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Psychology 101 - Fall '17 > Chapter 12: Personality > Flashcards

Chapter 12: Personality Flashcards

1
Q

Five factors model of personality

A
  1. Openness
  2. Conscientiousness
  3. Extroversion
  4. Agreeableness
  5. Neuroticism
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2
Q

What is personality?

A

Personality refers to an individual’s unique set of consistent behavioral traits.

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3
Q

What is personality trait?

A

A personality trait is a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations.

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4
Q

Five factors model:

Openness

A

Low score

  • not creative
  • not curious

High score

  • creative
  • curious
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5
Q

Five factors model:

Conscientiousness

A

Low score

  • lazy
  • disorganised

High score

  • punctual
  • well organised
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6
Q

Five factors model:

Extroversion

A

Low score

  • loner, quiet
  • passive

High score

  • talkative
  • active
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7
Q

Five factors model:

Agreeableness

A

Low score

  • suspicious
  • ruthless

High score

  • trusting
  • soft hearted
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8
Q

Five factors model:

Neuroticism

A

Low score

  • calm
  • unemotional

High score

  • self conscious
  • emotional
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9
Q

Psycho-dynamic theories

A

A view that explains personality in terms of conscious and unconscious forces, such as unconscious desires and beliefs.

  • Sigmund Freud
  • Carl Jung
  • Alfred Adler
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10
Q

Fred’s Psyschoanalytic Theory

Freud’s claims/ theories

A
  1. People’s behavior is governed by unconscious factors of which they are unaware [level of awareness + structure of personality]
  2. Defense mechanism
  3. Adult personalities are shaped by childhood experiences and other factors beyond one’s control, he suggested that people are not masters of their own destinies. [psychosexual stages]
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11
Q

Freud’s theory:

Structure of Personality

A

ID - the primitive, instinctive component of personality that operates according to the pleasure principle

Ego - the decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle. [moderator between ID and Superego]

Superego - the moral component of personality that incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong.

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12
Q

Freud’s theory:

Level of awareness

A
  1. Conscious - contact with the outside world
  2. Preconscious - material just beneath the surface of awareness that can easily be retrieved
  3. Unconscious - contains thoughts, memories, and desires that are well below the surface of conscious awareness but that nonetheless exert great influence on behaviour.

Preconscious + Conscious = Ego
Unconscious = ID
Conscious + Preconscious + Unconscious = Superego

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13
Q

Freud: Defense mechanism

A

Conflicts between the ID, ego and superego -> anxiety

Defense mechanism: Defense mechanisms are largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and guilt

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14
Q

Types of defense mechanism

A
  1. Repression: Keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious (intentionally bury memories or thoughts)
  2. Projection: Attributing one’s own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or motives to another (you may hate someone but superego claims hatred is unacceptable -> you solve the prob by thinking the other person hates you)
  3. Displacement: Diverting emotional feelings (usually anger) from their original source to a substitute target
  4. Reaction formation: Behaving in a way that is exactly the opposite of one’s true feelings (acting like you hate someone when you actually have feeling for that person)
  5. Regression: A reversion to immature patterns of behavior (an adult has a temper tantrum when he doesn’t get his way)
  6. Rationalization: Creating false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behavior
  7. Sublimation: Channeling unconscious, unacceptable impulses into socially acceptable or admirable activities (transforming inappropriate desire or thoughts to art/music)
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15
Q

Freud: Psychosexual stages

A

Developmental periods with a characteristic sexual focus that leave their mark on adult personality.

  1. Oral
  2. Anal
  3. Phallic
  4. Latency
  5. Genital
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16
Q

Fixation

A

A failure to move forward from one stage to another as expected.

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17
Q

Psychosexual stages:

Oral

A
  • Ages: 0 - 1
  • Erotic focus: mouth (biting, sucking)
  • Key experience: Feeding
  • Fixation of this stage: obsessive feeding or smoking later in life
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18
Q

Psychosexual stages:

Anal

A
  • Ages: 2 - 3
  • Erotic focus: Anus
  • Key experience: toilet training
  • punitive toilet training -> genital anxiety -> anxiety about sexual activity later in life
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19
Q

Psychosexual stages:

Phallic

A
  • Ages: 4 - 5
  • Oedipal complex: children manifest erotically tinged desires for their opposite- sex parent, accompanied by feelings of hostility toward their same-sex parent.
    [Boys compete with their father for mother’s affections, Girls tend to develop special attachment to father]
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20
Q

Psychosexual stages:

Latency

A
  • Ages: 6 - 12

- Sexuality is suppressed

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21
Q

Psychosexual stages:

Genital

A
  • Ages: Puberty - onward

- Develops sexual energy toward opposite sex peers

22
Q

Carl Jung’s analytical psychology

A

Unconscious contains two layers:

  1. Personal unconscious: houses material that is not within one’s conscious awareness because it has been repressed or forgotten.
  2. Collective unconscious: storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from people’s ancestral past.
23
Q

Carl Jung: Archetypes

A

Jung believes each person shares the collective unconscious with the entire human race
-> these ancestral memories = archetypes

Archetypes: emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning.

+ ancient images derived from the collective unconscious
+ archetypal images and ideas show up frequently in dreams often manifested in a culture’s use of symbols in art, literature, and religion.

24
Q

Alfred Adler’s Individual theory

A
  • Inferiority feelings - the striving for superiority arises because as human beings we feel inferior
  • Human infants are born with inferiority feelings

In order to overcome inferiority feelings, compensation involves
- Compensation: efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiority by developing one’s abilities.

  • Overcompensation: an exaggerated effort to cover up a weakness that entails a denial rather than an acceptance of the real situation
25
Q

Evaluation of psychodynamic theories

A

Strengths

  • Helps us understand how our early relationships can effect our adult personality
  • It’s the first approach to try and explain mental illness in psychological terms and massively influenced how it’s understood and treated

Weaknesses

  • Problems with generalisation [Freud based his findings on a single individual]
  • Cultural variations were not taken into account [Freud’s research is mostly done on white, middle class people]
  • Subjective interpretation of research methods leads to unreliable conclusions
26
Q

Behaviourism

A

A theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study only observable behavior.

27
Q

Behavourism theorists (3)

A
  1. Skinner
  2. Bandura
  3. Mischel
28
Q

Behaviourism: Skinner’s theory

Operant conditioning

A

Operant conditioning involves learning through the consequences of behaviours

  • Skinner believes that best way to understand behaviour is to
    look at the causes of an action and its consequences
29
Q

Behaviourism: Skinner’s theory

3 types of responses/ operants that can follow behaviour

A
  1. Neutral operants: responses from the environment that neither increase nor decrease the probability of a behaviour being repeated
  2. Reinforcers: responses from the environment that increases the probability of a behaviour being repeated. Reinforcers can be positive or negative
  3. Punisher: responses from the environment that decrease the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated. Punishment weakens behaviours
30
Q

Behaviourism: Skinner’s theory

Reinforcement x Punishment

A
  • Positive reinforcement: presenting the subject with something it likes
    i. e Skinner rewarded his rats with food
  • Negative reinforcement: reward - in the sense of removing or avoiding some painful stimulus
    i. e Skinner’s rats learned to press the lever in order to switch off electric current in the cage
  • Punishment: imposing an aversive or painful stimulus
    i. e Skinner’s rats were given electric shocks
31
Q

Behaviourism: Bandura’s theory

Observational learning

A

Observational learning: occurs when an organism’s responding is influenced by the observation of others, who are called models. [model: a person whose behaviour is observed by others].

  • Observational learning can be intentionally or accidentally
  • Imitation: more likely when people see similarities between themselves and the models
    i. e children tend to imitate same sex role models more than opposite sex model
  • People are more likely to copy a model if they observe that the model’s behaviour leads to positive outcomes
32
Q

Behaviourism: Bandura’s theory

Social cognitive theory: Self efficacy

A

Self efficacy - refers to one’s belief about one one’s ability to perform behaviours that should lead to expected outcomes

  • High efficacy: when individuals feel confident that they can execute the responses necessary to earn reinforcers
  • Low efficacy: individuals worry that the necessary responses may be beyond their abilities
33
Q

Behaviourism: Mischel

Person - Situation Controversy

A

Mischel’s social learning theory states that: people will often behave differently in different situation.

  • People make responses that they think will lead to reinforcement in the situation at hand
34
Q

Evaluation of behaviourism theories

A
  1. Reductionist: very limited views, as it thinks we are all blank sheets with no personality or individual thought process [dehumanising nature of radical behaviourism]
  2. Studies done on animals: not generalised to humans. [Skinner’s box - experiments of rats and pigeons]
  3. Treats the symptoms and not the cause: feat is often displaced onto other phobias
35
Q

Humanism theory

A

Humanism: a theoretical orientation that emphasises the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and their potential for personal growth

36
Q

Humanism theorists

A
  1. Carl Rogers

2. Abraham Maslow

37
Q

Humanism theory

Rogers’s Self Concept

A

Self concept: a collection of beliefs about one’s own nature; unique qualities, and typical behaviours

  • Self image: how we see ourselves [appearances - affects how a person thinks, behaves and feels]
  • Self worth (self worth): what we think about ourselves [developed in early childhood, from interaction with parents]
  • Ideal self: person that we would like to be [changes throughout life]
38
Q

Humanism theory
Carl Rogers
Incongruences vs Congruences

A

Incongruences: when self image is different to ideal self
- self actualisation is hard to obtained

Congruences: when self image is similar to ideal self
- self actualisation is possible or is close to be obtained

39
Q

Humanism theory

Carl Rogers’s view of humanistic personality development

A
  • Children who receive unconditional love have less need ti be defensive, they develop mor accurate congruent self concept.
  • While conditional love fosters incongruences
40
Q

Humanism theory

Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

A

Hierarchy of needs: a systematic arrangement of needs, according to priority, in which basic needs must be met before less basic needs aroused.

Hierarchy of needs

  1. Self actualisation (achieved one’s full potential)
  2. Esteem needs (feeling of accomplishment)
  3. Love and affiliation needs (relationship, family, friends)
  4. Safety needs (security, safety)
  5. Physical needs (food, clothes, shelters)
41
Q

Types of theories and theorists

A

Psychodynamic

  1. Sigmund Freud
  2. Carl Jung
  3. Alfred Adler

Behaviourism

  1. Skinner
  2. Bandura
  3. Mischel

Humanism

  1. Carl Rogers
  2. Abraham Maslow

Biological
1. Eysenck

42
Q

Biological approach:

Eysenck’s three factors theory

A

Eysenck’s theory: personality is determined to a large extent by a person’s genes.

3 Personality traits that are determined by heredity

  1. Extraversion & Introversion
  2. Neuroticism & Emotional stability
  3. Psychoticism & Impulse control

Eyesenck’s study on twins shows that neuroticism seemed to be determined by genetics (80% stemming from biological factors, 20% from environmental factors)

43
Q

Evaluation of biological approach

A

Strengths:
- Provides clear predictions -> explanations can be scientifically tested and proved

Weaknesses

  • Reductionists: dehumanising nature - assuming all humans are blank sheets with no thought processes
  • Do not provide enough information to fully explain human behaviour. Individuals may be predisposed to certain behaviours, but these are triggered by factors in the environment
44
Q

Theorists Comparison

Carl Jung vs Sigmund Freud

A

Similarities:

  • Both involve the conscious and unconscious
  • Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious being human instincts and desires is similar to Freud’s idea of the ID
  • Both analyse the meaning of dreams
  • Both split up the psych/mind

Differences

  • Jung splits the unconscious up into the collective and personal unconscious. Though Freud does not
  • Jung believes that dreams are the way to communicate with the unconscious. Whereas, Freud believes dreams are a way for our urges to be released from our unconscious
  • Jung based his theories on experiences, Freud bases his theories on sex
45
Q

Theorists comparison

Skinner vs Bandura

A

Differences

  • Bandura: learning occurs when people observe role models and learn new behavior as a result of observations
  • Skinner: learning that occurs when responses are controlled by their consequences
46
Q

Theories comparison

Humanism vs Behaviourism

A

Similarities:
- Both provide solid aspects in the study of human behavior.

Differences:
- Behaviorism focuses on the external behavior of individuals whereas humanism focuses on the individual as a whole.

  • Behaviorism has a very scientific basis and uses experimentation as a means of understanding behavior
  • Humanism is subjective and does not have a very scientific basis as behaviorism.
  • Humanism goes beyond behavior and also focuses on the emotions of human beings.
  • Humanism rejects the behaviourists’ assumption of determination and believes that humans are agents of free will.
47
Q

Theories comparison

Humanism vs Psychodynamic

A

Similarities
- Both focus on develop ideas and methods than formally evaluate their efficacy, as it is hard to measure definitive evidence of change due to subjectivity.

Differences
- Psychodynamic: A view that explains personality in terms of conscious and unconscious forces, such as unconscious desires and beliefs. (does not value humans’ unique qualities - reductionist)

  • Humanism: emphasises the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and their potential for personal growth
48
Q

Theories comparison

Behaviourism vs Psychodynamic

A

Differences

Behaviourism:

  • Emphasises the significance of behaviour over the mind
  • Behaviourists believed that behaviour is learnt and is a response to external stimuli
  • Laboratory experiments are extensive to form theories of classical and operant conditioning

Psychodynamic

  • Emphasises the importance of the human mind, especially the role of the unconcious
  • Psychodynamist believe that the unconcious motivates behaviour
  • Laboratory experiment is minimal
49
Q

Types of personality test

A
  • Self report inventory

- Projective personality test

50
Q

Personality test:

Self report inventory

A
  • Psychological test in which an individual answers standardised questions about their behaviour and feelings
  • The answers are then compared to established norms
51
Q

Personality test:

Projective personality test

A
  • A psychodynamic tool used to assess personality (i.e. Rorschach or TAT tests)
  • Assesses the unconscious
  • Used to uncover potential unconscious, deep seated emotions
  • How? It provides ambiguous stimuli, and the client projects his or her motivates (thought and feelings) into the ambiguous stimuli
  • It asks one to give a personal interpretation instead of “yes” or “no”

Psychology 101 - Fall '17 (5 decks)

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