Freud believed personality develops through five stages. Problems at any stage can lead to fixation (arrested development) or regression (returning to an earlier stage).
  1. Oral Stage (birth to ~18 months): Pleasure is focused on the mouth (feeding, sucking).
  2. Anal Stage (~2-3 years): Pleasure is focused on the anus (bowel control).
  3. Phallic Stage (~4-5 years): Pleasure is focused on the genitals. Children experience the Oedipus Complex (in boys) or Electra Complex (in girls), involving attraction to the opposite-sex parent and hostility toward the same-sex parent.
  4. Latency Stage (~7 years to puberty): Sexual urges are inactive, and energy is channeled into social and achievement activities.
  5. Genital Stage (puberty onwards): Sexual maturity is attained, and people learn to form mature relationships.

Post-Freudian Approaches

These theorists, also called neo-analysts, built upon or diverged from Freud's work, placing less emphasis on sexual drives and more on social and ego functions.

• Carl Jung: Developed analytical psychology. He proposed a collective unconscious containing archetypes (inherited, primordial images like "God" or "Mother Earth").
• Karen Horney: Challenged Freud's views on women. She argued that psychological disorders stem from disturbed interpersonal relationships in childhood, which can cause basic anxiety.
• Alfred Adler: Developed individual psychology. He believed behavior is purposeful and goal-directed, driven by the need to overcome the inferiority complex that arises from childhood.
• Erich Fromm: Had a social orientation, viewing humans as social beings whose personalities develop from their relationships with others and a desire for freedom and justice.
• Erik Erikson: Emphasized rational, conscious ego processes and lifelong development. He is known for his concept of the identity crisis during adolescence.

Criticisms of Psychodynamic Theories:

• They are largely based on case studies and lack a rigorous scientific basis.
• The concepts are not well-defined and are difficult to test scientifically.
• Freud's theories are criticized for focusing on male development as the norm.

Behavioural Approach

This approach focuses on observable and measurable data. Behaviorists believe personality is best understood as an individual's response to the environment.

• Personality develops through learning, where behaviors are acquired through principles like classical conditioning (Pavlov), instrumental conditioning (Skinner), and observational learning (Bandura).
• The structural unit of personality is the response, which is a behavior emitted to satisfy a need. Behavior is organized around the reduction of biological or social needs through reinforcement.

Cultural Approach

This approach seeks to understand personality in relation to the ecological and cultural environment.

• It proposes that a group's "economic maintenance system" (e.g., hunting-gathering vs. agriculture) shapes its social structures, child-rearing practices, and ultimately, the personality traits that are valued. [!example] In the hunting-gathering Birhor tribe, children are socialized to be independent and achievement-oriented. In agricultural societies, children are socialized to be obedient and responsible, as these traits are more functional for that way of life.

Humanistic Approach

Developed in response to Freud's theory, this approach emphasizes human potential, free will, and the drive for self-actualisation.

• Carl Rogers: Proposed the idea of a fully functioning person. He believed that fulfillment is the motivating force for personality development.
  • His theory is structured around the self-concept. He distinguished between the real self (who we are) and the ideal self (who we would like to be). A large gap between the two leads to unhappiness.
  • He emphasized the need for an atmosphere of unconditional positive regard to enhance a person's self-concept.
• Abraham Maslow: Known for his hierarchy of needs. He believed the real journey of human life begins with the pursuit of higher-order needs like self-esteem and self-actualisation.
  • Self-actualisation is a state in which people have reached their own fullest potential.

Who is a Healthy Person?

According to humanistic theorists, a healthy person:

• Is aware of and accepts themselves, their feelings, and their limits.
• Takes responsibility for their own life.
• Experiences life in the "here-and-now," not trapped in the past or future.

Assessment of Personality

Personality assessment is the formal process used to evaluate an individual's personality to understand and predict their behavior accurately. Common techniques include self-report measures, projective techniques, and behavioural analysis.

Self-report Measures

These are structured tests where a person provides information about themselves, usually by responding to questions or statements on a rating scale.

• The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): Widely used for psychiatric diagnosis. Subjects respond "true" or "false" to 567 statements.
• Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ): Assesses the personality dimensions of introversion-extraversion, emotional stability-instability, and psychoticism.
• Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16 PF): Developed by Cattell to assess the 16 source traits he identified.

Limitations: These measures can be affected by biases like social desirability (respondents answer in a way they think is socially acceptable) and acquiescence (the tendency to agree with items regardless of content).

Projective Techniques

These are indirect methods that use unstructured stimuli to allow individuals to "project" their unconscious feelings, desires, and needs.

• Common Features: The stimuli are ambiguous, the purpose of the assessment is hidden, and there are no right or wrong answers. Scoring is often subjective and requires extensive training.
• The Rorschach Inkblot Test: Consists of 10 inkblots. Subjects are asked what they see in the blots, and their responses are analyzed to reveal aspects of their personality.
• The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): Consists of picture cards depicting people in various situations. Subjects are asked to tell a story about each picture, which can reveal their underlying motives and conflicts.
• Rosenzweig's Picture-Frustration Study (P-F Study): Uses cartoon-like pictures of frustrating situations to assess how people express aggression.
• Sentence Completion Test: Subjects are given incomplete sentences (e.g., "My greatest fear is ___") and asked to complete them.
• Draw-a-Person Test: The subject is asked to draw a person, and the drawing is interpreted for personality clues.

Behavioural Analysis

This approach assesses personality by observing an individual's behavior in various situations.

• Interview: Can be unstructured (flexible questioning to form an impression) or structured (specific questions asked in a set procedure for objective comparison).
• Observation: A trained observer watches and records a person's behavior, for example, a clinical psychologist observing a client's interaction with their family.
• Behavioural Ratings: People who know the individual well rate them on certain behavioral qualities. This method can be affected by biases like the halo effect (letting one positive or negative trait influence the overall judgment).
• Nomination: Used in groups where people know each other well. Each person is asked to choose others in the group for a specific activity, revealing social dynamics and personality qualities.
• Situational Tests: A person's behavior is observed in a created situation, such as a situational stress test where they must perform a task with non-cooperative partners.