PSYC 1030H Chapter Notes - Chapter 12: Collective Unconscious, Observational Learning, Operant Conditioning
3 May 2018
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Personality: Theory, Research, and Assessment
The Nature of Personality
● The concept of personality explains the consistency in people’s behaviour over
time and situations, while also explaining their distinctiveness. There is
considerable debate as to how many trait dimensions are necessary to account
for the variation in personality, but the Big Five model has become the dominant
conception of personality structure.
Psychodynamic Perspectives
● Freud’s psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the importance of the unconscious.
Freud described personality structure in terms of three components (the id, ego,
and superego) which are routinely involved in an ongoing series of internal
conflicts.
● Freud theorized that conflicts centring on sex and aggression are especially likely
to lead to anxiety. According to Freud, anxiety and other unpleasant emotions
such as quilt are often warded off with defence mechanisms.
● Freud described a series of five stages of development ( oral, anal, phallic,
latency, and genital). Certain experiences during these stages can have lasting
effects on adult personality.
● Jung’s most innovative and controversial concept was the collective
unconscious. Adler's individual psychology emphasizes how people strive for
superiority to compensate for their feelings of inferiority.
● Overall, psychodynamic theories have produced many groundbreaking insights
about the unconscious, the role of internal conflict, and the importance of early
childhood experiences in personality development. However,psychodynamic
theories have been criticized for their poor testability, their inadequate base of
empirical evidence, and their male-centred views.
Behavioural Perspectives
● Behavioural theories view personality as a collection of response tendencies to
specific stimulus situations. They assume that personality development is a
lifelong process in which response tendencies are shaped and reshaped by
learning, especially operant conditioning.
● Social cognitive theory focuses on how cognitive factors such as expectancies
and self-efficacy regulate learned behavior. Bandura’s concept of observational
learning accounts for the acquisition of responses from models. Mischel has
questioned the degree to which people display cross-situational consistency in
behaviour.
Document Summary
The concept of personality explains the consistency in people"s behaviour over time and situations, while also explaining their distinctiveness. There is considerable debate as to how many trait dimensions are necessary to account for the variation in personality, but the big five model has become the dominant conception of personality structure. Freud"s psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the importance of the unconscious. Freud described personality structure in terms of three components (the id, ego, and superego) which are routinely involved in an ongoing series of internal conflicts. Freud theorized that conflicts centring on sex and aggression are especially likely to lead to anxiety. According to freud, anxiety and other unpleasant emotions such as quilt are often warded off with defence mechanisms. Freud described a series of five stages of development ( oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital). Certain experiences during these stages can have lasting effects on adult personality. Jung"s most innovative and controversial concept was the collective unconscious.
