Exam-useful questions from this chapter, grouped by marks, each with a full model answer. Try writing the answer yourself first, then check it against this one.
1 1-Mark Questions
Q. What is meant by ‘self-esteem’?
Answer: Self-esteem is the value judgment a person makes about her/his own worth, whether one sees oneself as having high or low worth.
Q. Define self-efficacy.
Answer: Self-efficacy is a person’s belief that s/he has the ability or behaviours required to succeed in a particular situation, based on Bandura’s social learning theory.
Q. What is a ‘trait’?
Answer: A trait is a relatively enduring attribute or quality on which one individual differs from another.
Q. Name the three structural elements of personality according to Freud.
Answer: Id, ego and superego.
Q. What is meant by ‘fixation’ in Freud’s theory?
Answer: Fixation is the arrest of a child’s development at a particular psychosexual stage because the conflict at that stage was not resolved successfully.
Q. Name any two problems associated with self-report measures.
Answer: Social desirability (endorsing items in a socially acceptable way) and acquiescence (agreeing with items regardless of their content).
2 2-Mark Questions
Q. Differentiate between personal identity and social identity.
Answer: Personal identity refers to attributes that make a person different from others, such as name, qualities or capabilities. Social identity refers to attributes that link a person to a social or cultural group, such as religion or region.
Q. What is the difference between self as subject and self as object?
Answer: As a subject, the self actively engages in knowing itself (e.g. ‘I am a dancer’, an entity that does something). As an object, the self is observed and known (e.g. ‘I am one who easily gets hurt’, an entity something is done to). Self has this dual status.
Q. What are the three techniques of self-regulation mentioned in the chapter?
Answer: (1) Observation of one’s own behaviour, (2) Self-instruction, instructing oneself to behave in a certain way, and (3) Self-reinforcement, rewarding oneself for behaviours with pleasant outcomes.
Q. State the four features of personality given in the chapter.
Answer: (1) It has both physical and psychological components. (2) Its expression through behaviour is fairly unique to the individual. (3) Its main features do not easily change with time. (4) It is dynamic, some features may change due to internal or external demands.
Q. Differentiate between cardinal and central traits, with the book’s examples.
Answer: Cardinal traits are highly generalised dispositions around which a person’s entire life revolves, e.g. Gandhi’s non-violence, Hitler’s Nazism. Central traits are less pervasive but still generalised, e.g. warm, sincere, diligent, often used in a testimonial or job recommendation.
Q. What is meant by ‘source traits’ and ‘surface traits’ in Cattell’s theory?
Answer: Source traits are the 16 stable, primary traits Cattell identified through factor analysis, the building blocks of personality. Surface traits are traits that result from the interaction of the source traits.
Q. What is the ‘pleasure principle’ and the ‘reality principle’?
Answer: The pleasure principle (followed by the id) assumes people seek pleasure and avoid pain, demanding immediate gratification. The reality principle (followed by the ego) directs the id towards more appropriate, realistic ways of achieving that gratification.
Q. Differentiate between the Oedipus complex and the Electra complex.
Answer: The Oedipus complex (boys) involves love for the mother, hostility towards the father, and fear of punishment/castration by the father. The Electra complex (girls) involves attaching love to the father, and on realising this cannot succeed, identifying with the mother instead. Both are resolved by identifying with the same-sex parent.
Q. Name the five factors of the Five-Factor Model (Big Five) of personality.
Answer: Paul Costa and Robert McCrae’s five factors (Box 2.2) are: (1) Openness to experience (imaginative, curious, open to new ideas vs rigid); (2) Extraversion (socially active, assertive, talkative vs shy); (3) Agreeableness (helpful, cooperative, caring vs hostile, self-centred); (4) Neuroticism (emotionally unstable, anxious, worried, irritable vs well-adjusted); (5) Conscientiousness (achievement-oriented, dependable, responsible, self-controlled vs impulsive).
3 4-Mark Questions
Q. Explain the kinds of self described in the chapter.
Answer: The chapter describes: (1) Biological self, the earliest element: begins with a reflex (e.g. crying for milk) and develops into awareness of needs; soon the child’s psychological and social needs lead the other components to emerge. (2) Personal self, concerned with one’s own freedom, responsibility, achievement and comfort. (3) Social self (also called familial or relational self), values cooperation, unity, affiliation, sacrifice and sharing, and emerges in relation with others.
Q. How does the Indian notion of self differ from the Western notion? Explain with reference to the self-group boundary.
Answer: In the Western view, the boundary between self and other is relatively fixed, individuals maintain their individuality within the group, with clear dichotomies between self/other, man/nature and subjective/objective (individualistic cultures). In the Indian view, this boundary is shifting, at one moment the self expands to fuse with the cosmos or others, and at the next it withdraws to focus on individual needs. Self and group exist in harmonious co-existence rather than sharp separation (collectivistic cultures).
Q. Explain any four type approaches to the study of personality.
Answer: (1) Hippocrates classified people into sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic and choleric types based on bodily humours. (2) Charak Samhita’s tridosha (vata, pitta, kapha) determines a person’s prakriti; apart from this, a separate Indian typology is based on the trigunas (sattva, rajas, tamas), present in everyone in varying degrees. (3) Sheldon classified body build and temperament into endomorphic, mesomorphic and ectomorphic types. (4) Jung classified people as introverts (prefer solitude, withdraw from conflict) or extraverts (sociable, outgoing).
Q. Explain Eysenck’s dimensions of personality.
Answer: Eysenck proposed personality could be reduced to biologically/genetically based dimensions: (1) Neuroticism vs emotional stability, degree of control over one’s feelings; (2) Extraversion vs introversion, degree of being socially outgoing or withdrawn; (3) Psychoticism vs sociability, added later, a high scorer tends to be hostile, egocentric and antisocial. The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) is used to assess these dimensions.
Q. Describe the five ego defence mechanisms mentioned in the chapter, with an example of each.
Answer: (1) Repression, anxiety-provoking thoughts are dismissed into the unconscious (‘I don’t know why I did that’). (2) Projection, attributing one’s own traits to others (an aggressive person sees others as aggressive). (3) Denial, totally refusing to accept reality (denying a serious illness). (4) Reaction formation, adopting behaviour opposite to one’s true feelings. (5) Rationalisation, making unreasonable behaviour seem reasonable (buying new pens after doing poorly and claiming ‘I’ll do better with these’).
Q. Describe Freud’s five stages of psychosexual development.
Answer: (1) Oral stage, mouth is the pleasure centre (feeding, thumb-sucking). (2) Anal stage (2-3 yrs), bowel/bladder control, conflict between babyish pleasure and adult demands. (3) Phallic stage (4-5 yrs), focus on genitals, Oedipus/Electra complex, resolved through identification with the same-sex parent. (4) Latency stage (7 yrs to puberty), sexual urges relatively inactive, energy goes into social/achievement activities. (5) Genital stage, psychosexual maturity, healthy relating to the opposite sex.
Q. Explain the cultural approach to personality with the example of the Birhor.
Answer: The cultural approach views personality as an adaptation to a group’s ecological and cultural environment. A group’s ‘economic maintenance system’ (shaped by climate, terrain and food availability) determines economic activity, settlement patterns and child-rearing. The Birhor, a nomadic hunting-gathering tribal group of Jharkhand, give children early freedom and socialise them to be independent, autonomous and achievement-oriented, qualities suited to their hunting-gathering life, in contrast to agricultural societies, which socialise children to be obedient, nurturant and responsible.
Q. Explain Rogers’ concept of the ‘fully functioning person’.
Answer: Rogers’ most important idea is the fully functioning person: one whose real self and ideal self are congruent, so that the person expresses capabilities, potentials and talents to the fullest. Rogers believed fulfilment is the motivating force for personality development, people try to express their capabilities and talents to the fullest. He made two assumptions: behaviour is goal-directed and worthwhile, and people (who are innately good) will almost always choose adaptive, self-actualising behaviour. He introduced the idea of a real self and an ideal self, when they correspond a person is generally happy, and a discrepancy often results in unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Unconditional positive regard, provided through client-centred therapy, helps a person’s self-concept and self-esteem grow.
4 6-Mark Questions
Q. Discuss the psychodynamic approach to personality proposed by Freud, including the three levels of consciousness and the structure of personality.
Answer: Freud’s psychodynamic theory visualises the human mind in three levels: the conscious (thoughts/actions we are aware of), the preconscious (activity we become aware of only if we attend closely) and the unconscious (a reservoir of instinctive drives and repressed, mostly sexual, wishes we are unaware of). The primary structural elements of personality, id, ego and superego, are concepts (not physical structures) inferred from behaviour. The id works on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification with no regard for morality. The ego, which grows out of the id, works on the reality principle, mediating between the id’s demands and real-world constraints. The superego is the moral branch of personality, internalising parental authority through socialisation, and tells the id and ego whether a gratification is ethical. Freud believed id is energised by the life instinct (libido) and the death instinct, with more emphasis on the former. According to Freud, much of human behaviour reflects an attempt to deal with or escape from anxiety; how the ego deals with anxiety largely determines how people behave.
Q. Discuss the post-Freudian (neo-analytic) approaches to personality, covering any four theorists.
Answer: Post-Freudian theorists worked with Freud initially and then developed their own theories, giving less weight to sex/aggression and more to the ego and social/rational forces. Carl Jung’s analytical psychology proposed personality as competing forces within the individual, and a collective unconscious containing inherited archetypes (e.g. the God or Mother Earth image) found in myths and art across humanity. Karen Horney took an optimistic view and challenged Freud’s treatment of women as inferior; she held that disturbed parent-child relationships in childhood (indifferent or erratic parenting) cause basic anxiety and resentment. Alfred Adler’s individual psychology held that behaviour is purposeful and goal-directed, and that everyone carries a childhood inferiority complex whose resolution drives personality development. Erich Fromm took a social (not biological) orientation, viewing humans as social beings whose character traits develop from their relationships with others and their striving for freedom, justice and truth. Erik Erikson stressed rational, conscious ego processes across a lifelong developmental process, and is known for the concept of the identity crisis of adolescence.
Q. Explain the major approaches to the study of personality, type, trait, psychodynamic, behavioural, cultural and humanistic, in brief.
Answer: Type approaches place individuals into broad categories based on similar behaviour patterns (e.g. Hippocrates’ humours, Sheldon’s body types, Jung’s introvert/extravert). Trait approaches identify specific, relatively stable attributes along which people differ (Allport’s cardinal/central/secondary traits, Cattell’s 16PF, Eysenck’s dimensions, the Big Five). The psychodynamic approach (Freud) explains personality through unconscious conflict among id, ego and superego, developing through psychosexual stages. The behavioural approach views personality as the learned response of an individual to the environment, without reference to internal dynamics (Pavlov, Skinner, Bandura). The cultural approach sees personality as an adaptation to a group’s ecological and cultural environment (e.g. the Birhor). The humanistic approach (Rogers, Maslow) focuses on people’s subjective experience, self-concept and drive towards self-actualisation.
Q. Discuss any five methods used for the assessment of personality.
Answer: (1) Self-report measures, structured tests like MMPI (567 true/false items, 10 subscales, developed by Hathaway and McKinley), 16PF (Cattell) and EPQ (Eysenck) where the subject directly reports own feelings. (2) Projective techniques, unstructured stimuli that let the person project unconscious feelings, e.g. the Rorschach Inkblot Test (10 inkblots) and TAT (30 picture cards + 1 blank, Morgan and Murray). (3) Interview, structured (fixed questions/procedure) or unstructured (open impression-building). (4) Behavioural ratings, people who know the assessee well categorise their behavioural qualities, watching for the halo effect. (5) Observation, nomination (peer assessment) and situational tests (e.g. the situational stress test) round out the behavioural-analysis methods.
Q. Arihant wants to become a singer even though he belongs to a family of doctors. His family members claim to love him but strongly disapprove of his choice of career. Using Carl Rogers’ terminology, describe the attitudes shown by Arihant’s family.
Answer: Arihant’s family is placing conditions on their love and acceptance of him, they claim to love him, but their approval depends on him giving up the self he would like to be (a singer, his ideal self) in favour of what they consider acceptable (following the family profession of medicine). In Rogers’ terms, this is the opposite of unconditional positive regard: the family is offering only conditional positive regard, accepting Arihant only if he conforms to their expectations. Living by his family’s conditions keeps a discrepancy between Arihant’s real self and his ideal self, which, in Rogers’ view, often results in unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
5 Case Studies
(A) 2 marks Which stage of psychosexual development is the counsellor most likely referring to, and why?
Answer: The Phallic stage (ages 4-5), because this is the stage in which the Oedipus complex occurs, and its resolution normally requires the boy to accept his father’s relationship with his mother and identify with his father as a role model.
(B) 2 marks Using Freud’s terminology, what may have happened to Rohan’s development, and what might this cause later in life?
Answer: Rohan may have become fixated at the phallic stage because the Oedipus complex was not resolved, so he may still feel hostile toward the parent of the same sex. The book says such a boy may come to consider that men are generally hostile and may wish to relate to females in a dependable relationship; regression to an earlier stage is also a likely outcome.
(A) 2 marks Which ego defence mechanism is Meera displaying?
Answer: Rationalisation, she is trying to make her failure seem more acceptable and reasonable by blaming external biased judges, rather than accepting her own preparation was insufficient.
(B) 2 marks According to Freud, is Meera likely to be aware that she is using this defence mechanism? Explain.
Answer: No. Freud held that people who use defence mechanisms are often unaware of doing so, rationalisation, like other defence mechanisms, is the ego’s way of dealing with the uncomfortable feelings produced by anxiety, and it typically operates without the person’s conscious awareness.