Chapter 10 - Personality and Self Flashcards
Personality
The organized combination of attributes, motives, values, and behaviors that is unique to each individual
Dan McAdams and Jennifer Pals’ three aspects of personality
dispositional traits
characteristic adaptations
life stories
dispositional traits
Relatively enduring dimensions or qualities of personality along which people differ (e.g., extraversion, aloofness).
characteristic adaptations
Compared to traits, more situation-specific and changeable aspects of personality; ways in which people adapt to their roles and environments, including motives, goals, plans, schemas, self-conceptions, stage-specific concerns, and coping mechanisms
life stories
Unique and integrative life narratives that we construct about our lives— past, present, and future—to give ourselves an identity and our lives meaning; sometimes called narrative identities.
What things help shape all three aspects of personality?
biological factors, including a “human nature” shared with fellow humans and an individual genetic makeup, and cultural and situational influences
Self-concept
People’s perceptions of their unique attributes or traits. Self-concept is about “what I am,”
Self-esteem
People’s overall evaluation of their worth as based on an assessment of the qualities that make up the self-concept. self-esteem concerns “how good I am”
Identity
A self-definition or sense of who one is, where one is going, and how one fits into society.
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
Psychoanalytic Theory
Trait Theory
Social Learning Theory
What techniques do psychoanalytic theories generally use?
in-depth interviews and similar techniques to get below the surface of the person and her behavior and understand the inner dynamics of personality
Freud’s thoughts on personality:
children progress through universal stages of psychosexual development ending in adolescence—stages guided by biological forces of which they are largely unconscious
not see psychosexual growth continuing during adulthood - although anxieties arising from harsh parenting or other unfavorable early experiences in the family, he said, would leave a permanent mark on the personality and reveal themselves in adult personality traits
Freud believed that the personality was largely formed during the first ___ years of life and showed much ___________ thereafter
5
continuity
Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory
highly influential theory of lifelong personality development, emphasizing social influences beyond parents, the rational ego and its adaptive powers, possibilities for overcoming harmful early experiences, and the potential for growth and change throughout the life span
looking at conflicts among the id, the ego and the superego
proposed that people undergo similar personality changes at similar ages
Erikson placed more emphasis than Freud on these four things:
social influences beyond parents such as peers, teachers, and cultures
the rational ego and its adaptive powers
possibilities for overcoming the effects of harmful early experiences
the potential for growth and change throughout the life span
according to Erikson, whether the conflict of a particular stage is successfully resolved or not, what will happen?
the individual is pushed by both biological maturation and social demands into the next stage. However, the unsuccessful resolution of a conflict will negatively affect how later stages play out whereas successful resolution will help the individual develop the virtue or strength
Trait Theory
A theory that defines personality as a set of dispositional trait dimensions. Traits are thought to be genetically and environmentally influenced, consistent across situations, and relatively enduring throughout life.
What approach do trait theorists use?
the same psychometric approach that guided the development of intelligence tests - administer personality scales to people and use the statistical technique of factor analysis to identify groups of personality scale items that are correlated with each other but not with other groups of items
Similarity between psychoanalytic and trait theorists
they expect to see carryover in personality over the years
Difference between psychoanalytic and trait theorists
trait theorists do not believe that the personality unfolds in a series of stages
most common trait theory
Big Five
five-factor model of the Big Five - what are the 5?
Openness to experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
(OCEAN)
Are the Big Five universal?
appear to be universal - capture how people all over the world describe themselves and others
However, average levels of Big Five traits differ from culture to culture (for example, Europeans appear to be more extroverted on average than Asians or Africans)
Social Learning Theory - who and what?
Albert Bandura and Walter Mischel
reject the notion of universal stages of personality development like Erikson’s
question the trait theory view that we have enduring personality traits
personality boils down to a set of behavior patterns shaped by interactions with other people in specific social situations
how does emergence of self develop in infants?
quickly develop an implicit, if not conscious, sense of self - based in their perceptions of their bodies and actions and grows out of their everyday interactions with caregivers
sense of agency - what is it and when does it emerge?
a sense that they can cause things to happen in the world
displayed by infants by 2-3 months of age
What are infants developing for the first six months?
discover properties of their physical selves, distinguish between themselves and the rest of the world, and discover that they can act upon other people and objects
What are infants developing from 6 mos to 1 year?
realize that they and their companions are separate beings who have different perspectives and on occasion can share perspectives (e.g., joint attention, or the sharing of perceptual experiences by two people, and is evident from about 9 months of age on)
What two things do infants start to display around 18 months?
self-recognition - being aware of themselves as distinct individuals - The ability to recognize oneself in a mirror or photograph
categorical self - they classify themselves into social categories based on age, sex, and other visible characteristics, figuring out what is “like me” and what is “not like me.”
Factors influencing self-recognition/self-awareness:
depends on cognitive development and the maturation of relevant areas of the brain
social interaction - secure attachments with their parents are better able than those whose relationships are less secure to recognize themselves in a mirror and know more about their names and genders
cultural context - n the individualistic/urban cultures recognized themselves in a mirror by 18 or 19 months, whereas only a minority of those in the collectivist/rural cultures did
By what age do infants display distinctive personalities?
from the first weeks of life - temperament
temperament
early, genetically based but also environmentally influenced tendencies to respond in predictable ways to events that serve as the foundation for later personality
study of infant personality has centered on this
Social learning theorists have tended to view babies as…
“blank slates” who can be shaped in any number of directions by their experiences - However, it is now clear that babies are not blank slates—that they differ from the start in basic response tendencies
Alexander Thomas, Stella Chess, and their colleagues gathered information about what types of dimensions of infant behavior in order to categorize temperaments?
typical mood,
regularity or predictability of biological functions such as feeding and sleeping habits,
tendency to approach or withdraw from new stimuli,
intensity of emotional reactions
adaptability to new experiences and changes in routine
Three temperament categories:
Easy temperament
Difficult temperament
Slow-to-warm-up temperament
longitudinal study of temperament found what percentages of each category?
40% were easy infants, 10% were difficult infants, and 15% were slow-to-warm-up infants, remaining third could not be placed neatly in only one category because they shared qualities of two or more categories
longitudinal study of continuity and discontinuity in temperament from infancy to early adulthood showed what?
some continuity from infancy to childhood
but little continuity to adulthood
Mary Rothbart and her colleagues’ three major dimensions of temperament
Surgency/extraversion
Negative affectivity
Effortful control
Surgency/extraversion
Dimension of temperament that involves the tendency to actively and energetically approach new experiences in an emotionally positive way (rather than to be inhibited and withdrawn).
evident from infancy on
Negative affectivity
Dimension of temperament that concerns the tendency to be sad, fearful, easily frustrated, and irritable and difficult to soothe (as opposed to laid-back and adaptable)
evident from infancy on
Effortful control
Dimension of temperament pertaining to being able to sustain attention, control one’s behavior, and regulate one’s emotions (as opposed to unable to regulate one’s arousal and stay calm and focused).
emerges more clearly in toddlerhood and early childhood and continues to develop into adulthood
At age 3, only 22% of children can inhibit forbidden actions like this; by age 4, 90% can
Matching with Big Five dimensions:
surgency/extraversion matches up with…
negative affectivity with…
effortful control with…
extraversion
neuroticism
conscientiousness
goodness of fit
The extent to which the child’s temperament and the demands of the child’s social environment are compatible or mesh, according to Thomas and Chess; more generally, a good match between person and environment.
can be changed - e.g., Teaching parents of irritable, difficult babies how to interpret their infants’ cues and respond sensitively and appropriately to them can produce calmer infants who cry less and become less irritable preschoolers
What can help children pull together what they know of themselves into a self-concept?
Parents who help their children reminisce about their experiences and the emotions associated with them
preschool child’s emerging self-concept is…
concrete and physical
- Asked to describe themselves, preschoolers note their physical characteristics, possessions, physical activities and accomplishments, and preferences
When do children self-describe with more psychological and social qualities? What are the three stages?
around age 7 or 8
First, they describe their personality traits using terms such as funny and smart and shy
Second, children focus on their social identities (Brownie Scout)
Third, they engage social comparison
self-esteem becomes more _______________ with age in childhood?
differentiated or multidimensional
Preschool children distinguish only these two broad aspects of self-esteem
competence and social acceptability
By mid–elementary school, children differentiate among five aspects of self-worth:
scholastic competence (feeling smart or doing well in school)
social acceptance (being popular or feeling liked)
behavioral conduct (staying out of trouble)
athletic competence (being good at sports)
physical appearance (feeling good-looking)
How is the accuracy of children’s self-evaluations?
increased steadily with age
(those with high scholastic self-esteem were more likely than those with low scholastic self-esteem to be rated as intellectually capable by their teachers, and those with high athletic self-esteem were frequently chosen by peers to be on sports teams)
Three influences on self-esteem in childhood
genetic makeup
competence
social feedback
Who is the most important influence on self-esteem in childhood?
Parents are especially important (The relationship between high self-esteem and warm, democratic parenting is evident in a variety of ethnic groups and cultures)