Personality | ISC Class 12 Psychology Notes

This note covers the meaning and definition of personality, the terms related to it (temperament, habit, values, self-concept), the type theories (Hippocrates, Sheldon, Friedman), the psychoanalytic theory of Freud (levels of consciousness, id-ego-superego, psychosexual stages) and the post-Freudians (Erikson, Horney), the humanistic theories of Rogers and Maslow, the trait theories of Allport and Cattell and the five-factor model, Bandura's social cognitive theory, and the methods of personality assessment: self-report inventories (MMPI), projective techniques (Rorschach Inkblot Test and TAT) and behavioural analysis.

What is meant by personality?

In everyday language, personality often refers only to a person's physical appearance or charm, so that a "good-looking" person is assumed to have a "charming personality". Psychologists reject this superficial view.

In psychological terms, personality refers to our characteristic ways of responding to individuals and situations. It refers to the unique and relatively stable qualities that characterise an individual's behaviour across different situations over a period of time.

Personality has four features. It has both physical and psychological components. Its expression in behaviour is fairly unique to the individual. Its main features do not easily change with time.

Yet it is also dynamic, because some of its features may change due to internal or external situational demands, so that personality is adaptive to situations.

For example, an honest person is more likely to remain honest irrespective of time or situation, even though some situational variation in behaviour does occur as individuals adapt to their surroundings.

Definition: Personality. Gordon Allport defined personality as the dynamic organisation within the individual of the psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behaviour and thought.

Self lies at the core of personality. Self refers to the totality of an individual's conscious experiences, ideas, thoughts and feelings with regard to herself or himself, defining the individual's existence at both the personal and social levels.

Self-concept is the way a person perceives herself/himself and the ideas held about her/his own competencies and attributes; it may be positive or negative, and can vary across different areas of life, such as sport or academic study.

What are the personality-related terms?

Several terms are often used as synonyms of personality, but each has a distinct defining feature.

• Temperament is a biologically based characteristic way of reacting.
• Trait is a stable, persistent and specific way of behaving.
• Disposition is the tendency of a person to react to a given situation in a particular way.
• Character is the overall pattern of regularly occurring behaviour.
• Habit refers to over-learned modes of behaving.
• Values are the goals and ideals that are considered important and worthwhile to achieve.

Taken together, these terms show that personality is not a single idea but a cluster of related concepts: some biologically rooted (temperament), some narrowly specific (trait, habit), and some evaluative (values).

Keeping the terms distinct matters for examinations, because a question may ask for the term that best fits a described behaviour, and each term above has only one correct defining feature.

What are the type theories of personality?

The type approach tries to understand personality by placing individuals into broad categories on the basis of the similarity of their behavioural characteristics with an expected pattern. Each type represents a cluster of expected behaviours.

Hippocrates' humoural typology

The Greek physician Hippocrates proposed a typology of personality based on fluid or humour, classifying people into four types: sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic and choleric, each characterised by specific behavioural features.

Each type was named after the fluid, or humour, that was believed to dominate the body, and each humour was linked with a characteristic temperament.

Sheldon's somatotypes

William Sheldon used body build and temperament as the basis for a typology. Endomorphs are fat, soft and round in build; by temperament they are relaxed and sociable.

Mesomorphs have strong musculature and a rectangular, strong body build; they are energetic and courageous. Ectomorphs are thin, long and fragile in build; they are brainy, artistic and introvert.

These body typologies are simple and have limited use in predicting actual behaviour, and are more like stereotypes that people hold.

Friedman's Type A and Type B personality

Meyer Friedman and Rosenman classified individuals into Type-A and Type-B personalities while identifying psychosocial risk factors for disease.

People with Type-A personality possess high motivation, lack patience, feel short of time, are in a great hurry, and feel always burdened with work; such people find it difficult to slow down and relax.

Type-A personality is linked with greater susceptibility to hypertension and coronary heart disease (CHD), sometimes even more than the risk from high blood pressure, high cholesterol or smoking. Type-B personality can be understood as the absence of Type-A traits.

Personality typologies are appealing because they are simple, but they are too simplistic: human behaviour is highly complex and variable, and people do not fit neatly into such categories.

How does Freud explain the structure of personality?

Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory is highly influential. Freud, a physician, developed the theory during his clinical practice, using free association, dream analysis and analysis of errors to study the internal functioning of the mind.

Levels of consciousness

Freud described three levels of mental life. The conscious level includes thoughts, feelings and actions of which people are aware. The preconscious level includes mental activity of which people may become aware only if they attend to it closely.

The unconscious level includes mental activity that people are unaware of; it is a reservoir of instinctive drives and of ideas and wishes concealed from awareness, often because they would lead to conflict.

Id, ego and superego

Freud proposed three structural elements of personality, which reside in the unconscious as forces that can be inferred from behaviour.

The id is the source of instinctual energy; it demands immediate gratification of primitive needs, sexual desires and aggressive impulses, and works on the pleasure principle.

The ego grows out of the id and seeks to satisfy instinctual needs in accordance with reality; it works on the reality principle, and directs the id towards more appropriate ways of behaving.

The superego is the moral branch of mental functioning; it tells the id and ego whether gratification is ethical, controlling the id by internalising parental authority through socialisation. The instinctual life force that energises the id is called libido.

Draw an iceberg with a small tip above the waterline labelled "conscious", a layer just below the surface labelled "preconscious", and the large mass below the waterline labelled "unconscious".

Inside the submerged part, place the id at the base, the superego near the top, and show the ego straddling the waterline, mediating between the two and reality.

Psychosexual stages of development

Freud proposed a five-stage theory of psychosexual development. Problems at any stage may arrest development (fixation) and have long-term effects on the person's life.

1. Oral stage (infancy): the mouth is the primary pleasure-seeking centre; gratification occurs through feeding, thumb-sucking, biting and babbling, and basic feelings about the world are established here.
2. Anal stage (around ages two and three): pleasure is focused on the anal area through control of urination and defecation, establishing the basis for conflict between id and ego, and between babyish pleasure and adult, controlled behaviour.
3. Phallic stage (around ages four and five): focus shifts to the genitals; the male child experiences the Oedipus complex (love for the mother, hostility towards the father, fear of punishment or castration by the father), resolved by identifying with the father. In girls, the parallel Electra complex involves attachment to the father, followed by identification with the mother as a way of sharing the father's affection. In this stage the girl is also said to experience penis envy, a sense of envy at not having a penis, which Freud held helps turn her towards her father and later towards identification with her mother.
4. Latency stage (about seven years to puberty): sexual urges are relatively inactive, and energy is channelled into social or achievement-related activities.
5. Genital stage: the person attains maturity in psychosexual development and learns to deal with the opposite sex in a socially and sexually mature way; excessive stress or over-indulgence at this stage may cause fixation to an earlier stage.

Identification is the process by which the child takes on the attitudes and behaviour of the same-sex parent, and it is the critical step in resolving the Oedipus complex: boys give up their sexual feelings for the mother and come to see the father as a role model rather than a rival, while girls give up their desire for the father and identify with the mother.

Failure to pass successfully through a stage leads to fixation, where development is arrested at that earlier stage; regression, taking the person back to an earlier stage, is also a likely outcome when resolution of problems at any stage is inadequate.

Freud's theory has faced several criticisms: the theories are largely based on case studies and lack a rigorous scientific basis; they use small and atypical samples for generalisation; the concepts are not properly defined and are difficult to test scientifically; and Freud used males as the prototype of personality development, overlooking female experiences and perspectives.

How did the post-Freudian theorists build on Freud?

A number of theorists, some of whom had worked with Freud, developed their own versions of psychoanalytic theory. These post-Freudian (neo-analytic) theories give a less prominent role to the sexual and aggressive id, expand the concept of ego, and emphasise human creativity, competence and problem-solving.

Karen Horney

Horney took a more optimistic view than Freud, emphasising growth and self-actualisation, and challenged Freud's treatment of women as inferior, arguing that women were more affected by social and cultural factors than by biology.

She held that psychological disorders are caused by disturbed interpersonal relationships in childhood: when a parent's behaviour towards a child is indifferent, discouraging and erratic, the child feels insecure, producing basic anxiety, which in turn produces deep resentment or basic hostility towards the parents.

Excessive dominance, indifference, or too much or too little approval generate feelings of isolation and helplessness that interfere with healthy development.

To cope with basic anxiety, Horney held that people move towards others, against others or away from others, giving three coping styles: compliance (moving towards people, seeking affection and approval), aggression (moving against people, seeking power and control) and withdrawal (moving away from people, seeking independence and self-sufficiency).

Erik Erikson

Erikson's theory stresses rational, conscious ego processes, viewing development as a lifelong process with ego identity at its centre. His concept of the identity crisis of adolescence holds that young people must generate a central perspective and direction to give themselves a meaningful sense of unity and purpose.

One common criticism of Erikson's theory is that, like other psychodynamic theories, its stages and conflicts are difficult to define precisely and to test through rigorous scientific methods.

What do the humanistic theories say about personality?

The humanistic approach developed largely in response to Freud, emphasising the positive and subjective side of human experience. Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow are its major contributors.

Carl Rogers

Rogers proposed the idea of the fully functioning person. He believed fulfilment is the motivating force for personality development, and that there is an inborn tendency directing people to actualise their inherited nature.

Rogers assumed that behaviour is goal-directed and worthwhile, and that people, being innately good, will almost always choose adaptive, self-actualising behaviour.

Rogers structured his theory around the self. Each person also has a concept of the ideal self, the self a person would like to be.

When the real self and ideal self correspond (congruent), a person is generally happy; a discrepancy between them (incongruent) results in unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Rogers held that people have a tendency to maximise self-concept through self-actualisation.

Positive social conditions raise self-concept and self-esteem, while negative conditions lower them. An atmosphere of unconditional positive regard, acceptance of a person without conditions attached, must be created to enhance self-concept; Rogers' client-centred therapy attempts to create exactly this condition.

Conditional positive regard is the opposite situation, in which love, approval or acceptance is given only when the person meets certain conditions set by others. A child who is praised only for good marks, and ignored otherwise, learns to value herself/himself only under those conditions, so the self-concept becomes distorted and the person may hide parts of the real self.

One criticism of Rogers' theory is that it is hard to test scientifically. Its key ideas, such as the self-actualising tendency and the congruence of the real and ideal self, rest largely on what clients reported in therapy, and the assumption that people are innately good and will choose growth whenever they receive unconditional positive regard is closer to an optimistic belief than to a tested finding.

Abraham Maslow

Maslow gave a detailed account of psychologically healthy people in terms of their attainment of self-actualisation, a state in which a person has reached her/his own fullest potential.

Maslow held an optimistic, positive view of human beings as having the potential for love, joy and creative work, free to shape their lives.

Maslow arranged human needs in a five-level hierarchy, from the lowest to the highest: Physiological needs (food, water, sleep), Safety needs (security, order, freedom from fear), Love and Belongingness needs (affection, friendship, acceptance), Esteem needs (self-respect, recognition, achievement) and Self-Actualisation (reaching one's fullest potential).

Physiological, Safety and Love and Belongingness needs are shared with animals; an individual's sole concern with satisfying these reduces her/him to the level of animals.

The real journey of human life, for Maslow, begins with the pursuit of self-esteem and self-actualisation needs.

Maslow also described the Peak Experience, a moment of intense joy, wonder and wholeness in which a person feels fully alive and at one with the world. Such experiences are often reported by self-actualising people and are taken as a sign that the person is moving towards the fullest use of her/his potential.

Healthy people, according to humanistic theorists, are aware of themselves, their feelings and their limits; accept themselves and their lives as their own responsibility; have "the courage to be"; experience the "here-and-now" rather than being trapped in it; and do not live in the past or dwell in the future through anxious expectation and distorted defences.

How do the trait theories describe personality?

Trait theories try to discover the "building blocks" of personality. A trait is a relatively enduring attribute or quality on which one individual differs from another, including a range of behaviours activated according to the demands of a situation.

Traits are relatively stable over time, generally consistent across situations, and their strengths and combinations vary across individuals.

Gordon Allport

Allport, considered the pioneer of the trait approach, argued that the words people use to describe themselves and others provide a basis for understanding personality. He categorised traits into three kinds.

Cardinal traits are highly generalised dispositions indicating the goal around which a person's entire life revolves, for example Mahatma Gandhi's non-violence and Hitler's Nazism.

Central traits (such as warm, sincere, diligent) are less pervasive but still quite generalised, and are often used in a testimonial or job recommendation. Secondary traits are the least generalised, such as "likes mangoes" or "prefers ethnic clothes".

Raymond Cattell

Cattell believed there is a common structure on which people differ, discoverable through the statistical technique of factor analysis.

He identified 16 primary or source traits, the stable building blocks of personality, besides a number of surface traits that result from the interaction of source traits.

Cattell developed the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16 PF) for personality assessment, widely used by psychologists.

The five-factor model

Paul Costa and Robert McCrae examined possible personality traits and identified five factors, often called the Big Five.

The five-factor model is considered a useful empirical approach because it is consistent with analyses of personality traits found in different languages and is supported by studies carried out through different methods.

What is Bandura's social cognitive theory of personality?

Albert Bandura's work rests on the idea that children and adults learn behaviour by observing and imitating others, a process called observational learning or modelling.

People's expectations of mastery or achievement and their convictions about their own effectiveness determine the types of behaviour in which they engage, and the amount of risk they undertake.

Central to Bandura's theory is self-efficacy: a person who believes s/he has the ability or behaviours required by a particular situation shows high self-efficacy, while a person who attributes outcomes to luck, fate, or other situational factors shows low self-efficacy.

A strong sense of self-efficacy allows people to select, influence and even construct the circumstances of their own life, and people with high self-efficacy also feel less fearful; it can be developed through positive models during the formative years.

Bandura's self system also includes self-reinforcement, rewarding one's own behaviours that have pleasant outcomes (for example, going to see a film with friends after doing well in an examination), and setting self-chosen standards or self-set goals against which a person evaluates her/his own performance.

Observational learning theory gives thought processes an important place in learning, and emphasises both social learning (through observation and imitation) and self-regulation, aspects that are largely absent from classical and instrumental conditioning accounts of behaviour.

How is personality assessed through self-report inventories?

Personality assessment is a formal effort to understand an individual's personality through procedures that evaluate or differentiate people on the basis of certain characteristics, aiming to predict behaviour with minimum error and maximum accuracy.

Assessment through reports draws on what is reported about a person. In a self-report, the person answers questions about her/his own feelings, beliefs and behaviour; in reports by others, people who know the person well, such as parents, teachers or peers, describe or rate the person's typical behaviour, as in the behavioural ratings and nominations described under behavioural analysis below. Inventories and questionnaires such as the MMPI are the most structured form of self-report.

Self-report measures are fairly structured, often theory-based measures that require a person to objectively report her/his own feelings on various items, using a rating scale; responses are scored quantitatively and interpreted against test norms.

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Developed by Hathaway and McKinley as a tool for psychiatric diagnosis, the MMPI has proved effective for identifying varieties of psychopathology; its revised version is the MMPI-2. It consists of 567 statements, each to be judged "true" or "false" by the subject, divided into ten clinical subscales.

The self-report method suffers from two main problems. Social desirability is the tendency to endorse items in a socially desirable manner. Acquiescence is the tendency to agree with items irrespective of their content, often appearing as repeatedly saying "yes". These tendencies reduce the reliability of the assessment.

What are the projective techniques of personality assessment?

Direct methods rely on information given by a person who knows her/his personality is being assessed, so people may become self-conscious and respond in a socially desirable way; they also cannot reach unconscious motives.

Projective techniques are indirect methods developed to assess unconscious motives and feelings, based on the assumption that an unstructured stimulus allows a person to project her/his feelings, desires and needs onto it, which experts then interpret.

The Rorschach Inkblot Test

Developed by Hermann Rorschach, this test consists of ten inkblots: five in black and white, two with some red ink, and three in pastel colours, each printed symmetrically in the centre of a white cardboard of about 7 inches by 10 inches. The cards are administered individually in two phases.

1. In the performance proper phase, the subject is shown each card in turn and asked to say what s/he sees in it.
2. In the inquiry phase, a detailed report of each response is prepared by asking the subject where, how, and on what basis a particular response was made.
3. For scoring, each response is coded for its location (whether the whole blot or a part of it was used), its determinants (whether form, colour or movement shaped the response) and its content (human, animal, object and so on).
4. For interpretation, the examiner reads the pattern of these codes together, for example a large number of whole-blot responses, or many colour-determined responses, and relates it to the person's emotional life and ways of thinking.
5. The examiner makes a fine judgment to place each response in a meaningful context, a task that requires extensive training.
6. Computer techniques have also been developed to support analysis of the responses.

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Developed by Morgan and Murray, the TAT is a little more structured than the Rorschach.

It consists of 30 black-and-white picture cards and one blank card, with each card depicting one or more people in a variety of situations; some cards are used with adult men or women, others with boys or girls, and some in combination.

Twenty cards are considered appropriate for a subject, although fewer cards, even five, have also been used successfully.

1. Appropriate cards are selected for the subject's age and sex.
2. The cards are presented to the subject one at a time.
3. The subject is asked to tell a story describing what led up to the situation shown, what is happening at the moment, what will happen in the future, and what the characters are feeling and thinking.
4. For scoring, the story is analysed for its hero (the character with whom the subject seems to identify), the needs of the characters, the press or pressures coming from the environment, and the themes that run through the story.
5. For interpretation, the examiner reads recurring needs and themes across several stories as clues to the subject's own motives, conflicts and view of relationships.
6. The story is scored and interpreted using a standard procedure, available in modified form for children and for the aged, with an Indian adaptation by Uma Chaudhury also available.

Although projective techniques help in understanding unconscious motives and deep-rooted conflicts, their scoring and interpretation are often lengthy and subjective, and there are problems with the reliability of scoring and the validity of interpretation; even so, practitioners have found them useful.

How is behavioural analysis used to assess personality?

Behavioural analysis uses observation of a person's actual behaviour as its basis, drawing on data from several procedures.

Interview involves talking to the person and asking specific questions; it may be unstructured (the interviewer forms an impression through open questioning) or structured (specific, standardised questions, often used for objective comparison, sometimes with rating scales).

Observation of behaviour is a sophisticated procedure requiring careful training of the observer and detailed guidelines for analysing behaviour; for example, a clinical psychologist may observe a client's interaction with family members and visitors to gain insight into the client's personality.

Both interview and observation require demanding professional training, require a mature psychologist to obtain valid data, and may be contaminated because the mere presence of an observer can influence the behaviour of the person observed.

Nomination is used for peer assessment among people who have interacted for a long time and know each other well; each person is asked to choose one or more group members with whom s/he would like to work, study or play, sometimes also giving the reason for the choice.

This technique is found to be highly dependable, although it may be affected by personal biases.

Behavioural ratings are taken from people who know the person being assessed intimately, placing individuals into categories in terms of behavioural qualities; traits must be clearly defined with behavioural anchors, since vague numbers or adjectives confuse raters.

Ratings suffer from the halo effect (a single favourable or unfavourable trait colouring the rater's overall judgment) and from a tendency towards either a middle category bias or an extreme response bias.

Situational tests, most commonly the situational stress test, show how a person behaves under stress: the person is asked to perform a given task with others instructed to be non-cooperative and interfering, involving a kind of role play, with a verbal report also obtained afterwards.

How do the major approaches to personality differ?

Each approach to personality rests on a different model of human behaviour and throws light on some, but not all, aspects of personality.

Type and trait approaches both describe personality through categories or dimensions derived from behaviour, but a type places a person wholly within one broad pattern, while a trait rates a person along a continuous dimension such as shyness or friendliness.

The psychodynamic approach looks inward, to unconscious conflict; the behavioural approach looks outward, to learned responses to the environment; and the humanistic approach looks at the person's own subjective view of self.

No single approach explains every aspect of personality, which is why a complete study of personality draws on several of them together.

Going beyond the syllabus

The concept of self, which underlies several of these theories, itself has personal, social and cultural aspects. A distinction can be drawn between the personal self, concerned with personal freedom, personal responsibility and personal achievement, and the social self, which emphasises cooperation, unity, affiliation and sharing with others.

Self-esteem, the value judgment a person makes of her/his own worth, develops in distinct areas such as academic, social and physical/athletic competence, with children typically showing formed self-esteem in these areas by around six to seven years of age; children with high self-esteem across these areas tend to perform better and are better liked by peers, while low self-esteem in all areas is often linked with anxiety and antisocial behaviour.

Self-efficacy, a person's belief in her/his own ability to control life outcomes rather than attribute them to luck or fate, can be developed through positive models during childhood and allows people to select, influence and shape the circumstances of their own lives.

Self-regulation, the ability to organise and monitor one's own behaviour, is supported by techniques such as observation of one's own behaviour, self-instruction and self-reinforcement (for example, rewarding oneself with a pleasant outcome after doing well in an examination); these help explain how a stable personality is maintained day to day, even though self and personality are studied as somewhat separate topics within the formal theories covered above.

Glossary

• Personality — the characteristic, relatively stable ways in which a person responds to individuals and situations across time.
• Temperament — a biologically based characteristic way of reacting.
• Trait — a stable, persistent and specific way of behaving on which individuals differ.
• Self-concept — the way a person perceives her/himself and the ideas held about her/his own competencies and attributes.
• Id — the unconscious source of instinctual energy, working on the pleasure principle.
• Ego — the part of personality that seeks to satisfy instinctual needs in accordance with reality.
• Superego — the moral branch of mental functioning, internalising parental authority.
• Libido — the instinctual life force that energises the id.
• Fixation — arrested development at an earlier psychosexual stage due to unresolved conflict.
• Regression — a return to behaviour typical of an earlier, less mature stage of development.
• Self-actualisation — the state of having reached one's own fullest potential.
• Unconditional positive regard — acceptance of a person without conditions attached, held to be necessary for healthy self-concept.
• Self-efficacy — a person's belief that s/he has the ability required by a particular situation.
• Factor analysis — a statistical technique used to identify common underlying trait structures from many descriptive items.
• Projective technique — an indirect assessment method using unstructured stimuli onto which a person projects unconscious feelings and needs.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: The id, ego and superego are physical parts of the brain. Correct: Freud described them as concepts, not real physical structures; they are forces inferred from behaviour.
• Misconception: Type-A personality is the same as being hardworking. Correct: Type-A specifically combines high motivation with impatience, time pressure and difficulty relaxing, and is linked to greater risk of hypertension and coronary heart disease.
• Misconception: A trait and a type are the same idea. Correct: A type places a person within one broad category; a trait rates a person along a continuous dimension such as shyness.
• Misconception: The Oedipus and Electra complexes are only about love for a parent. Correct: They also involve hostility towards the same-sex parent and resolution through identification with that parent.
• Misconception: Unconditional positive regard means approving of every single behaviour a person shows. Correct: It means accepting the person as worthwhile without conditions, which enhances self-concept and self-esteem.
• Misconception: Projective tests are scored exactly like self-report inventories. Correct: Projective tests use unstructured stimuli, and their scoring and interpretation are lengthy, often subjective, and require specialised training.
• Misconception: The Rorschach and the TAT use the same kind of cards. Correct: The Rorschach uses ten symmetrical inkblots, while the TAT uses 30 picture cards depicting people in situations, plus one blank card.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. Which one of the following best illustrates the term temperament? [1 mark]

1. (a) A student checks the timetable every night before sleeping.
2. (b) A student believes she is better at debating than at mathematics.
3. (c) A student has been calm and easy-going since early childhood, rarely getting upset even in stressful situations.
4. (d) A student strongly believes in honesty and refuses to cheat even when others do.
5. Answer: (c). Temperament is a biologically based characteristic way of reacting, and a stable calm style present since early childhood fits it; (a) is a habit, (b) is self-concept and (d) is a value.

Q2. Define the term self-concept. [2 marks]

1. Self-concept is the way a person perceives herself/himself.
2. It includes the ideas a person holds about her/his own competencies and attributes, and may be positive or negative and vary across areas of life.

Q3. Distinguish between the id and the superego. [4 marks]

1. The id is the source of a person's instinctual energy, while the superego is the moral branch of mental functioning.
2. The id works on the pleasure principle, seeking immediate gratification of primitive needs, sexual desires and aggressive impulses, while the superego judges whether gratification is ethical.
3. The id does not care for moral values, society or other individuals, while the superego controls the id by internalising parental authority through socialisation.
4. Both are concepts rather than physical structures, and the ego mediates between them and reality.

Q4. Explain how the Rorschach Inkblot Test is administered. [4 marks]

1. The test consists of ten inkblots, five in black and white, two with some red ink and three in pastel colours, each printed symmetrically on a white card.
2. The cards are administered individually, one at a time.
3. In the performance proper phase, the subject is asked to say what s/he sees in each card.
4. In the inquiry phase, a detailed report of each response is prepared by asking where, how and on what basis the response was made, and the responses are then scored and interpreted by a trained examiner.

Q5. Explain how Karen Horney's theory accounts for the development of basic anxiety and basic hostility. [4 marks]

1. Horney held that psychological disorders are caused by disturbed interpersonal relationships during childhood.
2. When parents' behaviour towards a child is indifferent, discouraging and erratic, the child feels insecure, and this feeling is called basic anxiety.
3. Deep resentment towards the parents, called basic hostility, arises out of this anxiety.
4. Excessive dominance or indifference, or too much or too little approval, generates feelings of isolation and helplessness that interfere with healthy development.

Q6. Explain how the Thematic Apperception Test is administered, scored and interpreted. [7 marks]

1. The TAT was developed by Morgan and Murray and is a little more structured than the Inkblot test.
2. It consists of 30 black and white picture cards and one blank card, each picture showing one or more people in a variety of situations.
3. Cards are selected for the subject's age and sex; twenty cards are considered appropriate, though fewer, even five, have been used successfully.
4. The cards are presented one at a time, and the subject is asked to tell a story describing what led up to the situation, what is happening at the moment, what will happen in the future, and what the characters are feeling and thinking.
5. For scoring, a standard procedure is used, and the story is analysed for its hero, the needs of the characters, the press of the environment and the themes that run through it.
6. For interpretation, the examiner reads recurring needs and themes across the stories as clues to the subject's unconscious motives, conflicts and view of relationships.
7. The test has been modified for children and for the aged, and an Indian adaptation by Uma Chaudhury is also available; interpretation requires sophisticated skills and specialised training.

Q7. Evaluate the humanistic approach to personality, using the ideas of Rogers and Maslow. [7 marks]

1. Rogers proposed the idea of the fully functioning person and held that fulfilment is the motivating force for personality development.
2. He held that behaviour is goal-directed and worthwhile, and that people, being innately good, will almost always choose adaptive, self-actualising behaviour.
3. Rogers centred his theory on the self: when the real self and the ideal self are congruent a person is generally happy, while a discrepancy between them results in unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
4. He held that an atmosphere of unconditional positive regard enhances self-concept, and his client-centred therapy attempts to create this condition.
5. Maslow described self-actualisation as the state of having reached one's own fullest potential, and arranged needs in a five-level hierarchy from physiological needs up to self-actualisation.
6. He held that concern only with survival needs reduces a person to the level of animals, and that the real journey of human life begins with the pursuit of esteem and self-actualisation needs.
7. Evaluation: the approach offers an optimistic and positive view of human beings, but its assumptions about innate goodness and self-actualisation are difficult to test scientifically, so it is weaker as an empirical account than as a description of healthy personality.

Q8. A student says that she feels she is never good enough for her parents, who praise her only when she tops her class. Using Rogers' terms, identify the attitude of the parents and explain its likely effect on her self-concept. [4 marks]

1. The parents are showing conditional positive regard, because their approval is given only when she meets a condition they have set.
2. Rogers held that when social conditions are positive, self-concept and self-esteem are high, but when the conditions are negative, self-concept and self-esteem are low.
3. Under conditional positive regard the student learns to value herself only when she meets the condition, so her real self and ideal self move apart and she becomes incongruent.
4. Rogers held that an atmosphere of unconditional positive regard, accepting her without conditions, is needed to enhance her self-concept.

Key takeaways

• Personality is the relatively stable, unique way a person responds to individuals and situations, with both physical and psychological components.
• Temperament, trait, disposition, character, habit and values are related but distinct terms, each with its own defining feature.
• Type theories (Hippocrates' four humours, Sheldon's somatotypes, Friedman's Type A and B) place people in broad categories, but are too simplistic for predicting behaviour.
• Freud's psychoanalytic theory explains personality through conscious, preconscious and unconscious levels, and through id, ego and superego, developing across five psychosexual stages.
• Post-Freudians such as Horney and Erikson kept the emphasis on early experience but gave more weight to social relationships and conscious ego processes.
• Rogers' humanistic theory centres on congruence between real self and ideal self, supported by unconditional positive regard; Maslow centres on a five-level hierarchy of needs leading to self-actualisation and peak experiences.
• Allport's cardinal, central and secondary traits, Cattell's source and surface traits, and the five-factor model each describe personality through stable, measurable dimensions.
• Bandura's social cognitive theory adds self-efficacy and self-reinforcement to observational learning as explanations of personality.
• Personality is assessed through self-report inventories such as the MMPI, projective techniques such as the Rorschach and TAT, and behavioural analysis including interview, observation, nomination, ratings and situational tests.

Test yourself

Which humour was believed to dominate the sanguine type, and what temperament went with it?

Blood was believed to dominate the sanguine type, whose temperament was cheerful, lively, hopeful and sociable.

What is penis envy in Freud's theory?

Penis envy is the girl's sense of envy at not having a penis, which Freud held helps turn her towards her father and later towards identification with her mother.

Name Horney's three coping styles for dealing with basic anxiety.

They are compliance (moving towards people), aggression (moving against people) and withdrawal (moving away from people).

What is conditional positive regard in Rogers' theory?

It is the situation in which love, approval or acceptance is given only when the person meets conditions set by others, which distorts the self-concept.

What is a peak experience in Maslow's theory?

A peak experience is a moment of intense joy, wonder and wholeness in which a person feels fully alive and at one with the world, often reported by self-actualising people.

What is the pleasure principle, and which part of Freud's structure of personality works on it?

The pleasure principle means seeking pleasure and avoiding pain; the id works on this principle, demanding immediate gratification of primitive needs and impulses.

What distinguishes the inquiry phase from the performance proper phase in the Rorschach Inkblot Test?

In performance proper, the subject simply says what s/he sees in each card; in the inquiry phase, the subject explains where, how and on what basis each response was made.

What is the halo effect in behavioural ratings?

The halo effect is a rater's tendency to let a single favourable or unfavourable trait of a person colour the rater's overall judgment of that person's other traits.