Theories of Personality Essay

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Pages: 5

Theories of Personality

Psychoanalytic perspective is based on Sigmund Frued perspectives about early experiences it focuses on the importance of the unconscious mind which contains thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories/past experiences in which we are unaware of. The id operates on the pleasure principle by satisfying basic urges, needs, and desires. Ego operates on the reality principle, satisfies the id’s desires in ways that it will cause pleasure instead of pain. Superego strives for perfection, positive feelings and negative feelings of guilt. These three systems were interactions of Frued’s view of personality structure. Freud perspective also focused on psychosexual stages which is the childhood stages of development.

Finally there is Psychoticism which is having difficulty dealing with reality and may be antisocial, hostile, non-empathetic and manipulative. The trait perspective can lead to an introverted personality by having psychoticism that perhaps consisted from a genetic basis. An individual might have inherited psychoticism, thus leading the individual to have interpersonal hostility and an introverted personality. The trait perspective can lead to an extroverted personality by having Extraversion traits as the individuals Cardinal traits. The individuals attitude would be sociable, fun-loving, and affectionate, plus all that will be their dominate traits, thus having and extroverted personality.

Introversion involves directing attention on inner experiences, while extraversion relates to focusing attention outward on other people and the environment. So, a person high in introversion might be quiet and reserved, while an individual high in extraversion might be sociable and outgoing.

The social cognitive perspective was proposed by Albert Bandura it emphasizes the interactions of a person and their situations. Social cognitive theorists focused on how we and our environment interact they believed we learn many of our behaviors by observing others as well as mental process which was thinking about our situations affects our behavior.