Ch.14 Flashcards
Personality
people’s typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving
Traits
relatively enduring predisposition that influences our behavior across many situations.
Nomothetic Approach
Idiographic Approach
nomothetic approach
— scientific approach that seeks out general principles in nature, rather than principles specific to an individual.
idiographic approach
— scientific approach that focuses on identifying the unique configuration of characteristics and life history experiences within a person.
Genetic factors (Behaviour-genetics)
- What it means?
- How Twin and Adoption studies are used to determine the influences of genes and environment on personality?
• GENETIC FACTORS. Regardless of how and by whom we are raised (i.e., our learning experiences), our personalities have been linked to our biological parents’ genetic makeup.
Kandler and colleagues: showed that genetic contribution to certain traits changed over time, specifically that with more mileage through life (i.e., more life experience), genetics contributed less and less.
Genes code for proteins, not specific behaviours or attitudes, and therefore affect most psychological characteristics in a highly indirect fashion.
— Jack and Oskar: genes probably exert an indirect influence on certain personality traits— but the environment influences how these traits play out in our lives.
Twin:
— Because identical (monozygotic) twins are more similar genetically than fraternal (dizygotic) twins, a higher correlation of a trait among identical than fraternal twins assuming that the environmental influences on both sets of twins are comparable suggests a genetic influence.
Adoption:
— finding that an adopted child’s personality is similar to that of their biological parents points to genetic influence.
Shared Environmental Factors (Behaviour-genetics)
- What it means?
- How Twin and Adoption studies are used to determine the influences of genes and environment on personality?
• SHARED ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS. Some experiences make individuals within the same family more alike.
— If parents try to make both of their children more outgoing by reinforcing them with attention and succeed in doing so, their parenting in this case is a shared environmental factor.
Twin:
— Shared environment plays little or no role in adult personality.
— Shared environment plays some role in childhood personality, but this role generally dissipates as we grow older.
— impact of shared environment on our personalities is weak at best.
Adoption:
— finding that an adopted child’s personality is similar to that of their adoptive parents points to shared environmental influence.
Nonshared Environmental Factors (Behaviour-genetics)
- What it means?
- How Twin and Adoption studies are used to determine the influences of genes and environment on personality?
• NONSHARED ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS. Some experiences make individuals within the same family less alike.
— If a parent treats one child more affectionately than another, and as a consequence this child ends up with higher self-esteem than the other child, the parenting in this case is a nonshared environmental factor.
Twin:
— All correlations are substantially less than 1.0. This finding demonstrates that nonshared environment plays an important role in personality
— identical twin correlations that are equal to or less than fraternal twin correlations suggest the absence of a genetic component and instead point to nonshared environmental influences.
Molecular Genetics Study
Molecular Genetic Study
— Investigation that allows researchers to pinpoint genes associated with specific personality traits.
Rest on two premises:
- Genes code for proteins that in turn often influence the functioning of neurotransmitters, like dopamine and serotonin.
- The functioning of many neurotransmitters is associated with certain personality traits.
• Most studies work by examining the linkage between specific genes and known genetic markers on each chromosome.
— At this point, however, there have been relatively few consistently replicated associations between specific genes and personalitv traits.
• Twin and Adoption studies provide remarkably useful information concerning the heritability of personality traits however, they tell us little about which genes are related to personality.
• It’s exceedingly unlikely that a single gene codes directly for these or other multifaceted behaviours
Psychoanalytic
Freud hypothesized that the human psyche consists of three agencies or components: id, ego, and superego.
— interplay among these three agencies gives rise to our personalities, and differences in the strength of these agencies account largely for individual differences in personality.
Psychoanalytic theory rests on three core assumptions:
(second and third, set this theory apart from most other personality theories)
- Psychic Determinism:
the assumption that all psychological events have a cause.
— We aren’t free to choose our actions.
— we’re at the mercy of powerful inner forces that lie outside of our awareness.
— Dreams, neurotic symptoms, “Freudian slips” of the tongue are all reflections of deep psychological conflict bubbling up to the surface.
- Symbolic Meaning:
no action (no matter how seemingly trivial) is meaningless. All are attributable to preceding mental causes, even if we can’t always figure out what they are.
— all dreams are wish fulfillments that is, expressions of the id’s impulses.
— wishes are disguised. When the superego perceives the id’s desires to be threatening, it “commands” the ego to plaster over these wishes with symbols.
- Unconscious Motivation:
we rarely understand why we do what we do, although we quite readily cook up explanations for our actions after the fact.
— Freudian view of the mind/personality is analogous to an iceberg.
- The unconscious the part of personality of which we’re entirely unaware is submerged entirely underwater.
- The conscious component of the mind, the part of personality of which we’re aware, is the “tip of the iceberg,”.
• Is accompanied by treatment called psychoanalysis.
• Ego (the person trying to make the decision), id (demon), and superego (angel).
behaviourist
• differences in our personalities stem largely from differences in our learning histories.
• Skinner
• reject the notion that the first few years of life are especially critical in personality development.
• our personalities are bundles of habits acquired by classical and operant conditioning.
• don’t believe that personality plays a role in causing behaviour. For them, personality consists of behaviours.
• behaviours are both overt (observable) and covert (unobservable), such as thoughts and feelings.
• view personality as under the control of two major influences: (a) genetic factors and (b) contingencies in the environment–that is, reinforcers and punishers
• are determinists: They believe that all of our actions are products of pre-existing causal influences.
• free will is an illusion
• we’re unconscious of many things because we’re often unaware of immediate situational influences on our behaviour
humanistic perspectives about personality (their main ideas regarding where personality comes from, which theories are deterministic (i.e., people don’t have free will), what they have in common, and how they differ).
Each address 3 key Questions:
Sigmund Freud
Psychoanalytic:
Psychoanalytic: ID
ID
— Reservoir of our most primitive impulses, including sex and aggression.
- provides the driving force for much of our behaviour.
- entirely unconscious.
- ID operates by means of the pleasure principles.
Pleasure Principle
— Tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification
Psychoanalytic: Ego
Ego
— Psyche’s executive and principal decision maker.
- interacting with the real world and finding ways to resolve the competing demands of the other two psychic agencies.
- ego, unlike the id, is governed by the reality principle.
Reality Principle
— Tendency of the ego to postpone gratification until it can find an appropriate outlet.
Psychoanalytic: Superego
Superego
— Our sense of morality (with arguably unrealistic expectations, so high that they cannot possibly be met).
- contains the sense of right and wrong we’ve internalized from our interactions with society, particularly our parents.
- people with overly developed superegos are guilt-prone.
- guilt-free people are at risk for developing psychopathic personality.
Psychoanalytic: Freudian defense mechanisms (in general what they are and why we use them, not the 8 specific ones).
Defence Mechanisms
— Unconscious manoeuvres intended to minimize anxiety.
• principal function of the ego.
• “tools for coping”
• When danger arises, the ego experiences anxiety, signalling it to undertake corrective actions.
— Sometimes, these actions are straightforward.
— Other times, we can’t do much to correct the situation, so we must change our perception of it.
Psychoanalytic: How neo-Freudian theories differ from Freudian theory.
Neo-Freudian Theories
— Theories derived from Freud’s model, but that placed less emphasis on sexuality as a driving force in personality and were more optimistic regarding the prospects for long-term personality growth.
• More emphasis on social drives, such as culture and one’s need for approval.
• Pointed out that anatomy isn’t always destiny when it comes to the psychological differences between the sexes and argued that social influences must be reckoned within the development of personality.
