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Self and Personality – Class 12 Psychology Chapter 2 Notes & NCERT PDF

Class 12PsychologyChapter 2NCERT book: Psychology - Class 12

Notes and a simple summary of Chapter 2 of the NCERT Class 12 Psychology book, with the official chapter PDF, flashcards, an MCQ quiz and an AI tutor for your doubts.

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Chapter 2: Self and Personality

Introduction

Why do you react differently from your friends in the same situation, and why does your own behaviour stay fairly stable from one situation to another? Psychologists answer the first question with the notion of self and the second with the notion of personality. The two are intimately related – self lies at the core of personality. This chapter introduces the concept of self, self-regulation, the major approaches to personality, and the techniques used to assess it.

Key Concepts

Concept of Self

  • Self is the totality of an individual's conscious experiences, ideas, thoughts and feelings with regard to herself or himself. A newborn has no idea of self; parents, friends, teachers and significant others shape it.
  • Personal identity refers to attributes that make a person different from others (name, qualities, capabilities, beliefs). Social identity links a person to a social or cultural group (e.g., Hindu or Muslim, North Indian or South Indian).
  • Self as subject and object: as a subject the self actively knows ("I am a dancer"); as an object it gets affected and is known ("I am one who easily gets hurt").
  • Kinds of self: the biological self (e.g., a newborn crying for milk), the personal self (personal freedom, responsibility, achievement) and the social self, also called the familial or relational self (cooperation, unity, affiliation, sacrifice).

    • Cognitive and Behavioural Aspects of Self

  • Self-concept: the way we perceive ourselves and the ideas we hold about our competencies; it can be positive at one level (athletics) and negative at another (mathematics).
  • Self-esteem: the value judgment a person makes about her/his own worth. By 6–7 years children form self-esteem in four areas: academic, social, physical/athletic competence and physical appearance. Warm, positive parenting helps high self-esteem; low self-esteem in all areas is linked with anxiety, depression and antisocial behaviour.
  • Self-efficacy: the belief that one has the ability required by a situation, based on Bandura's social learning theory. It can be developed through positive models.
  • Self-regulation: the ability to organise and monitor one's own behaviour; people who change behaviour according to external demands are high on self-monitoring. Learning to delay gratification is self-control. Indian tradition offers vrata, roza and non-attachment. Psychological techniques: observation of own behaviour, self-instruction and self-reinforcement.

    • Culture and Self

    In the Western view the boundary between self and other is relatively fixed; the Indian view is characterised by a shifting boundary – the self may expand to include others or the cosmos and then withdraw to personal goals. Many Western cultures are individualistic, many Asian cultures collectivistic.

    Concept of Personality

    The word comes from the Latin persona, the mask worn by actors in Roman theatre. In psychology, personality refers to unique and relatively stable qualities that characterise behaviour across situations over time. It has physical and psychological components, is fairly unique, its main features do not easily change, and it is dynamic and adaptive. Box 2.1 distinguishes temperament, trait, disposition, character, habit and values.

    Type Approaches

  • Hippocrates: sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, choleric (based on humours).
  • Charak Samhita: vata, pitta, kapha (tridosha) giving one's prakriti; also the trigunas – sattva (cleanliness, truthfulness), rajas (intense activity, envy), tamas (anger, laziness). All three are present in everyone in different degrees.
  • Sheldon: endomorphic (fat, relaxed, sociable), mesomorphic (muscular, energetic, courageous), ectomorphic (thin, brainy, introvert).
  • Jung: introverts and extraverts.
  • Friedman and Rosenman: Type-A (high motivation, impatience, time pressure; prone to hypertension and CHD) and Type-B (absence of Type-A traits). Morris suggested Type-C (cooperative, unassertive, suppresses anger; prone to cancer); Type-D is characterised by proneness to depression.

    • Trait Approaches

  • Gordon Allport (pioneer): cardinal traits (Gandhi's non-violence), central traits (warm, sincere, diligent) and secondary traits (likes mangoes).
  • Raymond Cattell: used factor analysis to find 16 source traits; surface traits arise from their interaction; developed the 16PF.
  • H.J. Eysenck: neuroticism vs emotional stability, extraversion vs introversion, and later psychoticism vs sociability; measured by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.
  • Five-Factor Model (Box 2.2) by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae: openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and conscientiousness.

    • Psychodynamic Approach

  • Sigmund Freud used free association, dream analysis and analysis of errors.
  • Levels of consciousness: conscious, preconscious and unconscious.
  • Structure: id (pleasure principle; instinctual energy, libido), ego (reality principle) and superego (moral branch). The ice-cream cone example shows all three.
  • Defence mechanisms: repression, projection, denial, reaction formation, rationalisation (buying new pens after a poor exam).
  • Psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic (Oedipus/Electra complex), latency and genital; failure leads to fixation, and regression takes a person back to an earlier stage.
  • Post-Freudians: Carl Jung (analytical psychology, collective unconscious, archetypes), Karen Horney (optimism, basic anxiety, challenged Freud's view of women), Erich Fromm (social orientation, human concerns), Alfred Adler (individual psychology, inferiority complex), Erik Erikson (identity crisis in adolescence).
  • Criticisms: based on case studies, small atypical samples, poorly defined concepts, and male prototype.

    • Behavioural, Cultural and Humanistic Approaches

  • Behavioural: the structural unit of personality is the response; learning through classical conditioning (Pavlov), instrumental conditioning (Skinner) and observational learning (Bandura).
  • Cultural: personality is an adaptation to ecology and culture through a group's economic maintenance system. The Birhor of Jharkhand raise independent, autonomous, achievement-oriented children; agricultural societies raise obedient, nurturant, responsible ones.
  • Humanistic: Carl Rogers – the fully functioning person, real self vs ideal self, unconditional positive regard, client-centred therapy. Abraham Maslow – self-actualisation. Box 2.3 describes the healthy person who lives in the "here-and-now".

    • Assessment of Personality

  • Self-report measures (suggested by Allport): MMPI (Hathaway and McKinley; MMPI-2 has 567 statements, 10 subscales; Indian version JMPI by Mallick and Joshi), EPQ and 16PF. Problems: social desirability and acquiescence.
  • Projective techniques: Rorschach Inkblot Test (10 inkblots; performance proper and inquiry), TAT (Morgan and Murray; 30 picture cards + 1 blank; Indian adaptation by Uma Chaudhury), Rosenzweig's P-F Study (adapted by Pareek), Sentence Completion Test, Draw-a-Person Test.
  • Behavioural analysis: interview (structured/unstructured), observation, behavioural ratings (halo effect, middle category bias, extreme response bias), nomination and situational tests (situational stress test).

    • Examples & Activities from the Text

  • Activity 2.1 – complete ten "I am…" sentences to discover personal and social identity.
  • Activity 2.2 – which aspect of your personality would you change?
  • Activity 2.3 – note behaviours imbibed from youth icons.
  • The child who does not like orders should be offered acceptable alternatives.

    • Key-Facts Sheet

  • Self-esteem areas: academic, social, physical/athletic, physical appearance.
  • Rorschach: 5 black-and-white, 2 with red ink, 3 pastel.
  • Cattell: 16 source traits; Eysenck: 3 dimensions; Costa and McCrae: 5 factors.

    • Board Exam Focus

    Review questions cover Indian vs Western self, delay of gratification, type vs trait, Freud's structure, humanistic ideas, observational and projective methods, and Rogers' terminology.

    Outline 1 – Freud's structure of personality. Three levels of consciousness → id (pleasure principle, libido) → ego (reality principle) → superego (morality) → ice-cream example → relative strength determines stability → defence mechanisms reduce anxiety.

    Outline 2 – Type vs trait. Type groups people by broad patterns (Hippocrates, Sheldon, Jung, Type-A/B) → trait rates degrees of specific attributes (Allport, Cattell, Eysenck, Big Five) → types simple but stereotyped; traits stable and consistent.

    Outline 3 – Arihant's case (Rogers). Family's love depends on his choice → conditional positive regard → gap between real and ideal self → Rogers recommends unconditional positive regard.

    Key Terms

  • Self (आत्म/स्व) – totality of conscious experiences about oneself
  • Personal identity (व्यक्तिगत पहचान) – attributes that make one different
  • Social identity (सामाजिक पहचान) – link to a group
  • Self-esteem (आत्म-सम्मान) – judgment of one's own worth
  • Self-efficacy (आत्म-सक्षमता) – belief in one's ability
  • Self-control (आत्म-नियंत्रण) – delaying gratification
  • Personality (व्यक्तित्व) – stable, unique ways of responding
  • Trait (शीलगुण) – stable, specific way of behaving
  • Id, Ego, Superego (इदं, अहं, पराहम्) – Freud's structures
  • Defence mechanism (रक्षा युक्ति) – reducing anxiety by distorting reality
  • Collective unconscious (सामूहिक अचेतन) – Jung's inherited archetypes
  • Inferiority complex (हीनता मनोग्रंथि) – Adler's feelings of inadequacy
  • Self-actualisation (आत्मसिद्धि) – reaching one's fullest potential
  • Projective techniques (प्रक्षेपी तकनीक) – indirect assessment of unconscious motives
  • Halo effect (परिवेश प्रभाव) – one trait colouring overall judgment

    • Common Mistakes

  • Mixing up projection (attributing own traits to others) with reaction formation (behaving opposite to true feelings).
  • Saying Cattell had five factors – Cattell had 16, Costa and McCrae gave the Big Five.
  • Calling TAT less structured than Rorschach – TAT is a little more structured.
  • Confusing self-esteem (worth) with self-efficacy (ability to succeed).
  • Forgetting that the Indian self has a shifting boundary, not a fixed one.

    • 💡 Key Learning Points

    • ✓Self is the totality of one's conscious experiences about oneself; it includes personal and social identity and can be viewed as subject and object.
    • ✓Self-concept, self-esteem, self-efficacy and self-regulation are key cognitive and behavioural aspects of self; culture shapes the boundary between self and others.
    • ✓Personality consists of unique, relatively stable qualities; type approaches group people into categories while trait approaches (Allport, Cattell, Eysenck, Big Five) rate attributes.
    • ✓Freud's psychodynamic theory explains personality through levels of consciousness, id-ego-superego, defence mechanisms and psychosexual stages; post-Freudians emphasised ego and social forces.
    • ✓Behavioural, cultural and humanistic approaches offer other views, and personality is assessed through self-report measures, projective techniques and behavioural analysis.

    👨‍🏫 Teaching Tips

    • →Begin with Activity 2.1 ('I am…') and sort answers into personal and social identity on the board.
    • →Use a concept map linking self-concept, self-esteem, self-efficacy and self-regulation with one real example each.
    • →Contrast Western and Indian self-boundaries using Figure 2.1; ask students for examples of collectivistic behaviour.
    • →Present a comparison chart of typologies (Hippocrates, Charak Samhita, trigunas, Sheldon, Jung, Type A–D) and ask students why typologies are too simplistic.
    • →Act out the ice-cream cone example to show id, ego and superego, then role-play each defence mechanism.
    • →Show sample items of self-report and projective tests (as suggested in the Pedagogical Hints) while stressing that testing needs professional training.
    • →Discuss the Birhor case to illustrate how ecology and economic activity shape personality.
    • →Use the Arihant review question to practise applying Rogers' terms like real self, ideal self and unconditional positive regard.

    📋 Assessment Questions

    1. Can the student define self, self-esteem, self-efficacy and self-regulation and give examples?
    2. Can the student distinguish type and trait approaches and name the main theorists of each?
    3. Can the student explain Freud's structure of personality, defence mechanisms and psychosexual stages?
    4. Can the student compare the behavioural, cultural and humanistic approaches?
    5. Can the student describe self-report, projective and behavioural assessment methods and their limitations?

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    Keep learning

    All chapters in Psychology - Class 12

    1. 1. Variations in Psychological Attributes
    2. 2. Self and Personality
    3. 3. Meeting Life Challenges
    4. 4. Psychological Disorders
    5. 5. Therapeutic Approaches
    6. 6. Attitude and Social Cognition
    7. 7. Social Influence and Group Processes