After studying this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
- Define personality.
- Compare and contrast the psychodynamic, trait, genetic, environmental, cultural and humanistic approaches to the study of personality.
- Describe Freuds’ structure of personality and psychosexual stages of personality development.
- List common defense mechanisms and explain their role in personality.
- Discuss the challenges to psychoanalytic theory made by Horney, Jung, and the object-relations school.
- Differentiate between the types of traits proposed by Allport and the specific traits of the “Big Five.”
- Discuss the issue of heritability of personality, temperament, and traits.
- Describe and evaluate the key components of the social-cognitive learning approach.
- Discuss how culture influences how we define our selves and our personality.
- Summarize the principles of humanistic psychology proposed by Maslow, Rogers, and May.
