Examples and Illustrations of Concepts in Personality
DreamBank Welcome to The DreamBank, a collection of over 16,000 dream reports in English (and another 6,000 in German). The reports come from a variety of different sources and research studies, from people ages 7 to 74. They can be analyzed using the search engine and statistical programs built into this site. Based on the research of Adam Schneider and G. William Domhoff Psychology Department, at UC Santa Cruz. Includes transcriptions of the dream journals of real people including Freud and Jung and others here.
Erik Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development Visit this page to see classroom activities submitted by high school and college teachers to illustrate the 8 stages of development. Add your own activities for inclusion here.
Erikson: Identity vs. Role Confusion: Parents Can Play An Active Role In The Identity Formation Of Their Adolescent Children Science Daily, from August 27, 2008, summarizes research by Elli Schachter of Bar Ilan University and Jonathan Ventura of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mainstream belief regarding identity theory tends to portray adolescents as the sole agents involved in their identity development. However, a new article in the Journal of Research on Adolescence reveals that parents are concerned, involved, and reflective participants in their children's identity formation
Examples for Erikson's 8 Stages of Development Visit this page to see examples of people (actual and fictional) to illustrate each of the 8 stages of development and to add your own examples.
Extroversion-Introversion: The Necker Cube Experiment This brief on-line experiment, devised by the Open University in conjunction with the BBC was developed by Dr Peter Naish. Their hypothesis is that because of their varying response to stimulation, extroverts and introverts will perceive a Necker cube differently.
Factor Analysis and Sea Monsters Kevin Grobman, who maintains the DevPsy.org website, uses the brilliant metaphor of underwater sea monsters in order to help students understand what factor analysis is. Check out his cute graphics and explanation here. He also includes a link to PowerPoint slides you can use in your own lectures.
The Five Factor Model and U. S. Presidents. Just in time for President's day, check out Steve Rubenzer and Thomas Faschingbauer's site comparing the presidents on the five factor model of personality. Find out the 8 types of presidents, what traits set presidents apart from other people, what traits the most successful presidents share, which modern president is most like our founding fathers, and much more.
Freudian Dream Analysis Doug Davis, Haverford College, shares these notes from his Foundations of Personality class. These teaching notes on The Interpretation of Dreams, describe in some detail Irma's dream from Chapter 2.
Freudian Slips Doug Davis, Haverford College, shares these from his Foundations of Personality class.
Freudian Slips Add your own examples to this list of our favorite Freudian slips.
Gender: Girls' Versions of Classic Non-Gendered Board Games Scrabble, LIFE, and Monopoly in pink? That's right, Toys-R-Us are selling girl versions of these classic toys. Is this a stroke of marketing genius or an example of gender over-schematization or just plain old sexism? We'll let you and your students be the judge.
Gender Inequity in Whoville? NPR commentator Peter Sagal and his daughters discover that sexism is alive and well in the just-released movie Horton Hears a Who -- sexism that was not in the original 1954 book.
Genetics: Famous Black Lives Through DNA's Prism This New York Times article gives an overview of the new PBS Series African-American Lives 2 in which Henry Louis Gates Jr. uses DNA evidence, archival research, and good old-fashioned detective work to trace the family trees of Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Tina Turner and others. Includes a brief video and links to related web sites.
A Genetic Map of Europe: Evoked Culture Biologists have constructed a genetic map of Europe showing the degree of relatedness between its various populations. New York Times writer Nicholas Wade's explanation of genetic variation provides a good illustration of genetics and evoked cultural variation. Originally published on August 13, 2008.
Karen Horney's Three Neurotic Personality Styles Add your own examples to this list of personalities from movies, TV, fiction, and real life.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, including newer 7- and 8- stage models. Also includes links to PDF and MSWORD illustrations of the hierarchies.
- Hierarchy of Needs Original 5 stage model in PDF format.
- Hierarchy of Needs Modified 7-stage model from the 1970s in PDF format.
- Hierarchy of Needs Modified 8-stage model from the 1990s in PDF format.
- Self-test Quick self-test based on the 5-stage model of the hierarchy of needs in PDF format.
- Self-test Quick self-test based on the modified 8-stage model of the hierarchy of needs in PDF format.
Maslow: The relentless urge to create. Joseph Martell, a paint mixer at Home Depot, is able to see the beauty in a simple can of unmixed paint. While others are too busy to notice, he quickly snaps a photo before the can hits the mixing machine. The results are stunning and illustrate the urge to create -- even under less than ideal circumstances. Illustrates beautifully Maslow's quote: A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
Introversion: Confessions of an introverted traveler and Six tips for introverted travelers You don't have to be an extrovert to enjoy travel. Sophia Dembling, writer for the travel blog World Hum which believes that Travel is a state of mind, suggests that while some people travel to meet people, introverts don't. She blogs about how extroverted and introverted travelers see the world differently. In the second link, she describes strategies that introverts might try while traveling to enhance their experience and to counteract the myth that introverts are just not cut out for traveling.
MBTI Typealyzer: What type is that blog? Just type in the URL of a favorite blog and this site will tell you the Myers-Briggs personality type of the writer. The results are bound to spark a lively debate in your class about reliability, validity, generalizability, and self-presentation.
Pavlov's Dog. The Nobel Prize Organization hosts an informative web site on Nobel Prize winners which includes educational games. Since Ivan Petrovich Pavlov won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904, the site has a game to illustrate principles of classical conditioning. Note: if you find the graphics too simplistic, stick around until the end for the theoretical explanation.
NEO-PI-R Profiles of National Character McCrae, R. R., Terracciano, A. & 79 members of the Personalty Profiles of Cultures Project (2005). Personality Profiles of Cultures: Aggregate Personality Traits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(3), 407-425. (PDF). This article, in PDF format describes their research on personality profiles of cultures. The article includes two summary figures comparing Italians and Malays on the NEO-PI-R. The tables are a great way to illustrate for students what an NEO-PI-R profile looks like, and how to interpret scores and facets. A companion article in Current Directions in Psychological Science (McCrae, R. R., & Terracciano, A., 2006, National Character and Personality, 15(4), 156-161) presents the same work in a more compact format with figures comparing Americans and Canadians on the NEO-PI-R. A summary of this article (without the figures) is available here. Members of APS can access the complete article (with figures) online by following the directions given at the end of the summary.
Neuroscience A companion site to the PBS series The Secret Life of the Brain this site contains definitions and examples of CAT scans, PET scans, MRI, fMRI, MEG, a 3-D tour of the brain, and mind illusions. Divided into five segments (the baby's brain, the child's brain, the teenage brain, the adult brain, the aging brain), the site contains numerous video clips including infant vision, the birth of the brain, motherese, sleep, addiction, culture and schizophrenia, laughter, emotions, Alzheimer's, memory, and more.
Optimism: Never Ever Give Up This You Tube video (2 minutes and 42 seconds long) tells the story of a young man who lived a hard life (his mother died when he was young, he had no education, lost jobs, etc.). At the very end of the video we find out that this young man was Abraham Lincoln.
Personality Disorders: Reel People This web site presents in-depth analysis of your favorite characters from the movies. (Note that this page may not load properly at times -- so check back at another time if it doesn't work for you right away.)
Research Methods Paul C. Cozby at California State University, Fullerton, wrote the textbook Methods in Behavioral Research: Resources for Research in Psychology and the Behavioral Sciences. This homepage for the book includes web resources and examples of key concepts. Very useful even if you are not familiar with his textbook.
16PF Pearson Assessments, the publishers of the 16PF provide an extensive overview of the scale, including background and uses free on their website. They even have 3 full sample reports which would make useful case study examples for a class. The test itself, however, is available for a fee.
Phineas P. Gage Check out the only known photograph (daguerreotype) of Phineas Gage, the foreman who sustained a serious and amazing head wound which changed his personality for the rest of his life. Provides links to background information on Phineas P. Gage.
Self-Conceptions from Childhood to Adolescence: A Brief Experiment. All graduating seniors in the Psychology Department at Sweet Briar College leave behind a legacy in the form of a project which inspired them as a student. Alumnae to Chantal Yavari '02 summarizes the results of a study she did in which four participants aged 5, 11, 16, and 20 answer the question "Who am I?". This makes a good class exercise as well as providing interesting examples for a class on identity development.
Self: Who's that Beautiful Baby? How can we have changed so much from when we were children and yet still be the same person? Use this entertaining slide show quiz of celebrity baby pictures to introduce the idea of self-concept and personality continuity.
Sensation Seeking: Novel Drug Abuse Prevention Ads Get Strong Response from High-Sensation Seekers According to the website of the National Institute on Drug Abuse: A strong, biologically based need for stimulation appears to make sensation-seeking young adults more vulnerable to drug abuse. Now a NIDA-funded study has shown that highly novel drug abuse prevention messages can capture the attention of high-sensation-seeking young adults and get them to consider participating in alternatives to drug abuse. Read about the study and the ad here.
16PF in Other Languages Information and population norms for the standard English version of the 16PF are available on this site, which specializes in multi-language on-line administration of the test for a fee. However, the website has full-size samples of reports in 23 languages including Spanish, Japanese, Turkish, Dutch, French, Belgian, Portuguese of Brazil, and English for Australia, the UK, India, Canada, and South Africa free for the downloading. These would be excellent examples to use in a class.
TAT Cards. Doug Davis, Haverford College, as part of his Personality Assessment course posted these 4 sets of responses to TAT cards. They include responses of a University of Michigan undergraduate woman from the 1960s, a Moroccan adolescent, and Haverford undergraduates to both a computer stimulus and the standard cards.