Personality Psychology

Explore behavioral psychology and behaviorism, explaining how observable behavior links to stimuli and responses, with classical and operant conditioning, reinforcement schedules, and the role of rewards and punishments in motivation.

Explore how Freud links anxiety to the ego's conflicts and protects itself with defense mechanisms such as denial, projection, rationalization, sublimation, and repression.

Explore Freud's psychosexual development stages from oral to genital, and how early childhood experiences shape personality, fixation outcomes, and the role of unconscious processes and defense mechanisms.

Explore neo-Freudian contributions to personality theory, focusing on Adler's inferiority complex, birth order, three fundamental social tasks, Jung's collective unconscious and archetypes, and Erikson's psychosocial stages and coping styles.

A psychosocial theory of development unfolds across the lifespan, emphasizing social relationships at each stage and eight conflicts, from trust versus mistrust to integrity versus despair.

Explore observational learning, showing how we imitate behavior based on observed reinforcement or punishment, and how reciprocal determinism and self-efficacy shape personality development and goal pursuit.

Compare internal and external locus of control, the belief that outcomes arise from effort versus luck, and examine how this cognitive factor relates to learning and personality.

Explore humanistic psychology, the third force that emphasizes self-directed change, Maslow's hierarchy of needs and self-actualization, and Rogers' self-concept, unconditional positive regard, and congruence.

Examine how personality rests on enduring traits, from cardinal to central and secondary traits, as Allport and Cattell map them along a continuum and through the 16PF model.

Explore how Eysencks linked biology to personality, outlining extroversion, introversion, and neuroticism-stability. Compare four quadrants to ancient temperaments and discuss nonconformist versus conventional impulse control.

Explore how culture shapes personality through genetic and environmental factors, with cross-cultural variations in the big five and approaches like cultural comparative, indigenous, and combined.

Explain how personality assessments use self-report inventories like the MMPI and projective tests with ambiguous stimuli to measure traits, screen candidates, diagnose problems, and inform employment and criminal cases.

Explore self-report inventories like the MMPI and MMPI-2, their Likert scales, large question pools, reliability and validity, and how they are used in clinical and occupational settings.