Exam 1 Flashcards
Personality
Psychological definition:
Unique and relatively enduring internal and external aspects of a person’s character.
Description is complex.
Humans change according to different situations and people.
Role of race gender and culture in shaping personality.
Race and gender:
Personality theorists have historically consisted of white europeans and white americans. Ignored ethnic, gender, SES influences.
Subjects, clients, and patients have mostly been white too.
Culture:
Cross cultural psychology research.
Conclusion shows that personality is formed by genetic and environmental influences.
Differences in cultural beliefs and values
Individualism vs collectivism:
Impacts:
child-rearing practices,
Self enhancement – tendency to promote oneself aggressively and be conspicuous.
Assessment
Evaluation of an individual’s personality.
Used for diagnosis, education, counseling, and research.
Principles of measurement:
- reliability: consistency of response to a psychological assessment device.
- Validity: Extent to which an assessment device measures what it is intended to measure.
Self-report inventories
Participants respond to questions and or statements about their behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.
-objective measures
MMPI-2, NEO PI-R, MBTI
Advantages: objective scoring and quick assessment
Disadvantages: Not suited for those with limited reading skills and a tendency to provide socially desirable answers.
Online test administration
Advantages:
- Less time consuming and expensive than face-to-face
- Accepted by younger individuals
- Can prevent test takers from looking ahead at questions and changing their answers
Projective test
Projective techniques: Rorschach Inkblot Technique, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), Word association and sentence completion.
Interpretation is subjective
Reliability and validity of the tests are low.
Clinical interviews
Conversation between a clinician and client that involves asking relevant questions about:
Past and present life experiences
Social and family relationships
Reasons for seeking psychological help
Advantage: Problem areas can be explored in more detail.
Disadvantage: Subjective data aren’t necessarily quantitative.
Behavioral assessments
Trained observer(s) evaluates a person’s behavior in a given situation.
-Aka naturalistic observations
-Sometimes used in conjunction with clinical interviews
Advantage: Provides valuable insights from a naturalistic setting.
Disadvantage: Less systematic than self report, requires rigorous training of observers, time consuming.
Thought and experience sampling.
- Involves the use of technology for momentary assessment
- Sometimes called ecological momentary assessment
- Can provide longitudinal data
Thought sampling
- Records thoughts and moods
Experience sampling
- Participants describe social and environmental context in which the thoughts being sampled occurs
Thought and experience sampling.
- Involves the use of technology for momentary assessment
- Sometimes called ecological momentary assessment
- Can provide longitudinal data
Thought sampling
- Records thoughts and moods
Experience sampling
- Participants describe social and environmental context in which the thoughts being sampled occurs
Advantage:
determines how context influences thought and mood.
Disadvantage:
Participant may forget to record activities
Emotions and mood affect nature of information reported
Data can be complex and difficult to analyze
Thought and experience sampling.
- Involves the use of technology for momentary assessment
- Sometimes called ecological momentary assessment
- Can provide longitudinal data
Thought sampling
- Records thoughts and moods
Experience sampling
- Participants describe social and environmental context in which the thoughts being sampled occurs
Advantage:
determines how context influences thought and mood.
Disadvantage:
Participant may forget to record activities
Emotions and mood affect nature of information reported
Data can be complex and difficult to analyze
Research methods:
Clinical method
Correlational method
Experimental method
Virtual research method
Clinical method
Clinical method
Case study: Detailed history of an individual
- Contains data from various sources
- Consistencies in the patients lives across studies are used by theorists to generalize their findings
Advantage: provides an in depth view of ones personality
Disadvantages: no precision and control, subjective, accuracy of memories (especially from childhood) cannot be checked.
Experimental method:
Experimental method:
Involves determining effects of variables or events on behavior
- An experimental situation is arranged by psychologists
Independent variable: variable that is manipulated
Dependent variable: variable that is measured
Experimental group: exposed to experimental treatment
Control group: does not receive experimental treatment
Advantage: well controlled and systematic
Disadvantage:
Safety, ethical, and logistic reasons restrict control over some variables
Questions of validity of in lab behavior vs behavior in the real world
How do you manipulate something that’s supposed to be “stable and enduring”
Correlational method
Measures the degree of relationships between two variables.
- Expressed by the correlational coefficient, which ranges from -1 to +1
- Advantage: helps make predictions in the real world and allows studying things that can not be manipulated.
- Disadvantages: Cause and effect conclusions may be flawed and correlations can be spurious or due to correlations with some other variable.
Virtual research method
Online test administration
- Psychological tests, opinion surveys, and participant responses to experimental stimuli
Advantages
- Fast responses
- Inexpensive
- Reaches broad range of subjects
Disadvantages
- Sample may not represent the populations
- May be bots
- Online test takers may have different characteristics from non-responders
- Honesty and accuracy of data is questionable
Theory in the study of personality
Theory (scientific) - Provides the framework to describe data in a meaningful way.
- Set of principles that must:
- Be able to clarify and explain data by organizing those data into a coherent framework
- Be testable and capable of stimulating research
- For psychology, help understand behavior
Theories can be wrong
- Based on the data that are available
- Should be open to continued testing, scrutiny, revision, and replacement
Sigmund Fraud:
Psychoanalytic theory
Life of Freud
Born in Austria 1856-1939
Early years
- Father was a strict authoritarian
- Mother was extremely protective and loving
- Possessed a high degree of self confidence and an intense ambition to succeed
Trained, worked as a clinical neurologist
Studied with charcot, Breuer.
- Sexual basis of neurosis
- Explored the benefits of cocaine
Personal sexual conflicts and purportedly had ED
Experienced a serious midlife neurotic episode
Developed psychoanalysis
Psychoanalyzed himself using his dreams
Published his work and developed a group of disciples
Instincts
Mental representations of internal stimuli that drive a person to take action
Homeostatic approach
- When in a need state, we experience anxiety, tension, ect.
- Motivates us to restore and maintain equilibrium
Life instincts
- Unconscious orientation toward survival, maximization of pleasure
- Most important=sex
Libido: drives a person towards pleasurable behaviors and thoughts
Cathexis: Investment of psychic energy in an object or person
Death instincts: Unconcius drive toward decay, destruction, and aggression
- Based on patients re-experiencing trauma
- Happens to all living things
Aggressive drive: compulsion to destroy, conquer, and kill.
Freud’s Structure of personality
Id
- Aspect of personality allied with the instincts
- Operates in accordance with the pleasure principle
- Pleasure principle: functions to avoid pain and maximize pleasure
- Primary process thought: childlike thinking by which the id attempts to satisfy the instinctual drives
Ego
- Rational master of personality
- Operates in accordance with the reality principle
- Reality principle: Provide appropriate constraints on the expression of the id instincts
- Develops during the first few years of life
- Secondary process thoughts
- Secondary process thoughts: Mature thought processes needed to deal rationally with the external world
Superego
- Moral aspect of personality
- Acts according to the morality principle
- Oriented around right and wrong, moral perfection
- Does not delay id’s needs like the ego; instead, it denies them
- Develops last, usually by age 5 or 6
- Components:
- Conscience: behaviors for which the child has been punished
- Ego-ideal: moral or ideal behaviors for which a person should strive
- The behaviors for which we’ve been praised^
Anxiety
Signals a problem with personality
- Alerts the individual that the ego is being threatened
- Induces tension in the individual
- Becomes a drive the individual is motivated to reduce
Conflicts can threaten the ego:
Reality anxiety Fear of tangible dangers
Neurotic anxiety Conflicts between the id and ego
Moral anxiety Conflicts between id and superego
Defense Mechanisms
Ego strategies to defend against all kinds of anxiety
Characteristics:
- Distortions of reality
- Operate unconsciously
Some defence mechanisms:
- Repression: rejection of something internal that causes anxiety
- Denial: rejection of an external threat or trauma
- Reaction formation: expressing an id impulse that is the opposite of the true desire
- Projection: involves attributing an anxiety provoking impulse to someone else
Psychosexual stages of development.
Personality develops in 5 innate stages
Each stage is defined by an erogenous zone that the libido becomes invested in.
Must resolve conflict to form a healthy personality
First three stages are especially crucial to personality development
1. Oral stage: First year of life; mouth and sucking Resolution=weaning 2. Anal stage: Second year; pleasure from pooping Resolution=potty training 3. Phallic stage: Age 3-6; pleasure from penis/clitoris Sexual attraction to opposite sex parent and conflict with same sex parent Oedipus complex, castration anxiety in boys Electra complex, penis envy in girls Resolution=identification with same sex parent 4. Latency phase: Period before puberty; erotic impulses are repressed/dormant 5. Genital phase: Puberty; mature sexuality Resolution= adult romantic relationships
Fixation:
portion of libido remains invested in one of the stages
- Caused due to excessive frustration or gratification.
Assessment in freud’s theory
Free Association:
- Saying whatever comes to mind
Catharsis: Expression of emotion expected to reduce symptoms
Dream analysis:
- Dreams show repressed desires, fears, and conflicts
- Manifest content: Actual dream invents
- Latent content: hidden and symbolic meaning
Research
Freud used the clinical method
Many Freudian concepts are difficult to measure
- E.g the unconscious mind
- Scientific research may use subliminal perception
- Subliminal perception: Perception below the threshold of concius awareness
Research supports Freud’s concepts of:
- Some defense mechanisms like repression, denial, and projection
- Dreams as reflection of emotional concerns
- Influence of the unconscious
Questions about human nature:
Freud’s view was deterministic
Recognized universality in human nature
- Personality shaped by early childhood interactions
- Ultimate motivation for all=reduce tension
- Pessimistic view of people motivated by instinctual forces outside of their awareness
- Contended that psychoanalysis can create free will
Questions about human nature:
Freud’s view was deterministic
Recognized universality in human nature
- Personality shaped by early childhood interactions
- Ultimate motivation for all=reduce tension
- Pessimistic view of people motivated by instinctual forces outside of their awareness
- Contended that psychoanalysis can create free will
Psychoanalysis has had an impact on:
Psychologic theories and practices.
The image of human nature
Understanding of personality
The study of motivation
Criticisms of freud:
Overemphasis on biology, determinism, and sex.
Lack of healthy, positive human qualities.
Some people seek out tension in order to learn, achieve, and grow.
Based on intuition, not rigorous scientific evidence
B.F. Skinner:
Behaviorism
- Skinner’s subjects
Used rats and pigeons.
- Held that fundamental processes were the same in humans
Attempted to explain all behavior through factual and descriptive terms.
- Excluded internal and subjective states
- Radical behaviorism
Ideas rooted in Watson’s classical conditioning, Thorndike’s law of effect.
- The life of skinner (1904-1990)
1904-1990, Pennsylvania Burrhus Frederic Skinner
Childhood:
Parents were hardworking, religious, dictated clear rules for proper behavior
Was Fascinated with machines and non-human animals
Originally wanted to be a writer and never gave up his dream
Studied psychology, specializing in behaviorism at Harvard.
Published Walden Two (1948)
- Describes a society controlled by positive reinforcement
- Believed in building a better person, society, world with conditioning techniques
- Skinner’s characteristics: Quirky, conscientious, open to new experiences, extraverted, and neurotic.
- Controlling behavior
Respondent behavior:
- Responses made to or elicited by environmental stimuli
- Behavior controlled by its antecedents.
Operant behavior:
- Behavior emitted spontaneously or voluntarily that operates on the environment to change it
- Behavior controlled by its consequences
- Operant conditioning and the skinner box.
The consequences of a response will affect the rate at which the response occurs
Follow behavior with a reward= increase behavior
- Positive reinforcement (also can just be called reinforcement
- Follow behavior with an aversive stimulus= decrease in behavior
Called punishment
Combined with shaping to teach specific behaviors
Skinner held that personality is a collection of operant patterns
- It’s the behaviors we’ve learned through reinforcement
- And the absence of behaviors we’ve learned through punishment.
Life of Skinner
- 1904-1990, Pennsylvania as Burrhus Frederic Skinner
- Childhood:
- Parents were hardworking, religious, dictated clear rules for proper behavior
- Was fascinated with machines and non-human animals
Originally wanted to be a writer and never gave up this dream
Studied psychology, specializing in behaviorism - At Harvard
Published Walden Two (1948) - Describes a society controlled by positive reinforcement
- Believed in building a better person, society, world with conditioning techniques
Skinner’s Characteristics: - Quirky, conscientious, open to new experiences, extraverted, and neurotic
Controlling Behavior
Respondent behavior- Behavior controlled by its antecedents
Operant behavior- emitted spontaneously or voluntarily that operates the environment to change it, behavior controlled by its consequences
Operant Conditioning
The consequences of a response will affect the rate at which the response occurs
- Follow behavior with a reward= increase behavior
- Positive reinforcement (also can be called just reinforcement) Negative reinforcement doesn’t mean just punishing somebody
- Follow behavior with an aversive stimulus= decrease in behavior
- Punishment
- Controlled with shaping to teach specific behaviors
- Skinner held that personality is a collection of operant patterns
- It’s the behaviors we’ve learned through reinforcement
And the absence of behaviors you’ve learned through punishment
The Skinner Box
- First, the rat explores the environment
- Accidently trigger the level, producing food
- Over repeated trials, learns to press the lever to get food
- Food acts as a reinforcer for pressing the lever
Rats can also be shocked for pressing the lever - E.g., in stimulus discrimination training
Schedules of Reinforcement
- Rates/patterns of reinforcement
- Reinforcement does not have to occur every time we behave a certain way for us to learn
- Learning when continuous reinforcement is initially used
- Transition to intermittent reinforcement maintains the behavior, makes it resistant to extinction
Fixed interval schedule:
Reinforcer given following a fixed amount of time after response
Variable interval schedule:
Reinforcer given after unpredictable amount of time
Fixed ratio schedule:
Reinforcer given following a fixed number of responses
Variable ratio schedule:
Reinforcer given after unpredictable number of responses
Shaping
Development of a new behavior by reinforcement of successive approximations
- Used when a behavior does not exist
- Begins with rewarding responses that will lead to the behavior
- E.g., learning a language, athletic abilities, rehabilitation
Superstitious Behavior
- Persistent behavior that has a coincidental and nonfunctional relationship to the reinforcement it received (Example- prayer has no effect on individuals based on some studies regarding healthcare recovery, pick and choose when prayer works)
Applications of operant conditioning
Behavior modification: Therapy that uses operant conditioning to change behavior.
Punishment: Less effective than positive reinforcement.
- Produces negative emotions
- Doesn’t inform how to behave instead
- Recommendation: if you want to reduce a behavior, replace it with something else using reinforcement
Token economy: tokens are earned and exchanged for objects or privileges.
Negative reinforcement: Reinforcement through removal of an aversive stimulus
Consequences are not as predictable as positive reinforcement.
Behavior modification:
Therapy that uses operant conditioning to change behavior.
Punishment:
Less effective than positive reinforcement.
- Produces negative emotions
- Doesn’t inform how to behave instead
- Recommendation: if you want to reduce a behavior, replace it with something else using reinforcement
Token economy:
: tokens are earned and exchanged for objects or privileges.
Negative reinforcement:
Reinforcement through removal of an aversive stimulus
Consequences are not as predictable as positive reinforcement.
Skinner’s questions about human nature:
Deterministic Emphasis on the influence of nurture Focused on the past and present. Stressed uniqueness Equilibrium and growth Optimistic
Assessment in skinners theory
Basic process: - Assess the frequency of a behavior - The situation it occurs in - And it’s associated reinforcers. Includes: - Direct observation - Self-report - Physiological measurements Research on skinners theory Intensive study of single non-human subjects
Findings:
Greater reinforcement during learning= behavior is more resistant to extinction.
Can shape most forms of behaviors
Instinctive drift: substitution of instinctive behaviors for behaviors that had been reinforced.
Token economy programs can reduce aggressive acts by cognitively impaired people and people with autism.
Reflections on Skinners theorys
Criticisms
Focuses on overt behavior, ignores internal experiences
- Challenged by cognitive movement
- Cognitive mediational processes
- Largely ignores the influence of biology on our behavior.
- Experiments were simplistic and used non-human animals as subjects.
Contributions
- Shaped the field of psychology
- Relied entirely on objective, replicable observations.
- Approach continues to be applied in scientific, clinical, and organizational settings.
Which of the following is true of the principle of reliability:
It involves the consistency of response to an assessment device.
Of the three levels of personality ___________ strives for immediate satisfaction of its needs
The Id
Skinner believed people function:
Like machines whose buttons are pushed by the environment producing, their behavior
