approaches II: personality Flashcards
define personality
Personality
- a combination of long-lasting and distinctive behaviors, thoughts, motives, and emotions that typify how we react and adapt to other people and situations
Theory of personality
Organized attempt to describe and explain how personalities develop and why they differ
freud’s psychoanalytic theory definition
emphasizes the importance of early childhood experiences, unconscious or repressed thoughts that we can’t voluntarily access, and the conflicts between conscious and unconscious forces that influence our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors
- poor validity (not testable or supported)
- poor reliability (very subjective)
freud’s psychoanalytic theory (conscious vs unconscious forces)
Conscious thought
- wishes, desires, or thoughts that we’re aware of, or can recall, at any given moment
Unconscious forces
- wishes, desires, or thoughts that, because of their disturbing or threatening content, we automatically repress and can’t voluntarily access
Unconscious motivation
- the influence of repressed thoughts, desires, or impulses on our conscious thoughts and behaviors
freud’s psychoanalytic theory (divisions of the mind)
Id (pleasure seeker)
- first to develop
- biological drives: sex and aggression
- goal: to pursue pleasure and satisfy these biological drives
pleasure principal: satisfy drives and avoid pain without concern for moral restrictions or society’s regulations
Ego (negotiator between id and superego)
- develops during infancy
- goal: find safe & socially acceptable ways to satisfy the ids wants and superegos prohibitions
- largely conscious but a small part is unconscious
reality principal: satisfying a desire only if done in a socially acceptable way
Superego (regulator)
- develops from the ego during early childhood
- goal: apply moral values of society and peers (both that we are and are not aware of) to satisfy one’s wishes
freud’s psychoanalytic theory (divisions of the mind cont.)
Defense mechanisms
- Freudian processes that operate at unconscious levels and that use self-deception or untrue explanations to protect the ego from being overwhelmed by anxiety
Rationalization
- Covering up the true reasons for actions, thoughts, or feelings by making up excuses and explanations
Denial
- Refusing to recognize some anxiety-provoking event or piece of information that’s clear to others
Repression
- Blocking and pushing unacceptable or threatening feelings, wishes, or experiences into the unconscious
Projection
- Falsely and unconsciously attributing your own unacceptable feelings, traits, or thoughts to others
Reaction formation
- Substituting behaviors, thoughts, or feelings that are the direct opposite of unacceptable ones
Displacement
- Transferring feelings about, or response to, an object that causes anxiety to another person or object that’s less threatening
Sublimation
- Type of displacement; involves redirecting a threatening or forbidden desire, usually sexual, into a socially acceptable one
freud’s psychoanalytic theory (developmental stages)
development
- dealing with conflict
psychosexual stages
- 5 developmental periods (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital) marked by a potential conflict between child and parent
- conflicts arise as a child seeks pleasure from different body areas that are associated with
sexual feelings
- erogenous zones
- Freud emphasized that first five years were important in personality development
fixation
- potential personality problems
- occur during the first 3 stages
- Refers to a Freudian process through which an individual may be locked into a particular psychosexual stage because his or her wishes were either overgratified or undergratified
Oedipus complex: boys
- Discovers that his penis is a source of pleasure and is sexually attracted to mother
Result: feels hatred, jealousy, and competition toward his father and fears castration and resolves the complex by identifying with his father
electra complex: girls
Penis envy: girl discovers that she doesn’t have a penis and feels a loss
Loss makes her turn against her mother and develop sexual desires for her father
Resolves fixation by identifying with her mother
freud’s psychoanalytic theory (techniques to discover the unconscious)
Free association
- technique in which clients are encouraged to talk about any thoughts or images that enter their head; the assumption is that this kind of free-flowing, uncensored talking will provide clues to unconscious material
Dream interpretation
- technique of analyzing dreams; based on the assumption that dreams contain underlying, hidden meanings and symbols that provide clues to unconscious thoughts and desires
the usefulness of Projective Tests
Projective tests
- require individuals to look at some meaningless object or ambiguous photo and describe what they see
- describe or make up a story about the ambiguous object
- individuals are assumed to project both their conscious and unconscious feelings, needs, and motives
ADVANTAGES
- Reduces social desirability biases
- Obtains information about a person in a setting with no right or wrong answers
DISADVANTAGES
- problems in scoring and interpreting responses
EXAMPLES:
Rorschach inkblot test
Used to assess personality by showing a person a series of 10 inkblots
Ask the person to describe what he or she thinks each image is
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Involves showing a person a series of 20 pictures of people in ambiguous situations
Ask the person to make up a story about what the people are doing or thinking in each situation
carl jung
- disagreed with freud over his emphasis on sex drive
- Believed the collective unconscious and not sex to be the basic force in the development of personality
Collective unconscious
- consists of ancient memory traces and symbols passed on by birth and shared by all peoples in all cultures
neo-freudians
- Proposed psychosocial stages rather than psychosexual stages
- Generally agreed with Freud on ideas about the unconscious, divisions of the mind, and defense mechanisms
- Disagreed over emphasis on biological and sexual motivations
humanistic theory
Humanistic theories
- Emphasize our capacity for personal growth, development of our potential, and freedom to choose our destiny
Three characteristics of humanistic theories
1) Phenomenological perspective
- your perception or view of the world, whether or not it’s accurate, becomes your reality
2) Holistic view
- personality is more than the sum of its individual parts; instead, the individual parts form a unique and total entity that functions as a unit
3) Self-actualization
- refers to our inherent tendency to develop and reach our true potential
EVALUATIONS
- Remain popular because of positive view of people, now seen in the positive psychology movement
- Focuses on study of optimal human functioning
- Greatest impact in counseling/clinical settings
- Low Validity
- Difficult to test experimentally
- Modest Reliability
humanistic theory (maslow)
Maslow: needs hierarchy and self-actualization
Hierarchy of needs
- arranged in ascending order
- biological needs at the bottom and social and personal needs at the top
- must satisfy biological safety needs before using energy to fulfill your personal and social needs
- devote time and energy to reach true potential, called self-actualization
humanistic theory (rogers)
rogers: self theory
Real self
-based on actual experience and represents how we really see ourselves
Ideal self
- based on hopes and wishes and reflects how we would like to see ourselves
trait theory
Approach for analyzing the structure of psychological traits by measuring, identifying, and classifying similarities and differences in behavioral characteristics or traits
Trait
Relatively stable and enduring tendency to behave in a particular way
trait theory (raymond cattell)
Raymond Cattell
- Allport’s list of 4,500 traits: used factor analysis to reduce the list to the most basic traits
Factor analysis
- Complicated statistical method that finds relationships among different or diverse items and allows them to be grouped together
- 35 basic traits Cattell called source traits that he claimed describe all differences among personalities
- Later reduced this to 16 source traits
- Finally reduced to 5 personality traits
