Personality
Ask a friend to describe someone you both know. You will hear the words of personality: she is so outgoing, he never gets rattled, they are hard to pin down. Personality is why a person is still clearly themselves from day to day and from room to room. It is their usual way of thinking, feeling, and acting. It goes with them everywhere. This chapter follows a debate that has run for about one hundred years. Where does that pattern come from? Freud pointed to hidden conflicts in the unconscious. The humanists pointed to a self that wants to grow. Trait theorists counted a few main dimensions. Social-cognitive theorists saw a loop between the mind and the situation. The chapter ends with a practical problem. How do you measure something as private as a personality?
By the end of this chapter you can
- Define personality. Explain what consistency across situations and over time does and does not mean.
- Describe Freud's model of the id, ego, and superego, and his levels of awareness.
- Name the main defense mechanisms and give an everyday example of each.
- Sum up how the neo-Freudians (Jung, Adler, Horney, and Erikson) changed Freud's ideas.
- Compare the humanistic theories of Rogers and Maslow with the psychodynamic view.
- Name and describe the Big Five (OCEAN) trait dimensions.
- Explain Bandura's reciprocal determinism and Rotter's locus of control.
- Tell self-report inventories apart from projective tests, and weigh the strengths of each.
Section 1What we mean by personality
A characteristic and enduring pattern
Personality is a person's characteristic, enduring pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Two words in that definition do most of the work. Characteristic means the pattern is typical of that person. It sets them apart from other people. That is why a description like "careful and warm" tells you something. Enduring means the pattern shows up again and again. It does not flicker from moment to moment. It is what is left once you set aside one bad morning or one good mood.
The idea that people come in stable types is very old. The ancient Greek doctor Hippocrates, and later Galen, said the body held four fluids, called humors. Galen linked them to four temperaments: sanguine (cheerful), choleric (quick to anger), melancholic (sad), and phlegmatic (calm). The biology was wrong. But the hunch lasted. Differences in how people react seem built in. They show up early, and they are slow to change. Modern psychology keeps the word temperament for just that idea. Temperament means the early, biology-based tendencies we see in babies, such as how easily a baby is calmed or startled. Later personality is built on top of it.
Consistency across situations and time
If personality is real, it should be consistent. But consistency has two separate meanings, and they are easy to mix up. Consistency over time means a person keeps the same place compared with other people as the years pass. The shy ten-year-old tends to become a quiet adult. Long-term studies that follow the same people for years find that this rank-order stability is high. It also grows stronger as people age. Consistency across situations means a trait shows up in different places. The careful student is also a careful worker. This second kind is weaker. It was at the center of a famous fight.
In 1968, Walter Mischel looked over the research. He pointed out a hard fact. How a person acts in one situation predicts how they act in a different situation only a little. A friendly person is not friendly to everyone, everywhere. This person-situation debate did not kill the idea of traits. It made the idea sharper. The answer that came out of it is called interactionism. Behavior comes from the person and the situation working together. Traits predict behavior best when you aggregate, which means you average many moments instead of betting on one. You are not the same in every room. But average your behavior over a hundred rooms, and a clear "you" appears.
| Perspective | Core idea | Personality is driven by… |
|---|---|---|
| Psychodynamic | Hidden conflict | Unconscious drives and early childhood (Freud, neo-Freudians) |
| Humanistic | Growth of the self | The drive to grow into your best self, plus a caring setting (Rogers, Maslow) |
| Trait | Measurable dimensions | A small set of stable traits that everyone has in different amounts (Allport, the Big Five) |
| Social-cognitive | Person meets situation | The loop among thoughts, behavior, and setting (Bandura, Rotter) |
| Biological | Built-in tendencies | Genes, temperament, and brain systems |
These views are the map for the rest of the chapter. They are not really enemies. They are different lenses pointed at the same person. A full picture of someone usually borrows from several of them at once.
- Personality is a characteristic, enduring pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
- Consistency over time (rank-order stability) is strong. Consistency across situations is weaker. People shift more from place to place than from year to year.
- Mischel started the person-situation debate. It led to interactionism. Behavior comes from the person and the situation. Traits predict best when many moments are averaged.
- Temperament is the early base of personality. It is rooted in biology.
Section 2The psychodynamic view
Freud and the unconscious
Sigmund Freud was a doctor in Vienna, Austria. Around 1900 he built the first complete theory of personality. He called it psychoanalysis. Its main claim still shapes how we talk about the mind: much of what drives us is unconscious, which means hidden from our own awareness. Freud pictured the mind as an iceberg. The small tip above the water is the conscious mind. It holds what you are aware of right now. Just below the surface is the preconscious. It holds things you can bring to mind easily, like a phone number. The huge part under the water is the unconscious. It holds wishes, fears, and memories, many from childhood. They push on behavior even though you cannot look at them directly. Freud believed they leak out in dreams, slips of the tongue, and symptoms.
Freud also said personality forms through a series of psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. Each stage centers on a different body area as a source of pleasure. He thought a child who got too much or too little at a stage could become fixated, or stuck, there. That would leave a lasting mark on the adult. The details of the stages have not held up well in research. But the broad idea, that early life shapes the lasting self, is still important.
Id, ego, and superego
Freud split personality into three parts that act on one another. The id is there from birth. It is fully unconscious. It runs on the pleasure principle: it wants what it wants, right now, with no thought for reality or results. The superego forms later. It is the inner voice of parents and society. It acts as the conscience and the ideal self, and it insists on how you should behave. Stuck between the two is the ego. It runs on the reality principle. The ego is the go-between. It finds real, socially acceptable ways to satisfy the id without setting off the superego's guilt. In this model, a healthy personality is one where the ego keeps a workable balance.
Defense mechanisms
Sometimes the ego cannot fully settle the id's demands with the superego's rules. The result is anxiety. To manage it, the ego uses defense mechanisms. These are unconscious strategies that bend reality just enough to make it bearable. Freud described them, and his daughter Anna Freud worked them out in more detail. Everyone uses them. They become a problem only when they are rigid or take over a life. One of them, sublimation, is usually seen as mature and healthy. It turns an unacceptable urge into a useful activity.
| Defense | What it does | Everyday example |
|---|---|---|
| Repression | Pushes upsetting thoughts out of awareness | Having no memory of an embarrassing childhood moment that others remember well |
| Denial | Refuses to accept a painful fact | Insisting a clearly failing relationship is "fine" |
| Projection | Sees your own unacceptable feelings in other people | A person who is cheating accuses their partner of cheating |
| Displacement | Moves an urge onto a safer target | Yelling at the dog after the boss criticizes you |
| Rationalization | Makes up a reasonable-sounding excuse for the real reason | "I didn't want that job anyway" after a rejection |
| Reaction formation | Shows the opposite of an upsetting urge | Being extra sweet to someone you resent |
| Regression | Goes back to an earlier, more childlike behavior | An adult sulking or throwing a tantrum under stress |
| Sublimation | Turns an unacceptable urge into a valued activity | Turning aggression into a competitive sport |
A note on repression. Freud thought people often bury terrible memories. Modern memory research finds the opposite for most people. Real trauma is usually remembered too well, not forgotten. Claims of fully "recovered" memories are debated. Memory can be changed by suggestion.
The neo-Freudians
Freud's early followers kept the idea of the unconscious. But they did not agree with his heavy focus on sex and aggression. They gave more weight to social and cultural forces. They are called the neo-Freudians, which means "new Freudians." Carl Jung started analytical psychology. He proposed a collective unconscious. This is a deep layer of the mind that all humans share. It is full of universal images he called archetypes, such as the hero, the mother, and the shadow. Alfred Adler coined the term inferiority complex. He said the great human motive is not sex. It is the push to stop feeling "less than" and to become capable. Karen Horney pushed back hard against Freud's view of women. She said personality is shaped by basic anxiety. That is a feeling of being alone and unsafe. It comes from childhood relationships, not from the body. Erik Erikson described eight psychosocial stages that cover the whole lifespan. Each stage poses a social crisis. Two examples are trust versus mistrust, and identity versus role confusion.
- Freud placed most of the mind in the unconscious. He split personality into three parts. The id seeks pleasure. The superego is the conscience. The ego is the go-between that deals with reality.
- Defense mechanisms are unconscious tricks the ego uses to lower anxiety. They bend reality a little. Sublimation is the mature one.
- The neo-Freudians kept the unconscious. But they stressed social forces and culture. Jung: the collective unconscious and archetypes. Adler: inferiority and striving. Horney: basic anxiety. Erikson: psychosocial stages.
- Freud's influence is huge, even though much of his specific theory lacks research support.
Section 3Humanistic and trait theories
The humanistic response
By the mid-1900s, some psychologists found both psychoanalysis and behaviorism too gloomy. One saw people as buried conflicts. The other saw them as trained habits. The humanistic theorists offered a hopeful starting point instead. People are basically good. They are pulled forward by an inborn drive to grow. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers both called this drive self-actualization: the push to become the fullest version of yourself.
Maslow arranged human motives into a hierarchy of needs, usually drawn as a pyramid. Body needs, like food and water, sit at the bottom. Next come safety, then love and belonging, then esteem. Self-actualization is at the top. In general, lower needs must be fairly well met before higher ones feel pressing. Later research supports the broad idea but not a strict order. People can seek love or meaning even when they are hungry or unsafe.
Rogers focused on the self-concept, which is your sense of who you are. He argued that mental health depends on congruence. Congruence means a good match between your real self (who you are) and your ideal self (who you think you should be). What helps that health grow is unconditional positive regard: being accepted and valued with no strings attached. When acceptance has conditions, people twist themselves to earn it, and congruence suffers.
From types to traits
Trait theorists set aside the question of hidden causes. They asked a simpler one. What are the basic dimensions on which personalities differ, and how do we measure them? A trait is a fairly stable tendency to act in a certain way. Gordon Allport sorted traits into three kinds. Cardinal traits are a single theme that rules a whole life, and they are rare. Central traits are the handful of words you would use to describe a friend. Secondary traits are preferences that show up only in certain situations. Raymond Cattell used a math tool called factor analysis, which finds which traits tend to go together. With it he boiled the words for personality down to sixteen source traits. Hans Eysenck argued for even fewer. He stressed extraversion and neuroticism (how emotionally unsteady a person is), and he tied them to differences in how easily the brain is aroused.
The Big Five (OCEAN)
Decades of factor analysis settled on a middle number. Five broad dimensions capture most of the ways human personalities differ. This Five Factor Model, or Big Five, is remembered by the letters OCEAN. Each one is a scale. Everyone falls somewhere along it. It is not a box you are in or out of. The Big Five is the trait model with the most research support. It shows up in study after study, in many cultures and languages. It is also moderately heritable, which means genes explain a fair share of the differences between people.
| Dimension | High scorers | Low scorers |
|---|---|---|
| Openness | Curious, creative, drawn to new things and ideas | Traditional, practical, likes the familiar |
| Conscientiousness | Organized, disciplined, reliable | Spontaneous, careless, relaxed about rules |
| Extraversion | Outgoing, energetic, seeks social contact | Reserved, quiet, comfortable alone (introverted) |
| Agreeableness | Warm, trusting, cooperative, kind | Competitive, doubting, blunt |
| Neuroticism | Anxious, moody, quick to get upset | Calm, secure, even-tempered (emotionally stable) |
The Big Five describes. It does not explain. It tells you how people differ, not why. But that is still very useful. Conscientiousness predicts how well people do at work. It even predicts a longer life. Low agreeableness and high neuroticism predict trouble in close relationships. And the profile stays steady enough in adult life to be worth measuring.
- The humanistic theorists (Maslow, Rogers) focused on growth, not conflict. The goal of growth is self-actualization.
- Maslow's hierarchy of needs ranks motives. Body needs are at the bottom, and self-actualization is at the top. Rogers stressed the self-concept, congruence, and unconditional positive regard.
- A trait is a stable tendency. Allport, Cattell, and Eysenck tried to count the basic ones.
- The Big Five (OCEAN) is the trait model with the most support. The five are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
Section 4Social-cognitive theories
Reciprocal determinism
The social-cognitive approach grew out of learning theory. But it insisted that thinking matters. People are not just shaped by rewards. They interpret, look ahead, and choose. Its leading figure was Albert Bandura. He is the same researcher whose Bobo doll studies showed that children learn aggression by watching others. Bandura proposed reciprocal determinism. Personality comes from a constant, three-way exchange among behavior, inner personal factors (thoughts, beliefs, and expectations), and the environment. Each arrow runs both ways. Your setting shapes you. But you also pick and build your settings. A social person seeks out parties, and the parties make them even more social. In this view, personality is not a fixed core. It is a set of habits in how the three pieces feed one another.
Locus of control and self-efficacy
Two ideas capture the "personal factors" that matter most in this loop. Julian Rotter introduced locus of control. It is a person's general belief about who controls what happens in their life. People with an internal locus believe their own effort and choices drive their results. People with an external locus believe luck, fate, or powerful others decide their results. On average, internals try harder when things get tough. They also report better health and success. Still, a false sense of control has its own costs.
Bandura added self-efficacy. It is your belief that you can succeed at a specific task. It is not a general trait. It depends on the area. You can feel very capable at cooking and helpless at math. High self-efficacy leads people to try harder goals, keep going longer, and bounce back faster. Its opposite is learned helplessness. That is the passive giving up that can follow when a person fails again and again to control what happens.
| Internal locus of control | External locus of control | |
|---|---|---|
| Belief | "My results depend on me" | "My results depend on luck, fate, or others" |
| After failure | Tries a new plan, works harder | Gives up; sees effort as pointless |
| Often goes with | Higher success, better health habits | More stress, more passivity |
| Watch out for | Blaming yourself for things you could not control | Missing chances to act when acting would help |
- Reciprocal determinism is Bandura's idea. Your actions, your thoughts, and your setting all act on one another.
- People actively choose and shape their settings. They are not just molded by them.
- Locus of control (Rotter) is your belief about where results come from. Internal means from you. External means from outside forces.
- Self-efficacy is a task-specific belief that you can succeed. It strongly predicts effort and success.
Section 5Assessing personality
Self-report inventories
The most common way to measure personality is simply to ask. A self-report inventory is a standard questionnaire. The person rates how well many statements describe them. Everyone answers the same items. The items are scored the same way. So results can be compared with large norms, which are the scores of many other people. The best-known clinical example is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). It was built to help spot mental health conditions. It has been updated many times. The newest version is the MMPI-3, from 2020. Its hundreds of items were chosen empirically, which means from data. An item was kept only if it truly told groups of people apart. The MMPI also has validity scales. They are built to catch people who lie, try to look good, or answer carelessly. Research tools such as the NEO-PI measure the Big Five in the same way.
Self-reports are easy to score in an objective way. They are reliable and quick. Their weakness is plain to see. They assume people can and will describe themselves honestly. People may not see themselves clearly. And social desirability, the pull to answer in ways that look good, can skew the results. That is exactly why serious inventories build in validity checks. A separate warning applies to popular type tests such as the Myers-Briggs, which come from Jung's types. They are fun. But they sort people into fixed boxes, and they are less reliable and less valid than scale-based measures like the Big Five. Many people get a different "type" when they retake the test.
Projective tests
Projective tests take the opposite approach. They do not ask clear questions. They show an ambiguous picture, one that could mean many things. The person is asked to make sense of it. The idea is that they will "project," or cast, their hidden feelings and motives onto it. In the Rorschach inkblot test, made by Hermann Rorschach, a person says what they see in a set of mirror-image inkblots. In the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), made by Henry Murray and Christiana Morgan, the person tells a story about unclear scenes. Projective tests grew out of the psychodynamic tradition. That tradition cared most about the unconscious.
Their big appeal is that they are hard to fake. There is no clear "right" answer to aim for. Their big problem is measurement. Scoring depends on the scorer's judgment. Two scorers often disagree, so reliability is low. And whether the tests measure what they claim (validity) is disputed. Newer scoring systems for the Rorschach, such as the Exner system and the later R-PAS, have improved things. The tests are still used in clinics as one source of ideas to check. But most researchers trust well-tested self-report inventories more.
| Self-report inventory | Projective test | |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Clear statements the person rates | Unclear picture the person interprets |
| Examples | MMPI, NEO-PI, 16PF | Rorschach inkblots, TAT |
| Scoring | Objective, compared with norms | Depends on judgment; needs trained scorers |
| Main strength | Reliable, quick, can include validity scales | Harder to fake; may reveal what people won't say |
| Main weakness | Depends on honesty and self-insight | Lower reliability and disputed validity |
- Self-report inventories, such as the MMPI, are standard questionnaires. Scores are compared with norms. The MMPI adds validity scales to catch dishonest answers.
- Their weakness is that they need honest answers from people who know themselves. The pull to look good, called social desirability, can skew them.
- Projective tests (Rorschach, TAT) use unclear pictures to draw out unconscious material. They are hard to fake but weaker as measurement tools.
- A useful test must show reliability, which means steady scores. It must also show validity, which means it measures what it claims. The Barnum effect explains why unscientific "tests" feel convincing.
The chapter in one breath
- Personality is a person's usual and lasting way of thinking, feeling, and acting. It is more consistent over time than across situations. The person and the situation together predict behavior best.
- Freud's psychodynamic theory placed personality in the unconscious. He split it into three parts: the id, ego, and superego. Defense mechanisms help manage anxiety.
- The neo-Freudians (Jung, Adler, Horney, Erikson) kept the unconscious but stressed social and cultural forces.
- The humanists Rogers and Maslow stressed growth. Key ideas: self-actualization, the self-concept, and unconditional positive regard.
- Trait theory led to the Big Five (OCEAN). It is the best-tested way to describe how personalities differ.
- Social-cognitive theory sees personality as a loop. Thoughts, actions, and setting all shape one another. Key ideas: Bandura's reciprocal determinism, Rotter's locus of control, and self-efficacy.
- Personality is measured in two main ways. One is objective self-report inventories, such as the MMPI. The other is projective tests, such as the Rorschach and TAT. Projective tests are harder to fake but less reliable.
ReferenceWords worth knowing
A quick list of the terms in this chapter. Skim it now, or come back whenever a word trips you up.
- Archetype
- In Jung's theory, a universal image or theme passed down to all people, such as the hero or the mother. Archetypes live in the collective unconscious.
- Big Five (Five Factor Model)
- The five broad trait dimensions that capture most personality differences: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN).
- Collective unconscious
- Jung's idea of a deep layer of the mind shared by all humans. It holds archetypes passed down from our distant past.
- Defense mechanism
- An unconscious strategy the ego uses to lower anxiety by bending reality. Examples are repression, projection, and sublimation.
- Ego
- In Freud's model, the reality-based part of personality. It works out deals between the id's demands and the superego's rules.
- Id
- In Freud's model, the unconscious, pleasure-seeking part of personality. It is there from birth and wants instant satisfaction.
- Locus of control
- A person's general belief that results are controlled by their own actions (internal) or by luck, fate, or others (external).
- MMPI
- The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It is a widely used self-report inventory. Its items were chosen from data, and it has built-in validity scales.
- Personality
- A person's characteristic and enduring pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
- Projective test
- A test that shows an unclear picture so the person casts hidden feelings and motives onto it. The Rorschach and the TAT are examples.
- Psychodynamic theory
- The family of theories, starting with Freud, that explains personality through unconscious drives and early life.
- Reciprocal determinism
- Bandura's idea that personality comes from the two-way exchange among behavior, personal factors, and the environment.
- Repression
- The defense mechanism that pushes upsetting thoughts and memories out of awareness.
- Rorschach inkblot test
- A projective test in which the person says what they see in a series of mirror-image inkblots.
- Self-actualization
- The humanistic drive to reach your fullest potential. It is the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
- Self-concept
- In Rogers's theory, your overall sense of who you are. Health depends on a good match (congruence) between the real self and the ideal self.
- Self-efficacy
- Bandura's term for your belief that you can succeed at a specific task.
- Sublimation
- The usually healthy defense mechanism that turns an unacceptable urge into a socially valued activity.
- Superego
- In Freud's model, the inner conscience and ideal self. It enforces moral rules.
- Temperament
- Early, biology-based tendencies in how strongly a person reacts and in their usual mood. Later personality is built on it.
- Trait
- A fairly stable tendency to act, think, or feel in a certain way over time.
- Unconditional positive regard
- Rogers's term for accepting and valuing a person with no conditions. It helps healthy growth.