Personality
A person’s pattern of thinking,
feeling and acting.
Definitions
1. Personality refers to characteristic patterns
of thinking, feeling, and behaving (Cacioppo
& Freberg, 2013).
2. An individual’s unique and relatively stable
patterns of behavior, thoughts, and feelings
(Baron & Misra, 2014).
Types of Personalities
Type A Type B
• Ambitious • Relaxed
• Easily angered • Calm and composed
• Stress Junkies • Less stressed
• Highly competitive • Easygoing
• Workaholics • Don’t face much health
• Feel time pressure. problems
• More prone to heart
disease & hypertension
Types of Personalities
Type A
Type B
• Work hard • As hardworking as type
A but they don’t mind
losing
• Play for entertainment
• Play hard to win
• Flexible (get productive)
• Impatient
• Emotional & Expressive
(get destructive)
• Dominating
• But some people fit in
neither type
Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality
• Fathered by Sigmund What’s on our minds!!!
Freud.
• Idea of the Libido
(survival & sexual
energy): driving force of
all the behavior.
• Proposed the concept of
Instincts:
Eros (life instinct)
Thanatos (death
instinct) Sigmund Freud
Structure of Mind/ levels of
Awareness
• Conscious- things we
are aware of.
• Preconscious- things
we can be aware of if
we think of them.
• Unconscious- deep
hidden reservoir that
holds the true “us”.
All of our desires and
fears.
Freud’s Concept of Personality
(Psyche)
• Ego
• Superego
• Id
Id
• Exists entirely in the
unconscious (so we are
never aware of it).
• Our hidden true
animalistic wants and
desires.
• Works on the Pleasure
Principle
• Avoids Pain and
receives Instant
Gratification.
Ego
Example: If an individual seriously wants to harm his foe in
order to take revenge. His id says just take the revenge, but
his ego does not want to end up in jail or any serious
consequences. So the person decides to stay out.
• Develops after the Id
• Works on the Reality
Principle
• Negotiates between
the Id and the
environment.
• In our conscious and
unconscious minds.
• It is what everyone
sees as our
personality.
Superego
• Develops last at
about the age of 5
• It is our conscience
(what we think the
difference is
between right and
wrong)
• The Ego often
mediates between
the superego and id.
Freud’s Psychosexual stages
of Development
Stages of Psycho-Sexual Development
are:
1.Oral
2.Anal
3.Phallic
4.Latent
5.Genital
Freud’s Psychosexual stages of
Development
Stage Main Characteristics
•Oral stage •Pleasure obtained by sucking.
At this stage in life infant’s
(birth to 1) gratification is oral, or mouth
orientated, such as sucking, biting,
and breastfeeding.
•Freud said oral stimulation could lead to
an oral fixation in later life, such as
smoking, nail-biting, finger-chewing, and
thumb sucking. Oral personalities engage
in such oral behaviors, particularly when
under stress.
• Anal stage • Conflict between
(1-3 years) child’s ability to
eliminate wastes at
will versus societal
expectations of
toilet training
Freud’s Psychosexual stages of
Development Cont..
• Oedipus and Electra
• Phallic stage
complexes lead to
(3-6 years) identification with same-
sex parents. Essentially, a
boy feels that he is
competing with his father
for possession of his mother
(OC), while a girl feels that
she is competing with her
mother for her father's
affections (EC).
Freud’s Psychosexual stages of
Development Cont...
• Latency stage • Focus on internalization of
society’s rules. Freud thought
(6-12 years) that most sexual impulses are
repressed during the latent stage,
and sexual energy can be sublimated
(defense mechanism) towards school
work, hobbies, and friendships.
• Much of the child's energy is channeled
into developing new skills and acquiring new
knowledge, and play becomes largely
confined to other children of the same
gender.
• Genital stage • This is the last stage
(12 years and of Freud's
above) psychosexual theory
of personality
development and
begins in puberty.
• The focus of this
stage is on adult
sexual interests and
behaviors.
Defense Mechanisms
• The ego has a pretty
important job…and
that is to protect you
from threatening
thoughts in our
unconscious.
• One way it protects
us is through defense
mechanisms.
• You are usually
unaware that they are
even occurring.
Repression
• We deliberately and
consciously try to
push away thoughts
into our unconscious.
• Sometimes it is
called Motivated
Forgetting
Denial
• Not accepting the
ego-threatening
truth.
• Individual will refuse
to accept the reality
Displacement
• Redirecting one’s
feelings toward
another person or
object.
• Often displaced on
less threatening
things.
• Brandon may take
his anger on another
kid by bullying.
Projection
• Believing that the
feelings one has
toward someone else
are actually held by
the other person and
directed at oneself.
• Brandon insists that
Jasmine still cares
for him.
Reaction Formation
• Expressing the
opposite of how one
truly feels.
• Brandon claims he
hates Jasmine.
Rationalization
• Coming up with a
beneficial result of an
undesirable outcome.
• Brandon thinks he will
find a better partner.
“Jasmine was not all
that anyway!”
• I really did want to go
to ……..anyway, it was
too ……
Intellectualization
• Undertaking an
academic,
unemotional study of
a topic.
• Brandon starts doing
a research paper on
failed teenage
desire.
Sublimation
• Channeling one’s
frustration toward a
different goal.
• Sometimes a healthy
defense mechanism.
• Brandon starts to
learn how to play the
guitar and writing
songs (or maybe
starts body
building).
