Self and Personality
Self and Personality
This domain tests how the self is organised and how psychologists explain enduring patterns of behaviour. Expect questions on self-concept, self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-regulation, psychodynamic, trait, humanistic and social-cognitive approaches, and personality assessment.
Core rules
- Self-concept is the set of beliefs about one's attributes; self-esteem is the global evaluation of self-worth; self-efficacy is the belief that one can succeed in a specific task.
- Freud divided personality into id (pleasure principle), ego (reality principle) and superego (morality); conflict occurs largely at the unconscious level.
- Defence mechanisms distort reality to reduce anxiety: repression, projection, rationalisation, displacement, reaction formation, sublimation.
- Trait approaches describe stable dispositions: Allport's cardinal, central and secondary traits; Cattell's 16PF; Eysenck's extraversion-neuroticism-psychoticism; Big Five OCEAN.
- Humanistic views emphasise self-actualisation and congruence; Bandura's social-cognitive view emphasises observational learning and self-efficacy.
- Assessment uses self-report inventories, projective tests (TAT, Rorschach), interviews, observation and ratings.
Worked example
A student fails an exam and says, 'The paper was unfair and the teacher wanted to fail me.' Calling this rationalisation requires showing that the explanation protects self-esteem by giving a plausible but self-serving reason, without the person being fully aware of the distortion. If the student instead accused the teacher of hating him while feeling hostile himself, projection would fit better. The reasoning depends on the function of the defence, not just the words.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating defence mechanisms as deliberate lies; they are unconscious.
- Confusing self-esteem (global worth) with self-efficacy (task-specific confidence).
- Assuming projective tests are highly reliable; their scoring is often subjective.
- Labelling a person by a trait instead of describing behaviour in context.