CHAPTER 14

Question 1

what is personality?

Answer 1

a person’s unique and stablepattern of characteristics and behaviours

Question 2

what are the 3 key questions for personality?

Answer 2

1) how do our personalities develop?
2) what are the driving forces in our personalities?
3) what accounts for individual differences in personality?

Question 3

how does personality differ in twins raised together and raised apart?

Answer 3

environment actually has little role to play as identical twins reared apart tend to be very similar in their personality thus the same as twins reared together

Question 4

define shared environment

Answer 4

experiences that make individuals within the same family more alike

Question 5

define freud’s psychoanalytic theory and what is another name for this theory

Answer 5

he claimed some mental disorders were not somatogenic (physiologically caused) thus this marks the cornerstone of his psychoanalytic theory.

other name: first wave in personality theory

Question 6

was freud a psychologist?

Answer 6

no he was a neurologist.

Question 7

what are the 3 core assumptions for psychoanalytic theory?

Answer 7

1) freudians believe in psychic determinism: assume all psychological events have a cause
2) no action is meaningless. All have symbolic meaning even if we cant always figure out
3) theres an importance on unconscious motivation. The mind as he described is an iceberg with majority of things being hidden.

Question 8

how did freud obtain his findings?

Answer 8

by using case studies (observing his patients). the problem with this is you cant generalize the studies to a larger population.

Question 9

define free association

Answer 9

basically telling the pt to reax and say whatever is in their mind.

Question 10

define psychoanalysis

Answer 10

the process of using free association because he believed it would allow the patients to retrieve and then release unconscious memories from their childhood.

Question 11

how did freud view the mind?

Answer 11

like an iceberg with conscious awareness and below the iceberg is the portion he called unconscious which he believed made up the majority of the mind

Question 12

what are the 3 parts that frued belived consist of the human mind?

Answer 12

1) id : basic instincts(survive, reproduce and aggress). it uses the pleasure principle- seeks instant gratification (party)
2) ego: at age 4 or 5, a child’s ego aka mediator recognizes the demands of the merging superego
3) super ego: our conscience that leads the ego to focus on how one ought to behave.

Question 13

what are the stages of freuds psychosexual stages

Answer 13

1) oral (0-18mon): pleasure from mouth, sucking, biting, chewing
2) anal (18-36mon): pleasure focus on bowel and bladder elimination
3) phallic (3-6yrs): pleasure zone in genitals, coping with incestuous sexual feelings
4) genital (puberty - on): maturation of sexual interest

Question 14

is freuds psychosexual stages pseudoscientific?

Answer 14

yes it is

Question 15

what did freud say about ego?

Answer 15

protects itself from anxiety with defences by using tactics that reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality such as using defense mechanism

Question 16

what are the 7 defense mechanism?

Answer 16

1) repression : rids anxious thoughts and feelings from consciousness. Ex: person witness something traumatic but finds himself unable to remember it
2) regression: retreat to an earlier more infantile stage of development. ex: child may regress to the oral comfort to thumb sucking when under stress
3) reaction formation: turning an anxiety provoking feeling into its opposite. Ex: Harley riders have small penises
4) projection: unconscious attribution of our negative traits to others. Ex: “he doesnt trust me” may really mean “I dont trust him”
5) rationalization: unconsciously generating reasonable sounding explanations for our failures. Ex: billy says he didnt get the job because he didnt have connections
6) displacement: diverts an impulse from a socially unacceptable target onto a safer, more acceptable target. Ex: angry at his parents, a child kicks his dog
7) sublimation : turns a socially unacceptable impulse into an admired goal. Ex: working out at the gym 7 days a week because you arent having sex

Question 17

are there any scietifc proof for freuds 7 defence mechanism?

Answer 17

there is little scientific support for his defense mechanism.

modern researchers suggest defense mechanism protect self-esteem

Question 18

what are the 6 cricism of psychoanalytic theory?

Answer 18

1) unfalsifiability
2) failed predictions
3) lack of evidence for defense mechanism
4) questionable conception of the unconscious
5) unrepresentative samples
6) flawed assumption of shared environmental influence

Question 19

what did freud said about dreams?

Answer 19

dreams are wishful fullfilment, most dreams are sexual, we only dream for a few seconds, painful memories are repressed but all were proven false

• sexual dreams = 10%
• wishful dreams = what about nightmares? no one wants those
• painful memories arent always repressed such as people who went through the holocaust

Question 20

what theories did freud actually get right?

Answer 20

1) early loss can render us vulnerable to depression
2) some memories are reconstructive (put our memories back together like ex: thinking back on what we can recall from that experience)

Question 21

what is the Thematic apperception test (TAT)?

Answer 21

showing cards depecting ambigous situations and the child is asked to describe what is going on. They believe the child’s reponse project their own feelings/goals.

Question 22

can the rorschach test detect mental disorders?

Answer 22

no it cant in both validity and reliability

why do they still use them? some people stand on illusory correlation.

Question 23

define barnum effect

Answer 23

tendecy of people to accept descriptions that apply to almost everyone as accurate. it demonstrates that personal validity is a flawed method of evaluation a test’s validity.

ex: we may be convinced that the reuslts of a personality test fit us to a T but that doesnt mean the test is valid

Question 24

why do clinicalsshow confidence? whay are they fooled when these tests arent good?

Answer 24

confirmation bias. looking for proof that confirms your belief disregarding anything that goes against what you think

Question 25

what does criminal profiling heavily rely on?

Answer 25

barnum effect

Question 26

what is graphology?

Answer 26

personality traits lie is hands…palm reading

Question 27

define factor analysis

Answer 27

if people who describe themselves as outgoing also say they like excitment and dislike quiet reading, such a stratistically correlated cluster or behvaiours reflect the basic factor or trait - extraversion

Question 28

what are NEO personality inventories?

Answer 28

questionnairs designed to assess several traits

Question 29

what are the 5 factors that are measured of NEO personality inventory?

Answer 29

1) extraversion: sociability
2) neuroticism: emotional instability
3) conscientiousness: dependability
4) agreeableness: friendliness
5) agreeableness: turst, straightforwardness, compliance