Key Concepts in Personality Psychology: Theories and Development
Key Concepts in Personality Psychology
The Five-Factor Model
The Five-Factor Theory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) proposes personality traits can be categorized using two approaches:
- Categorical Approach: Classifying traits as either present or absent (yes/no).
- Dimensional Approach: Measuring traits on a continuous scale.
The five broad dimensions are:
- Openness to Experience
- Conscientiousness (嚴謹度)
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism (神經質)
Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in their ability to successfully accomplish a specific task.
Behaviorism suggests that the environment stimulates our responses. However, the social cognitive approach emphasizes that an individual’s reaction to an incident is influenced by more than just the incident itself.
Four Sources of Self-Efficacy
- Mastery Experience: Past experiences on specific tasks. Past successes increase self-efficacy.
- Vicarious Experiences: Observing others succeed can strengthen our self-efficacy.
- Social Persuasion: Encouragement and support from others.
- Interpretation of Emotional Arousal: Feelings of fearfulness or calmness can interfere with the judgment of our ability to complete a task.
Psychodynamic Perspective (Sigmund Freud)
Three Levels of Awareness
- Conscious (意識): Thoughts that we are currently aware of.
- Preconscious (前意識): Content that is not currently in awareness but can be easily brought to awareness.
- Unconscious (潛意識): Contains material that the mind cannot easily retrieve.
Early childhood experiences are crucial in shaping our personality.
Three Structures of Personality
- Id (本我)
- Time to emerge: Since birth
- Operating principle: Pleasure principle – Wish fulfillment (seek pleasure, avoid pain), demands immediate gratification of needs.
- Parts and features: Primitive, selfish, irrational, amoral.
- Operating level of consciousness: Totally unconscious.
- Ego (自我)
- Time to emerge: 6-8 months onwards
- Operating principle: Reality principle – The ego serves three masters: the Id, reality, and the superego, striking compromises between their conflicting demands.
- Delay gratification (滿足) of the id’s urges until appropriate outlets can be found; avoid negative consequences.
- Parts and features: Logical, rational, pleasure-delaying.
- Operating level of consciousness: Operates in all three levels of consciousness.
- Superego (超我)
- Time to emerge: 3-5 years onward, developed from socialization.
- Operating principle: Moral principle – Strives solely for moral perfection, functioning to completely inhibit the id’s demands.
- Ego ideal (自我理想): Rules and standards for good behaviors à reward (pride).
- Conscience (良心): Considers whether something is right or wrong à punish (guilt).
- Parts and features: Moralistic, no compromise with its demands.
- Operating level of consciousness: Operates in all three levels of consciousness.
Personality structures conflict with each other, creating anxiety.
Anxiety
- Realistic anxiety: A fear of tangible dangers in the real world.
- Neurotic anxiety: The ego feeling overwhelmed by the id, which threatens to express its irrationality in thoughts and behavior.
- Moral anxiety: A feeling that one’s internalized values are about to be compromised due to the development of the superego.
Defense Mechanisms
Unconscious mental strategies that the mind uses to protect itself from distress.
- Repression: An involuntary removal of something from conscious awareness.
- Denial: Refusing to acknowledge the existence of some external threat or traumatic event that has occurred.
- Reaction Formation: Defending against a disturbing impulse by actively expressing the opposite impulse.
- Projection: Defending against disturbing impulses by attributing them to someone else.
- Regression: Retreating to an earlier period of life that was more pleasant and free of frustration and anxiety.
- Rationalization: Reinterpreting our behavior to make it seem more rational and acceptable to us.
- Displacement: Diverting emotion (usually anger) from an original source to a substitute target.
Psychosexual Development
- Oral Stage (0-18 months): Pleasure centers on the mouth; experiences in this stage can influence trust and dependency.
- Anal Stage (1.5-3 years): Focus on bowel and bladder control; can lead to personality traits related to orderliness or messiness.
- Phallic Stage (3-6 years): Focus on the genitals; Oedipus and Electra complexes arise during this stage, impacting gender identity and relationships.
- Latency Stage (6-puberty): Sexual interests subside; focus shifts toward social and intellectual skills.
- Genital Stage (puberty onward): Sexual reawakening and mature sexual relationships.