Chapter 10 Personality Flashcards
Type a personality
More anxious and ambitious, competitive, hardworking, easily angered, more likely to develop cardiac issues
Personality
Unique attitudes behaviors and emotions that characterize a person
Type b personality
Relaxed and easygoing
Personality- psychoanalytic approach
- Sigmund freud’s psychosexual stages (environ in childhood)
- id, ego, and superego
Stage theories
Theories where development is discontinuous, steps are recognizable diff from each other
Psychosexual stage theory
Personality made in early childhood thru the sexual urges in diff stages
- oral
- anal
- phallic
- latency
- adult genital
Oral stage
- birth to one year
- sucking and biting gives sexual pleasure
Anal stage
- 1-3 yrs
- sexually pleasure from pooping and peeing
Phallic stage
- 3-5 yrs
- sexual pleasure from genitalia
- Oepidus crisis and Electra crisis
- boys and girls notice physical diff
(Penis envy and castration anxiety)
Oepidus crisis
- in phallic stage, boys sexually desire mom and view fathers as rivals for mom’s love
- castration anxiety, use defense mechanism of identification, emulate and attach themselves to fathers
Electra crisis
- in phallic stage, girls sexually desire fathers and view mom as rivals for dad’s love
- develop penis envy
Penis envy
In phallic stage, a girl’s desire for a penis
Castration anxiety
- In phallic stage, boys fear that their father will castrate them if they misbehave or to eliminate them as rivals for mom’s love
- use defense mechanism of identification
Identification- Oepidus crisis
In phallic stage, boys emulate and attach themselves to fathers to protect themselves from castration anxiety
- prevents boys from fearing fathers
- encourages boys to break away from motherly attachments and act like men
Latency stage
- 6 yrs to puberty
- repress sexual feelings out of concious awareness
- focus on same sex friendships and academic studies
Adult genital stage
- puberty to death
- sexual pleasure from sexual relationships with others
Fixation
- tendency or habit created by being under or over gratified in any psychosexual stage (libido is stuck in the stage)
Oral fixation
- child not fed regularly or overly indulged have tendency to overeat, chew gum, smoking addiction, or other mouth related behavior
Anal fixation
Caused by traumatic toilet training
- anal expulsive personality- messy, disorganized
- anal retentive- meticulously neat
Phallic fixation
- Very sexually assured and aggressiveness
- feel sexually inadequate
Libido
Psychic energy used to keep unconscious thoughts from the conscious mind, directs life instincts(Eros )
Unconscious mind
Part of our mind we don’t have access to
Conscious mind
Everything we are thinking of at the moment
Precocious
Anything we can potentially summon to our unconscious mind with ease
Id
- In the unconscious
- propelled by pleasure principle
- babies have only the id
Has
- psychic energy
- instincts- Eros and Thanatos
Eros
Life instincts in id
- ex: desire for sex
Thanatos
Death instincts in id
- ex aggression
Pleasure principle
- id’s driving force
- wants immediate gratification
Ego
- follows reality principle
- partly in unconscious and conscious
- comes around age 2 or 3
- protects conscious mind with defense mechanisms
Reality principle
Driving force behind ego
- negotiates bw desires of id and limitations of environ
Superego
- comes around age 5
- both in conscious and unconscious mind
- sense of conscience or morality
Defense mechanism
Protects conscious mind from threatening thoughts in the unconscious
- repression
- denial
- displacement
- projection
- reaction formation
- regression
- rationalization
- intellectualization
- sublimation
Repression
Blocking thoughts from conscious awareness
Denial
Not accepting the threatening truth of a situation
Displacement
Redirecting ones feelings towards another person or object
Projection
Believing the feeling one has towards someone else are actually held by the other person and directed at oneself
Reaction formation
Expressing opposite of how you feel
Regression
Returning to an earlier more comforting behavior
Rationalization
Coming up with a beneficial result to an undesirable consequence
Intellectualization
Doing an academic unemotional study of a topic
Sublimation
Channeling ones frustrations towards a different goal
Fruedian personality theory cons
- little empirical evidence
- any reaction subject has to psychoanalytic theory can be seen as support of it theory
- overemphasizes importance of early childhood and sex
- feminists think it objectifies men- penis envy not based on any empirical evidence- suggests womb envy
Karen horney
Criticizes freud’s penis envy and says men have womb envy
Womb envy
Jealousy of women’s reproductive capabilities
Impact Freudian theory of personality
- More prominent role in the arts (ex Salvador Dali) and modern lang than in actual psychology
Psychodynamic personality theory
- carl Jung- collective and personal unconscious
- Alfred Adler- focused on ego, importance of superiority and inferiority
Carl Jung
Psychodynamic theorist
- unconscious is made of personal and collective unconscious
Personal unconscious
Made by Carl Jung
- consists of complexes
Complexes
anxiety- causing memories from the past that are repressed into personal unconscious
Collective unconscious
- made by Carl Jung
Passed down they species, explains similarities we see bw cultures - consists of archetypes
Archetypes
Universal concepts we all share as part of the human species in collective unconscious
Ex shadow is evil
Alfred Adler
- Ego psychologist who focused on our fear of inferiority and desire to be superior , how it shapes personality
Trait theorists
- believe personality can be described by specifying main characteristics
- nomotheic approach
- ideographic theorists
Nomothetic approach
Trait theorists that believe we can describe ppls personalities with same basic set of traits
- Hans eyesenck
- Paul costa and Robert McCrae
- Raymond Catell
Hans eyesenck
Nomothetic trait theorist
- classified ppl with an introversion-extroversion scale and stable- unstable scale
Raymond Catell
Nomothetic trait theorist
- made 16 PF (personality factor) test
Paul costa and Robert McCrae
- nomothetic trait theorist
- classified ppl according to big five traits (ocean)
- openness to experience.
- conscientiousness
- extroversion
- agreeableness
- neuroticism
Factor analysis
Statistical technique used to cluster traits and find main traits
Idiographic theorists
- each person’s personality must be seen in terms of what few traits best characterize their unique self
- Gordon allport
Gordon allport
- idiographic trait theorist
- characterized ppl by their cardinal, central, and secondary dispositions
Criticism trait theorist
Underestimate importance of the situation in personality
Biological theory personality
- view genes, chemicals, and body types as central forces in personality
- little research, growing field
- babies are born with diff temperaments, thought to influence personality
- Hippocrates and William Sheldon
Heritability
Measure of variation of a trait due to genetics
Temperaments
Emotional way of dealing with the world
Hippocrates
Personality determined by relative levels of 4 bodily fluids (blood, yellow bike, black bile, and phlegm)
- untrue but the first theory to attribute biological factors to personality
William Sheldon
somatotypes theory of personality
- ectomorphs (thin) are shy
- endomorphs (round) are friendly and outgoing
- mesomorphs (muscular) are confident and assertive
Behavioral theories personality
- personality is nothing more than behavior, determined by reinforcement contingencies
Behavioral personality theory criticism
- fails to recognize importance of cognition
Socio-cognitive theories personality
- mix of behavioral with a cognitive component
- bandura
- George Kelly
- Julian rotter
Bandura personality theory
- Triadic reciprocality/ reciprocal determinism
- highly affected by ppl’s self-efficacy
Triadic reciprocality
Personality is created by interaction bw environment, behavior, and personality traits. All effect each other in a loop like form
Self efficacy
- feelings about one’s ability to get things done right (powerlessness vs optimism)
George Kelly
- Personal construct theory
Personal construct theory
- people develop their own personal evaluations of how world works, ppls behavior determined by how they evaluate the world
- based on fundamental postulate
Fundamental postulate
- ppl’s behavior is influenced by their cognitions and ppls past behaviors predict future ones
Julian rotter
- Made locus of control concept
Locus of control
- like bandura’s self efficacy
- internal locus of control- ppl who feel that they are responsible for what happens to them
- external locus of control- luck and other outside forces determine destinies (powerlessness)
- internals are healthier more ppl active and do better academically
Humanistic theory personality
- view ppl as innately good
- ppl able to use free will to determine destiny
- ppl motivated to self actualization
- stress self concept and self esteem
- Abraham Maslow
- Carl Rogers
Self concept
Person’s global feeling about him or herself, develops mostly thru parent interaction
- high self concepts have high self esteem
Abraham Maslow
- Made hierarchy of needs in which self actualization sits at the top
Carl Rogers
- made self theory
Self theory
- although ppl are innately good, they need unconditional positive regard to self actualize
Unconditional positive regard
Blanket acceptance usly by parent to children, needed to self actualize acc to Carl Rogers
Humanistic theory criticism
Overly optimistic, how do ppl do horrible things if they are innately good?
Reliability
Yielding consistent results
Validity
Accuracy, actual correctness of results
Assessment techniques personality
- projective tests
- self report inventories
- radical behaviorists think there is no assessment technique but to observe behavior
- Barnum effect
Projective tests
involve asking ppl to interpret ambiguous stimuli
- Rorschach ink blot test
- thematic apperception test (TAT)
- criticism- scoring is hard and based on therapist’s interpretations
- used by psychoanalysts to reveal unconscious
Rorschach ink blot test
- projective test
- showing ppl ink blots, what do you see ?
Thematic apperception test (TAT)
- projective tests
- shows picture of ppl in ambiguous situation, what is happening?
Self report inventories
- questionnaires asking ppl about themselves
- used by many types of psychologists
- paper answer is an objective assessment
- interview is more subjective and opens the door to interviewer bias in interpretating answers
- ppl may lie, less reliable
- Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (MMPI-2)
Barnum effect
Curiosity for ppl to know their future and other info based on personality assessments, very easily deceived, used by fortune tellers, psychics, etc
