Self and Personality

Self-esteem, self-efficacy and self-regulation, the type and trait approaches, the Big Five, Freud and the post-Freudians, the humanistic view, and how personality is assessed.

Key ideas

• Personal identity sets a person apart from others; social identity links them to groups.
• Self-esteem is how worthy a person judges themselves; self-efficacy (Bandura) is the belief that one can do what a situation demands.
• Self-regulation includes self-control, the ability to delay gratification, helped by self-observation, self-instruction and self-reinforcement.
• Personality is the set of relatively stable characteristics that make a person unique across situations and time.
• Type approaches sort people into groups; trait approaches describe them on enduring qualities, summed up in the Big Five.
• Freud saw personality as id, ego and superego, with defence mechanisms that reduce anxiety; post-Freudians stressed social and cultural factors.
• Rogers held that well-being comes from congruence between the real and ideal self, helped by unconditional positive regard.

Remember

Watch out

• Mixing up self-esteem (how worthy you feel) and self-efficacy (believing you can do a task).
• Giving the ego the pleasure principle: the id seeks pleasure, the ego works on reality.
• Calling the Big Five a typology: they are trait dimensions, and everyone has some of each.

Worked example