Final Ob Assgn

PERSONALI TY THEORIES Organizational Behaviour Submitted by: Engr. Tayyaba & Engr. Pakeeza B.sc Industrial engg & Management University of Punjab

PERSONALITY: Most people use the term "personality "to identify the most obvious characteristic of a person or to refer to that person's social skills. Personality may be defined as: “The dynamic organization within an individual of those systems that determine his or her characteristic behavior and thought.” According to this definition personality has following dimensions: • Organized • Active or changing • Unique • Stability is implied and • There may be multiple causes of our behavior PERSONALITY THEORIES: “Theories of personality organize what we do know, stimulate new research, and formally specify a view of personality.” Psychologists are mainly interested in personality to: (1) Explain why people with similar heredity, experience, and motivation may react differently in the same situation. (2) Explain why people with different heredity, past experiences, and/or motivation may nevertheless react similarly in the same situation. Which personality theory we're discussing largely determines how we define personality, what elements of personality are being emphasized, and what techniques of study will be applied. Personality theories have been divided into five groups: i. Trait theories ii. Psychoanalytic theories iii. Behavioral or social learning theories iv. Self-Growth theories v. Modern big five theories SUMMARIES OF PERSONALITY THEORIES: BIOLOGICAL (OR TRAIT) THEORIES: William Sheldon’s Theory of Constitutional Psychology: • Sheldon in his theory proposed that body features might be used to influence and thus predict certain features of personality.

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According to Sheldon each of us could be rated on a 7-point scale as to the amount of each form represented in our body on three different general forms of human physique identified by him. He suggested that continuity, or a high correlation, exists between physique and behavior.

Raymond B. Cattell’s Factor Theory: • Raymond B. Cattell relied on data collected from three sources for the description and analysis of personality: a person's life record, self-ratings, and objective tests. • Through complex statistical analyses, Cattell identified major personality factors both within individuals and across people in general .e.g. outgoing—reserved, stable—emotional, suspicious— trusting etc. • Cattell distinguishes between surface traits, which are observable patterns of behavior, and source traits, which he viewed as underlying, internal traits responsible for our overt behavior; general traits -- those possessed by all -- and specific traits -- those typical of only one person. PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES: Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: • Sigmund Freud argued that we are not even aware of all the forces controlling our behavior -- we are subject to unconscious urges. • He established the iceberg model of the human mind. He believed just like the greater part of an iceberg lies below the water, the greater part of the human mind remains below the surface of the conscious. He labeled the part of the mind above the water the conscious, and the parts below the preconscious and unconscious. The conscious mind we are aware of, the preconscious mind we can be aware of by focusing on it and the unconscious remains a mystery. • Freud developed the concepts of the id, ego, and superego as separate but interacting systems. The id (the initial system present at birth) has to do with our most basic desires without any regard for the needs or concerns of others. The ego serves to balance the demands of the id against those of the superego by realistically assessing the limits imposed by the real world. It serves an executive function to maximize the benefits to the whole person. The superego being the last of the three to develop is concerned completely with the good of society. • According to Freud, unconscious urges, forces of life, wealth of instincts (both life and death instincts which show a balance

between aggression and a pursuit of pleasure) and experiences of childhood impact our behavior. Carl Jung’s Theory of Analytical Psychology: • Carl Jung believed that we harbor within us not only our own thoughts, but also what he called a collective unconscious. This was viewed as the accumulated memories and urgings of the whole human race, based on certain common elements of our experience. We each have parents, and we each experience a life of sunrises and sunsets, tragedies and celebrations, feasts and deprivations. • Jung was interested in opposites. He gave the concepts of introversion (a turning inward) and extraversion (a looking outward). For Him, the successful person can bring the opposing parts of his person (inclinations toward introversion and extraversion, among others) together. Alfred Adler’s Theory of Individual Psychology: • Alfred Adler assumed that since we have little control over our life in childhood, we grow up feeling inferior. • The battle to overcome this feeling of inferiority becomes a style of life. Those who fail to master the feelings of inferiority, or who remain overly worried about it even when they have mastered it, are said to have developed an inferiority complex. LEARNING THEORIES: Dollard and Miller's Stimulus-Response Theory: • Miller developed their theory of personality stressing the importance of learning. A/c to them in order to learn one must want something, notice something, do something, and get something. Stated more exactly, these factors are drive, cue, response, and reward. We may be stimulated into action mainly by primary drives such as hunger. Stimulus may also come to acquire drive-like properties & may cause behavior. Cues guide us & encourage us to respond. • Reinforcement is any response that reduces our drive level; it will tend to occur again. We are likely to do again whatever response reduces our hunger. • They argue that our personality is based on our most recent learning experiences. We change from day to day and month to month. Our personality, then, is composed of habits – the learned associations between drives, appropriate cues, and responses. B. F. Skinner and Personality as Behavior:

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For Skinner, nobody is "neurotic" – we simply show a variety of ineffective modes of escape. We are not "frustrated"; we are simply replacing one response with another. According to Skinner, much of our behavior, especially in the company of others -- involves freely emitted "operants" or responses. If an operant is reinforced, Skinner asserts, we will be more likely to emit that operant in a similar situation. We must learn stimulus generalization so that we will emit responses to a variety of similar, if not identical, situations. Likewise, we must learn to stimulus discrimination i-e when to and when not to emit certain responses. Skinner emphasizes the importance of generalized reinforcers -- such things as money and social approval.

Bandura and Social Learning: • He suggested that environment causes behavior, true; but behavior causes environment as well. He labeled this concept reciprocal determinism: The world and a person’s behavior cause each other. • He established that there were certain steps involved in the modeling process of learning. Attention: If you are going to learn anything, you have to be paying attention. Retention: you must be able to retain -- remember -- what you have paid attention to. Reproduction: You have to translate the images or descriptions into actual behavior. Motivation: And yet, with all this, you’re still not going to do anything unless you are motivated to reproduce, i.e. until you have some reason for. • He believed that punishment is not the right way to motivate the people and bring about the significant changes in the personality. Excessive punishment can de-motivate the people and it has adverse effects on human psychic. SELF-GROWTH THEORIES: Carl Rogers and Person-Centered Theory: • According to Rogers, "behavior is basically the goal-directed attempt of the organism to satisfy its needs as experienced, in the field as perceived. Rogar defines the organism as the focal point of all experience. The total of the experience is called the phenomenal field. As a person grows from infancy to adulthood and gains experience, what eventually emerges, as part of the phenomenal field, is the self. • Rogers assumes we each possess an inherited urge or need for self-actualization. This is thought to be a tendency to develop and utilize all of our potential. We assess everything we do and assign a value, positive or negative, to it. If it feels good when we

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are doing it, or even thinking about it, then it is good and should be done. The final concept that is important in Rogers' theory is termed unconditional positive regard, or acceptance. It causes us to seek acceptance, warmth, and love from the valued people in our life.

Maslow's Holistic Theory: • Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs – basic needs and what some have called "metaneeds." The basic needs are the needs of hunger, affection, security, self-esteem, and self-actualization needs. Metaneeds refer to needs for goodness, order, unity, justice, and so forth. Clearly more than one of the metaneeds may be operating at any given time. • One of Maslow's major contributions was to suggest that healthy people might not simply be the opposite of sick people. According to him self-actualizing people will be oriented toward reality accepting of self, of others, and of nature more spontaneous problem-centered (not self-centered) more detached from others and desire more privacy self-sufficient and independent. A Modern Theory of Personality-Big Five: • This five-factor model of personality represents five core traits that interact to form human personality which are: Openness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism. • Openness is a general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience. People who are open to experience are intellectually curious and sensitive to beauty. People with low scores on openness tend to prefer familiarity over novelty. They are conservative and resistant to change.Conscientiousness is a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement. Extraversion is characterized by positive emotions and the tendency to seek out stimulation and the company of others. They tend to be quiet, low-key, deliberate, and less involved in the social world. • Agreeableness is a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious towards others. Disagreeable individuals place self-interest above getting along with others. Neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or depression. It is sometimes called emotional instability. Individuals who score low in neuroticism tend to be calm, emotionally stable, and free from persistent negative feelings.

COMPARISON OF PERSONALITY THEORIES: BIOLOGICAL (OR TRAIT) THEORIES: William Sheldon’s Theory of Constitutional Psychology: • Sheldon proposed that our personality totally depends on our physique. He totally ignored the affect of childhood & environment on human, also the role of human’s experience & learning on its personality. • Sheldon’s theory is limited by the problem that we cannot rate someone's personality or behavior without seeing him or her behave. The raters of behavior must also see the physique of the body that is behaving. The measures and ratings are thus confused in this theory. • His theory is not theoretical at all. Rather is empirical or data oriented. Raymond B. Cattell’s Factor Theory: • Cattell concentrared on too many personality traits. Though his theory is right to some extent in the aspect that our personality is composed of many traits. But he didn’t analyze that how these traits are developed in a person as discussed in the learning & self-growth theories. • In Raymond B. Cattell’s theory by collapsing so many data, the individual person is lost in the process.

PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES: Sigmund Freud and Alfred Alder’s Theory: • Freud made us aware of two powerful forces and their demands on us. Back when everyone believed people were basically rational, he showed how much of our behavior was based on biology whereas Alder gave the wonderful concept of impact of childhood on personality. • Freud & Alder argued about our unawareness of all the forces controlling our behavior and placed too much emphasis on heredity and childhood experiences. They placed too little emphasis on the role of daily experience in determining our behavior as in self-growth theories. Their theories seem to paint a desolate picture of human and couldn’t be easily tested in laboratory. Carl Jung’s Theory of Analytical Psychology: • Carl Jung has explained the concept of unconscious better than FREUD

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Jung tries to bring everything into his system. He has little room for chance, accident, or circumstances. Personality -- and life in general -- seems "over-explained" in Jung's theory.

LEARNING THEORIES: Dollard and Miller's Stimulus-Response Theory: • Concept of personality -- id, ego, and superego -- of Freud's Psychoanalytic theory is collapsed in Miller’s Learning theory into habits. Freud's instincts become drives in this theory. Where Freud emphasizes childhood experiences, the Dollar and Miller stress the effects of more recent experiences. Both these theories emphasize the long-term stability of the consequences of past experience. • The issues of reinforcement are most controversial part of this theory. B. F. Skinner and Personality as Behavior: • Skinner in his Learning theory rejects Freud's concept of unconscious urges as excess baggage. He also rejects the main beliefs of self-growth theories because of too much appeal by these theorists to internal, not-directly-observable processes. • Skinner doesn’t have a proper theory of personality, not even a (social-) learning of personality development. Yet the principles of operant conditioning can be applied to the derivation of statements about hoe personality is formed and how it functions. Bandura and Social Learning: • Albert Bandura concentrates on learning by observation whereas skinner just concentrates on observable behaviors. On the other hand, Dollard and Miller emphasize internal processes such as motivation, drive, drive-reduction and reinforcement. SELF-GROWTH THEORIES: Carl Rogers and Maslow’s Theories: • Rogers and Maslow clearly objected to studying only a portion of humans (as in trait, psychoanalytic and learning theories), preferring to consider humans as a whole, complete, healthy, growing organism. • Both Roger and Miller pay little attention to childhood experiences or unconscious determinants of behavior. • The most common criticism concerns the methodology of Maslow: Picking a small number of people that he himself declared self-actualizing and coming to conclusions about what self-actualization is in the first place does not sound like good science to many people. Also Maslow placed such constraints on

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self-actualization. Maslow limits it to something only two percent of the human species achieves. The self-growth theories are descriptive, but not analytic. They do not yield to precise prediction or test. In these theories the self is emphasized as opposed to having a broader social, interactive, other-centered focus.

A MODERN THEORY OF PERSONALITY-BIG FIVE: • There are limitations to the scope of Big Five as an explanatory or predictive theory. Big Five does not explain all aspects of human personality such as Religiosity, Honesty, Thriftiness, Conservativeness, Snobbishness, Sense of humor, Identity, Selfconcept, and Motivation. • Big Five is not theory-driven. It is merely a data-driven investigation of certain descriptors that tend to cluster together under factor analysis. CONCLUSION: The best theory according to us is BANDURA’S SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY because: • Bundura had given the excellent approach towards the learning process of people, their style of thinking, and the kinds of reinforcement. • He believed that human being and his environment are interrelated with each other and they both have strong impact on each of them. • He also gave the very good ideas about the reinforcement models. • The most significant aspect of his theory is his concepts about punishment & its adverse affects.