PERSONALITY

WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 DEFINITIONS
• Personality is an individual’s unique
(uncommon) and relatively consistent patterns
of thinking, feeling and behaving (Pervin1997)

• Ewen (1984) defines personality as long lasting

important characteristics of an individual that
continue to exert a strong influence on
behavior.

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF PERSONALITY?
• Personality means the characteristics that distinguish one person from another

• Personality means the sum of the characteristics which make up physical and
mental being , including appearance, manners, habits, tastes and moral character

• Personal beliefs, expectations, desires, values and behaviours that derive from
the interaction between culture and the individual.

• Personality is a particular pattern of behaviour and thinking prevailing across

time and situations that differentiates one person from another.

• Enduring patterns of perceiving , relating to and thinking about oneself and the
environment

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 ASPECTS TO CONSIDER WHEN
DESCRIBING PERSONALITY?
Aspects to consider include:
• Invisible and visible qualities/ characteristics
• Physical characteristics of the person. That is visible
qualities –social and physical behaviours (actions,
sayings, doings etc)
• Mental characteristics of personality
• Invisible qualities-thoughts, feelings
• Consistence/ stability/ enduring/ prevailing/ long
lasting- what is observed need to be stable over time

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 PERSONALITY THEORY
• A theory is a set of organized ideas used to
explain a particular matter
• A personality theory attempts to describe and
explain how people are similar, how they are
different and why every individual is unique.

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 THREE MAJOR GROUPINGS OF
PERSONALITY THEORIES
The three major groupings of Personality
theories are:
1. Social learning theory
2. Self theory
3. Psychoanalysis

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
• This theory emphasizes the element of
development
• Human mind regarded as tabular rasa terms and
personality is molded by the environment through
learning, reward and punishment.
• The environment is key to what one becomes e.g.
Nurse, Pilot, Prostitute, Thief
• The rewards, punishments pertaining in the
environment shapes behavior. Behavior is shaped
by its consequences.
(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B
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 PSYCHOANALYSIS
• Psychoanalytic Explanation to Personality:
•
• Structure and Dynamics of Human Personality
• Freuds Theory of the Mind
• Conscious –level of awareness. Contains thoughts,
feelings or motive one actively aware of at that
moment. Thus, a person is aware of what he/she does
• Preconscious-level of partial awareness. Contains
what can easily be retrieved.

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 THE SELF THEORY
• Associated with Carl Rogers
• Emphasizes human inherent potentials,
psychological growth, self awareness and free
will
• People are motivated by the need to grow
psychologically (integrated self-fulfilment)
• But most important factor in personality, is the
individual’s conscious, subjective perception of
self
(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B
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 SELF THEORY CONTD.
Conditions for Integration or Self Fulfilment:
• One must grow up in a family and social
environment that treats him/her with
unconditional positive regard

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY CONTD
• Behaviours that are reinforced tend to be
repeated.
• Some are not reinforced and thus tend not to
be repeated.
• The repeated behaviour becomes a habit thus
part of personality.
• The real question is how shall external
conditions in the environment be manipulated
to produce the consequences we want?
(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B
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 PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
Structure and Dynamics of Human Personality
[Link] Theory of the Mind
• Conscious –level of awareness. Contains
thoughts, feelings or motive one actively
aware of at that moment. Thus, a person is
aware of what he/she does
• Preconscious-level of partial awareness.
Contains what can easily be retrieved.

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY CONTD.
• Unconscious-level of no awareness. Stores the
biggest chunk of ideas, memories or desires we
are not aware of and cannot easily become
aware of
• Most important to Freud
• Painful experiences e.g. death of a relative
stored here and continue influencing behaviour
• Repressed material find expression through
dreams, slips of the tongue etc.
(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B
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 STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY
• Three structures:
• ID
• EGO
• SUPEREGO

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 THE ID
• First and fundamental part of the mind
• Only part present at birth
• The id is the pleasure seeking centre of
personality.
• The id contains the drives that motivate
people to satisfy their basic instincts that are
primarily sexual (libido) and aggressive, Eros
and thanatos respectively

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 THE ID CONTD.
FUNCTION
• To ensure that the individual remains in a
comfortable state of physical satisfaction. This
drive for physical satisfaction characterises the id.
It consists of the basic urges: food, water,
elimination, warmth, affection, sex and other
needs that the id strives for. For example when a
man is hungry, the id demands that he be fed. So
when the demand is met, the man returns
immediately to a state of homeostasis.
(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B
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 THE ID CONTD.
• The id seeks immediate gratification at earliest
time and operates on pleasure principle. When
the id is not satisfied, tension is produced; the id
strives to eliminate this tension as quickly as
possible. E.g. infant feels hungry, so it is impelled
to move about, sucking in order to reduce
tension arising from the unsatisfied drive.
• Develops out of Oedipus complex (strong sexual
desire for opposite sex parent).

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 THE ID CONTD
Powerful Id/ Strongest Id:
• If the id was the strongest of the three
personality structures, then the individual
would pursue a life of hedonistic ( believing
that pleasure is the most important thing in
life) and destructive aggressiveness.

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 THE EGO
• Develops after id.
• Operates on the reality principle
• Develops through one’s experiences with
reality
• It is our self, the reasoning part of personality

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 DEVELOPMENT OF THE EGO
• Develops through identification (how do
parents satisfy needs, overcome frustrations
and control their traits) these help in adapting
to the environment
• Ego development continues for years as it
does not happen at once

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 THE STRONG & WEAK EGO
The Strong Ego:
• Individuals with a strong or powerful ego have a strong or
balanced personality because the ego is capable of maintaining
proper balance between superego and id.
The Week Ego:
• Maladjusted personality
• Either superego is powerful lead to neurotic personality (mental
illness resulting from strong feelings of fear and worry thus
behaving in unreasonable & uncalm ways)or
• Id more powerful thus, the person may engage in unlawful or
immoral activities thus delinquent personality (tendency to
commit crime).
(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B
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 THE SUPEREGO
• Last to develop
• Ethical moral arm of personality and concerned with
perfection
• Described as the internal representation of societal values or
rules which motivate a person to seek perfection or the sense
of morality or conscience
• Operates on idealistic principle
• Not realistic- Like id, the superegos have no contact with
reality and often places unrealistic demands on the individual.
• Too powerful
• Cruel

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 FUNCTIONS OF THE SUPEREGO
• To achieve perfection
• To instill guiltiness over immorality

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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 CONCLUSION
• All behaviour can be understood in terms of the dynamic
equilibrium between id, ego and superego. The id
demands to satisfy its needs and appetites, while the ego
tries both, to control the id in terms of reality and to
appease the superego.
• The well adjusted person is governed by his/her ego, the
anxious neurotic by guilty stemming from his/her
superego. The psychopath (a person suffering from
serious mental illness that causes behaving in a violent
way toward other people) by his id.
• The aim of psychoanalysis is to restore the balance
(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B
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 DEFENCE MENCHANISMS
Definition:
• Unconscious way of reducing anxiety by protecting the self and finding
ways of coping with frustration and conflict.

How they come about:

• Comes about when the ego fails to co-ordinate impulses of the id and
fails to deal with the demands of the superego.
• This creates tension/conflict, emotion and anxiety.
• When extreme anxiety exist the ego develops measures Freud called
defence mechanisms
• We all have defence mechanisms and use the almost all the times

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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TYPES OF DEFENCE MECHANISMS
1. Repression- keeping painful experiences in
the unconscious. E.g. lost parents, that
thought is buried in the unconscious.
• Motivated forgetting
2. Rationalization- Giving a false explanation for
unacceptable behaviour reason will believe in
but it is not [Link] I failed my exam because
it’s hot and I failed to study. Logically when it’s
hot it’s difficult to study.
(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B
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 ASSIGNMENT
1. What is Environmental Psychology?
2. What is Engineering Psychology?
3. What is Community Psychology?
4. What is counselling? What takes
people for counselling? What
aspects will make counselling
fruitful?
(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B
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 DEFENCE MECHANISMS CONTD.
3. Denial- Refusal to accept something unpleasant e.g.
denying being HIV positive despite having an HIV test and
tested positive.
[Link]-Dealing with our own short comings. Tendency
to transfer own wrong deeds to other
• An attempt to deal our own weakness by putting them on
others
[Link]-To substitute the real object with another
object.
• Diverting thoughts, feelings, impulses from the real source
to another
(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B
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 DEFENCE MECHANISMS CONTD
[Link] formation-Behaving the opposite
[Link]-Identifying with what you are
not

(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B

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(NJOBO LILLIAN- MSc-PH, PG [Link]. B
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