Introductory Psychology

AN APPROACH FOR SOCIAL WORKERS

D R Price-Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136326806
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

This is Volume XXVI of thirty-eight in the General Psychology series. Originally published in 1958, this study offers an introductory approach to the field of psychology for social workers. It was originally designed as a textbook for students of Social Work. Written by the author on being appointed to provide a course of lectures in Psychology for students taking the Certificate in Social Science and Administration.

VI
Personality

THERE are some terms in Psychology which possess a multiplicity of definitions. "Set" is one such term, "attitude" is another, and the subject of this last chapter is clearly another. Allport, writing in 1937,¹ listed forty-eight definitions used in the past, and then provided the forty-ninth and fiftieth. Definitions of Personality range from omnibus interpretations to interpretations in a framework of adjustment or integration. And they sometimes differ according to the slant of a school of thought. If one confined the study of personality to the single task of taxonomy, the discipline would become far more complex than indeed it is already. Enumeration of the varieties of individuals, in the psychological sense, could there even be found a fundamental basis of classification, would overshadow the efforts of the biologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—men such as Ray and Cuvier and the Swede, Linneaus, who attempted to classify the world of plants and animals. So it is not surprising that many psychologists have eschewed this approach, and merely given a working definition, as Allport does for his book. In this volume, although for the sake of exposition, we shall approach the subject from different viewpoints, from the biological position, from the social standpoint and so on, if it helps the reader to have some kind of definition, then we can do no better than in fact to use Allport's working definition, which is: "Personality is the dynamic organisation within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment."

Analysis and Synthesis. Both analysis and synthesis when applied to the study of personality have limitations. Analysis takes up various approaches, renders the complex material easier to understand, but loses the essential ingredient, namely the individual that is analysed. After tearing a person into his biological and social components, it is difficult to say as Mark Antony said of Brutus, "This was a man", unless we apply it cynically with the emphasis on the past tense of the auxiliary verb. Synthesis, on the other hand, may keep the essential but leaves the myriad-like aspect untouched; it is at once too embracing and too narrow. The distinction in approach has been called the "nomothetic" as against the "idiographic" way of describing personality. The emphasis in the nomothetic approach is to analyse the components of personality common to all individuals, while in the ideographic approach the insistence is upon personality as a unique configuration which cannot be analysed into its component parts.

Definitions

In this Chapter we shall adopt an analysis of personality by tracing the various determinants of it—biological, psychological and social. The discussion of these will occupy the next three sections. In this section it is necessary to provide both working definitions of some of the aspects of personality discussed, and to describe some of the methods of measuring personality.

Temperament and Character. These two terms have often been used as synonymous with personality itself, but we shall define them as aspects of it. Temperament has been regarded as the constellation of the emotional and impulsive aspects in experience, which are characteristic of an individual. We describe people as being cheerful, gloomy, excitable, calm, optimistic and pessimistic and so forth, which are all adjectives designating temperament. The Greeks devised a scheme, a classification of temperament, based on the notion of humours or fluids of the body, which divided emotional dispositions into four groups, which they called sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic. Today the theory is discredited, but the fact that emotions are bound up with the internal workings of our bodies is very true. A resumé of the modern conception of this aspect will be given in the next section.

Broadly speaking, while personality is considered to be the sum total of the physical, mental, moral and social qualities of a person, character pertains to integration of these tendencies from the standpoint of a social or ethical criterion. When we say that X is a "bad character" we are saying that certain aspects of this person's personality are not in accordance with the type of behaviour which in our society we designate as "good". Besides this, the term "character traits" is often used to describe the relatively enduring features of personality, the ones which as we say are "characteristic" of a person.

Traits and Types. As suggested in the last few lines, a trait is a characteristic feature of personality. It cuts across the classification of temperament and character, as both these aspects of personality are made up by traits. "Cheerful" is a trait and so is "honesty". A personality is made up of scores of traits. Obviously, from the point of view of evaluation, it would be simpler if we could find some way of reducing this large number to a smaller quantity. A method of doing this is factor analysis,² whereby traits are clustered into groups and correlated with one another. Those traits that correlate well with one another are abridged under one basic trait or factor. In this way a number of traits can be reduced to a few common factors.

A type is generally an example of an extreme feature in personality, common to a class of individuals. Jung's classification of introvert and extrovert is an example. An introvert is a person who turns his interest inwards to his own thoughts and feelings, while an extrovert characteristically is more interested in the world about him. But these are the extreme cases. Most people are a mixture of introvert and extrovert. If we think of types as being in separate compartments, its use as a way of defining personalities is misleading. Rather we should think of types as being selected points on a continuum; in the above case both would be the extreme points, at either end. When we discuss constitutional types in the next section, the advantage of defining along a continuous scale will be recognised.

The Measurement of Personality

The following four methods of testing personality will be reviewed: Rating scales, Questionnaires and Inventories, Situational Tests, and Projective methods.

Rating Scales. There are several types of rating scales. One of the most common is simply to make judgement on a number of traits by indicating an assessment along a prepared list of descriptions. For example if a person was being judged for honesty, a five or seven point scale ranging from extreme honesty to extreme dishonesty, with the intermediate steps in between, would be given to somebody to indicate their rating by checking at the appropriate place. The scale might run, if there were only five points: Very honest, honest, half honest and half dishonest, dishonest, very dishonest; all that the judge has to do is to place a tick at one of these points. Descriptions need not be given, and the quantitative scale can be given alone, the higher the number indicating more of the trait judged. The advantage of rating scales is that intermediate steps are allowed for; to judge a man as either honest or dishonest is likely to be too sweeping an assertion. It also fails to differentiate different people accurately enough. Also two or three or more judges can use the same scale on one person and their assessment can be pooled. Finally it is a relatively easy method to apply.

Questionnaires and Inventories. The simplest form of questionnaire merely consists of a number of statements to which a person must answer "yes" or "no". Sometimes a third category "don't know" is included. Or the statements may be in the form to which answers of "true" and "false" are the appropriate responses. The questionnaire approach has wide applicability. It can be used to find out people'S interests, their attitudes towards religion and poli tics, their emotional maladjustments, and their positions on any selected continuum of traits such as ascendancy-submission. The advantage of questionnaires and inventories is that they can be easily applied and if properly constructed can cull valuable jnformation about a person. The disadvantages are that many questionnaires are easy to "fool"; that is to say, if a person knows what the series of questions is after, he can frame his answers according to what impression he wishes to give. Also many questionnaires, by their set number of possible answers, impose artificial responses. A solution to the first difficulty is overcome by incorporating in the whole range of questions some which are specially designed to test lying. The second difficulty is met by including rating scales attached to each question.³

Situational Tests. Instead of attempting to discover the personality of a person by paper and pencil methods, there is the possibility of testing for a selected trait by miniature real life situations. One type of this kind of test was devised in the Character Education Inquiry carried out by Hartshorne and May.⁴ Here children were tested for a number of characteristics, such as honesty, truthfulness, self-control and generosity. A typical situational test was involved in the studies on cheating. The children were given pencil and paper problems to solve, which were then collected and a duplicate set of each child's answers made. Afterwards the original papers were then returned to the children with a key for self-scoring. It could then be seen, by comparing the original and the duplicate, whether the child had cheated in scoring his own paper by altering his responses. In other words the situation was deliberately contrived to allow for any sign of dishonesty to manifest.

Projective Methods. The principle in projection tests is to give an individual a series of pictures or statements which are deliberately open to all kinds of interpretations. In this way the subject is said to reveal his innermost needs, desires and attitudes, which would not be possible by a direct approach. The best known of these methods is the Rorschach ink blot test. Ten standard patterns of ink blots are given one at a time to a subject, who is simply asked to report what he sees or what he thinks the ink blots represent. The patterns are all bilaterally symmetrical, some are in black and white, others are in colour. Responses are measured according to such factors as the part of the blot to which the subject makes his observation, or whether he regards the pattern as a whole or chooses some small detail. The form, colour and shading ob served are further factors to be assessed, and whether movement is perceived. The content of the patterns suggest a range of perceptions of human figures to animals and plants, from anatomical diagrams to landscapes, and from maps to food. The scoring of this test is very complex. There are many possible responses which are given interpretations. Thus seeing humans in movement is regarded as an indication of fantasy living, reaction to the whole figure is assessed as conceptual thinking, responses determined primarily by colour, with form contributing are interpreted as an unstable emotional reaction.⁵

The drawback of the Rorschach test is that there is a poor standardisation of the interpretations of the responses. Judgements of personality from this device are prone to different subjective impressions by the person that uses it. When it is used by an experienced clinician along with other methods of measuring personality it has been found very useful in establishing clues to diagnosis.

Another type of projective method consists of giving a person incomplete sentences which he has to finish. For example the opening words may be "What annoys me . . . " "My greatest fear . . . ", "Other people . . . ", "I am best when . . . ", "My greatest worry is . . . ". The subject is then instructed to complete these sentences in order to express his real feelings. The rationale of the test, similar to all projective methods, is that a subject will reflect his own desires, fears and attitudes in the completed sentence.

The chief advantage of projective techniques is that they make available information about a person which is not readily accessible by other means, as the purpose of the test is disguised from the subject. He is more likely to reveal his secret wishes and fears in this way than by being directly probed. The disadvantages lie with the difficulties of standardisation, as discussed above.⁶

Biological Aspects

The organism operates in an integrative manner, and the various parts of which it is compounded are interdependent, so that one might justly state, if one looks upon personality as a configuration of the total response of the organism, that every part of the latter enters into what we call personality. Although this may be true, nevertheless there are some parts of the body which are relatively more important for personality manifestations, and we will proceed to discuss these.

The Endocrine System

There are two main divisions of glands in the body, the duct glands and the ductless glands. The latter division differs from the former in that their secretions or hormones pass directly into the blood or lymph instead of into ducts and then excreted. Hence the ductless glands are also called the glands of internal secretion or the endocrine system, and it is this system which is important for the study of personality.

The endocrines represent an interlocking system on their own, as each gland has repercussions upon another, and if one oversecretes or under-secretes the whole system is thrown out of balance. Besides this it is integrated with the nervous system in such a way that the two are combined into a larger system. Abstracting the one from the other is necessary for exposition, but the integrative action of the nervous system must be kept in mind throughout.

Pituitary. Situated at the base of the brain, often called the "master-gland", is the Pituitary. It is composed of three parts, the posterior lobe, the anterior, and the segment that lies between. The first and the last need not concern us much in the discussion of personality, as the secretions produced are connected with the output of urine, the stimulation and contraction of blood vessels and the like. There is one hormone secreted by the posterior pituitary, however, which is of practical use; this is pituitrin which is employed clinically for increasing the tone of the muscles of the uterus in childbirth. It is the anterior pituitary that is of most importance for our subject, as this part has several hormones, which influence strongly the external behaviour of the organism. Some of these hormones are related to growth and development. Phyone is the name given to the growth hormone of the anterior pituitary. If there is an abnormal increase of it during childhood there results an acceleration of the growth of the skeletal...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• PREFACE
• I INTRODUCTION
• II MOTIVATION
• III LEARNING
• IV PERCEPTION
• V COMMUNICATION
• VI PERSONALITY
• INDEX