CHAPTER 11 SELF AND PERSONALITY

1. CHAPTER 11SELF AND PERSONALITY

2. Learning Objectives • How is the personality typically defined, and what are the five principles of defining personality? • How do psychoanalytic, trait, and social-learning theories explain personality development?

3. Conceptualizing the Self and Personality • Personality • An organized combination of attributes, motives, values, and behaviors unique to each individual • Often described in terms of relatively enduring dispositional traits (extraversion or introversion, independence or dependence)

4. Conceptualizing the Self and Personality • Personality (continued) • Characteristic adaptations • Situation-specific and changeable ways in which people adapt to their roles and environments • Motives, plans, goals, schemas, self-conceptions, stage-specific concerns, coping mechanisms • Narrative identities • Unique and integrative life stories that construct to give ourselves an identity and meaning to our lives

5. Conceptualizing the Self and Personality • Our self-perceptions • Self-concept • Our perceptions – positive, negative, realistic, unrealistic – of our attributes and traits as a person • Self-esteem • Our overall evaluation of our worth as a person based upon the positive and negative self-perceptions that constitute our self-concept • Identity • Our overall sense of who we are and how we fit into society

6. Conceptualizing the Self and Personality • Psychoanalytic theory • Psychoanalytic theorists use in-depth interviews, dream analysis, etc. to understand personality • Trait theory • Trait theorists construct personality scales and use the statistical technique of factor analysis to identify groupings of personality scale items that correlate with each other but not with other grouping of items

7. Conceptualizing the Self and Personality • Currently, there is agreement that personality can be described in terms of a five-factor model. • Five dimensions of personality known as the Big Five • Openness to experience • Conscientiousness • Extraversion • Agreeableness • Neuroticism

9. Conceptualizing the Self and Personality • Social-learning theorists reject the notion of universal stages of personality development, question the existence of enduring personality traits, and emphasize that people change if their environments change • From the social-learning perspective, personality is a set of behavioral tendencies shaped by interactions with other people in specific social situations

10. Learning Objectives • How do infants develop a sense of self? • What behaviors do researchers accept as evidence of infants’ self-awareness? • What is temperament? • How do researchers define and describe temperament?

11. The Infant – The Emerging Self • Infants develop an implicit sense of self through their perceptions of their bodies and actions • In the first 2 or 3 months, infants discover they can cause things to happen • After 6 months, infants realize they and other people are separate beings with different perspectives, ones that can be shared • Illustrated by joint attention • About 9 months, infants and their companions share perceptual experiences by looking at the same object at the same time • When an infant points at an object and looks toward her companions to attempt to focus their attention on the object, she shows awareness that self and other do not always share the same perceptions

12. The Infant – The Emerging Self • Around 18 months, infants recognize themselves visually as distinct individuals • Lewis and Brooks-Gunn (1979) demonstrated the development of self-recognition by putting a dot of rouge on a baby’s nose and placing the infant in front of a mirror • Infants 18 to 24 months of age touched their noses rather than the mirror, which indicated they thought they had a strange mark on their faces – evidence of self-recognition

13. The Infant – The Emerging Self • Infants develop a categorical self • Classify themselves into social categories based on age, sex, and other characteristics • What is “like me” and what is “not like me” • By age 2, infants master the task of distinguishing between photos of themselves and photos of other infants of the same sex

14. The Infant – The Emerging Self • What contributes to self-awareness in infancy? • Cognitive development • Ability to recognize the self • Social interaction • Social relationships that enable secure attachments • Social feedback – positive and negative

15. The Infant – Temperament • The study of infant personality has centered on dimensions of temperament – early, genetically based tendencies to respond in predictable ways to events • Easiness and difficultness • Thomas and Chess (1986, 1999) and colleagues studied nine dimensions of infant behavior, including • Typical mood • Regularity or predictability of biological functions • Tendency to approach or withdraw from new stimuli • Intensity of emotional reactions • Adaptability to new experiences and changes in routine

16. The Infant – Temperament • Categories of temperament • Easy temperament • Infants are even tempered, typically content or happy, open and adaptable to new experiences, have regular feeding and sleeping habits, and are tolerant of frustrations and discomforts • Difficult temperament • Infants are active, irritable, and irregular in their habits, often react negatively (and vigorously) to changes in routine, are slow to adapt to new people or situations, cry frequently and loudly, and often have tantrums • Slow-to-warm-up temperament • Infants are relatively inactive, somewhat moody, only moderately regular in their daily schedules, slow to adapt to new people and situations, but they typically respond in mildly, rather than intensely, negative ways.

17. The Infant – Temperament • Jerome Kagan identified another aspect of early temperament – behavioral inhibition • The tendency to be shy, restrained, and distressed in response to unfamiliar people and situations • Kagan and his colleagues have concluded that behavioral inhibition is biologically rooted • Individuals with inhibited temperaments display strong brain responses and high heart rates in reaction to unfamiliar stimuli

18. The Infant – Temperament • Rothbart and colleagues defined infant temperament in terms of emotional reactions and the control/regulation of such reactions • Identified three dimensions of temperament • Surgency/extraversion – the tendency to actively and energetically approach new experiences in an emotionally positive way (rather than to be inhibited and withdrawn) • Negative affectivity – the tendency to be sad, fearful, easily frustrated, and irritable (as opposed to laid back and adaptable) • Effortful control – the ability to focus and shift attention when desired, control one’s behavior and plan a course of action, and regulate or suppress one’s emotions

20. The Infant – Temperament • Thomas and Chess referred to the goodness of fit between a child and her environment • The extent to which the child’s temperament is compatible with the demands and expectations of the social world to which she must adapt • Infants’ temperaments and their parents’ parenting behaviors reciprocally influence one another and interact over time to steer the direction of later personality development

21. Leaning Objectives • What changes occur in the development of children’s self-esteem? • What factors influence self-esteem? • How does personality evolve over childhood, and what do children understand of their personality?

22. The Child – Elaborating on the Sense of Self • Toddlers give evidence of their emerging self-concepts • By age 2, toddlers may use the personal pronouns I, me, my, and mine when referring to the self and you when addressing another person • Toddlers show their emerging categorical selves when they describe themselves in terms of age and sex

23. The Child – Elaborating on the Sense of Self • The preschool child’s self-concept is concrete and physical • A preschooler’s self-description focuses on physical characteristics, possessions, physical activities, accomplishments, and preferences • Young children typically do not mention their psychological traits or inner qualities

24. The Child – Elaborating on the Sense of Self • Around age 8, psychological and social qualities become prominent in self-descriptions • Describe their enduring qualities using personality trait terms, such as funny or smart • Form social identities, define themselves as part of social units • “I’m a Kimberly, a second-grader at Brookside School, a Brownie Scout.” • Become more capable of social comparison – using information about how they compare with other children to characterize and evaluate themselves • “I’m the fastest runner in my class”

25. The Child – Self-Esteem • Susan Harter (1999, 2003, 2006) has found that self-esteem becomes more differentiated or multi-dimensional with age • Preschoolers distinguish two aspects of self-esteem • Their competence (physical and cognitive) • Their personal and social adequacy (social acceptance). • By mid-elementary school, children differentiate among five aspects of self-worth • Scholastic competence • Social acceptance • Behavioral conduct • Athletic competence • Physical appearance.

26. Caption: The multidimensional and hierarchical nature of self-esteem

27. The Child – Self-Esteem • As children age, they integrate their self-perceptions in the five distinct domains to form an overall, abstract sense of self-worth • Self-esteem becomes multidimensional and hierarchical • Global self-worth is at the top of the hierarchy • The accuracy of children’s self-evaluations increases over the elementary school years • Children form a sense of what they “should” be like – an ideal self • With age, the gap between the real self and the ideal self increases, which contributes to a decrease in average self-esteem from early to middle childhood

28. The Child – Influences on Self-Esteem • Influences on self-esteem • Heredity • Competence • Social feedback • Secure attachment to warm, democratic parents • Self-esteem remains stable over the elementary school years • High self-esteem is positively correlated with a variety of measures of good adjustment

29. The Child – The Developing Personality • During childhood, temperament interacts with individual social experiences and evolves into predictable personality • Researchers are finding links between the dimensions of temperament and Big Five personality trait dimensions • Exact relationships are unclear • Many aspects of personality do not stabilize until the elementary school years, or adolescence, or adulthood

30. Learning Objectives • How do adolescents conceptualize their selves, including self-esteem and personality? • What factors influence the development of identity during adolescence? • How do adolescents make vocational choices? • How does work affect adolescents’ identities?

31. The Adolescent – Self-Conceptions • Compared to children’s self-descriptions, those of adolescents • Become less physical and more psychological • Become less concrete and more abstract • Have a more differentiated self-concept • Includes acceptance by a larger peer group, by close friends, and by romantic partners • Are more integrated and coherent • Recognizes and integrates inconsistencies • Are more self-aware and reflective

32. The Adolescent – Self-Esteem • Between childhood and early adolescence self-esteem tends to decrease • Transition to middle or junior high school • Physical changes of puberty • Social context and social comparisons • Big-fish – little-pond effect occurs when the social comparisons are changed • A good student in a class of good students is a small fish in a big pond • A good student in a class of not-so-great students is a big fish in a little pond

33. The Adolescent – Self-Esteem • Adolescents who experienced a decrease in self-esteem in early adolescence typically emerge with higher self-esteem • Contributing factors • Opportunities to feel competent in areas that are important to them • Approval and support of parents, peers, and other important people • As adults, adolescents with low self-esteem tend to have poorer physical and mental health, poorer career and financial prospects, and higher levels of criminal behavior than adolescents with high self-esteem

34. The Adolescent – Forging a Sense of Identity • Eric Erikson proposed that adolescents experience the psychosocial conflict of identity versus role confusion • The search for identity involves important questions • What kind of career do I want? • What religious, moral, and political values can I really call my own? • Who am I as a man or woman and as a sexual being? • Where do I fit into the world? • What do I really want out of my life? • The many separate perceptions that are part of the self-concept must be integrated into a coherent sense of self – identity

35. The Adolescent – Forging a Sense of Identity • Erikson believed that an adolescent identity crisis can be explained by • Changing bodies that call for a revised self-concept and adjustment to being sexual beings • Cognitive growth that permits systematic thinking about hypothetical possibilities, including possible future selves • Social demands to grow up • According to Erikson, the moratorium period during high school and the college years permits adolescents to experiment with different roles to find themselves

36. The Adolescent – Forging a Sense of Identity • James Marcia (1966) expanded on Erikson’s theory and developed a procedure to assess adolescent identity formation • Adolescents are classified into one of four identity statuses based upon their progress toward an identity • The key questions are • Whether an individual has experienced a crisis (or has seriously grappled with identity issues and explored alternatives) • Whether an individual has achieved a commitment (that is, resolved the questions raised)

37. Caption: The four identity statuses as they apply to religious identity

38. The Adolescent – Forging a Sense of Identity • James Marcia’s identity statuses • Diffusion • No crisis and no commitment • Foreclosure • Commitment without a crisis • Accepted an identity suggested by parents or other people • Moratorium status • Experiencing a crisis or actively exploring identity issues • Questioning their religious upbringing, experimenting with drugs, changing majors or relationships • Identity achievement status • After a period of moratorium, a commitment is made

39. Caption: Percentage of subjects in each of James Marcia’s four identity statuses as a function of age

40. The Adolescent – Forging a Sense of Identity • The process of identity development includes forming an ethnic identity • A sense of personal identification with an ethnic group and its values and cultural traditions • The ingredients of a positive ethnic identity include • Socialization/teaching by parents regarding cultural traditions • Preparation to live in a culturally diverse society • Preparation to deal with prejudice in a manner that does not breed anger and mistrust

41. The Adolescent – Forging a Sense of Identity • Exploring and forging a positive ethnic identity can • Protect adolescents’ self-concepts from the damaging effects of racial or ethnic discrimination • Foster high overall self-esteem • Help promote academic achievement and good adjustment • Reduce depression symptoms.

42. The Adolescent – Forging a Sense of Identity • The main developmental trend evident in vocational choice is increasing realism with age • Between the ages of 11 and 18, adolescents become more realistic and begin to make preliminary vocational choices that consider their interests, capacities, and values • By late adolescence or emerging adulthood, considerations include the realities of the job market, the physical and intellectual requirements for different occupations, the availability of job openings in a field, the years of education required, and the work conditions

43. The Adolescent – Forging a Sense of Identity • Some adolescents are challenged to form a positive vocational identity • Adolescents from lower income families, especially minority group members living in poverty and facing limited opportunities, discrimination, and stress, may lower their career aspirations and aim toward jobs they are likely to get rather than the jobs that interest them most • The vocational choices of females have been and continue to be constrained by traditional gender norms

44. The Adolescent – Forging a Sense of Identity • Young women who have adopted traditional gender-role attitudes for marriage and family in early adulthood may set their educational and vocational sights low, figuring that they cannot “have it all” • Many young women do not seriously consider traditionally male-dominated jobs, doubt their ability to land such jobs, and aim toward feminine-stereotyped, and often lower-status and lower-paying, occupations • Many teens – female and male – do not explore a range of possible occupations before making a choice

45. The Adolescent – Forging a Sense of Identity • Progress toward identity formation in adolescent is influenced by five factors • Cognitive growth • The ability to contemplate possible future identities, to think in complex and abstract ways, and to seek information • Personality • Low neuroticism and high levels of openness to experience and conscientiousness • Relationships with parents • Those who are in the moratorium and identity achievement statuses have solid relationships with parents who encourage autonomy

46. The Adolescent – Forging a Sense of Identity • Opportunities to explore • Exposure to diverse ideas and independent thinking, such as occurs during a college education • The broader cultural context • In industrialized Western societies, adolescents are expected to forge an identity after exploring their options • In traditional societies, identity foreclosure may be the most adaptive path to adulthood

47. Learning Objectives • How does personality change during adulthood? • Why do people change or remain the same? • How does culture influence personality

48. The Adult – Self-Conceptions • Self-esteem tends rise gradually through the adult years until the mid-60s and then – for some adults – to drop in the 70s and 80s • How do most elderly people manage to maintain positive self-images for so long, even as they experience some of the disabilities and losses that come with aging? By • Reducing the gap between the ideal self and the real self • Changing standards of self-evaluation • Making social comparisons to other old people • Avoiding self-stereotyping

49. The Adult – Self-Conceptions • Reducing the gap between the ideal self and the real self • According to Ryff’s (1991) research, older adults scaled down their visions of what they could ideally be and what they likely will be, possibly because they recognized that aging brings with it a loss of capacities • They also judged more positively what they had been • As a result, their ideal, future, present, and past selves converged

50. The Adult – Self-Conceptions • Adjusting goals and standards of self-evaluation • People’s goals and standards change with age so that what seem like losses or failures to a younger person may not be perceived as such by the older adult • As our goals and standards change over the lifespan, we apply different measuring sticks in evaluating ourselves and do not mind failing to achieve goals that are no longer important