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APSS5065 Advanced Personality and Individual Differences Course Notes

Textbook:
Kelland, M. (2017). Personality Theory in a Cultural Context. Minneapolis, MN:
OpenStax CNX. Available at https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/formats/880
https://app.perusall.com/courses/apss5065_20242_a-advanced-studies-in-personality-
and-individual-differences/_/dashboard/startup
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Contents
Week 1: Psychology of Personality.........................................................................................1
Week 2: Psychodynamic approach to personality development..........................................6

Week 1: Psychology of Personality

1. Why do we study personality
i. MBTI types of a glance
2. What is personality?
a. The word “personality” originates from the Latin persona, which means
mask. In the theatre of the ancient Latin-speaking world, the mask was not
used as a plot device to disguise a character's identity but rather was a
convention employed to represent or typify/personify that character.
(dynamic)
b. “is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical
systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment”
c. – “Personality is a dynamic organization inside the person, of psychophysical
systems that create the person’s characteristics pattern of behaviours,
thoughts, and feelings”
d. – “Personality is the distinctive pattern of long-lasting psychological and
behavioural characteristics by which someone can be compared to others.”
e. Hollander (1971) – “the sum total of an individual’s characteristics which
make him unique.” (personality as a comparative/ relative term)
i. traits = unique characteristics that distinguish to other ppl.
ii. personality = is the cornerstone to predicting behaviors./ social pathic
personality ?!
f. Carl Rogers: personality is self, an organized, permanent, subjectively
perceived entity which is at the very heart of all our experiences.
g. Geoge Kelly: personality is the individual ‘s unique way of “making sense”
our of life experiences.
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h. Raymond Cattell: personality is core structure of personality comprised of

sixteen source traits.
i. Albert Bandura: personality is a complex pattern in which person, behaviour,
and situation continually influence each other.
j. Erik Erikson: personality is life proceeds in terms of a series of psychosocial
crises, with personality a function of their outcome.
k. grand unifying personality
l. personality is …
i. a discipline that emphasizes the importance of inviduality or
distinctiveness
ii. conceputalised as some kind of hypothetical structure or organization
iii. stresses on life history or developmental perspective – evolving
process
iv. a tenet of characteristics of the person that account for consistent
pattern of behaviour – enduring and stable over time and across
settings.
m. approaches to personality: nomothetic and idiographic
i. there are 2 major approaches to study personality: the nomothetic and
idiographic approaches.
1. Nomothetic psychology – seeks general laws that can be
applied to many diff ppl, such as the principle of self-
actualisation, or the trait of extraversion.
2. idiographic psychology – is an attempt to understand the
unique aspects of a particular individual.
3. Human nature in general  individual and group diff.
4. youtube!!!
3. Historical stages in personality study
a. personality study is one of several sections into which psychology is sub-
divided.
b. Cattel (2008) suggests that the systematizing of knowledge about personality
has fallen broadly into 3 historical phases:
i. the literary and philosophical phase
1. personal insights and conventional belief (e.g., works of
novelists and playwright)
2. contains insights which could still surpass in refinement
those depended upon by many psychiatrists or
experimental psychologist today
3. offers no objective way of sorting out the truth.
ii. the Proto-clinical phase-stages of organized observation and
theorizing
1. grew up through attempts of medicine to cope with
abnormal, sick behaviors.
2. began with study of insane and neurotic
3. e.g., the works of Freud, Jung, Adler, etc.
4. 2 shortcomings of the clinical phase:
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a. develop theory of “normal” out of observations on

abnormal ppl. special disease processes describe
normal functioning.
b. it did not use quantitative methods. descriptions of
single case failed to agree with that by others. “Post-
diction” rather than “prediction”.
iii. the quantitative and experimental phase
1. started before the turn of this century
2. science was viewed as starting with empirical observation
and then proceeding to the development of theory.
3. science assumes determinism and seek general laws.
a. determination - belief that everything that occurs
does so because of known and knowledge causes, and
that if these causes were known in advance, an event
could be predicted with complete accuracy. \
4. scientist accept a general framework within which they
perform their research-paradigm.
a. paradigm – a viewpoint shared by many scientists
while exploring the subject matter of their science.
Determine the nature of problem and methodology
to study the problem.
c. Personality theories
i. what do theories do? explain and predict
ii. components of a personality theories?
1. structure concepts
2. process aspects
3. developmental concepts/ growth
4. psychological health
5. psychopathology
6. intervention
d. 8 major personality theories:
1. Psychodynamic theories
2. Neo-analytic theories
3. Behaviorist personality theories
4. cognitive personality theories
5. Trait personality theories
6. humanistic and existential personality theories
7. person-situation personality theories
8. ? youtube!!!p.19
b. scientific inquiry of personality:
1. paradigm – model/ concept of the world that is shared by the
members of a community that governs their activities.
2. scientific statements – are statements based on empirical
observations arising from a paradigms.
3. empirical observation – objective (e.g., self-report questionnaires)
VS subjective data
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4. consensual validation – repeated observations of the same

phenomena under specific conditions.
5. generalization – a conclusion that sth is true about many/ all the
members of certain class.
4. scientific inquiry of personality
a. definitions VS operational definition (specifies which behaviours are included
in the concept. (e.g., critical thinking etc.); use scales (e.g., grit scale- I wont
cry when I break my arms…)
b. scientific construct
i. imaginary/ hypothetical;
ii. to explain what we observe. (e.g., IQ, traits, etc.)
iii. intangible, invisible.
5. viewpoints & evaluations of personality theories
a. verifiability – based on empirical observations? does it specify how they can
be confirmed and refuted?
b. compatibility – does it build on/ consistent with other existing/ well-
established information?
c. predictive power – how well it can predict/ anticipate phenomena? how well
it can be in generating new ideas? (how well the personality theories can be
applicable to wider context?)
d. simplicity – can it adequately account for the complexity of events in the
simplest way (economical way)?
e. usefulness – does it work for you? can it assist you in living in the everyday
world?
6. applications of personality
a. assessment
i. reliability - consistency over time/ across settings.
ii. objectivity – e.g., setting guidelines of observations, rubrics, etc.
iii. validity – measure what it is supposed to measure.
b. observations
c. psychometric test
d. projective test
e. measuring personality (YouTube, phone pics!!!)
f. research
i. clinical approach
ii. psychometric approach
1. psychometrics
1. correlations (e.g., factor analysis) - In the 1950’s and 60’s,
Raymond Cattell used the procedure of factor analysis –
correlating many variables to identify closely related clusters of
variables – to reduce a list of thousands of personality traits to
just 16 basic dimensions. He also developed a test called the 16
PF to measure where a person falls along these16 personality
dimensions.
iii. experimental approach – powerful to draw causal relationship, but it
has limitations too…
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g. Psychotherapy and its 3 major motives:

i. scholarly – consider therapy as a way to understand the self and
human nature.
ii. ethical – helping individuals to change, grow, and improve their
quality of life.
iii. curative – eliminating troublesome symptoms/ replacing problematic
behaviors with more appropriate behaviors.
h. roles of personality psychologists:
i. YouTube!!!
ii. Social psychology VS personality psychology: not in dichotomy, but
they are mixing with each other now.
iii. questions for personality psychology: units of personality? how
personality changes over time?
7. personality & spectra/ dilemmas in human nature
Freedom Determinism
- what degree of internal freedom, in any, they actually possess in directing
and controlling their thoughts, feelings, and actions?
- how valid and to what extent is the subjective sense of freedom
experienced by ppl in decision making?
- to what extent is their behaviour actually determined by factors that are
partially/ totally outside the sphere of their conscious recognition?
Rationality Irrationality
-to what degree our reasoning powers are capable of influencing our
everyday behaviour?
-are human primarily rational begins who direct their behaviour through
reason, or are they mainly directed by irrational forces?
Holism Elementalism
-holistic: explained only by studying -elementalistic: explained only by
persons as integrated totalities. investigating each specific,
fundamental aspect of it
independently of the rest.
Constitutionalism Environmentalism
-to what degree is the result of -to what degree is the result of the
genetic make-up? environment?
-“Nature-nurture” debate
-interactionist position bw nature & nurture
Changeability/ Instability Unchangeability/ Stability
-to what degree individual is seen as capable of fundamental change
throughout life?
-can personality change over time? (yes, but when, where, and how?)
-how much can be changed?
- concepts of developmental stages-life span
- forces that produce behaviour change
- how people may be discontinuous with their past
- ongoing personal growth
Subjectively Objectively
- highly personal, subjective world of experience that major influence upon
their behavior?
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- are behaviors influenced primarily by external and objective factors?

Proactivity Reactivity
- locus of causality (locus of control)
- sources of human actions?
- we generate internally? or we react to external stimulation?
Homeostasis Heterostasis
- are individuals motivated - is there basic motivation directed
primarily/ exclusively to reduce toward growth, stimulus seeking,
tensions and maintain an internal and self-actualization? (evolution of
state of equilibrium. (strike a certain our cells to be a better person?)
balance at the expense…)
Knowability Unknowability
a. recap
i. What is personality? Personality is the distinctive pattern of long-
lasting psychological and behavioural characteristics by which
someone can be compared to others
ii. Approaches to Personality: The Nomothetic approach focus on
individual differences, while the Idiographic approach focus on
anecdotal introspection and growth
iii. Historical Stages in Personality Study: 1) Literary & philosophical
phase; 2) Proto-clinical phase; 3) Quantitative & experimental phase
iv. Viewpoints & Evaluations of Personality Theories: Philosophical &
Scientific
v. Applications of Personality: Assessment of individual differences; self-
understanding & growth; therapy
vi. Personality & Spectra / Dilemmas in Human Nature: Personality is a
dynamic interplay between person & environment (not static)

Week 2: Psychodynamic approach to personality development

1. psychoanalysis – origin & fundamental assumptions
a. psychoanalysis began w/ the case history of Joseph Breuer’s patient, Anna
O.
b. Anna O. experienced conversion disorder (called hysteria at the time).
c. Breuer used hypnosis & “talking method”.
d. after talking about her father’s illness & death, Anna O’s symptoms were
relieved.
e. (psychoanalysis is a new treatment for neurosis)
f. Sigmund Freud proposed 3 functions of psychoanalysis:
i. a theory of personality & psychopathology
ii. a technique for investigating an individual’s unconscious thoughts
& feelings.
iii. a method of therapy for personality disturbances.
g. assumptions of psychoanalytic theory:
i. human mind is like a “hydraulic” system, operating by internal
pressure (e.g., drives, pleasures…)
ii. personality change occurs w/ redirection of a person‘s psychic
energy.
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iii. primacy of the unconscious – psychodynamic theories contend that

the majority of psychological processes take place outside conscious
awareness – they are unconscious.
iv. Critical Importance of Early Experiences - According to the
psychodynamic model, early experiences (related to our father &
mother, childhood…)—including those occurring during the first
weeks/months of life, would influence our personality processes in
years and decades to come (Blatt & Levy, 2003; McWilliams, 2009).
v. Psychic Causality (a deterministic view in the development in
personality)- Psychic Causality posits that nothing in mental life
happens by chance — there is no such thing as a random thought,
feeling, motive, or behavior. Psychoanalysts would believe it firmly,
while other theorists tend to agree that thoughts, motives, emotional
responses, and expressed behaviors do not arise randomly, but always
stem from some combination of identifiable biological and
psychological processes (Elliott, 2002; Robinson & Gordon, 2011).
h. the origins of psychoanalysis:
i. Freud used the “talking method” to assit his patients in rmbing past
traumatic events.
ii. unconscious processes
1. *resistance: force that prevents the patient from becoming
aware of events & keeps them in the unconscious.
2. *repression: p.6
iii. an emotion…
iv. primary procedures: p.7
1. free association: helps patients recover repressed ideas 
a. Using a recorder, assume a relaxed position and then try
to speak into the recorder whatever thoughts come to
mind for a period of one half-hour or more
b. After a period of time, play the tape back and reflect on
what you have said
c. Look for patterns and themes
d. You may discover that you have thoughts and impulses
that you did not realize before
2. interpretation of dreams and slips of tongue: manifest
meaning, latent meaning.
2. dynamics and development of personality p.9
a. the importance of sexuality:
i. p.10
ii. Drives: p.11
1. Eros: life impulses/ drives
2. Thanatos: death impulses/ drives
3. libido: emotional & psychic energy derived from the biological
drive/ sexuality
a. impetus
b. source
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c. aim
d. object
iii. p.13
b. psychosexual stage model
i. the psychosexual stages of development  libido invests itself in
various erogenous zones as we age
ii. each successive stage = a more mature mode of obtaining sexual
gratification p.14-18
Stages Yo
Oral 1 -Main sources of pleasure and tension
reduction are the mouth, lips, and tongue
-Key conflict is weaning—withdrawing
from the breast or bottle
anal 1-3 -Child obtains pleasure from first expelling
feces and then, during toilet training, from
retaining feces
-Many conflicts arise around the child’s
ability to achieve self-control
Phallic 3-6 Distinguish b/w male and female
Oedipal and electra conflicts
Oedipus complex (in boys)
electra complex (in girls)

➢Child discovers he has (or that she

doesn’t have) a penis
➢Sexual desire directed toward the parent
of opposite sex
➢Produces Oedipal and Electra conflicts—
unconscious wish to have opposite-sex
parent all to self by eliminating the same-
sex parent
➢Upon completion of the phallic stage,
personality is more or less determined
➢The first few years of life is regarded as
the most determining for later personality
Latency 7-puberty ➢Little psychological development occurs
➢Focus of child is on learning skills and
abilities necessary to succeed as adult
➢Culturally accepted levels of activities
➢Prefer company of same-sex peers

Genital Puberty- ❖Libido is focused on the genitals, but not

adulthood in manner of self-manipulation associated
with the phallic stage
❖Not accompanied by specific conflict;
reach only if conflicts are resolved at
previous stages
❖Mature personality – “to love and to
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work”
❖Object of sexual drive → opposite-sex
members
iii. effects of the psychosexual stages:
1. Lingering effects revealed in adult traits and disorders
2. If libido is frustrated or overindulged during a stage, it can
become fixated at the particular stage
3. Fixation creates excessive needs characteristic of an earlier
stage - if a child stuck at a specific stage he or she exhibits a
less mature approach to obtaining sexual gratification. (e.g.,
oral fixation)
c. the structure of personality (Iceberg metaphor)
i. Id (unconscious)- genetic inheritance, reflexes,
instincts, and drives that motivate us; operates
according to the pleasure principle using
primary processes
1. A mass of instinctive drives that
demands immediate satisfaction
2. The id is responsible for our basic
drives such as food, sex, aggressive
impulses, pees, and poos.
3. Pleasure principle - It is amoral &
egocentric, for seeking pleasure &
avoiding pain
4. It is primary sexual; illogical; without a sense of time; infantile
in its emotional development
5. Will not take “no” for an answer (so that we need sth to
regulate b/w Id and social norms/ moral standards…)
ii. Ego (conscious/subconscious)- develops in order to realistically meet
the wishes of the id; follows the reality principle using secondary
processes
1. Mediates among the id, the super-ego and the external world
2. Reality principle – Used in dealing with the id and the
superego, allowing them to express their desires, drives and
morals in realistic and socially appropriate ways.
3. Id impulses are not appropriate for civilized society, so society
presses us to modify the pleasure principle in favor of the
reality principle; that is, the requirements of the external world.
iii. Superego (subconscious/conscious)- consists of conscience and ego-
ideal; represents internalized values, ideals, and moral standards
1. To function effectively in society—must acquire a system of
values, norms, and ethics that are reasonably compatible with
the society
2. Last component to be developed
3. Through process of socialization; interaction with formative
figures; collective conscience
4. Conscience – acquired thru the use of punishment
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5. Ego Ideals – rewarding aspect of the superego

iv. conscious, preconscious, unconscious
d. topological model – levels of consciousness
i. assumes that human mind consists of 3 parts: p.22
1. conscious
2. preconscious
3. unconscious
e. overall for the structure of personality:
i. p.23
ii. Anxiety
1. Reality anxiety: fear of a real danger in the external world
2. Neurotic anxiety: fear that one’s inner impulses cannot be
controlled
3. Moral anxiety: fear of the retributions of one’s own conscience
4. To deal with anxiety, the ego develops defense mechanisms.
3. defense mechanism p.26
a. Employed by Ego to protect individual from overwhelming anxiety;
b. Feelings of guilt, embarrassment and shame often accompany the feeling of
anxiety
c. Two features:
i. Occur on an unconscious level
ii. Deny or distort reality
d. Not necessary maladaptive; with survival value

e.
f. repression- a thought, idea, or wish is dismissed from consciousness (memory
loss, memory repressed)
g. denial – deny the existence of a traumatic/ otherwise socially unacceptable
fact.
h. projection – what is internal and unacceptable is projected out and seen as
external
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i. rx formation – the individual defends against the expression of an

unacceptable impulse by only recognizing and expressing its opposite
j. regression – moves backward in time to a stage that was less anxious and had
fewer responsibilities
k. rationalization – is a more complex and mature mechanism; not just simply
dney that a thought or action occurred; recognize the existence of an action but
distort its underlying motive; make the behaviour more acceptable and
resoanlble
l. identification – reduce anxiety by modeling our behavoiur on that of someone
else
m. displacement – shift impulse onto another substitute object, when the object
that would satisfy the impulse is unavailable.
n. sublimination – the original object of gratification is replaced by a higher
goal that is far removed from a direct expression of the impulse.
4. psychoanalysis
a. pleasure principle
b. reality principle
5. psychoanalytic techniques
a. free association p.33
i. in relaxed atmosphere
ii. client reports immediately w/o censoring any feelings/ thoughts
iii. patent says whatever come to mind
iv. resistance: anything that works agains t the progress of therapy and
prevent sthe production of unsciusos material.
v. catharsis
vi. interpretation
b. parapraxis
i. Freudian slip
ii. psychological error in speaking/ writing
iii. evidence …p.34
c. dream analysis
i. Dreamwork: processes that distort latent dream content & transform it
into manifest dream content
ii. manifest content: the images that make up the dream experience as it
recalled
iii. latent content: the underlying sources of symbolic dream images
iv. unconscious can manifest itself symbolically in a dream
v. …p.35
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d. analytic process
e. transference
i.
f. countertransference
6. individual psychology & Adler p.39-40, 42 (how we wish we would be…)
a. a person-society theory
b. development of…
c. human goals:
i. make new friends
ii. establish intimacy
iii. contribute to society
d. fictional finalism p.43
i.
e. creative self p.44
i.
f. social interest p.45-46
i.
7. inferiority feelings & compensations p.46-48
a. physical inferiority
b. psychological inferiority
8. faulty parent-child relationships
9. striving for superiority
10. complexes
a. inferiority complex
b. superiority complex
i. overcompensation
11. style of life (SoL) & subsequent personality types p.54
a. encompasses the unique pattern of traits, behaviours, and habits which
defines…
b. social interest x degree of activity
c. type:
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i. ruling type
ii. getting type
iii. avoiding type
iv. socially useful type
d. SoL can be adaptive/ mistaken!
12. birth order & personality p.57
a. birth order & family constellation
b. sibling relationships & birth order