Page 419 - Understanding Psychology

Summary and Vocabulary
Psychologists have proposed various theories of personality. The theories attempt to help explain similarities and to provide rea- sons for differences in personality.
Purposes of Personality Theories
Chapter Vocabulary
personality (p. 375) unconscious (p. 379)
id (p. 379)
ego (p. 380)
superego (p. 380)
defense mechanisms (p. 380) collective unconscious (p. 384) archetype (p. 384)
inferiority complex (p. 385) behaviorism (p. 387)
contingencies of reinforcement (p. 388)
humanistic psychology (p. 392)
self-actualization (p. 392)
self (p. 395)
positive regard (p. 395)
conditions of worth (p. 395)
unconditional positive regard (p. 396)
fully functioning (p. 396) trait (p. 398)
cardinal trait (p. 400) factor analysis (p. 401) surface trait (p. 401) source trait (p. 401) extravert (p. 401) introvert (p. 401)
Main Idea: Personality theories provide a way of organizing the many characteristics that people have.
s Personality theorists try to organize traits by similarities and differences, explore how people cope with life situations, and how people grow and change.
Main Idea: Freud’s psychoanalytic theory proposes that person- ality is made up of three components: the id, ego, and superego.
s Sigmund Freud believed that every personality has an unconscious component and that childhood experiences, even if not consciously recalled, con- tinue to influence people’s behaviors.
s The id, ego, and superego explain how the mind functions and how instinctual energies are regulated.
Psychoanalytic Theories
Main Idea: Behav- iorists are interested in how aspects of person- ality are learned.
s Behaviorists believe that as individuals differ in their learning experiences, they acquire different behaviors and different personalities.
s Albert Bandura believed that personality is acquired not only by reinforcement but also by observational learning.
Main Idea: Humanistic and cognitive theories of personality stress the positive aspects of human nature.
s Humanistic psychology is founded on the belief that all human beings strive for self-actualization.
s Carl Rogers believed that many people suffer from a conflict between what they value in themselves and what they believe other people value in them.
Learning Theories
Humanistic and Cognitive Theories
Main Idea: Trait theo- rists believe that charac- ter traits account for consistency of behavior in different situations.
s Trait theorists believe we understand people by specifying their traits, and we use traits to predict people’s future behavior.
s Gordon W. Allport defined common traits as those that apply to everyone and individual traits as those that apply more to a specific person.
Trait Theories
Chapter 14 / Theories of Personality 405