Chapter 13: Self and Personality

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Your Sense of Self is Who You Believe You Are

Personality: A person's typical thoughts, emotional responses, and behaviors that are relatively stable over time and across circumstances

Your sense of self (self-concept)

Mental representations of your personal experiences (memories and perceptions of what is going on at any particular moment)

Physical body

Conscious awareness of being separate from others and unique

Who you believe you are

Includes gender, age, student status, family status, interpersonal style, personal characteristics, and physical traits

Affects how you think, the way you behave, and how you feel

Self-Schema

Consists of an integrated set of memories, beliefs, and generalizations about yourself

Interconnected knowledge about yourself

Helps you perceive, organize, interpret, and use information so that you are likely to notice things that are relevant to you (your name)

Important behavior and aspects of personality to you become prominent

May increase your memory for information that is relevant to you

Working self-concept: The immediate experience of self in the here and now

Limited to the amount of personal information that is being processed at one moment in time

Self-descriptions depend on which memories you retrieve, which situation you are in, which people you are with, and your role in that situation

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Self-Esteem Is How You Feel About Your Sense of Self

Self-esteem: How you feel about your sense of self

Based on how you believe others perceive you (reflected appraisal)

If you want to feel better about yourself, you should treat yourself as you would treat a good friend (self-compassion)

Social acceptance and rejections in self-esteem

Self-esteem is a sociometer - an internal monitor of social acceptance or rejection

Rejection - low self-esteem; acceptance - high self-esteem

Self-esteem and life outcomes

Western cultures put so much emphasis on self-esteem; however, self-esteem may be less important than commonly believed

Self-esteem is weakly related to objective life outcomes

'Bad' people, such as criminals and school bullies, commonly have very high self-esteem

Narcissists have inflated self-esteem

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You Try to Create a Positive Sense of Self

People show favoritism to anything associated with themselves

It is impossible for everyone to be above average, but self-esteem is different

Everyone rates themselves as above average even when there is evidence to the contrary

Most people have positive illusions about the sense of self

Positive illusions: Overly favorable and unrealistic beliefs about themselves in three areas

Better than-average effect, how much control they have over what happens, unrealistically optimistic about their personal futures)

Self comparisons affect the sense of self

Self-comparisons occur when you evaluate your own actions, abilities, and beliefs by contrasting them with those of other people

Downward comparisons: Compare self to those seen as inferior

Upward comparison: Compare self to those seen as superior

Temporal comparison: View current self as better than former self (type of downward comparison)

The self-serving bias supports a positive sense of self

Self-serving bias: Tendency to take credit for success but blame failure on outside factors

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Your Sense of Self is Influenced by Cultural Factors

Collectivist and individualist cultures emphasize different senses of self

Collectivist cultures emphasize the collective self more than the personal self (Japan, Greece, Pakistan, China, some regions of Africa)

Individualist cultures emphasize individual rights and freedoms, self-expression, and diversity (Northern and western Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States)

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Personality Has a Biological Basis

There is evidence that certain aspects of your personality (thoughts, emotions, and behaviors) are based on biological processes.

Extraversion and introversion

Differences in arousal produce the behavior differences between extraverts and introverts (extraverts below optimal, introverts above optimal)

A person's degree of arousal is based on a processing in a part of the brain called the reticular activating system

Personality is Influenced by Genes

Twin studies show that genes influence personality

Nearly all personality traits are influenced by genes

Identical twins are more similar in personality traits compared to fraternal twins

This does not necessarily mean there are particular genes for particular personality traits

Adoption studies show that genes influence personality

Adopted siblings do not share a lot of personality, like two strangers randomly found on the street, due to not sharing any genes and different environments

Parenting style has little effect on personality

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Temperament Is Innate

Temperament is the biologically based tendency to feel or act in certain ways (judging a baby's temperament based on how they act)

Three aspects of temperament

Activity level: Overall amount of energy and behavior a child exhibits

Emotionality: The intensity of a child's emotional reactions

Sociability: Refers to the child's tendency to affiliate with others

Temperament are the main personality factors influenced by genes

Long-term effects of temperament

Early childhood temperament appears to influence behavior and personality significantly throughout a person's development

Well-adjusted children were less likely to abuse alcohol or show antisocial disorders; undercontrolled children were more likely to abuse alcohol or show antisocial disorders

Inhibited children were more likely to be anxious, become depressed, be unemployed, have less social support, and to attempt suicide

Children as young as 6 weeks old show behaviors and reactions, such as being easily startled, that identify them as likely to be shy

Shyness has a strong biological influence but also has a social component

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Personality Stability is Influenced by Biology and Situation

Personality traits are generally stable over time

Clinical psychology is based on the belief that people can and do change important aspects of their lives

Personality traits are quite stable over the adult life span; stability was lowest in childhood and highest for those over age 50

Certain aspects of personality can change over the life course

Basic tendencies: Traits determined largely by biological processes

Characteristic adaptations: Adjustments to situational demands, somewhat consistent (skills, habits, roles, etc.); do not indicate changes in basic tendencies

People generally develop increased self-control and emotional stability as they get older

Personality may change in adulthood because people's lives change as they from long-term relationships, have children, and build careers

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Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious Conflicts

Psychodynamic theory of personality: Unconscious forces (wishes desires, and hidden memories) determine behavior and influence personality

Conscious level consists of the thoughts that you are aware of

Preconscious level consists of content that is not currently in your awareness but that could be brought to awareness (long-term memory)

Unconscious level contains material that the mind cannot easily retrieve

Three structures of personality

ID: Submerged in the unconscious, pleasure principle (libido)

Superego: Develops in childhood is the internalization of parental and societal standards of behavior

Ego: Operated according to the reality principle

Conflicts between the ID and the superego lead to anxiety, resulting in defense mechanisms - unconscious mental strategies that the mind uses to protect itself from distress

Denial

Repression

Projection

Reaction formation

Rationalization

Displacement

Sublimation

Psychosexual development

Psychosexual stages: Oral (birth to 18 months), anal (2-3 years), phallic (3-5 years old), latency (suppressed libidinal urges), genital (adolescents and adults)

Phallic stage is the most controversial

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Humanistic Approaches Emphasize Goodness in People

Humanistic approaches emphasize how your unique goodness, growth, and self-understanding influence your personality

Person-centered approach

Personality is shaped by the evaluations of others

Conditions of worth (withholding love makes children suppress their true desires and only shows those that their parents approve of)

Unconditional positive regard to prevent conditions of worth

Social Cognitive Approaches Focus on How Thoughts Shape Personality

Expectancy theory explains how personality is learned

Based on your expectancies for reinforcement and the values you place on particular reinforcers

People's personalities are based on their locus of control

Reciprocal determinism explains personality based on three factors

Environment

Multiple person factors (characteristics, self-confidence, expectations)

Behavior itself

Reciprocal determinism is personality being explained by the interaction of all of these three factors

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Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics

Trait approaches describe the behavioral tendencies that are generally consistent over time and across most situations

Your traits exist on a continuum (usually fall in the middle)

Eysenck's trait theory

A circle of introversion, extraversion, stable, and unstable

An introvert and an extravert can be stable or unstable emotionally

Also includes psychoticism (constraint); low constraint is high psychoticism and high constraint is low psychoticism

The Big Five personality traits (OCEAN)

Openness to experience

Conscientiousness

Extraversion

Agreeableness

Neuroticism