Personality Analysis of Justin Bieber: Theories of Personality
Abstract
Justin Bieber is a Canadian singer and songwriter. Before fame, his life was very different. After being discovered by a music producer, Bieber reached incredible fame all over the world. Fame changed not only changed his lifestyle but also his personality. This paper attempts to analyze the personality of pop star Justin Bieber, using different theories of personality. The theories used to analyze Bieber’s personality include: Freud’s theory, Carl Roger’s, Rotter’s, and Allport’s.
Personality Analysis of Justin Bieber: Theories of Personality
Justin Bieber is a Canadian pop and R&B singer and songwriter. Bieber was born in London, Canada, on March 1, 1994. The son of Jeremy Jack Bieber and Pattie Malette, who became parents as teenagers. Bieber was with his mother after the separation of the couple when he was only 10 months old. At three years old already showed an aptitude for music. As a child, he was already singing in the church he attended. He began playing musical instruments as a toddler, learning from his mother’s friends. Bieber grew up poor, his mom struggled to keep food on the table. “I definitely didn’t think of myself as not having a lot of money. I couldn’t afford to get a lot of new clothes a lot of times. But I had a roof over my head,”. Bieber started to sing and play guitar outside his local theater in Canada, this helped him raise money to help his mother out. At the age of 12,” Justin has always loved being the center of attention.
In 2007, he decided that entering a singing contest would give him an opportunity to do just that by singing for a crowd. He signed up for the Stratford Star, a local, four-week-long, elimination-style competition for children,”. Bieber took second place at his local competition. After the competition, he began posting the videos on YouTube, the social media platform, which was watched by marketing executive Scooter Braun, who introduced Bieber to some colleagues who worked with music, including singers Usher and Justin Timberlake. Soon after, Justin Bieber officially signed with Island Records. Later on, Bieber released his first song that lead to his fame.
Psychoanalysis-Sigmund Freud
Freud is the father of psychoanalysis, a method that aims to treat mental illnesses. Freudian psychoanalysis is a theory that attempts to explain the behavior of human beings and is based on the analysis of unconscious sexual conflicts that originate in childhood. This theory holds that the instinctive impulses that are repressed by consciousness remain in the unconscious and affect the subject. The unconscious is not observable by the patient: the psychoanalyst is the one who must make such unconscious conflicts accessible through the interpretation of dreams, failed acts, and free association. Sigmund Freud developed a topographic map of the mind in which he described the characteristics of the structure and functioning of the mind. In this model, the conscious mind is just the tip of the iceberg. In the unconscious mind rest many of our primitive impulses and desires that are mediated by precociousness
In his theory, he gives great importance to the unconscious mind, since the goal of psychoanalysis is to make conscious what is bothering the unconscious. Later, Freud developed a model of the mind that was composed of the id, ego, and superego, and called it the psychic apparatus. These are not physical areas, but hypothetical conceptualizations of important mental functions. Situations of aggressiveness towards others or explicit social conflict can come from the id, in its eagerness to territorialize reality, always dealing with others in a projective manner. Bieber has often fought with the paparazzi in public, Freud’s theory says that this form of aggression towards the paparazzi comes from Bieber’s id. Lust comes from the id. People who maintain a sexually active life will often feel impulses that will sound the alarms of the id to try to please those desires. On many previous occasions, Bieber has been seen at strip clubs and has been exposed to the public by sex workers hired by him.
During the time in which the author of the psychosexual theory lived, and in which the strong repression of sexual desires was habitual, especially in the female sex, Sigmund Freud understood that there was a relationship between neurosis and sexual repression. Therefore, it was possible to understand the nature and variety of the disease by knowing the patient's sexual history. Freud considered that children are born with a sexual desire that they must satisfy and that there are a series of stages, during which the child seeks pleasure from different objects. This is what led to the most controversial part of his theory: psychosexual development theory.
Justin Bieber’s parents separated when he was only ten months old. Growing up with an inconsistent father figure would have a tremendous impact on Bieber’s personality, according to Freud’s theory of personality. The phallic phase of Sigmund Freud's theory begins at age three and extends to age six. In this stage, the genitals are the object of pleasure, and interest in sexual and genital differences appears. Freud says that men begin to experience sexual feelings towards their mothers and see their parents as competitors, so they fear being castrated. However, Bieber did not complete this stage because he did not have a father figure for him, resulting in having an inappropriate balance between satisfaction and control, with much frustration or indulgence. In his relationships with others, people describe Bieber as too arrogant.
Social Learning- Rotter
Most of the behaviors we carry out are not innate but socially acquired. We have learned to eat in a specific way, move in a certain way or interact with our peers according to the situation and context. In this way, our behavior is strongly influenced by what the social environment and culture to which we belong show us throughout our lives, how we perceive others, and the feedback we receive from them regarding our actions.
There are a wide variety of theories that focus on this fact from many different perspectives, such as social learning theories. Although the best known is that of Albert Bandura, there have been previous attempts to explain our behavior from the social perspective. One of them is Julian Rotter's theory of social learning. Julian B. Rotter's theory states that the behavior that human beings exhibit in their daily lives is acquired through social experience. Our behavior patterns depending on the interaction we maintain with the environment, which is carried out largely through the connection with other similar ones. Between vandalism, fights, spits, and arrests … his career has been filled with controversial moments. Based on Rotter’s theory, we can conclude that Justin Bieber’s personality developed when he moved from a small town in Canada to a city full with celebrities in California, US. His behaviors changed, because of his desire to fit in with the other famous people. Being exposed to the older people in the music industry, Bieber learned to behave like them, drink and smoke like they did.
This theory would be called by the author herself as a theory of social learning, also known as a cognitive learning theory. In it, Rotter believes that human being seeks to meet their needs from the search for positive reinforcements and the avoidance of punishment. carrying out certain behaviors or not, based on the lessons learned throughout life and that these may or may not reinforce them the repetition. “the 19-year-old pop star got into more trouble on Jan.23, when he was charged with a DUI after drag racing. Admitting to using marijuana, alcohol, and prescription drugs earlier in the evening, Bieber took a sobriety test that put his blood alcohol level at 0.14, less than Florida’s legal limit of 0.02 for drivers under 21,”. After this experience, Bieber was arrested, as a form of punishment for breaking the law.
In addition, we also learn through the consequences of the behaviors of others, obtaining learning through its visualization and affecting this knowledge to our own behavior so that the results obtained by others can be replicated by ourselves, or avoided. Rotter goes beyond considering the behaviorism that mental acts are objectively studied and considers thought, imagination, evocation, intentionality, and other aspects related to cognition and emotion as covert behaviors. All behavior is socially mediated and society provides reinforcements or punishments based on these, whose consequences we learn. We can conclude that Bieber learned from being arrested because he has not committed any other crimes.
One of the most relevant contributions of Rotter's social learning theory is the idea of the locus of control as a fundamental element of personality. For Rotter, personality is mainly understood as the use of behavior as a means to achieve goals based on what has been learned and the desire to achieve their goals. This is what causes us to tend to act in a certain way more or less stably over time and through situations. This consistent pattern of behavior depends largely on the aforementioned factors as well as the perceived self-efficacy and attributions made based on the locus of control.
Traits Theory-Allport
Throughout history, the set of characteristics that make people different from each other, having a distinctive way of interpreting, acting, and living life, have been thoroughly studied. This distinctive pattern is what we commonly know as personality. Being an abstract concept, personality is interpretable from a large number of approaches. Among these approaches, some consider personality to be a unique configuration in each person, with no two being the same. Thus, each person is totally unique, although some similarities can be found with others. This point of view is what we consider an idiographic approach, being the maximum exponent of this Gordon Allport and his theory of personality.
The fact that we behave, or that we respond to the world in one way or another is due to a broad group of variables and factors. The situations we live in, what they demand from us and how we interpret both the situation and what we may be able to see are very relevant elements when deciding on an action plan or another. Living in Los Angeles California, surrendered by bad influences, having a lot of pressure from society, and having an enormous amount of money at a young age, caused Justin Bieber to become an arrogant and problematic person. However, not only does the situation control behavior but there are a number of internal variables that govern along with the environmental demands we make and even think concretely.
The personality has been conceptualized in many different ways. In the case of Allport, this important psychologist considers that personality is a dynamic organization of psychophysiological systems that determine the way of thinking and acting characteristic of the subject. Through these elements, Allport creates a theoretical system aimed at explaining the behavior style of individuals. However, the personality needs a backbone in which the different personality characteristics are structured. As the main exponent of the idiographic approach, Allport considered that each person's behavioral patterns are unique and different between subjects. Despite this, it is considered that human beings generally have the same types of traits, such as dependence, aggressiveness, sociability, and anxiety, so it is not uncommon for similar patterns to exist. What makes each individual have their own personality is the relationship between personality traits and which stand out in each.
Cardinal traits are those personality traits that are part of the person's own nucleus, affecting and defining most of the person's behavioral repertoire. That is, they have the most weight in the way of being of each individual. Due to Justin Bieber’s bad reputation, he is mostly known for being disrespectful and rude. The central traits are those sets of characteristics that have an influence on the behavior of the person in different contexts. They participate in our performance and the trends we have even though they influence a more restricted set of behavior, such as socialization, being generally independent of each other. One of Bieber’s central traits id generosity. Even though he has had a bad reputation, Bieber has helped so many people with donations. He has helped build a school for children living in poverty in Guatemala. Secondary traits are some elements that, although not part of the general personality of the subjects, may arise at certain times, such as when dealing with a specific situation. Bieber has a kind behavior and can usually behave selfishly and competitively when faced with challenges.
All this set of factors makes Allport's theory a complex element that tries to give a sense to the personality from a structural point of view, the main characteristic of the personalistic theory being the fact that each person is configured through a Composition of different traits unique to each person and the fact that the human being is an entity that is not limited to remaining static while life passes, but actively participates in its environment to build, experiment and fulfill goals and objectives.
Humanistic Theory- Rogers
Humanistic psychology is one of the most important currents of thought in psychology. From it, people like Abraham Maslow (with his popular Maslow Pyramid) defended a positive vision of the human being, according to which we are all able to become the type of people we want. The personality theory of Carl Rogers is an example of this vital optimism that led to psychology and philosophy.
Certain currents of psychology have been associated with a pessimistic view of the human being. For example, Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis presents an explanation of the psyche in which unconscious desires and their clash with social norms govern our behavior, and American behaviorism has been accused of presenting people as machines that react to external stimuli. However, humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers proposed some ideas about the mental processes that emphasize the freedom of individuals when it comes to taking the course of their lives. According to them, neither biological nor environmental factors are determining factors in our behavior, and they do not inevitably drag us towards certain types of behavior. In short, they were not deterministic.
Specifically, Carl Rogers believed that the personality of each person developed according to the way in which they manage to get closer to (or away from) their vital goals. This idea that personal development and the way in which the individual struggles to become as he wants to be is a central idea of humanistic psychology, but for Carl Rogers, it is especially important, because for him it is through personal development. Carl Rogers proposes the idea that the personality of each individual can be analyzed according to the way in which she/he approaches or moves away from a way of being and living the life to which he puts the label of a highly functional person.
Based on Roger’s theory, we can say that Bieber is a highly functional person because he keeps on trying to become and a better person and achieve his goals. Highly functional people are characterized by being in a constant process of self-actualization, that is, the search for an almost perfect fit with vital objectives and goals. This personal development process is in the present, so it is always in operation. In this way, the personality of highly functional people is, for Carl Rogers, a framework in which a way of living life that constantly adapts to circumstances flows in real-time.
Conclusion
The different theories about personality give us tools to understand some stages of life and know how to deal with them successfully and identify in our personal and professional life each of these stages to improve; The humanistic theory of personality of Carl Rogers emphasizes the importance of the tendency towards self-realization in the formation of self-concept. According to Rogers, the potential of the human individual is unique and develops in a unique way depending on the personality of each one. The closer the self-image is and the ideal self, the more consistent and consistent people are and the more value they believe they have. Personality theories there are many in psychology, however, it should be said that they all have common points that converge with similar ideas and approaches. However, if we make a small retrospective among all, within that range of interesting theories that of Carl Rogers and his positive vision of the human being stands out for bringing a necessary change. This theory helps to analyze Bieber’s personality better because it emphasizes the ability to move forward, which Justin Bieber did. He changed his life from a problematic pop star to a calm, religious, married man. Leaving behind or aside, that passive or deterministic vision emphasized by psychoanalysis and behaviorism, the humanist psychology of what is considered the most influential psychotherapist in history suddenly told us about the freedom of the human being. He emphasized our ability to move forward and create a better world, encouraged us to be responsible for us, and to open ourselves to experience through a non-directive therapy with which to promote self-knowledge.
References
- Bodden, V. (2012). Justin Bieber : Musical Phenom. Minneapolis, MN: Abdo Publishing. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=432482&site=eds-live
- Braun, S., Chu, J. M., Bieber, J., Cyrus, M., Kingston, S., Ludacris (Rapper), … Usher. (2011). Justin Bieber. [videorecording] : never say never. Paramount Home Entertainment. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat06315a&AN=iui.10932591&site=eds-live
- ENGLER, BARBARA. (2014). Personality theories. Belmont: Wadswort
- Tauber, M., Lewis, R., Helling, S., Marx, L., & Randel, B. (2014). Can Anyone Save Him? Justin Bieber No Rules, No Remorse. People, 81(5), 80. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=crh&AN=94119652&site=eds-live
