Identity and Personality

1. Identity and Personality The Self Identity Personality

2. The Self Self-Understanding • Self: • All characteristics of a person • Self-understanding, self-esteem, self-concept • Identity: • Who a person is. • Personality: • Enduring personal characteristics of individuals. • Young children perceive self as external characteristics. • Older children recognize difference between inner and outer states.

3. The Self Early Childhood • Self-understanding: • Self-descriptions are unrealistic positive overestimations • Understanding others: • Individual differences in social understanding linked to caregivers.

4. The Self Middle and Late Childhood • Self-understanding: (5 key changes) • Internal characteristicsemphasized • More referencing insocial descriptions • More use ofsocial comparisons • Distinguish betweenreal self and ideal self • Realistic in self-evaluations • Understanding others: • Increased perspective taking. • Perspective-taking: • Ability to assume another’s perspective and understand his or her thoughts and feelings.

5. The Self Self-Understanding in Adolescence • Abstract and idealistic • Self-conscious; preoccupied with self • Contradictions within the self – multiple roles in different contexts realized • Fluctuating self over time and situations • Compare real and ideal selves • Possible selves: what persons may be, would like to be, and are afraid of becoming • Self-integration in sense of identity

6. The Self Changes in Self-Understanding in Adulthood • Self-Awareness: • Awareness of strengths and weaknesses • Improves in young and middle adulthood • Possible Selves: • Get fewer and more concrete with age • Some revise throughout adulthood • Life Review: • Some in middle age, common in older adults • Evaluations of successes and failures

7. The Self Issues with Self-Esteem • Modest correlations link self-esteem and school performance; links vary between adult job performance and self-esteem • Self-esteem related to perceived physical appearance across life-span • Depression lowers high self-esteem • Persons with high self-esteem: • Increased happiness • Have greater initiative • Prone to both prosocial and antisocial actions • Undeserved high self-esteem: • Narcissism: self-centered, self-concerned • Conceited • Lack of awareness linked to adjustment problems

8. The Self Self-Esteem in Childhood and Adolescence • Accuracy of self-evaluations increases across the elementary school years • Majority of adolescents have positive self-image cross-culturally • Girls’ self-esteem is lower than boys’ by middle school years

9. The Self Self-Esteem in Adulthood • Some researchers find drops in self-esteem in late adulthood; others don’t. • Older adults with positive self-esteem: • May not see losses as negatively • Decrease in knowledge-related goals • Increase in emotion-related goals • Compare themselves to other older adults

10. Prenatal Development Self-Esteem Across the Lifespan

11. The Self Self-Regulation in Infancy and Early Childhood 12-18 months Depend on caregivers for reminder signals about acceptable behaviors Begin to comply with the caregiver’s expectations in the absence of monitoring 2-3 years Learn to resist temptation and give themselves instructions that keep them focused Preschool

12. The Self Self-Regulation in Middle/Late Childhood and Adolescence • Self-regulation increases from about 5 or 6 years up to 7 or 8 years of age • Across elementary school years, children increase beliefs that behavior is result of own effort and not luck • From 8 to 14 years of age, children increase perception of self-responsibility for failure • Successful self-regulation in aging linked to: • Selection: • Reduction in performance • Optimization: • Continue practice, use of technology • Compensation: • Concealment; offsetting or counterbalancing a deficiency

13. The Self Personal Control • Primary control striving: • One’s efforts to change external world to fit needs and desires. • Attain personal goals, overcome obstacles. • Secondary control striving: • Targets one’s inner worlds: motivation, emotion, and mental representation.

14. Identity What is Identity? Self-portrait of many identities: • Vocational/career • Political • Religious • Relationship • Achievement/intellectual • Sexual • Cultural/ethnic • Interests • Personality • Physical

15. Identity Erikson’s Ideas on Identity Erickson: • Identity versus identity confusion: • Adolescents examine who they are, what they are about, and where they are going in life. • Psychosocial moratorium: • Gap between childhood security and adult autonomy, part of adolescent identity exploration. _____________________________________________________________ • Marcia: • Individuals go through periods of- • Crisis: exploring alternatives during identity development. • Commitment: individuals show personal investment in what they are going to do.

16. Identity Marcia’s Identity Statuses

17. Identity Early Adolescence to Adulthood • Most important changes occur ages 18 to 25 • “MAMA” cycle: pattern for positive identity moratorium •achievement •moratorium •achievement _____________________________________________________________ • Parenting styles: • Democratic foster identity achievement • Autocratic foster identity foreclosure • Permissive foster identity diffusion

18. Personality Trait Theories and the Big Five Factors of Personality • Trait Theories: • Personality is broad dispositions or traits that tend to produce characteristic responses.

19. Personality Views On Adult Development • Stage-Crisis View: • Levinson’s Seasons of a Man’s Life- • Stage and transitions occur in life span. • Tasks or crisis in each stage shape personality. • Levinson’s midlife crisis in 40s.

20. Personality Age and Well-Being

21. Personality The Life-Events Approach • Now contemporary life-events approach. • How a life event influences individual’s development depends on: • The life event • Individual’s adaptation to the life event • Life-stage context • Sociohistorical context

22. Personality Generativity versus Stagnation • Seventh stage in Erikson’s life-span theory: • Generativity- • Encompasses adults’ desire to leave legacy to next generation • Middle-aged adults develop in number of ways • Stagnation- • Also self-absorption, develops when one senses s/he has done nothing for next generation

23. Personality Stability and Change • Many longitudinal studies have found evidence for both change and stability in personality in adulthood: • Smith College Study • Costa and McCrae’s Baltimore Study • Berkley Longitudinal Studies • Helson’s Mills College Study • Vaillant’s studies

24. Personality Stability and Change • Cumulative Personality Model: • With time and age, people become more adept at interacting with environment in ways that promote stability • Overall, personality is affected by: • Social contexts • New experiences • Sociohistorical changes