Chapter 13 Personality Flashcards
What is personality?
a persons characteristic thoughts, emotional responses, and behaviours
What is a personality trait?
a pattern of thought, emotion, and behaviour that is relatively consistent across time and situations
○ Assuming things based on behaviour or things they say
What are temperments
biologically based tendencies to feel or act in certain ways - can vary based on gender
○ Activity level: overall amount of energy and behaviour a person exhibits
○ Emotionality: intensity of emotional reactions
○ Sociability: general tendency to affiliate with others
§ Girls- stronger abilities to control their attention and resist impulses
§ Boys- more physically active and experienced more high intensity pleasure (boxing)
- it changes throughout age
Why are personality traits considered good?
- Personality is adaptive
○ Personality traits useful for survival and reproduction are favored
○ Groups benefited from diverse members
How is personality developed?
learning and cognition
○ Behavioural psychologist viewed personality mainly as learned responses to patterns of reinforcement
○ Twin studies suggest that genetic factors account for approximately half the variance in personality traits (40 - 60%)
○ Genes can be linked with some specificity to some personality traits
What is the trait approach?
an approach to studying personality that focuses on how individuals differ in personality dispositions
What is the Five - factor theory?
the idea that personality can be described using five factors: Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism
○ People’s “scores” on the Big Five traits have been shown to predict a wide variety of different behaviours
What is the person - situation debate?
○ Interactionists: behaviour is determined jointly by situations and underlying dispositions
○ Strong vs. Weak situations: strong situations mask differences; weak situations reveal differences
What is the behavioural approach system (BAS)?
the brain system invoved in the pursuit of incentives or rewards
What is beahvioural inhibitation system (BIS)?
the brain system that monitors for threats in the enviroment and therefore slows or inhibits behvaiour in order to be vigilant for danger or pain
What is the fight-flight-freeze system (FFFS)?
the brain system that responds to punishment by directing an organism to freeze, run away or engage in defensive fighting
What are humanisitc approches?
approaches to studying personaluty that emphasize how ppl seek to fulfill their potential through greater self understanding
What is locus of control?
Ppls personal beliefs about how much control they have over outcomes in their lives
What is reciprocal determinism?
The theory that the expression od personality can be explainted by the interaction of enviroment, person factors and behaviour itself
What is the need for cognition?
The tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking about difficult questions or problems
