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Psychology > Chapter 14: Personality > Flashcards

Chapter 14: Personality Flashcards

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1
Q

Define personality

A

Peoples typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving

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2
Q

What is a trait

A

Relatively enduring predisposition that influences our behaviour across many situations

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3
Q

What are the 3 broad influences on personality that Behaviour-genetic methods disentangle

A
  1. Genetic factors- regardless of how and by whom we are raised, Our personalities have been linked to our biological parents genetic make up
  2. Shared environmental factors-experiences that make individuals within the same family more alike
  3. Nonshared environmental factors-experiences that make individuals within the same family less alike
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4
Q

What are 2 studies that provide remarkably useful information concerning the heritability of personality traits but don’t tell us much about which genes are related to personality

A

Twin and adoption studies

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5
Q

What is molecular genetic studies and what are the two premises that this study rests on?

A

Investigation that allows researchers to pinpoint genes associated with specific personality traits:

  1. Genes code for proteins. Proteins influence the functioning of neurotransmitters(eg. Serotonin&dopamine)
  2. The functioning of many neurotransmitters is associated with certain personality traits.(eg. People with low levels of serotonin tend to be more Impulsive and aggressive)
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6
Q

What are the 3 core assumptions of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality that sets his theory apart from other personality theories

A
  • psychic determinism: the assumption that all psychological events have a cause
  • symbolic meaning: no action is meaningless, the matter how seemingly trivial

-unconscious motivation: we rarely understand why we do what we do. Some authors likened the Freudian view of the mind iceberg: unconscious(Id) part of personality= vast, large uncharted area submerged totally underwater
Conscious(ego)= part of personality of which we are aware, merely the “tip of the iceberg”, it barely visible above the water surface

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7
Q

Describe the id ego and superego (The three agencies or components the human psyche consists of)

A

For Freud, the interplay among these three agencies gives rise to our personalities, differences in the strength of these agencies account for individual differences in personality

Id: The reservoir of our most primitive impulses, including sex and aggression. cauldron of desires that provides the driving force for much of our behaviour. -Entirely unconscious
Superego: our sense of morality. Contains the sense of right and wrong we’ve internalized from our interactions with society
Ego: Psych’s executive and principal decision maker
-resolves the competing demands of the two other psychic agencies)

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8
Q

What is the pleasure principlein reality principle

A

Pleasure principle:Tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification
Reality principle: tendency of the ego to postpone gratification until it can find an appropriate outlet

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9
Q

What does Freud believed dreams are

A

wish fulfillments, that is, expressions of the id’s impulses. (Inner workings of our id in action)
-“The royal road to the unconscious mind”

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10
Q

Define defence mechanisms

A

Unconscious manoeuvres intended minimize anxiety- essential for psychological health
- The ego engages in defence mechanisms when danger arises and we can’t do much to correct the situation, so we must change our perception of it

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11
Q

What is repression?

A

Most critical defence mechanism triggered by anxiety.

  • motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses
  • Freud believes we repress unhappy memories of early childhood to avoid the pain they produce
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12
Q

What is denial

A

Defence mechanism. Motivated forgetting of distressing external experiences (contrast to repression where you forget distressing internal experiences)
-most often observe denial in people with psychotic disorders

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13
Q

What is regression

A

Defence mechanism that involves the act of returning psychologically to a younger, and typically simpler and safer age
-eg. Middle aged divorced man buys a new sports car in an unconscious effort to return to his virile youth

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14
Q

What is reaction formation

A

Defence mechanism. Transformation of an anxiety-provoking emotion into its opposite.
Eg. Some homophobics may harbour unconscious homosexual impulses that they find unacceptable and transform them into a conscious dislike of homosexuals

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15
Q

What is projection and displacement ?

A

Both defence mechanisms.

Projection: unconscious attribution of our negative characteristics to others
Eg. Accuses his or her partner of adultery(projecting his or her own impulse outward) when he or she is truly the one who has thoughts about straying from the relationship

Displacement: closely related to projection, in which we direct an impulse from a socially unacceptable target onto a safer and more socially acceptable target.
Eg. After hard day at work, using the punching bag rather than punching annoying coworkers

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16
Q

What is rationalization ?

A

Defence mechanism. Providing a reasonable-sounding explanation for unreasonable behaviours or failures
Eg: when a hypnotist asks why the person under hypnosis is barking they may reply because they missed their dog and felt like barking

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17
Q

What is sublimation

A

Defence mechanism. Transforming a socially unacceptable impulse into an admired goal
-a man who set fires as a kid becomes chief of his local fire department

18
Q

Freud termed each stage in personality development psychosexual because each stage focuses on an erogenous zone. What is an erogenous zone?

A

Sexually arousing zone of the body

19
Q

Name the 5 psychosexual stages in order of freud’s personality development

A
  1. The oral stage
  2. The anal stage
  3. The phallic stage
  4. The latency stage
  5. The genital stage
20
Q

What is the oral stage?

A

First psychosexual stage(birth to 12/18 months) that focuses on the mouth.
-infants obtain sexual pleasure primarily by sucking and drinking

21
Q

What is the anal stage

A

Second psychosexual stage(18 months to 3yrs) that focuses on toilet training

22
Q

What is the phallic stage? What is the Oedipus Complex?

A

Third psychosexual stage(3-6yrs) that focuses on the gentiles(penis for boys, clitoris for girls)-become the primary erogenous zones for pleasure
- children develop a powerful attraction for the opposite sex parent as well as a desire to eliminate the same sex parent as a rival

23
Q

What is the Oedipus complex and the Electra complex?

A

Conflict during phallic stage in which boys supposedly love their mothers romantically and want to eliminate their fathers as rivals

Conflict during the Phallic stage in which girls supposedly love their fathers romantically and want to eliminate their mothers as rivals

24
Q

What is the latency stage?

A

Fourth psychosexual stage(6-12yrs)

  • period of calm following stormy phallic stage
  • sexual impulses are submerged into the unconscious
25
Q

What is the genital stage ?

A

Fifth and final psychosexual stage of personality development in which sexual impulses awaken and typically begin to mature into romantic attraction toward others

26
Q

What are some disclaimers to freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality

A
  • critics noted that many hypotheses derived from his theory were difficult or impossible to falsify. And those portions of the theory that can be falsified often have been.
  • also,he studied a relatively small number of individuals in depth but applied his theories to virtually all of humanity
  • as behavioural studies have shown, shared environment plays scant role in adult personality, contracting a key proposition of Freudian theory
27
Q

What are neo-Freudian theories and in what two ways do they differ from Freudian theory ?

A

Theories derived from Freud’s model, but that placed less emphasis on sexuality as a driving force in personality and were more optimistic regarding the prospects for long term personality growth

28
Q

What did Alder’s neo-Freudian theory include

A

-principle motive in human personality is not sex or aggression, but the striving for superiority(better ourselves)
-aim to accomplish this goal by crafting our distinctive style of life or long-standing pattern of achieving superiority
-children who were pampered or neglected by their parents are later at risk for an inferiority complex and are prone to low self esteem.
As a result they tend to demonstrate their superiority to others at all costs

29
Q

What did Jung’s neo-Freudian theory include

A
  • personal unconsciousness
  • collective unconscious=our shared storehouse of memories that ancestors have passed down to us across generations. It contains numerous archetypes (cross-culturally universal symbols) which represent key objects in our development.
  • conflict with expectations and external reality
30
Q

What did Horney’s neo-Freudian theory include

A
  • feminist psychology
  • viewed Freuds concept of penis envy as especially misguided driving force behind the female psych
  • believed women’s sense of inferiority stems not from male anatomy but from their excessive dependency on men
31
Q

What are social learning theorists

A

Theorists influenced by radical behaviourists, who emphasize thinking as a cause of personality

  • reciprocal determinism
  • learning occurs by watching others in addition to classical and operant conditioning
32
Q

What are humanistic models of personality

A
  • more optimistic than psychoanalytics
  • reject determinism and embrace free will
  • propose that the core motive in personality is self-actualization: drive to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent
  • events are important but the person is more important
  • Rogers and Maslow: humanistic theorists
33
Q

According to rogers, what are the 3 major components that our personalities consist of?
-goal is to become a “fully functioning person”

A
  1. Organism: is innate and substantially genetically influenced. Like the id but inherently positive and helpful to others
  2. Self: our self concept, set of beliefs about who we are
  3. Conditions of worth: expectations we place on ourselves for appropriate and inappropriate behaviour
    - anxiety is generated when our self concept(ideal self) is different from our reality
34
Q

Describe Maslows characteristics of self actualized people

A
  • individuals strive through life though a hierarchy of needs to reach self-actualization(similar to roger’s ‘fully functional person’)
  • self actualized people tend to be creative, spontaneous, and accepting of themselves and others
  • they are prone to peak experiences: transcendent moments of intense excitement and tranquility marked by a profound sense of connection to the world
35
Q

Problems with humanistic theories?

A
  • poor testability
  • difficult to falsify
  • many concepts difficult to evaluate empirically
  • inadequate evidence
  • unrealistic optimistic view of human nature, is it really entirely positive?
36
Q

What is factor analysis

A

Statistical technique that analyzes the correlations among responses on personality inventories and other measures
-trait theorists use factor analysis to reduce the diversity of traits to perhaps 3 or 5 underlying traits

37
Q

What are the five traits that have surfaced repeatedly in factor analysis of personality measures in the Big Five Model

A
  1. Openness to experience
  2. Conscientiousness
  3. Extroversion
  4. Agreeableness
  5. Neuroticism
    (OCEAN)
38
Q

What s the lexical approach

A

Approach proposing that the most crucial features of personality are embedded in our language
-if a personality trait is important in our daily lives, it’s likely that we talk a lot about it

39
Q

What is the aim of trait models

A

Primarily efforts to describe individual differences in personality rather than to explain their causes
-helped psychologists predict performance in jobs

40
Q

What are projective tests? What is the projective hypothesis ?

A

Projective tests ask examinees to interpret or make sense of ambiguous stimuli such as ink blots, drawings of social situations, or incomplete sentences
Projective hypothesis-assumes that in the process of interpreting ambiguous stimuli, people inevitably project aspects of their personality onto these stimuli

41
Q

What is the rational/theoretical method of test consumption

A

Approach requires test developers to begin with a clear cut conceptualization of a trait and write items to assess that conceptualization

42
Q

What are is the PT Barnum effect?

A

Tendency of people to accept high base rate descriptions as accurate
-we may be convinced that the results of a personality test fit us to a T, but that doesn’t mean that the test is valid

Psychology (10 decks)

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