Week 8-Personality Part 2

Question 1

What is Carl Jung’s background?

Answer 1

-Swiss psychoanalyst inspired by Freud’s work (also worked with him but split later)
-couldn’t accept the Oedipal complex and other personality developments (e.g., personality is developed at age 5)
-was a traveller interested in how culture influenced mental life
-founder of analytical psychology

Question 2

What did Jung call the total personality?

Answer 2

the psyche

Question 3

What’s the psyche?

Answer 3

-opposing forces create this energy which motivates our behaviour (life-process energy)
-system of creating L-PE within the psyche=principles of opposites

Question 4

What did Jung (1954) believe about personality development?

Answer 4

-It continues throughout life and behaviour is affected by past experiences and future goals
-The endpoint of PD is self-realisation (self-acceptance and feeling at peace with oneself)
-Self-realisation demands life experiences and can only be achieved later in life

Question 5

What four main structures are within the psyche? (Jung, 1964)

Answer 5

1.Ego
2.Personal Unconscious
3.Collective Unconscious
4.Archetypes

Question 6

What 2 principles does the psyche operate to according to Jung?

Answer 6

1.The principle of equivalence: if activity increases in one part of the psyche, it decreases in another part

2.The principle of entropy: drive to create balanced energies in the psyche to express more of ourselves in our behaviour

personality development needs to be balanced so all the parts making up the psyche can come into harmony

Question 7

What is the ego (“the self”) according to Jung (1965)?

Answer 7

-The unifying force in our psyche at the centre of our consciousness
-Contains conscious thoughts and feelings about our own behaviour / feelings and memories of past experiences
-responsible for our feelings of identity and continuity as human beings
-Personal sense of being uniquely you and your own identity

Question 8

What is personal unconscious according to Jung?

Answer 8

-Contains all personal experiences that have been blocked from our awareness
-Contains repressed “unacceptable material” similar to Freud’s unconscious ideas
-This material can be brought into our consciousness through psychoanalysis or hypnosis

Question 9

What is the collective unconscious according to Jung?

Answer 9

-there are structures of the unconscious mind shared among all humans and cultures
-“extra layer of unconsciousness”
-lies deep within the psyche containing innate, inherited and universal instincts going beyond personal experiences
-Humans are born with certain fears and instincts stored within the collective unconscious
-universal instincts=archetypes

Question 10

What are archetypes according to Jung?

Answer 10

-Universal themes or symbols within the collective unconscious which can influence our current experiences
-Argued God is an archetype as people appeal to some form of God in cultures under threatening or stressful situations
-Fear activates the archetype of God in the collective unconscious, which then influences behaviour (e.g., praying,).

Question 11

What 5 common archetypes are there according to Jung (1954, 1964)

Answer 11

1.The persona
2.The shadow
3.The anima
4.The animus
5.The self

Question 12

What is the persona?

Answer 12

-The mask/role we adopt to deal with other people and to
present ourselves to the world.
-Helps us to disguise inner feelings and impulses and respond
in socially appropriate ways.
-We have personas for all our roles. It is adaptive but, when
used to extremes, it may result in the loss of our true selves.

Question 13

What is the shadow?

Answer 13

-The dark side of our nature, consisting of repressed material in our personal unconscious and
universal images of evil in our collective unconscious.
-We never truly know the shadow side of ourselves; it is too frightening to explore our potential to do harm or think evil thoughts.
-Expressed in unexplained moods (e.g., uncontrollable anger), psychosomatic pain, and
desires to do harm

Question 14

What is the anima?

Answer 14

-The feminine element in the male psyche, consisting of inherited ideas of what constitutes a woman, derived from men’s evolutionary experience of
women and mothers.
-Consists of feminine qualities – emotionality, sensitivity, irrationality, vanity
and moodiness.

Question 15

What is animus?

Answer 15

-The male element in the female psyche, derived from women’s
evolutionary experience of men and fathers.
-Consists of masculine qualities – reason, logic and social insensitivity.
-Anima/Animus help males and females to understand each other

Question 16

What is the self?

Answer 16

Drives the process of individuation; the quest to create balance within the psyche, to accept ourselves, and to reach our fullest potential

Question 17

What can archetypes influence?

Answer 17

-dreams, fantasies and real-life behaviours e.g., our behaviours
■E.g., a man’s anima (so his inherited ideas of what women are like) may become activated in
his relationship with a woman.
-Different archetypes become activated and influence us in different situations, allowing us to have predetermined ways of thinking about situations and dealing with objects and events.

Question 18

How did Jung try to understand the root of his difficulties with
Freud?

Answer 18

-Studied Freud’s disagreements with Alfred Adler
-Analysed a patient’s case history from a Freudian and Alderian perspective
-Concluded both perspectives were valid so disagreements were due to seeing the world differently due to different personalities

-Must be at least 2 personality types: one focusing on the external world (like Freud) and one that is internally oriented (like Adler)

Question 19

What 2 personality types did Jung (1964) propose?

Answer 19

1.Extraversion:“an outgoing, candid and accommodating nature that adapts easily to a given situation, quickly forms attachments, and, setting aside
any possible misgivings, often ventures forth with careless
confidence into an unknown situation”

2.Intraversion:“a hesitant, reflective retiring nature that keeps itself to itself,
shrinks from objects, is always slightly on the defensive and
prefers to hide behind mistrustful scrutiny

but people are never wholly one or the other but incorporates aspects of both, and neither personality type is healthier or better than the other!

Question 20

What 4 approaches did Jung (1968) propose to explain the differences between extroversion and introversion?

Answer 20

1.Sensing: registering that something exists without evaluation
2.Thinking: interpreting stimuli using thinking and logic
3.Feeling: evaluating the value/worth of what has been presented
4.Intuitive: Relating to the world with minimum interpretation and reasoning; instead proposing hunches

Question 21

How are these 4 approaches opposites?

Answer 21

■ Thinking and feeling are opposites; rational functions as they involve the cognitive processes used to form conclusions/make judgments.
– Thinkers use logic and analysis
– Feelers use values, attitudes, and beliefs
■ Sensation and intuition are opposites; less planned activities and happen reflexively.
– Sensors respond reflexively to situations based on what they perceive to be happening with little reflection/evaluation
– Intuitors also respond reflexively, looking for meaning in terms of
past/future events

From the 2 major attitudes (introversion, extraversion), and the 4 approaches (sensing, thinking, feeling, intuitive), Jung developed a classification of 16
psychological types, mainly focusing on 8.

Question 22

How empirically valid is Jung’s theory? The Cons

Answer 22

-Difficult to test and lacks scientific research (how do we test the shadow?)
-Theory suggests that the most important part of our unconscious aka the collective unconscious is inherited and NOT shaped by experiences
-Not been viewed positively and is often studied as a historical artefact
-Anima/Animus provide a stereotypical view of femininity and masculinity

Question 23

How empirically valid is Jung’s theory? The Pros

Answer 23

-Contributed to psychology in important ways
-Coined the term self-realisation and internal harmony which remains an important concept
-His introversion-extroversion typeology + 4 functions (thinking, feeling, sensing, intuiting), remains
significant.
-A personality test, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), has been developed to measure Jungian personality types.
(e.g., Neher)

Question 24

What is the MBTI?

Answer 24

-Developed by Myers and Briggs during WW2
-Judging and perceiving added to Jung’s original 4=16 personality types
-introspective self-report questionnaire (statement with 2 possible answers) indicating psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions (report is given with preferences in each categoruy
-Commonly used in occupational settings and research studies, demonstrating that different personality types pursue different interests, report different
memories, and have different job preferences etc. (Capraro & Capraro, 2002; DeVito, 1985; Kuipers et al., 2009; Thorne & Gough, 1991)

Question 25

How are scales composed of opposite preference pairs in the MBTI? (Capraro & Capraro, 2002)

Answer 25

1.Extraversion-Intraversion (EI): is general attitudes towards the world is oriented outward (E) or inward? (I)
2.Sensing-Intuition (SN):does a person prefer relying on the observable facts detected by the 5 senses (S) or through intuition relying on insight (N)
3.Thinking-Feeling (TF):logical thinking and decisions process (T) or a more subjective, interpersonal feeling approach (F)
4.Judgement-Perception (JP):either making prompt decisions, a preference for planning or organising activities or a preference for flexibility and spontaneity (P)

Question 26

How did Pestana & Codina 2019) investigate MBTI?

Answer 26

Aim:To see whether personal values e.g., achievement differed among personality types
Method: 45 students (future CEOs) completed the MBTI, developed a story about him/herself as the main hero/heroine, and completed a questionnaire about personal values.
Key findings: Students with a thinking (vs. feeling) type
personality scored higher in values about achievement. The perceiving (vs. judging) type scored higher in heroism and benevolence. The sensing (vs. intuition) type scored higher in benevolence.
Implications: MBTI appears to be useful to determine the
personality and values of future leaders

Question 27

What criticisms have been given to MBTI according to (Barbuto, 1997; Pittenger, 1993, 2005; Zemke, 1992?

Answer 27

-Poor validity+reliability (review found 37% of test takers saw at least one change in primary type after a retest)
-Measures categories that aren’t independent (TF as opposites when they’re actually not independents)
-Test is incomprehensive (ignores emotional stability vs reactivity)
-Wrongly classifies people as either extroverts or introverts when they could be both

Question 28

What can be an issue in personality assessments?

Answer 28

P’s are provided with a report telling them about their personality which people endorse + constant exposure to different tests that are intended to measure and tell us about our personality

Question 29

What is the Barnum Effect according to Emery &
Lilienfeld (2004)?

Answer 29

The tendency for people to endorse, as uniquely their own, personality descriptions that are actually fake or so general that they can describe almost anyone.