Chapter 11 Psychology 175.102 Flashcards
Structure of personality
The organisation of enduring patterns of thought, feeling, motivation and behaviour.
Personality
Personality refers to the enduring patterns of thought, feeling, motivation and behaviour that are expressed in different circumstances
Individual differences
Individual differences in personality; the way people differ from one another
Psychodynamics
Psychological dynamics analogous to dynamics among physical forces.
Topographic model
Divided processes into three types: conscious, pre-conscious and unconscious.
Conscious mental processes
Rational, goal directed thoughts at the centre of awareness
Pre-conscious mental processes
Not conscious but could become conscious at any point, such as knowledge of the colour of Robbins.
Unconscious mental processes
Irrational, organised along associative lines rather than by logic
Ambivalence
Conflicting feelings or motives
Conflict
A tension or battle between opposing motives
Compromise formations
The solutions people develop to maximise fulfilment of conflicting motives simultaneously
Drive or instinct model
Focused on what drives or motivates people. Freud
Libido
Refers as much to pleasure seeking, sexuality and love as it does to desires for sexual intercourse.
Psychosexual stages
Stages in the development of personality, sexuality and motivation
Development model - Freud
Freud’s model of how children develop
Oral stage
The first 18 months of life. Children explore the world through their mouths. Dependency
Fixations
Conflicts or concerns that persist beyond the developmental period in which they arise
Anal stage
Ages 2 to 3 years.
Categorised by conflicts with parents about compliance and defiance.
Orderliness, cleanliness, control, compliance.
Phallic stage
Ages 4 to 6 years.
During the phallic stage the child identifies with significant others, especially the same-sex parent.
Oedipus complex, establishment of conscience
Identification
Making another person part of one’s self: imitating the person’s behaviour, changing the self-concept to see oneself as like the person.
Oedipus complex
Freud’s hypothesis that little boys want exclusive relationship with their mothers, and little girls want an exclusive relationship with their fathers.
Castration complex
A small boys fear of castration by the father or others
Penis envy
The girls belief that because they make a penis they are inferior to boys
Latency stage
Ages 7 to 11 years.
Children repressed their sexual impulses and continue to identify with the same-sex parent
Genital stage
Age 12 years and beyond.
Conscious sexuality resurfaces after years of repression, and genital sex becomes the primary goal of sexual activity.
Mature sexuality and relationships
Structural model
Described conflict in terms of desires on the one hand and the dictates of conscious or the constraints of reality on the other
Id
The reservoir of sexual and aggressive energy.
Is driven by impulses and, like the unconscious of the topographic model, is characterised by primary process thinking: wishful, illogical and associative thought
Primary process thinking
Wishful, illogical and associative thought
Part of id
Pleasure principle
Seeking immediate satisfaction and gratification, with little or no consideration for the longer term ramifications.
Part of id
Superego
Acts as a conscience and source of ideals
Ego
The structure that must somehow balance desire, reality and morality.
Capable of secondary process thinking.
Obeys the reality principle.
Secondary process thinking
Rational, logical and goal directed thought
Reality principle
Recognises that the immediate desire for pleasure needs to be off set against the reality of what the consequences might be
Defence mechanisms
Unconscious and mental processes aimed at protecting the person from unpleasant emotions or bolstering pleasurable emotions
Repression
A person keeps thoughts or memories that would be too threatening to acknowledge from awareness
Denial
The person refuses to acknowledge external realities or emotions
Projection
A defence mechanism by which a person attributes his own unacknowledged feelings or impulses to others
Reaction formation
The defence mechanism whereby a person fails to acknowledge unacceptable impulses and overemphasises their opposites
Sublimation
The defence that involves converting sexual or aggressive impulses into socially acceptable activities
Rationalisation
A defence in which the person explains away actions in a seemingly logical way to avoid uncomfortable feelings, especially guilt will shame
Displacement
Defence involves people directing their emotions, especially anger, away from the real target to a substitute
Regression
The defence involves a person reverting back to an earlier stage of psychological development, typically went under a period of great stress or hardship
Passive aggression
The indirect expression of anger towards others
Object relations
Enduring patterns of behaviour in intimate relationships and to the motivational, cognitive and affective processes that produce those patterns
Relational theories
Argue that for all individuals adaptation is primarily adaptation to other people
Life history methods
Aim to understand the whole person in the context of his life experience and environment
Projective tests
Presents participants with an ambiguous stimulus and ask them to give some kind of definition to it, to ‘project’ a meaning into it.
Contributions of psychodynamic theories
- Unconscious cognitive, emotional and motivational processes
- Ambivalence, conflict and compromise
- Childhood experiences in shaping adult interpersonal patterns
- Mental representations of the self, others and relationships
- The development of the capacity to regulate impulses and to shift from an immature dependent state in infancy to a mutually caring, interdependent interpersonal stance on at adulthood
- Perhaps most importantly, psychodynamic approaches emphasis human thought and action are laden with meaning, and interpreting the multiple meanings of a person’s behaviour requires listening for ideas, fears and wishes of which the person himself my not be aware
Limitations of psychodynamic theory
Inadequate basis in scientific observation
Sexism
Cognitive-social theories
Developed from behaviourist and cognitive roots and consider learning, beliefs, expectations and information processing to be central to personality
Personal constructs
Mental representations of the people, places, things and events that are significant to a person
Personal value
The importance individuals attach to various outcomes or potential outcomes
Life tasks
Conscious, self-defined problems people try to solve
Expectancies
Expectations relevant to desired outcomes, influence the actions they take
Behaviour-outcome expectancy
A belief that a certain behaviour will lead to a particular outcome
Self-efficacy expectancy
A person’s conviction that she can perform the actions necessary to produce the desired outcome
Competences
Skills and abilities used for solving problems
Self-regulation
Refers to setting goals, evaluating performance and adjusting behaviour to achieve these goals in the context of ongoing feedback
Limitations of cognitive social theories
They tend to emphasise the rational side of life and underemphasised the emotional, motivational and irrational.
A tendency to assume that people consciously know what they think, feel and want and hence can report it.
Traits
Emotional, cognitive and behavioural tendencies that constitute underlying personality dimensions on which individuals vary.
Extroversion
A tendency to be sociable, active and willing to take risks.
Introversion
Social inhibition, seriousness and caution.
Neuroticism
A continuum from emotional stability to instability.
Report feeling anxious, guilty, tense and moody, and they tend to have low self-esteem.
Psychoticism
Describes people who are aggressive, egocentric, impulsive and antisocial.
Behavioural approach system (BAS)
The structure that is attuned to rewards, and leads people to seek out stimulation and arousal.
Behavioural inhibition system (BIS)
The structure that is attuned to punishment, and leads people to avoid potentially dangerous or painful experiences.
Five factor model (FFM)
Five superordinate personality traits, known as the ‘big five’ factors.
OCEAN. Acronym
Openness. Conscientiousness. Agreeableness. Extroversion. Neuroticism.
Situational variables
The circumstances and which people find themselves.
Play a large part in determining an individuals behaviour, according to Walter Mischel.
Principle of aggregation
A trait does not refer to a specific behaviour in a specific situation but rather to a class of behaviours over a range of situations
Temperament
The basic personality disposition heavily influenced by genes
Person-by-situation interactions
People expressed particular traits in particular situations
Contributions of trait theory
- Traits lend themselves to measurement and hence to empirical investigation through questionnaires.
- The trait approach has also enabled the development of an appropriate taxonomy for the categorisation of personality attributes.
Limitations of trait theory
- Some say five factors are too few to describe the huge variations possible in human personality.
- The model is purely descriptive and does nothing to explain how personality traits develop.
- They rely heavily on self-reports.
- The factor structure that emerges depends in part on the items that are included and the number of highly subjective decisions made by the factor analyst.
- Traits psychology does not examine the dynamic nature of personality.
- Factors may not mean precisely the same thing in different cultures.
- Trait theories often provide more insight into the how much of personality than the how or why.
Person-centred approach - Carl Rogers
Aims at understanding individuals phenomenal experience
Phenomenal experience
The way the individual conceived of reality and experience themselves in the world
Empathy
The capacity to understand another persons experience cognitively and emotionally.
True-self
A core aspect of being, untainted by the demands of those around them
False-self
A mask individuals wear and ultimately mistake to be their true psychological face
Conditions of worth
Certain standards that children observe then they distort themselves into being what significant others want them to be
Self concept
And organised pattern of thought and perception about oneself
Ideal self
The persons view of what they should be like
Actualising tendency
A desire to fulfil the full range of needs that humans experience, from the basic needs for food and drink to that needs to be open to experience and to express ones true self
Existentialism
School of 20th century philosophy that similarly focused on subjective existence. Individual is alone throughout life and must confront what it means to be human and what values to embrace.
Existential psychology
- The importance of subjective experience
- The centrality of the human quest for meaning in life
- The dangers of losing touch with what one really feels
- Hazards of conceiving of oneself is thing-like, rather than as a changing, ever-forming, creative source of will and action.
Existential dread
The recognition that life has no absolute value or meaning and that, ultimately, we all face death.
Contributions of humanistic theories
- The unique focus on the way humans strive to find meaning in life.
Limitations of humanistic theories
- It does not offer a comprehensive theory of personality.
2. Humanistic psychology has not produced a substantial body of testable hypotheses and research.
