Ch 12 Flashcards
Personality
A set of internally-based characteristics that create uniquness (specific to each person) and consistency (behaviour over time in similar situations) in a person’s thoughts and behaviours
→ provides an explanation to account for the expression of the behaviour
Personality trait: internally-based characteristic that make up one’s personality
→ behaviour in a variety of situations
The psychodynamic perspective
Look for the unconscious causes of behaviour in a dynamic interplay of inner forces that often conflict with one another
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory
Focused on:
- early childhood experiences
- unconscious conflicts
- sexual and aggressive urges
Unconscious and internal forces had a powerful influence on behaviour
Psychic energy
- Generated by instinctual drives (generated by the conflict between unconscious urges; desire to act on urges but not being able to because of societal norms)
- discharched directly or indirectly
→ venting energy (ex. Direct- getting into a fight with someone Indirect- take a kickboxing class)
Mental events
Conscious: things we are aware of
Preconscious: things we are unaware of but can easily be recalled (ex. What you had for dinner yesterday)
Unconscious: things we are unaware of (can’t easily become aware of)
The Id
- Only structure present at birth
- Exists within the unconscious mind (innermost core of the personality)
- source of all psychic energy
- No direct contact with reality/environment and functions in an irrational manner (uncontrollable)
Controlled by the pleasure principle:
→ seeking immediate gratification or release regardless of rational considerations and environmental realities
→ instinct and impulse
The Ego
- Functions primarily at a conscious level (goal is to keep impulses of The Id in control)
→ delays gratification
→ imparts self-control
Operates according to the reality principle:
→ looking at environment and deciding when and which circumstances are appropriate in order to safely discharge The Id’s impulses and satisfy its needs
→ secondary-process thinking: how can gratification be maximized without negative consequences of going against societal noms
The Superego
- The last personality structure to develop (around age 4 or 5)
- the moral aspect of personality
- controls The Id’s impulses through external control
- taking into consideration the values and ideals of society
Conflict, anxiety and defence (Freud’s structure of personality)
- Ego cannot always control Id; leads to conflict
→ anxiety occurs when the impulses of Id threaten to get out of control
Defence mechanisms:
- used by The Ego to try to suppress The Id from creating problems
- distortions of reality
- operate unconsciously
- cause of maladaptive behaviour (behaviours that stop you from adapting)
Stages of psychosexual development
- Series of stages focused on specific pleasure-sensitive areas of the body (adult personality is a result of the progression through these stages)
- Fixation: fixating on a particular stage (insticts focused on particular area) may cause maladaptive behaviou
Jung’s analytical perspective
- Personal unconscious: things we are unaware of (urges; Freud’s mindset)
- collective unconscious: unconscious store of the experiences of past generations of different people throughout the world (ancestral knowledge, universal knowledge that all humans share)
- archetypes: categories of behaviour patterns that emerge when faced with certain environmental stimuli
→ universal thought/behavioural patterns triggered by specific situations/symbols/images that represent certain ideas or beliefs
Adler’s individual perspective
- Striving for superiority:
→ universal drive to adapt, improve oneself, and master life’s challenges
→ feelings of inferiority are a driving force (inferiority complex occurs when these feelings become extreme) - Compensation: efforts to overcome inferiority (how to make yourself better and compensate for lacking qualities)
→ overcompensation for those with an inferiority complex
Birth order and personality
- home environments vary from first-born children to later-born children
→ different environment and treatment may affect personality
Horney’s interpersonal perspective
Social security: a sense of feeling safe and loved in our relationships with others
→ personality is expressed through the actions we take in order to achieve secure relationships
Basic anxiety: feelings due to lack of love, power, and safety in a relationship
Basic hostility: feelings of anger and hostility that people experience during insecurity (lower quality relationships)
Behaviourism
- Studies overt behaviour
- focuses on external forces and interactions within the external environment
Skinner and personality
- Operant conditioning: a form of learning where the likelihood of a behaviour is based on the consequences in engaging in that behaviour
→ bad consequence = less likely
→ good consequence = more likely - an individual’s personality is a collection of response tendencies that are tied to various environmental stimuli (strength of response tendency affected by experience)
- personality is continuously developing and changing as we gain experience
- personality can be explained externally
Bandura’s social cognitive theory
- Believes that when people learn they are active participants; seek information from the environment and are involved in how the behave under certain conditions
- focuses on how information processing highlights internal and unobservable cognitive events
- observational learning/vicarious conditioning: when a response is influenced by observing others (watching others and the consequences of their actions)
- Self-efficacy: your beliefs about your own ability to perform behavious that should lead to expected outcomes
→ high self-efficacy: confident in your ability to execute the necessary responses in order to obtain reinforcers
→ low self-efficacy: concern that the necessary responses go beyond your abilities - reciprocal determinism: environment influences behaviour but does not determine it; internal mental events, external environments, and overt behaviour all influence each other
Mischel— the person-situation controversy
- goal was to focus on how much situational factors governed behaviour
- people make responses that lead to reinforcement in certain situations at hand
→ consistency paradox: consistency in a person’s behaviour is low (ex. work hard IF the boss compensates your efforts)
Rotter’s locus of self control
- Locus of control: how much a person perceives an outcome as being contingent on their own actions rather than on external forces (whether your actions are the reason for certain outcomes)
→ internal: events under personal control; self-determined with a sense of personal effectiveness (control) and seeking out information in order to get involved
→ external: external faces like luck, chance, powerful individuals (less resistant to social pressures)
Humanistic approach
- Emphasis on the roles of the conscious, creative potential, and self-actualization
- focuses on the importance of what makes humans unique
→ freedom
→ self-determination
→ potential for personal growth - people can overcome their biological urges
- people are conscious and rational
- subjective view is more important than objective reality
- environmental phenomena can be framed in different ways depending on a person’s interpretation
Rogers’ person-centered theory
- Self-concept: organized and consistent set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself (who you think you are as a person)
→ our own mental picture of our nature, our behavour, and our unique qualities
→ may not be accurate to reality (Dunning-Kruger effect) - once self-concept is established there is a tendency to maintain it
Self-consistency (Rogers’)
Matching among components of self-concept (don’t counteract or contradict eachother)
→ ex. being nice and friendly
Congruence (Rogers’)
Consistency in our self-concept and what we encounter in our environment (experience)
→ ex. thinking you’re kind and other people affirming that they think you’re kind
Incongruence (Rogers’)
Disparity between self-concept and experience
→ threat: occurs when experience is inconsistent with self-concept (leads to anxiety)
→ in response to anxiety individuals can modify self-concept to match experience or distort reality to match self-concept
Self-verification (Rogers’)
- Motivated to confirm self-concept
- better recall for testimonies that were more consistent with self-descriptions
- seek out self-confirming relationships
