Chapter 13 Personality

Question 1

Describe, in general terms, the evidence for a genetic basis in personality (pages 550-552).

Answer 1

Loehlin and Nichols examined similarities in personalities in more than 800 pairs of twins. Identical twins were much similar than fraternal twins, which reflects the actions of genes, identical twins share the same genes while fraternal twins do not. Genes influence about 40-60 percent of all personality traits as in specific attitude.

Question 2

What is a temperament?

Answer 2

Temperament refers to the characteristics and aspects of personality that we are born with. They are similar to traits in that they are born innate and enduring. Temperament relates more to emotionality, the characteristics of calm, anxious, or nervous. Those who are anxious and nervous tend to be the same way when they are older.

Question 3

What are the three traits that your book argues can be considered temperaments?

Answer 3

The three temperaments are activity level, representing the overall energy and of behavior a person exhibits, emotionality describing the intensity of emotional reactions, and sociability, referring to the general tendency to affiliate with others. High sociability in people make them tend to prefer being with others than alone. A study in Finland shows people with higher sociability were more likely to move to cities and away from home while those with higher emotionality were more likely to move home. Childhood temperaments are a good predictor of later behavior.

Question 4

Describe the defense mechanism of sublimation

Answer 4

Sublimation is when you channel socially unacceptable impulses into constructive admirable behavior. A sadist who likes seeing humans in pain becoming a dentist or surgeon would be an example.

Question 5

Describe external locus of control vs internal locus of control

Answer 5

People differ in how much they believe their efforts will lead to positive outcomes. People with an internal locus of control think they will bring about their own rewards. People with an external locus of control believe rewards result from forces beyond control. These beliefs affect psychological adjustment.

Question 6

CAPS

Answer 6

Cognitive Affective Personality System - people’s personalities often fail to predict their behavior across different circumstances. Instead, their response are influenced by how they perceive a given situation, their emotional responses to a situation, their skills in dealing with challenges, and their anticipation of the outcomes of their behavior. If you’re shy in new situations, you might walk into a party expecting to be rejected. Your expectations will shape your behavior based on your beliefs of the party.

Question 7

Is there evidence that introverts and extraverts differ in baseline arousal? Explain.

Answer 7

Eysenck believed that differences in arousal produce the behavioral differences between extraverts and introverts. Arousal or alertness is regulated by the reticular activating system (RAS). Eysenck proposed that the resulting levels of the RAS are higher for introverts than extraverts. In other words, extraverts are chronically underaroused. In order to operate, they have to find arousal, so they impulsively seek out new situations and new emotional experiences. Introverts, in contrast, are typically above their optimal levels of arousal. Because they don’t want any additional arousal, they prefer quiet solitude with few stimuli. Introverts also tend to be more sensitive to stimuli, experiencing pain and sourness more intensely. Introverts are more arousable.

Question 8

Explain the sociometer theory of self-esteem.

Answer 8

Self esteem is a mechanism for monitoring the likelihood of social exclusion - it’s the gauge the measures the extent to which a person believes he or she is being included or excluded from a group. The theory runs on the idea that humans have a need to belong. When people behave in ways that increase the likelihood to get rejected, they experience a reduction in self esteem. Self-esteem is a sociometer or a internal monitor of social acceptance or rejection. If you have a low chance of rejection, you have high self esteem. If you have a high chance of rejection, you have low self-esteem.

Question 9

What is the difference between an idiographic and nomothetic approach to personality?

Answer 9

Idiographic approaches are person centered and how various characteristics are integrated into unique people. Nomothetic approaches focus on characteristics that are common along all people but vary from person to person in degree. Idiographic approaches use a different metric for each person while nomothetic approaches use the same metric to compare all people. Idiographic approach considers each person as unique. Central traits are more predictive of behavior than secondary traits. Nomothetic approaches focus on common traits and measuring such traits. Individuals are still unique based on the combination of traits. The five factor theory is a example of a nomothetic approach.

Question 10

Strong situation vs weak situation

Answer 10

Strong situations tell you how to behave, whereas weak situations allow for a wide range of behavior. Strong situation = funeral, while weak situation = Dillo day

Question 11

Explain Freud’s distinction between the conscious and unconscious. Distinguish between the id, ego, and superego.

Answer 11

The conscious level consists of the thoughts that people are aware of, the preconscious level consists of content that isn’t in awareness but can be brought to awareness, while the unconscious level contains material that the mind cannot easily retrieve, including wishes, desires, and hidden motives. Unconscious forces that drive behavior produce conflict. You might want to steal something but the thought that stealing is wrong and you get in trouble would conflict with your thought.
Personality is composed of the id, which exists submerged in the unconscious. The id operates on the idea of the pleasure principle, and that you want to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Libido, which drives this force, acts on impulses and desires. An example is an infant crying to be fed when hungry. The superego is the brake of the id, largely unconscious, and develops in childhood as the result of parental and societal expectations of conduct. it’s a structure of morality. The ego mediates between the id and the superego. The ego tries to satisfy the wishes of the id while being responsive and meeting the ideas of the superego. Ego is rational.

Question 12

How do defense mechanisms work?

Answer 12

Conflicts between the id and the superego can lead to anxiety. Defense mechanisms are subconscious. Evidence can be the repressive personality type on negative thoughts, where you cannot remember negative events. The effects of suppression occur when you’re deliberately blocking thoughts you think up before you go to bed. You might not think about it or bring it up but once you do you can’t stop. Defense mechanisms protect self esteem. By embracing the opposite, you can ward off an uncomfortable thought.

Question 13

Repression

Answer 13

Repression involves forgetting unacceptable thoughts, feelings, experiences. Try to forget an unfortunate or unpleasant event.

Question 14

Reaction Formation

Answer 14

Warding an uncomfortable thought by emphasizing the opposite. Cooties! You like the girl but you try to ward it off by saying girls are disgusting.

Question 15

Displacement

Answer 15

Redirection of an impulse on a less threatening target. Ie You are angry because of work but you yell at your children, or you’re angry so you button mash on the fax machine

Question 16

Projection

Answer 16

Feeling something unacceptable and putting it onto someone else. You think your partner might cheat but in reality you’re probably the one prone to cheating. If you’re competitive, you might describe others as super competitive.

Question 17

Know the first three psychosexual stages in order

Answer 17

Libido is focused on one of the erogenous zones: the mouth, anus, or genitals. The oral stage lasts from 0-18 months where infants seek pleasure through the mouth; pleasure has been associated via breastfeeding. Anal stage is next around 2-3 years old, which toilet training and learning to control bowels leads them to focus on their anus. From age 3 to 5, children are focused more on their genitals, as they realize the pleasure of rubbing their genitals without sexual intent. During the latency stage, children suppress libidinal urges and channel them into schoolwork. In the final genital stage, adults and adolescents maintain mature attitudes about sexuality and center their urges on the capabilities to reproduce and contribute to society.

Question 18

Explain the important events during the phallic stage (penis envy, castration complex, oedipal complex) and how, according to Freud, they differ for boys vs. girls.

Answer 18

Boys:
Love mom, want to be my dad, After masturbation “but dad has mom!” Dad’s my rival
Penis Envy: Hey! My sister doesn’t have one! Who cut it off?
Castration Complex: If Dad finds out that I want Mom Dad will cut mine off too (castration anxiety) -> where superego comes from
Oedipal Complex: I better stop wanting mom. I’ll just identify with dad again.

Girls:
Penis Envy: Hey, brother has a penis and I don’t? I want a penis (claimed to be worst in feminists)
Dad has a penis. If I could be him, that would almost be like having a penis.
I can’t have a penis, I’ll just identify with mom then.

Question 19

What are the criticisms of Freudian theory?

Answer 19

Freudian theory criticisms include that it was not testable, and when testable, was not supported. We can see that Freud relied heavily on cases of Victorian Upper class women and lies to conduct his theories.

Question 20

What are positive things about Freudian Theory

Answer 20

Some positive things include that there is an influence on childhood experiences, and the influence of unconscious forces on behavior.

Question 21

In general, what do trait theorists study?

Answer 21

Trait psychologists study more of the description over the explanation. They focus less so on the why and more so on what’s happening. They focus on people as a structure, that people differ along the same dimensions even with different politics, religion geographic,etc, anywhere you go you’ll find a friendly and unfriendly personTrait theorists study the structure of personality, dimensions on which everyone seems to differ - > more interested in description, less of why you have it, more of what personality is

Question 22

Big 5 Traits

Answer 22

OCEAN
Openess to experience - adventurous, remembers dreams more, comes up with new ideas, curious about many things, more likely to read 12 books a year
Conscientiousness - orderly, dutiful, achievement striving, self discipline, does a through job, orderly, tend to be more on time, not careless, have higher job security
Extraversion - Less prone to depression, full of energy, more likely to take leadership, not reversed, enjoys social attention
Agreeableness - Don’t like conflict, helpful and unselfish with others, has a forgiving nature
Neuroticism - lacks self confidence, depressed, self conscious, easy to flip mood, worries a lot, doesn’t handle stress well

Question 23

What evidence suggests that people can reliably report their personality traits and that these reports are valid?

Answer 23

Yes, people can accurately report personality traits. Correlates with reports of others who know you well. There was a research study where college students’ big 5 traits where college students took the big 5 tests, then had their friends take them, then strangers who went into the person’s room to take the big 5 traits.. Strangers did better than friends (?) because friends have subjective interpretation of personality

Question 24

What are trends in personality

Answer 24

After age 30, traits have very high RANK ORDER STABILITY. Manifestations of traits will change over time and most will likely become conscientious. Neuroticism usually goes down, extraversion tends to go down as people like smaller groups more and more, and opens to experience goes down. Agreeableness and conscientiousness increase over time.

Question 25

Explain how the BAS and BIS related to extraversion and neuroticism (also in book).

Answer 25

The BAS consists of brain structures that lead organisms to approach stimuli in pursuit of rewards. The stop system is the BIS. The BIS inhibits behavior that might lead to danger or pain. The BIS is more related to anxiety rather than to fear. The BAS is linked to extraversion. Extraverts are more influenced by rewards than by punishments and tend to act impulsively in the face of strong rewards even following punishment. The BIS is related to neuroticism. People with neuroticism tend to be anxious in social situations when they anticipate negative outcomes.

Question 26

How can one use lexical research and factor analysis to determine the important components of personality

Answer 26

Factor Analysis vs Lexical research - lr taking words out of dictionary that refer to human personality traits then try to group them that we did before we had statistics; factor analysis is a statistical appraoch; rate themselves on 400 adjectives, which one of those traits move together, those words moving together are subtraits that move together to form a greater trait. Think OCEAN has individual facets

Question 27

How accurate are friends compared to you in determining traits?

Answer 27

People are more accurate judging themselves for traits that are hard to observe and less prone to bias (anxiety). A trait highly easy to observe and low evaluativeness is more accurate by friends (talkativeness). Things that are not observable by yourself but easily evaluated (creativity) your friends judge much better than you do.