Personality
-------------
Essentials of Psychology 211
March 8, 2014
Shelly Peed
Personality
What is personality? According to Hockenbury and Hockenbury (2014), personality is a person’s distinctive and rather consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. But how is that personality developed? What influences certain personality traits and can we find the root of them? Countless theorists have studied and dissected this provocative subject.
Psychoanalytic Perspective
Cherry (n.d.), “The psychoanalytic perspective of personality emphasizes the importance of early childhood experiences and the unconscious mind” (para. 3). The emphasis is put on the value of unconscious process and early childhood experience. Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud first introduced this perspective on personality. He believed the unconscious mind concealed things that could be uncovered through dreams, free association and slips of the tongue (Cherry, n.d.).
Humanistic Perspective
The humanistic perspective has a more optimistic approach on human nature as compared to the other perspectives. The focus is more on personal awareness, free will, and psychological progress (Cherry, n.d.). The two more prominent contributors to the humanistic approach were Carl Roger and Abraham Maslow. They were part of the opposition of two dominant perspectives in the 1950s, which were psychoanalysis and behaviorism. They championed a “third force” in psychology, humanistic psychology that emphasizes uniquely human potential and characteristics (Hockenbury & Hockenbury, 2014).
Social Cognitive Perspective
“The social cognitive perspective emphasizes learning and conscious cognitive processes, including the importance of beliefs about the self, goal setting, and self-regulation” (Hockenbury & Hockenbury, 2014, p. 437). The concept that an individual’s...