Exam 4 Flashcards
(107 cards)
Personality definition
An individual’s unique patter of: thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that persist over time across situations
Personality definition focuses on:
Unique differences (diversity)
Stable, enduring differences (although change in stability-change)
Biological/genetic influences
Temperament, traits influenced by genes (nature)
Environmental (experience) influences
Learning, parents, peers, situation, chance events influence traits (nurture)
Sociocultural influences
Norms influence what traits are valued, notion of “self/personality”, shape behaviors (diversity)
Psychodynamic influences
Unconscious dynamics influence motives, guilts, conflicts, and defenses
Humanist approaches influence
People can exercise free will to determine who they will be (change)
Objective personality tests
Standardized tests
Minnesota Multiphasic personality inventory-2 (over 550 questions)
Measures such things as social introversion, depression, schizophrenia, etc.
Strength: relatively easy to administer and score/analyze results
Limitations: rely entirely on self-report; familiarity with the test affects responses
Projective personality tests
Use of ambiguous stimuli
Rorschach test (inkblots)
Thematic apperception test (TAT; pictures)
Strengths: difficult to fake “correct” response . Responses are not random. Believe responses uncover unconscious aspects of personality, which are “projected” onto the ambiguous stimuli, that cannot be detected by objective tests
Limitations: difficult to score/analyze responses; greater subjectivity in interpretation- who decides what the person’s reports mean?
Personality theories attempt to explain: personality development
How personality is formed (e.g., born with OR learned is acquired? if acquired, how so?)
Personality theories attempt to explain: Personality structure
What personality is made up of (e.g., id, ego, and superego OR traits?)
Personality theories attempt to explain: motivation
“Why” people behave the way they do (e.g., conscious causes OR unconscious causes of behavior?)
Personality theories attempt to explain: personality change
Is change possible? As a function of time (growing older)? Or through therapy? (stability-change)
Psychopathology and psychological health
Unhealthy, maladaptive personality
Healthy, adaptive personality
Freud’s theory
See behavior as the result of psychological dynamics within the individual: much of mental life is unconscious. Mental processes can be in conflict. Personality patterns start in childhood experiences. Personality involves learning to self-regulate
Freud’s psychosexual stages
Oral stage: first year; mouth-oral gratification; weaning
Anal stage:2-3 years; anus; toilet training
Phallic stage: 3-5/6 years; genitals; oedipus (in boys) and electra (in girls) complexes-successful resolution is the child’s identification with the same sex parent
Latency stage:5/6-adolescence; sexual interests repressed; focused on other things
Genital stage: adolescence to adulthood; genitals; reawakening of sexual desires
Erogenous zones (Freud)
Pleasure regions of the body
Overcoming fixation at each stage
Developmentally stalling at a particular stage, which influences adult personality later in life (e.g., anal retentive personality type).
Personality structure
Conscious: ideas, thoughts, and feelings of which we are aware
Preconscious: material that can be easily recalled
Unconscious: well below the surface of awareness
Ego
self reality principle
Superego
Ego ideal
moral guardian
ID
Pleasure principle
unconscious urges and desires
Motivation psychic determinism
Belief that there are causes for our behaviors, thoughts, feelings- they do not occur randomly or by chance
Causes- early childhood experiences, often of a mind sexual sort, hidden within the unconscious mind
Freudian slips
Say or do one thing when meant to say or do another. Unconscious desires are being expressed causing the slip/mistake