Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T16:17:48.012Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Personality and the Unconscious

from Part I - Foundational Issues: History and Approaches to Personality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

Philip J. Corr
Affiliation:
City, University London
Gerald Matthews
Affiliation:
University of Central Florida
Get access

Summary

Personality can be defined as about studying characteristic patterns of behaviors and mental processes (thoughts, feelings and motivations) that are relatively stable across time and can be used to differentiate among individuals (Baumert et al., 2017). One of the issues connected to the study of personality is how these behaviors happen. Do people intentionally behave in a certain way? Are they aware of how they behave? Do they know why? Are they aware of the antecedents and consequences of their behavior? Do they hold beliefs about who they are (i.e., their self-concept)? How much do they know who they are? How willing are they to reveal who they think they are to other people?

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aquino, K., & Reed, A. (2002). The self-importance of moral identity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 14231440.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Asendorpf, J. B., Banse, R., & Mücke, D. (2002). Double dissociation between implicit and explicit personality self-concept: The case of shy behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 380393.Google Scholar
Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., Perugini, M., Szarota, P., de Vries, R. E., Di Blas, L., … De Raad, B. (2004). A six-factor structure of personality-descriptive adjectives: Solutions from psycholexical studies in seven languages. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 356366.Google Scholar
Back, M. D., & Nestler, S. (2017). Dual process approaches to personality. In Deutsch, R., Gawronski, B. & Hofmann, W. (Eds.), Reflective and impulsive determinants of human behavior (pp. 137154). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Back, M. D., Schmukle, S. C., & Egloff, B. (2009). Predicting actual behavior from the explicit and implicit self-concept of personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 533548.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Banse, R., Messer, M., & Fischer, I. (2015). Predicting aggressive behavior with the aggressiveness-IAT. Aggressive Behavior, 41, 6583.Google Scholar
Bargh, J. A. (1994). The four horsemen of automaticity: Awareness, intention, efficiency, and control in social cognition. In Wyer, R. S. Jr. & Srull, T. K. (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition: Basic processes: Applications (pp. 140). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bargh, J. A. (2016). Awareness of the prime versus awareness of its influence: Implications for the real-world scope of unconscious higher mental processes. Current Opinion in Psychology, 12, 4952.Google Scholar
Bargh, J. A., & Morsella, E. (2008). The unconscious mind. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 7379.Google Scholar
Bargh, J. A., Schwader, K. L., Hailey, S. E., Dyer, R. L., & Boothby, E. J. (2012). Automaticity in social-cognitive processes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16, 593605.Google Scholar
Barnes-Holmes, D., Barnes-Holmes, Y., Power, P., Hayden, E., Milne, R., & Stewart, I. (2006). Do you know what you really believe? Developing the Implicit Relational Evaluation Procedure (IRAP) as a direct measure of implicit beliefs. The Irish Psychologist, 32, 169177.Google Scholar
Baumert, A., Schmitt, M., Perugini, M., Johnson, W., Blum, G., Borkenau, P., … Wrzus, C. (2017). Integrating personality structure, personality process, and personality development. European Journal of Personality, 31, 503528.Google Scholar
Blanton, H., & Jaccard, J. (2006). Arbitrary metrics in psychology. American Psychologist, 61, 2741.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bluemke, M., & Friese, M. (2012). On the validity of idiographic and generic self-concept Implicit Association Tests: A core-concept model. European Journal of Personality, 26, 515528.Google Scholar
Boldero, J. M., Rawlings, D., & Haslam, N. (2007). Convergence between GNAT-assessed implicit and explicit personality. European Journal of Personality, 21, 341358.Google Scholar
Bosson, J. K., Swann, W. B., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2000). Stalking the perfect measure of implicit self-esteem: The blind men and the elephant revisited? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 631643.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carlson, E. N. (2013). Overcoming the barriers to self-knowledge: Mindfulness as a path to seeing yourself as you really are. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 173186.Google Scholar
Chevance, G., Héraud, N., Guerrieri, A., Rebar, A., & Boiché, J. (2017). Measuring implicit attitudes toward physical activity and sedentary behaviors: Test-retest reliability of three scoring algorithms of the Implicit Association Test and Single Category-Implicit Association Test. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 31, 7078.Google Scholar
Cicchetti, D. (1994). Guidelines, criteria, and rules of thumb for evaluating normed and standardized assessment instruments in psychology. Psychological Assessment, 6, 284290.Google Scholar
Cogswell, A., Alloy, L. B., Karpinski, A., & Grant, D. A. (2010). Assessing dependency using self-report and indirect measures: Examining the significance of discrepancies. Journal of Personality Assessment, 92, 306316.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conrey, F. R., Sherman, J. W., Gawronski, B., Hugenberg, K., & Groom, C. J. (2005). Separating multiple processes in implicit social cognition: The quad model of implicit task performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 469487.Google Scholar
Costantini, G., Perugini, M., Dentale, F., Barbaranelli, C., Alessandri, G., Vecchione, M., & Caprara, G. V. (2016). Assessing positive orientation with the Implicit Association Test. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, advance online publication.Google Scholar
Costantini, G., Richetin, J., Borsboom, D., Fried, E. I., Rhemtulla, M., & Perugini, M. (2015). Development of indirect measures of conscientiousness: Combining a facets approach and network analysis. European Journal of Personality, 29, 548567.Google Scholar
Currie, C. J., Katz, B. A., & Yovel, I. (2017). Explicit and implicit shame aversion predict symptoms of avoidant and borderline personality disorders. Journal of Research in Personality, 71, 1316.Google Scholar
De Cuyper, K., De Houwer, J., Vansteelandt, K., Perugini, M., Pieters, G., Claes, L., & Hermans, D. (2017). Using indirect measurement tasks to assess the self-concept of personality: A systematic review and meta-analyses. European Journal of Personality, 31, 841.Google Scholar
De Cuyper, K., Pieters, G., Claes, L., Vandromme, H., & Hermans, D. (2013). Indirect measurement of perfectionism: Construct and predictive validity. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 32, 844858.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Houwer, J. (2014). A propositional model of implicit evaluation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 8, 342353.Google Scholar
De Houwer, J., & Moors, A. (2010). Implicit Measures: similarity and differences. In Gawronski, B. & Payne, B. K. (Eds.), Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications (pp. 176193). New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Deutsch, R., & Gawronski, B. (2009). When the method makes a difference: Antagonistic effects on “automatic evaluations” as a function of task characteristics of the measure. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 101114.Google Scholar
Egloff, B., & Schmukle, S. C. (2002). Predictive validity of an implicit association test for assessing anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 14411455.Google Scholar
Egloff, B., Weck, F., & Schmukle, S. C. (2008). Thinking about anxiety moderates the relationship between implicit and explicit anxiety measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 771778.Google Scholar
Funder, D. C. (2013). The personality puzzle (6th ed.). New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Gawronski, B., & De Houwer, J. (2014). Implicit measures in social and personality psychology. In Reis, H. T. & Judd, C. M. (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology (2nd ed., pp. 283310). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gawronski, B., & Hahn, A. (2019). Implicit measures: procedures, use, and interpretation. In Blanton, H., LaCroix, J. M. & Webster, G. D. (Eds.), Measurement in social psychology (pp. 2955). New York: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Gawronski, B., Hofmann, W., & Wilbur, C. J. (2006). Are “implicit” attitudes unconscious? Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 485499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glashouwer, K. A., & de Jong, P. J. (2010). Disorder-specific automatic self-associations in depression and anxiety: Results of The Netherlands study of depression and anxiety. Psychological Medicine, 40, 11011111.Google Scholar
Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. G. (2006). The international personality item pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 8496.Google Scholar
Greenwald, A. G. (1992). New Look 3: Unconscious cognition reclaimed. American Psychologist, 47, 766779.Google Scholar
Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological review, 102, 427.Google Scholar
Greenwald, A. G., & Farnham, S. D. (2000). Using the implicit association test to measure self-esteem and self-concept. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 10221038.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 14641480.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenwald, A. G., Nosek, B. A., & Banaji, M. R. (2003). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: I. An improved scoring algorithm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 197216.Google Scholar
Greenwald, A. G., Poehlman, T. A., Uhlmann, E. L., & Banaji, M. R. (2009). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta-analysis of predictive validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 1741.Google Scholar
Hahn, A., Judd, C. M., Hirsh, H. K., & Blair, I. V. (2014). Awareness of implicit attitudes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 13691392.Google Scholar
Hassin, R. R., Uleman, J. S., & Bargh, J. A. (Eds.) (2005). The new unconscious. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hofmann, W., Gschwendner, T., Friese, M., Wiers, R. W., & Schmitt, M. (2008). Working memory capacity and self-regulatory behavior: Toward an individual differences perspective on behavior determination by automatic versus controlled processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 962977.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hofmann, W., & Wilson, T. D. (2010). Consciousness, introspection, and the adaptive unconsciousness. In Gawronski, B. & Payne, B. K. (Eds.), Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications (pp. 197215). New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Horcajo, J., Rubio, V. J., Aguado, D., Hernández, J. M., & Márquez, M. O. (2014). Using the Implicit Association Test to assess risk propensity self-concept: Analysis of its predictive validity on a risk-taking behaviour in a natural setting. European Journal of Personality, 28, 459471.Google Scholar
Huntjens, R. J. C., Rijkeboer, M. M., Krakau, A., & de Jong, P. J. (2014). Implicit versus explicit measures of self-concept of self-control and their differential predictive power for spontaneous trait-relevant behaviors. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 45, 17.Google Scholar
Jordan, C. H., Spencer, S. J., Zanna, M. P., Hoshino-Browne, E., & Correll, J. (2003). Secure and defensive high self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 969978.Google Scholar
Karpinski, A., & Steinman, R. B. (2006). The single category implicit association test as a measure of implicit social cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 1632.Google Scholar
Klauer, K. C., Voss, A., Schmitz, F., & Teige-Mocigemba, S. (2007). Process components of the Implicit Association Test: A diffusion-model analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 353368.Google Scholar
Koole, S. L., Govorun, O., Cheng, C. M., & Gallucci, M. (2009). Pulling yourself together: Meditation promotes congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 12201226.Google Scholar
Krause, S., Back, M. D., Egloff, B., & Schmukle, S. C. (2011). Reliability of implicit self-esteem measures revisited. European Journal of Personality, 25, 239251.Google Scholar
LeBel, E. P., & Gawronski, B. (2009). How to find what’s in a name: Scrutinizing the optimality of five scoring algorithms for the name-letter task. European Journal of Personality, 23, 85106.Google Scholar
McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (2008). Empirical and theoretical status of the Five-Factor Model of personality traits. In Boyle, G., Matthews, G. & Saklofske, D. (Eds.), SAGE handbook of personality theory and assessment: Personality theories and models (Vol. 1, pp. 273294). London: Sage.Google Scholar
Moors, A. (2016). Automaticity: Componential, causal, and mechanistic explanations. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 263287.Google Scholar
Moors, A., & De Houwer, J. (2006). Automaticity: A theoretical and conceptual analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 297326.Google Scholar
Newell, B. R., & Shanks, D. R. (2014). Unconscious influences on decision making: A critical review. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 119.Google Scholar
Nosek, B. A., & Banaji, M. R. (2001). The Go/No-Go Association Task. Social Cognition, 19, 625666.Google Scholar
Ozer, D. J., & Benet-Martínez, V. (2006). Personality and the prediction of consequential outcomes. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 401421.Google Scholar
Payne, B. K., Cheng, C. M., Govorun, O., & Stewart, B. D. (2005). An inkblot for attitudes: Affect misattribution as implicit measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 277293.Google Scholar
Perugini, M., Back, M., Hagemeyer, B., & Wrzus, C. (2020). Dual process models of personality. In Rauthmann, J. F. (Ed.), The handbook of personality dynamics and processes. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Perugini, M., Costantini, G., Richetin, J., & Zogmaister, C. (2015). Implicit Association Tests, then and now. In Ortner, T. M. & van de Vijver, F. J. R. (Eds.), Behavior based assessment in psychology: Going beyond self-report in the personality, affective, motivation, and social domains (pp. 1528). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.Google Scholar
Perugini, M., & Leone, L. (2009). Implicit self-concept and moral action. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 747754.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perugini, M., Richetin, J., & Zogmaister, C. (2010). Prediction of behavior. In Gawronski, B. & Payne, B. K. (Eds.), Handbook of implicit social cognition (pp. 255278). New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Remue, J., Hughes, S., De Houwer, J., & De Raedt, R. (2014). To be or want to be: Disentangling the role of actual versus ideal self in implicit self-esteem. PLOS ONE, 9, e108837.Google Scholar
Richetin, J., Costantini, G., Perugini, M., & Schönbrodt, F. (2015). Should we stop looking for a better scoring algorithm for handling Implicit Association Test data? Test of the role of errors, extreme latencies treatment, scoring formula, and practice trials on reliability and validity. PLOS ONE, 10, e0129601.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Richetin, J., Richardson, D. S., & Mason, G. D. (2010). Predictive validity of IAT aggressiveness in the context of provocation. Social Psychology, 41, 2734.Google Scholar
Rowatt, W. C., Powers, C., Targhetta, V., Comer, J., Kennedy, S., & Labouff, J. (2006). Development and initial validation of an implicit measure of humility relative to arrogance. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1, 198211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sava, F. A., Maricutoiu, L. P., Rusu, S., Macsinga, I., Vîrgă, D., Cheng, C. M., & Payne, B. K. (2012). An inkblot for the implicit assessment of personality: The semantic misattribution procedure. European Journal of Personality, 26, 613628.Google Scholar
Schmukle, S. C., Back, M. D., & Egloff, B. (2008). Validity of the Five-Factor Model for the implicit self-concept of personality. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 24, 263272.Google Scholar
Schnabel, K., Banse, R., & Asendorpf, J. B. (2006a). Assessment of implicit personality self-concept using the implicit association test (IAT): Concurrent assessment of anxiousness and angriness. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 373396.Google Scholar
Schnabel, K., Banse, R., & Asendorpf, J. (2006b). Employing automatic approach and avoidance tendencies for the assessment of implicit personality self-concept. The Implicit Association Procedure (IAP). Experimental Psychology, 53, 6976.Google Scholar
Schröder-Abé, M., Rudolph, A., & Schütz, A. (2007). High implicit self-esteem is not necessarily advantageous: Discrepancies between explicit and implicit self-esteem and their relationship with anger expression and psychological health. European Journal of Personality, 21, 319339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sriram, N., & Greenwald, A. G. (2009). The Brief Implicit Association Test. Experimental Psychology, 56, 283294.Google Scholar
Stieger, S., Göritz, A. S., & Burger, C. (2010). Personalizing the IAT and the SC-IAT: Impact of idiographic stimulus selection in the measurement of implicit anxiety. Personality and Individual Differences, 48, 940944.Google Scholar
Steffens, M. C., & König, S. S. (2006). Predicting spontaneous Big Five behavior with Implicit Association Tests. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 22, 1320.Google Scholar
Stieger, S., Voracek, M., & Formann, A. K. (2012). How to administer the initial preference task. European Journal of Personality, 26, 6378.Google Scholar
Suslow, T., Lindner, C., Kugel, H., Egloff, B., & Schmukle, S. C. (2014). Using Implicit Association Tests for the assessment of implicit personality self-concepts of extraversion and neuroticism in schizophrenia. Psychiatry Research, 218, 272276.Google Scholar
Teige, S., Schnabel, K., Banse, R., & Asendorpf, J. B. (2004). Assessment of multiple implicit self-concept dimensions using the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST). European Journal of Personality, 18, 495520.Google Scholar
Timmermans, B., & Cleeremans, A. (2015). How can we measure awareness? An overview of current methods. In Overgaard, M. (Ed.), Behavioral methods in consciousness research (pp. 2146). Oxford, UK. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vazire, S., & Carlson, E. N. (2010). Self‐knowledge of personality: Do people know themselves? Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4, 605620.Google Scholar
Vecchione, M., Dentale, F., Alessandri, G., & Barbaranelli, C. (2014). Fakability of implicit and explicit measures of the Big Five: Research findings from organizational settings. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 22, 211218.Google Scholar
Williams, B. J., & Kaufmann, L. M. (2012). Reliability of the Go/No Go Association Task. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 879891.Google Scholar
Wilson, T. D. (2004). Strangers to ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious. Cambridge, UK: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Yovel, I., & Friedman, A. (2013). Bridging the gap between explicit and implicit measurement of personality: The questionnaire-based implicit association test. Personality and Individual Differences, 54, 7680.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×