Chapter 13 - Personality Flashcards
Define personality.
An individual’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, persisting across time and across situations.
Sigmund Freud’s Path to Developing Psychoanalysis.
1856 - 1939: Vienna physician.
“Discovered” the unconscious.
Free association.
He didn’t study normal people, just his patients and had no research / evidence / studies.
Freud: Could physical symptoms be caused purely by psychological factors?
If there’s nothing physically wrong with his patients, it must be a mental issue causing the physical pain. Something must be happening in the unconscious mind , but how could Freud help them if they were unconscious of the problem?
What did Freud think a Freudian slip of the tongue meant?
Clues leaking from the unconscious.
What are Feud’s three levels of consciousness?
Id - pleasure.
Ego - reality.
Superego - moral compass.
The ego is the mediator and negotiates compromises between the id and superego.
Personality arises from a conflict between impulse and restraint.
Describe Freud’s mind ice berg.
The mind is mostly hidden, like an ice berg. Unacceptable thoughts and passions are repressed.
Ego - mostly conscious ideas.
Preconscious - ideas outside awareness, but accessible.
Superego - internalized ideas. Ideas unacceptable to express in society.
What is Freud’s theory of the psychosexual stages of development?
The id is focused on the needs of the erogenous zones - sensitive areas of the body.
People can get fixed at one stage, each associated with a different erogenous zone.
Freud: What are the different stages of the erogenous zones?
Oral (0 - 18 months) Anal (18 - 36 months) Phallic (3 - 6 years) Latency (6 - puberty) Genital (puberty onward)
Ex. If someone did not get over the oral stage as a child, he might smoke to fulfill the need of always having something in the mouth.
Freud: What is the Oedipus Complex?
Boys in the phallic stage develop unconscious sexual desires for their mothers and view their fathers as rivals.
Resolution: boys identify with their fathers rather than seeing them as rivals.
Define defense mechanism.
Unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce anxiety generated by threats from unacceptable impulses - EGO.
What are some defense mechanisms for repressing unacceptable impulses?
Regression, denial, rationalization, displacement, progression, reaction formation.
How did Freud attempt to assess the unconscious?
Freud tried to get unconscious themes to be projected into the conscious world through free association and dream analysis.
Projection tests: ambiguous prompts that reveal the inner workings on one’s mind.
What is the Rorschach test?
Ink blot test. Results don’t link well to traits (low validity) and different raters get different results (low reliability).
What are some critiques of Freud’s ideas?
Development is lifelong.
Peers have more influence on personality.
Dreams don’t necessarily mean anything.
Traumatic memories are not repressed, but usually intensely remembered.
Gender and sexual identity seem to be more a function of genetics.
Few objective observations, few testable hypotheses, as Freud did no research.
What is Maslow’s “the self actualizing person?”
People are motivated to keep moving up a hierarchy of needs.
Self-transcendence - meaning / purpose beyond the self.
Self-actualization - realizing one’s full potential.
What is Roger’s person centered perspective?
Three conditions that facilitate growth and fulfillment: genuineness, acceptance (unconditional positive regard), and empathy.
If our self-concept is positive, we tend to act and perceive the world positively.
What are some critiques of Roger’s person centered perspective?
It encourages self-indulgence, self-centeredness.
Human capacity for evil.
Humanists say self-acceptance is not the end; it then allows us to move on from defending our own needs to loving and caring for others.
What is the trait theory of personality?
We are made up of a collection of traits that can be identified and measured. Traits differ from person to person.
What is a trait?
A characteristic pattern of behavior of a predisposition to feel and act a certain way.
Ex. “honest” or “shy.”
What is factor analysis?
Traits can be put into two groups / dimensions: introverted and extroverted (stable and unstable).
Two basic dimensions along which we all vary.
Are traits rooted in biology?
Brain: extroverts seek stimulation because their normal brain arousal is relatively low.
Body: the trait of shyness appears to be related to high autonomic system reactivity, an easily triggered alarm system.
Genes: traits can be selected through selective breeding of animals, suggesting genetic roots for these traits. Ex. domesticating foxes through breeding.
What are the “Big Five” personality dimensions?
WHERE YOU FALL ALONG SPECTRUM.
Openness [to new experiences]. (imaginative - conforming)
Conscientiousness. (organized - not)
Extraversion. (sociable - shy)
Agreeableness. (trusting - suspicious)
Neuroticism. (emotional stability - instability)
Acronym: OCEAN.
How stable are our personality traits?
Personality traits don’t change much over the lifespan and usually become more stable with age.
In adulthood, however, everyone becomes more conscientious and agreeable, less extraverted, neurotic, and open (imaginative and flexible).
How heritable are our personality traits?
In general, genes account for 50% of the variation of most traits. As always, identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins.
