Self And Personality (Notes)

 

2. SELF AND PERSONALITY

 

Facts that matter

 

·         Self refers to the totality of an individual’s conscious experiences, ideas thoughts and feelings with regard to herself or himself.

·         The study of self and personality help us to understand ourselves as well as others.

·         The structure of self can be understood in terms of identity of the intended and the development of personal and social self.

·         Personal identity refers to those attributes of a person that make him/her different from others.

·         Social identity refers to those aspects of a person that link him/her to a social or cultural group or are derived from it.

·         Self refers to the totality of an individual’s conscious experiences, ideas, thoughts and feelings with regard to himself or herself.

 

Subject	Object
Who does something (actor).	Which gets affected (consequence).
Self actively engages in the process of knowing itself.	Self gets observed and comes to be known.

 

Kinds of Self

(i) Formed as a result of the interaction of the biological self with the physical and socio-cultural environment.

(ii) Biological self-developed as a result of our biological needs.

 

Personal Self	Social/Familial/Relational Self
Primarily concerned with oneself.	Emerges in relation with others.
Emphasis comes to be laid on those aspects of life that relate only to the concern the person, such as personal freedom, personal responsibility, personal achievement, or personal comforts.	Emphasises such aspects of life as cooperation, unity, affiliation, support or sharing. This self-value and social relationship.

 

·            Self-concept is the way perceive ourselves and the ideas we hold about our competencies and attributes. A person's self-concept can be found out by asking the person about himself/herself.

 

·            Self-esteem is the value judgment of a person about himself/herself.

1. Assessment present a variety of statements to a person, and ask him/her to indicate the extent to which those statements are true for him or her.

2. By 6 to 7 years, children have formed self-esteem in four areas-academic, social and physical/athletic competence, and physical appearance become more refined with age.

3. Overall self-esteem: It is the capacity to view oneself in terms of stable disposition and combine separate self-evaluations into a general psychological image of oneself.

4. Self-esteem has a strong relationship with our everyday behaviour. Children with low self-esteem in all areas often display anxiety, depression, and increasing anti-social behaviour.

5. Warm and positive parenting helps in development of high self-esteem among children- allows them to know they are accepted as competent and worthwhile.

 

·            Self-efficacy is the extent to which a person believes they themselves control their life outcomes or the outcomes are controlled by luck or fate or other situational factors.

1. A person who believes that he/she has the ability or behaviour required by a particular situation demonstrates high self-efficacy.

2. The notion of self-efficacy is based on Bandura’s social learning theory. He showed that children and adults learned behaviour by observing and imitating others.

3. People's expectations of achievement also determine the type of behaviour in which they would engage, as also the amount of risk they would undertake.

4. Strong sense of self-efficacy allows people to select, influence, and even construct the circumstances of their own life; also feel less fearful.

5. Society, parents and own positive experiences can help in the development of a strong sense of self-efficacy by presenting positive models during the formative years of children.

·               Self-regulation refers to the ability to organize and monitor one's own behaviour.

1. People who are able to change their behaviour according to the demands of the environment are high on self-monitoring.

2. Self-control is learning to delay or refer the gratification of needs.

3. Will-power is the ability to respond to situational pressure with resistance and control over ourselves.

4. Self-control plays a key role in the fulfilment of a long-term goal.

5. Indian culture tradition provides certain effective mechanisms (fasting in vrata or roza and non-attachment with worldly things) for developing self-control.

 

·         Techniques of self-control:

1. Observation of own behaviour: provides necessary information that may be used to change, modify or strengthen certain aspects of self.

2. Self-instruction: instructs ourselves to do something and behave the way we want to.

3. Self-reinforcement: rewards behaviours that have pleasant outcomes.

 

CULTURE AND SELF:

 

Indian	Western
Shifting nature of boundary between self and other (individual self and social self).	Boundary is relatively fixed.
Does not clear dichotomies.	Holds clear dichotomies between self and other, man and nature, subjective and objective.
Collectivistic culture: Self is generally not separated from one’s own group; rather both remain in a state of harmonious co-existence.	Individualistic Culture: Self and the group exist as two different entities with clearly defined boundaries; individual members of the group maintain their individuality.

 

CONCEPT OF PERSONALITY

 

·      Personality refers to unique and relatively stable qualities that characterized an individual’s behaviour across different situation over a period of time.

1. Derived from persona (Latin), the mask used by actors in Roman theatre for changing their facial make-up.

2. Once we are able to characterize someone's personality, we can predict how that person will probably behave in a variety of circumstances.

3. An understanding of personality allows us to deal with people in realistic and acceptable ways.

 

Features of Personality:

1. Personality has both physical and psychological components.

2. Its expression in terms of behaviour is fairly unique in a given individual.

3. Its main features do not easily change with time.

4. It is dynamic in the sense that some of its features may change due to internal or external situational demands; adaptive to situations.

 

APPROACHES TO STUDY PERSONALITY

 

Type Approach	Trait Approach	Interactional Approach
Examines certain broad patterns in the observed behavioural characteristics.	Focuses on the specific psychological attributes along which individuals tend to differ inconsistent and stable ways.	Situational characteristics play an important role in determining our behaviour.
Each pattern refers to one type in which individuals are placed in terms of the similarity of their characteristics with that pattern.	Traits along which individuals can be rated in terms of the degree of presence or absence of the trait.	External reward or threats available in a particular situation.

 

·         TYPE APPROACHES

 

1.         Hippocrates (Greek Physician)

(i) Proposed a typology of personality based on fluid or humour.

(ii) Classified people into four types (i.e., sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic and choleric); characterised by specific behavioural features.

 

2.         Charak Samhita (Treatise on Ayurveda)

(i) Classifies people into the categories of vata, pitta and kapha on the basis of three humoural elements called tridosha.

(ii) Each refers to a type of temperament, called prakriti (basic nature) of a person.

 

3.         Typology of personality based on the trigunas, i.e., sattva, rajas, and tamas.

- Sattva guna-cleanliness, truthfulness, dutifulness, detachment, discipline.

- Rajas guna-intensive activity, desire for sense gratification, dissatisfaction, envy, materialism.

- Tamas guna-anger, arrogance, depression, laziness, helplessness

All the three gunas are present in every person in different degrees-the dominance of any guna leads to a particular type of behaviour.

 

4.         Sheldon

Using body built and temperament as the main basis for classification:

(i) Endomorphic (fat, soft and round)-relaxed and sociable.

(ii) Mesomorphic (strong musculature, rectangular, strong body build)-energetic and courageous.

(iii) Ectomorphic (thin, long, fragile)-brainy, artistic and introverted.

- Limited use in predicting behaviour-simple and similar to stereotypes.

 

5.         Jung

Grouped people into two types, widely recognized.

(i) Introverts: People who prefer to be alone, tend to avoid others, withdraw themselves in the face of emotional conflicts, and are shy.

(ii) Extraverts: Sociable, outgoing, drawn to occupations that allow dealing directly with people, and react to stress by trying to lose themselves among people and social activity.

 

6.         Friedman and Roesenman

Tried to identify psycho-social risk factors and discovered types.

 

(i) Type-A (susceptible to hypertension and coronary heart disease): Highly motivated, impatience, feel short of time, be in a great hurry, and feel like being always burdened with work. Such people find it difficult to slow down and relax.

 

(ii) Type-B The absence of Type-A traits.

Moris continued this research and identified:

 

(iii) Type-C (prow to cancer): Co-operative, unassertive patient, suppress negative emotion, show compliance to authority.

 

(iv) Type-D (prone to depression).

Personality typologies are usually too simplistic as human behaviour is highly complex and variable. Assigning people to a particular personality type is difficult. People do not fit into such simple categorization schemes so neatly.

 

TRAIT APPROACHES

 

A trait is considered as a relatively enduring attribute or quality on which one individual differ another. They are:

Relatively Stable over Time

- Generally consistent across situations.

- Their strengths and combination vary across individuals leading to individual differences in personality.

 

1.         Allport’s Trait Theory (Gordon Allport)

(i) Individuals possess a number of traits-dynamic in nature and determine behaviour.

(ii) Analysed words people use to describe themselves-provided a basic for understanding human personality-and categorized them into-

- Cardinal Traits: highly generalized disposition, indicates the goal around which a person's entire life revolves, e.g., Hitler's Nazism.

- Central Traits: less pervasive in effect, but still quite generalized disposition. e.g., sincere.

- Secondary traits: least generalized characteristics of a person, e.g., likes mangoes.

(iii) The way an individual reacts to a situation depends on his/her traits.

(iv) People sharing the same traits might express them in different ways.

 

2.         Personality Factors (Raymond Cattell)

(i) Identified primary traits from descriptive adjectives found in language.

(ii) Applied factor analysis, a statistical technique to discover the common structure on which people differ from each other.

- Source or Primary Traits (16): stable, building blocks of personality- described in terms of opposing tendencies.

- Surface Traits: result out of the interaction of source traits.

(iii) Developed Sixteen Personality Factor (16PF) Questionnaire for the assessment of personality.

 

3.         Eysenck's Theory (H.J. Eysenck)

(i) Reduced personality into two broad dimensions which are biologically and genetically based and subsume a number of specific traits.

- Neuroticism (anxious, moody, touchy, restless) us. Emotional stability (calm, even tempered, reliable)-the degree to which people have control over their feelings.

- Extraversion (active, gregarious, impulsive, thrill seeking) vs. Introversion (passive, quiet, caution, reserved)-the degree to which people are socially outgoing or socially withdrawn.

(ii) Later proposed a third dimension, Psychoticism (hostile, egocentric, and antisocial) vs. Sociability, considered to interact with the other two dimensions.

(iii) Developed Eysenck Personality Questionnaires to study these dimensions of personality.

 

Five-Factor Model of Personality (Paul Costa and Robert McCrae)

Personality Trait	High	Low
Openness to Experience	Imaginative, curious, open to new ideas, interested in cultural pursuits.	Rigid.
Extraversion	Socially active, assertive, outgoing, talkative, fun- loving.	Shy.
Agreeableness	Helpful, co-operative, friendly, caring, nurturing.	Hostile, Self- centered
Neuroticism	Emotionally unstable, anxious, worried, fearful, distressed, irritable, hypertensive.	Well adjusted.
Conscientiousness	Achievement-oriented, dependable, responsible, prudent, hardworking, self-controlled.	Impulsive.

 

(iv) Useful in understanding the personality profile of people across cultures

(v) Consistent with the analysis of personality traits found in different languages and Methods

 

·         Psycho-dynamic Approach (Sigmund Freud)

 

A Levels of Consciousness

1. Conscious-thoughts, feelings and action of which people are aware.

2. Preconscious-mental activity which people may become aware only if they attend to it closely.

3. Unconscious-mental activity that people are aware of.

(i) A reservoir of instinctive or animal drives-stores all ideas and wishes that arise from sexual desires.

(ii) Cannot be expressed openly and therefore are repressed or concealed from conscious awareness.

(iii) Constant struggle to find a socially acceptable way to express unconscious awareness.

(iv) Unsuccessful resolution of conflicts results in abnormal behavior

 

Means to Approach the Unconscious

1. Free Association-a method in which a person is asked to openly share all the thoughts, feelings and ideas that come to his/her mind.

2. Dream Analysis.

3. Analysis of Errors-mispronunciations, forgetting.

Psycho-analysis is a therapeutic procedure, the basic goal which is to bring repressed unconscious material to consciousness, thereby helping people to live in a more self-aware and integrated manner.

 

B Structure of Personality

1. Freud gave an imaginary division of mind it believed in internal dynamics which can be inferred from the ways people behave.

2. Three competing forces-i.e. id, ego and superego influence behaviour relative strength of each structure determines a person's stability.

 

·         Id:

1. Source of a person's instinctual energy-deals with immediate gratification of primitive needs, sexual desires and aggressive impulses.

2. Works on the pleasure principle, which assumes that people seek pleasure and try to avoid pain.

3. Demanding, unrealistic and does not care for moral values, society, or other individuals.

4. Energised by instinctual forces, life (sexual) instinct (libido) and death instinct.

 

·         Ego:

1. Seeks to satisfy an individual's instinctual needs in accordance with reality.

2. Works on the reality principle, and directs the id towards more appropriate ways of behaving.

3. Patient and reasonable.

 

·         Superego:

1. Moral branch of mental functioning.

2. tells the id and ego whether gratification in a particular instance is ethical

3. Controls the id by internalizing the parental authority the process of socialization.

According to Freud personality is Biological determined. It is instinctive. Life instinct and death instinct determine behaviour.

·         Life instinct is dominant in human behaviour.

 

C Ego Defence Mechanisms

1. A defence mechanism is a way of reducing anxiety by distorting reality unconsciously.

2. It defends the ego against the awareness of the instinctual reality.

3. It is normal and adaptive; people who use mechanism are often unaware of doing so.

(i) Repression: Anxiety provoking behaviours or thoughts are totally dismissed by the unconscious.

(ii) Projection: People attributes their own traits to others.

(iii) Denial: A person totally refuses to accept reality.

(iv) Reaction Formation: A person defends against anxiety by adopting behaviours opposite to his/her true feelings.

(v) Rationalisation: A person tries to make unreasonable feelings or behaviour seem reasonable and acceptable.

 

D Stages of Personality/Psycho-sexual Development (Five Stage Theory of Personality)

1.     The core aspects of personality are established early, remain stable throughout life, and can be changed only with great difficulty.

2.     Problems encountered at any stage may arrest development, and have long-term effect on a person's life.

 

Stage	Age	Pleasure-seeking centre	Development
Oral	Infancy	Mouth (feeding, thumb sucking)	Basic feeling about the world are established.
Anal	2-3 years	Anus (experience pleasure in moving their bowels)	(i) Learns to respond to demands of society. Basis for conflict between the id (desire for (ii) Babyish pleasure) and the ego (demand for adult, controlled behaviour).
Phallic	4-5 years	Phallus	(i) Begin to realize the differences between males and females. (ii) Become aware of sexuality and the sexual relationship between their parents.
Latency	7-Puberty		(i) Grows physically, but sexual urges are relatively inactive. (ii) Energy is channeled into social or achievement related activities.
Genital	Puberty	Genitals	(i) Attains maturity in psycho-sexual development. (ii) Sexuality, fear and repressed feeling of earlier stages are once again exhibited. (iii) Learn to deal with members of the opposite sex in a socially and sexually mature way.

 

 

Oedipus Complex (Male)	Electra Complex (Female)
Love for mother, hostility towards the father, and   fear of punishment or castration by the father.	Attaches her love to the father and tries to symbolically marry him and raise a family.
Accepts his father's relationship with his mother and models his own behaviour after his father.	Identifies with her mother and copies her behaviour as a means of getting (or sharing in) her father's affection.

 

Resolution of Complex

1. Identification with same sex parent.

2. Giving up sexual feeling for sex parent.

Failure of a child to pass successfully through a stage leads to fixation to that stage. The child's development gets arrested at an earlier stage.

Regression occurs when a person's resolution of problems at any stage of development is less than adequate. People display behaviours typing of a less mature stage of development.

 

·         Post-Freudian Approach

 

Neo-analytic or Post-Freudian View

(i) Less prominent role to sexual and aggressive tendencies of the Id.

(ii) Expansion of the concept ego.

(iii) Emphasis on human qualities of creativity, competence, and problem solving.

 

1.         Carl Jung: Aims and Aspirations are the source of energy

(i) Saw human being as guided by aims and aspirations.

(ii) Analytical Psychology; personality consists of competing forces and structures within the individual (that must be balanced) rather than between the individual and the demand of society, or between the individual and reality.

(iii) Collective unconscious consisting of archetypes or primordial images; not individually acquired, but are inherited-found in myths, dreams and arts of all mankind.

(iv) The self-strive for unity and oneness; for achieving which, a person must become increasingly aware of the wisdom available in one's personal and collective unconscious, and must learn to live harmony with it.

 

2.         Karen Horney: Optimism

(i) Optimistic view of human life with emphasis on human growth and selfactualisation

(ii) Challenge to Freud's treatment of women as inferior-each sex has attributes to be admire by the other, and neither sex can be viewed as superior or inferior; countered that women were more likely to be affected by social and cultural factors than by biological factors.

(iii) Psychological disorders were caused by disturbed interpersonal relationship during childhood.                                                                       

(iv) When parents’s behaviour toward a child is indifferent, discouraging and erratic, the child feels insecure and a feeling called basic anxiety results-deep resentment toward parents or basic hostility occur due to this anxiety.   

              

3.         Alfred Adler: Lifestyle and Social Interest source of energy-attainment of personal goals,                                                               

(i) Individual Psychology: human behaviour is purposeful and goal directed,           

(ii) Each one of us has the capacity to choose and create,                              

(iii) Personal goals, goals that provide us with security and help us in overcoming the feelings of inadequacy, are the sources of our motivation.

(iv) Every individual suffers from the feeling of inadequacy and guilt, i.e., inferiority complex, which arise from childhood.

 

4.         Erich Fromm: The Human Concerns

(i) Social orientation viewed human beings as social beings who could be understood in terms of their relationship with others.

(ii) Character traits (personality) develop from our experiences with their individuals.

(iii) Psychological qualities such as growth from our experiences of potentials resulted from a desire for freedom. And striving for justice and truth.

(iv) People's dominant character traits in a given work as forces in shaping the social processes and the culture itself

 

5.         Erik Erikson: Search for Identity

(i) Rational, conscious ego processes in personality development.

(ii) Development is viewed as a lifelong process, and ego identity is granted a central place in this process.

(iii) Identity crisis at the adolescent age-young people must generate for themselves a central perspective and a direction that can give them a meaningful sense of unity and purpose.

 

·         Criticism to Psychodynamic Theories

1. The theories are largely based on case studies; they lack a rigorous scientific basis.

2. They use small and a typical individual as samples for advancing generalisations.

3. The concepts are not properly defined, and it is difficult to submit them to scientific testing.

4. Freud has used males as the prototype of all human personality development and overlooked female experiences and perspectives.

 

·         Behavioural Approach

1. Focus on learning of stimulus-response connection and their reinforcement.

2. Personality is the response of an individual as sample for advancing generalization.

3. The concepts are not properly defined, and it is difficult to submit them to scientific testing.

4. Freud has used males as the prototype of all human personality development and overlooked females experiences and perspective.

 

·         Cultural Approach

1. Considers personality as an adaptation of individuals or group to the demand of their ecology and culture.

2. A group's economic maintenance system plays a vital role in the origin of cultural and behavioural variations.

3. The climatic conditions, the nature of terrain of the habitat and the availability of food determine people's settlement patterns, social structures, division of labour, and other features such as child-rearing practices. Economic maintanence system.

4. These elements constitute a child's overall learning environment-skills, abilities, behavioural styles, and value priorities are viewed as strongly linked to these features.

 

·         Humanistic Approach

Carl Rogers

1. Fully functioning individual-fulfilment is the motivating force for personality development (people try to express their capabilities, potentials and talents to the fullest extent possible).

2. Assumptions about human behaviour:

(i) It is goal-oriented and worthwhile.

(ii) People (who are innately good) will almost always choose adaptive, self-actualising behaviour.

3. People are constantly engaged in the process of actualising their true self.

4. Ideal self is the self that a person would like to be-correspondence between ideal and real self = happiness, discrepancy = dissatisfaction.

5. People have tendency to maximize self-concept through self-actualisation.

6. Personality development is a continuous process.

7. Role of social influences in the development of self-concept-positive social conditions lead to a high self-concept and self-esteem, generally flexible and open to new experiences.

8. An atmosphere of unconditional positive regard must be created in order to ensure enhancement of people's self-concept.

9. Client-centered therapy that Rogers developed basically attempts to create this condition.

 

·         Abraham Maslow

1. Attainment of self-actualisation, a state in which people have reached their own fullest potential.

2. Optimistic and positive view of man who has the potentialities for love, joy and to do creative work.

3. Human beings are considered free to shape their lives and to self-actualisation.

4. Self-actualisation becomes possible by analysing the motivations that govern our life.

 

·         Characteristics of Healthy Person

1. Healthy become aware of themselves, their feelings, and their limits; accept themselves, and what they make of their own responsibility; have 'the courage to be'.

2. They experience the 'here-and-now'; are not trapped.                                   

3. They do not live in the past or dwell in the future through anxious expectation and distorted defences,   

                                                              

·         Assessment of Personality                                                     

A formal effort aimed at understanding personality of an individual is termed as personality assessment.                                                                      

Assessment refers to the procedures used to evaluate or differentiate people on the basis of certain characteristics.

The goal of assessment is to understand and predict behaviour with minimum error and maximum accuracy.

Besides promoting our understanding, assessment is also useful for diagnosis, training, placement, counselling, and other purposes.

 

 

Self-Report Measures                                         Projective Techniques
·	It was Allport who suggested that the best method to assess a person is by asking her/him about herself himself.	·	Direct methods of personality assessment cannot uncover the unconscious part of our behaviour.
·	Fairly structured measures, based on theory that require subjects to give verbal responses using some kind of rating scale.	·	Techniques based on assumption that a less structured or unstructured stimulus or situation will allow the individual to project her/his feelings, desires and needs on to that situation. These projections are interpreted by experts.
·	The method requires the subject to objectively report her/his own feeling with respect to various items. Responses are accepted at face value, scored in quantative terms and interpreted on basis of norms for the test.	·
·	eg. MMPI, EPQ, 16 PF  Direct technique	·	E.G. RORSCHACH Inkblot test, thematic apperception test, sentence completion test, Draw-a-person test. Indirect technique

Besides promoting our understanding, assessment is also useful for diagnosis, training, placement, counselling, and other purposes.

 

MINNESOTA MULTIPHASIC PERSONALITY INVENTORY

Developed by HATHAWAY and McKINLEY

Effective in identifying varieties of psychopathology

Revised version is MMPI-2

Consists of 567 statements. The subject has to judge each statement as 'true' or false'.

The test is divided into 10 sub scales which seek to diagnose hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviant, masculinity-feminity, paranoia, psychasthenia, schizophrenia, mania and social introversion.

In India, Mallick and Joshi have developed Jodhpur Multiphasic Personality Inventory. (JMPI)

 

EYSENCK PERSONALITY QUESTIONNAIRE

Developed by Eysenck

Initially assessed 2 dimensions of personality: hitroversion-Extraversion and emotionally stable-emotionally unstable. Emotional stability instability.

These dimensions are characterised by 32 personality traits.

Later on, Eysenck added a third dimension, called psychoticism. It is linked to psychopathology-sociability.

It represents a lack of feeling for others, a tough manner of interacting with people, and a tendency to defy social conventions. A person scoring high on this dimension tends to be hostile, egocentric and antisocial.

 

SIXTEEN PERSONALITY FACTOR QUESTIONNAIRE

Developed by cattell.

Test provides declarative statements, and the subject responds to a specific situation by choosing from a set of given alternative.

Can be used with high school level students as well as with adults.

Found useful in career guidance, vocational exploration, and occupational testing.

 

LIMITATIONS/CRITICISMS OF SELF REPORT MEASURES

Social Desirability: Tendency on the part of the respondent to endorse items in a socially desirable manner.

Acquiescence: tendency of the subject to agree with items/questions irrespective of their contents. Often appears in the form of saying ‘Yes’ to items. These tendencies render the assessment of personality less reliable.

 

 

SIMILARITIES OF PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

Stimuli relatively or fully unstructured and poorly defined.

 Person being assessed usually not told about the purpose of assessment and the method of scoring and interpretation.

The person is informed that there are no correct or incorrect responses.

Each response in considered to reveal a significant aspect of personality.

Scoring and interpretation are lengthy and sometimes subjective.

 

RORSCHACH INKBLOT TEST

 Developed by Herman Rorschach.

 Test consists of 10 ink blots. 5 in black and White, 2 with red ink, 3 in pastel colours.

 Blots are symmetrical in design with a specific shape or form. Each blot is printed in the Centre of a white cardboard of about 7”  10” size.

 Cards are administered individually in 2 phases.

Performance proper: Subjects are shown the cards and asked to tell what they see in them.

 Enquiry: A detailed report of the response is prepared by asking the subject where, how, and on what basis the response was made.

 Fine judgement is needed to place the responses in a meaningful context. The interpretation of this test requires extensive training.

 

THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TEST

 Developed by Morgan and Murray

 Consists of 30 black and white picture cards and one blank card.

Each picture depicts one or more people in a variety of situations. Each picture is printed on a card.

 Some cards are used with adult males or females. Others are used with boys or girls.

 20 cards are appropriate for a subject though lesser cards have also been used.

 The cards are presented one at a time, the subject is asked to tell a story describing the situation presented in the picture what led to the situation, what is happening at the moment, what will happen in the future and what characters are feeling and thinking?

Indian adaptation: Uma Chaudhary

 

ROSENZWEIG’S PICTURE-FRUSTRATION STUDY

Developed by Rosenzweig to assess how people express aggression in the face of a frustrating situation.

The test presents with the help of cartoon like pictures a series of situation in which one frustrates another, or calls attention to a frustrating condition.

The subject is asked to tell what the other person will say or do. The analysis of responses is based on the type and direction of aggression.

An attempt is made to examine whether the focus is on the frustrating object or on the protection of the frustrated person or on constructive solution of the problem.

The direction of aggression may be towards oneself, environment or it may be turned off as an attempt to gloss over or made the situation.

Indian Adaptation: Pareek

 

DRAW-A-PERSON TEST

Subject is asked to draw a person on sheet of paper.

After the completion, subject is asked to draw the figure of an opposite sex person.

The subject is asked to make a story about the person as if she/he was a character in a novel or play.

 

INTERPRETATIONS

 

Omission of facial features: person tries to evade a highly conflict-ridden interpersonal relationship.

Graphic emphasis on neck: Lack of control over impulses.

Disproportionately large head: Organic brain disease and preoccupation with headaches.

 

BENIFITS OF PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

Helps us to understand unconscious motives, deep rooted conflicts and emotional complexes of an individual.

 

LIMITATIONS

Interpretation of responses requires sophisticated skills and specialised training.

Problems associated with reliability of scoring and validity of interpretations.

 

BEHAVIOURAL ANALYSIS

A person’s behaviour in a variety of situations can provide us with meaningful information about her/his personality.

 

 

INTERVIEW

Involves talking to the person being assessed and asking specific questions.

Interviews may be structured or unstructured.

 

Structured                                     Unstructured
·	Address very specific questions and follow set procedure.	·	Interviewer seeks to develop an impression about a person being assessed and asking specific questions.
·	Done to make objective comparison of persons being inter mimed.	·	The may a person presents her/himself and answers the questions carries enough potential to reveal his/her personality.

 

OBSERVATION

Requires careful training of the observer and a fairly detailed guideline about analysis of behaviour in order to assers the personality of a given person.

 

LIMITATIONS OF INTERVIEW AND OBSERVATION METHODS

Professional training required.

 Demanding and time consuming.

 Maturity of psychologist is a precondition for obtaining valid data through these techniques.

 Mere presence of observer may contaminate the results.

 

BEHAVIOURAL RATINGS

 Used in educational and industrial settings.

 Ratings usually taken from people who know the assesse intimately and have interacted with her/him over a period of time or have had the chance to observe him/her.

They attempt to put individuals into certain categories in terms of their behavioural qualities. There may involve different numbers or descriptive terms.

 In order to use ratings effectively, traits should be clearly defined in terms of carefully stated behavioural anchors.

 

LIMITATIONS OF RATING

Halo Effect: Raters often display certain biases that colour their judgements of different traits eg. Most of us are greatly influenced by a single favorable or unfavorable trait. This often forms the basis of a raler’s overall judgement of a person. This is known a halo effect.

Raters have a tendency to place individuals either in the middle scale (Middle category bias) by avoiding extreme positions or in extreme position (extreme response bias) by avoiding middle categories on the scale.

 

NOMINATION

Used in obtaining peer assessment

Each person is asked to choose one or more persons of the group with whom she would like to work, study, and play participate etc. The person may be asked to specify the reason for his/her choices.

Nominations received can be analysed to understand the personality and behavioural characteristics of a person.

 

LIMITATIONS OF NOMINATION                             

May be affected by personal biases.      

                                                   '

SITUATIONAL TESTS

Most commonly used is situational stress test.

Provides information about how a person behaves under stressful situations.

Test requires a person to perform a given task with other persons who are instructed to be non-cooperative and interfering.

 The person is instructed to play a role for which she is observed.

 A verbal report is also obtained on what she was asked to do.

The situation may be a realistic one or may be created through a video play.

 

WORDS THAT MATTER

 

·         Alienation: The feeling of not being part of society or a group.

·         Anal stage: The second of Freud's psycho-sexual stages, which occurs during the child's second year. Pleasure is focused on the anus and on retention and expulsion of faeces.

·         Antisocial Personality: A behavioural disorder characteristics by truancy, delinquency, promiscuity, theft, vandalism, fighting, violation of common social rules, poor work record, impulsiveness, irrationality, aggressiveness, reckless behaviour, and inability to plan ahead. The particular pattern of behaviour varies from individual to individual.

·         Archetypes: Jung’s term for the contents of the collective unconscious; images or symbols expressing the inherited patterns for the organization of experience.

·         Cardinal Trait: According to all port, a single trait that dominates an individual’s entire personality.

·         Central Traits: The major trait considered in forming an impression of others.

·         Client centred therapy: The theraphentic approach developed by Carl Rogers in which therapist helps clients to clarify their true feelings and come to value who they are.

·         Collective Unconscious: Inherited portion of the unconscious, as postulated by Carl Jung. The unconscious shared by all human beings.

·         Defence Mechanisms: According to Freud, ways in which the ego unconsciously tries to cope with unacceptable id impulses, as in repression, projection, reaction formation, sublimation, rationalisation, etc.

·         Deinstitutionalisation: The transfer of former mental patients from institution into the community.

·         Ego: The part of the personality that provides a buffer between the id and the outside.

·         Evolution apprehension: The fear of being evaluated negatively by others who are present (an audience).

·         Extraversion: One of the dimensions of personality in which interests are directed outward to nature and other people rather than inwards to the thoughts and feelings of self (introvert).

·         Humanistic Approach: The theory that people are basically good and tend to grow to higher levels of functioning.

·         Id: According to Freud, the impulsive and unconscious part of the psyche that operates through the pleasure principle toward the gratification of instinctual drives. The Id is conceived as the true unconscious, or the deepest part of the psyche.

·         Ideal Self: The kind of person we would like to be. Also called ego-idea/idealized self- image.

·         Identity: The distinguishing character of the individual-who each of us is, what our roles are, and what we are capable of.

·         Inferiority Complex: According to Adler, a complex developed by adults who have not been able to overcome the feelings of inferiority they developed as children, when they were small and limited in their knowledge about the world.

·         Interview: Verbal interaction between a respondent and a researcher to gather information about the respondent.

·         Introversion: One of the dimensions of personality in which interests are directed inwards rather than outwards (extrovert).

·         Latency Period: In Freud’s theory of psycho-sexual stages, the period between the phallic stage and the mature genital stage (period from age 4 to 5 to about 12) during which interest in sex is sublimated.

·         Libido: Freud introduced this term. In Freud’s treatment, libido was quite simply a direct or indirect sexual expression.

·         Meta needs: In the hierarchy of needs, those at the top, such as self-actualisation, self- esteem, aesthetic needs, and the like, which can only be satisfied when lower order needs are satisfied.

·         Observational Method: A method in which researcher observes phenomenon that occurs naturally without being able to manipulate.

·         Oedipus complex: The Freudian concept in which the young child develops an intense desire to replace the parent of the same sex and enjoy that affection of the opposite sex parent.

·         Personal Identity: Awareness of oneself as a separate, distinct being.

·         Phallic Stage: Third of Freud’s psycho-sexual stages (at about age five) when pleasure is focused on the genitals and both males and females experience the 'Oedipus complex'.

·         Projection: A defence mechanism; the process of unwittingly attributing one's own traits, attitudes, or subjective processes to others.

·         Projective Techniques: The utilization of vague, ambiguous, unstructured stimulus objects or situation in order to elicit the individual's characteristic modes of perceiving his/ her world or of behaving in it.

·         Psycho-dynamic Approach: Approach that strives for explanation in terms of motives, or drives.

·         Psycho-dynamic Therapy: First suggested by Freud; therapy based on the premise that the primary sources of abnormal behaviour are resolved past conflicts and the possibility that unacceptable unconscious impulses will enter consciousness.

·         Rationalisation: A defence mechanism that occurs when one attempts to explain failure or shortcoming by attributing them to more acceptable causes.                             

·         Reaction Formation: A defence mechanism in which a person denies a disapproved motive through giving strong expression to its opposite.

·         Regression: A defence mechanism that involves a return to behaviours characterized of an earlier stage in life. The term is also used in statistics, in which with the help of correlation prediction is made.

·         Repression: A defence mechanism by which people push unacceptable, anxiety provoking thoughts and impulses into the unconscious to avoid confronting them directly. In short it is unconscious forgetting.

·         Repression: A defense mechanism by which people push unacceptable, anxiety provoking thoughts and impulses into the unconscious to avoid confronting them directly. [Unconscious forgetting]                                                                             

·         Self-actualization: A state of self-fulfilment in which people realize their highest potential in their own unique way.

·         Self-efficacy: Bandura’s term for the individual's beliefs about his or her own effectiveness; the exception that one can master a situation and produce positive outcomes.

·         Self-esteem: The individual's personal judgment of his or her own worth; one's attitude toward oneself along a positive-negative dimension.

·         Self-regulation: It refers to our ability to organize and monitor our own behaviour.

·         Social Identity: A person's definition of who he or she is; includes personal attributes (self- concept) along with membership in various groups.

·         Super Ego: According to Freud, super ego is the final personality structure to develop; it represents society's standards of right and wrong as handed down by person's parents, teachers, and other important figures.

·         Surface Traits: R. B. Cattell’s term for clusters of observable trait elements (response) that seems to go together. Factor analysis of the correlations reveals source traits.

·         Trait: A relatively persistent and consistent behaviour pattern manifested in a wide range of circumstances.

·         Trait Approach: An approach to personality that seeks to identify the basic traits necessary to describe personality.

·         Type Approach: Explanation of personality based on broad categories which are mostly determined by body constitution and temperament.

·         Typology: Ways of categorizing individuals into discrete categories or types e.g., Type-A personality.

·         Unconscious: In psycho-analytic theory, characterizing any activity or mental structure which a person is not aware of.

·         Values: Enduring beliefs about ideal modes of behaviour or end-state of existence; attitudes that have a strong evaluative and 'ought' aspect.

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