exam 4: personality psychology

Question 1

personality

Answer 1

translates literally as “mask;” an enduring “inner core” that embodies our distinct pattern of thoughts, feelings, motives, values, and behaviors

Question 2

personality is…

Answer 2

consistency

Question 3

psychoanalytic approach to personality

Answer 3

developed by Sigmund Freud; historically the first approach to personality within psychology; although you are conscious of your thoughts, feelings, and motives now, there is a whole bunch of you of which you are unconscious/unaware; deep aspects of your being that are beneath the surface of consciousness to which we have limited or no access that nonetheless effect our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors on a day-to-day basis

Question 4

humanistic approach to peronality

Answer 4

takes issue with the psychoanalytic approach (behavioral perspective) that your personality (the extent that it is consistent) reflects consistency in the environment; contingencies of reinforcement that are consistently applied to you; who you are is not a function of the environment in which you live, what matters is the here and now; argues that we can do more than just respond to the environment

Question 5

social-cognitive approach to personality

Answer 5

assumes that the environment affects your behavior/experience, but we are also cognitive creatures who can think about how the environment acts on us, and we can modify our responses accordingly

Question 6

trait approach to personality

Answer 6

looks at stable individual differences in personality

Question 7

reductionism

Answer 7

idea by Freud, who was convinced that there’s always a more basic level of analysis; complex phenomena can be explained best by reducing those phenomena to their component parts

Question 8

Jean Charcot
conversion hysteria
etiology of hysteria
(conversion disorder)

Answer 8

• Charcot: grand figure in European medicine; “Napoleon of neurosis;” studied with Freud; primary interest was hysteria
• conversion hysteria: the experience of real physical symptoms without a physical cause; people would experience blindness, paralysis, an inability to ingest liquids, and there was nothing wrong through medical exam; highly skewed toward women
• etiology of hysteria: Charcot discovered that hysteria could often be traced to traumatic experiences in the patient’s past; found that symptoms could be alleviated by placing the patients under hypnosis and making post-hypnotic suggestions
  (how do you explain the symptoms of hysteria? -> shift in point in Freud’s theoretical development)

Question 9

Anna O (symptoms and case, catharsis, talking cure)

Answer 9

• Anna O: studied by Josef Breuer; young woman who cared for her alien father and experienced paralysis of the limbs, impaired vision, impaired speech (lost her ability to speak in her native German but retained perfect ability to speak English), hysterical cough, hallucinations that happened exactly one year previously; also lost the ability to ingest liquids
• Breuer would work with Anna daily. She would fall into dissociative states that were later forgotten. In the evening, he would place her under hypnosis and repeat her hallucinations back to her. In his opinion, this facilitates catharsis (release/freeing of the psychological poisons that were plaguing the patient). Anna named this the talking cure, or the chimney sweep. Over the course of treatment, Anna’s symptoms gradually improved. One of her symptoms was a conversion pregnancy. The problem is that she was convinced that the father was Josef Breuer. He had to terminate treatment with Anna, her symptoms got worse, then she eventually made a full recovery.

Question 10

why Freud’s hypnosis was unsuccessful (2)

Answer 10

not everyone can be hypnotized; hypnosis brings about a transient (short-lived) cure

Question 11

free association and psychoanalysis

Answer 11

• free association: lie on the couch and say whatever comes to mind, censoring nothing; measures inconsistencies in association; Freud traced the source of psychological disturbances to unconscious material
• psychoanalysis: Freud’s theory of personality and his approach to treating psychological ailments

Question 12

Freud’s topographic model (definition and constructs (3))

Answer 12

• topographic model: concerns the location of mental phenomena in one’s mind
• conscious: material that is on your mind right now; easily and readily symbolized (we can make sense of it); no conflict experienced with this material; requires little, if any psychological activity to bring to mind
• preconscious: material that is not on your mind, but can be brought to mind easily; no conflict (there but not on mind); material requires a little bit of psychological energy to bring to mind
• unconscious: contains our repressed sexual and aggressive (libidinal) urges; social norms in a repressive society make it so you can’t acknowledge those urges; conflict with it and active resistance against it

Question 13

Freud’s structural model (definition and interacting structures (3), pleasure and reality principles)

Answer 13

• structural model: personality and conflict; our personality arises from a conflict between impulse and restraint (from society and that we place on ourselves later in life); we have urges and control over these urges
• id (the it): a repository for our repressions; the largest portion of the psyche that is an amoral, pleasure-seeking organ; all of the psychological materials that we have disowned and that are foreign to us; function is to give expression to sexual and aggressive urges (libidinal urges)
• pleasure principle: the id seeks to give immediate gratification to drives at all times
• ego (the i): our self-concept (psychic material that is not contradictory to ourselves); refers to how we think about ourselves; function is to delay gratification of these drives
• reality principle: even though the id would like to gratify drives, the ego knows that we can’t
• super-ego (the over-i): represents internalized cultural norms and values; learned through the process of socialization; forms at around the age of 5 or 6 when the child begins to internalize the values, norms, prescriptions, and proscriptions of their parents; critical function is to suppress our acting on the pleasure principle; kicks into high drive when the ego is weak

Question 14

psychosexual model of personality development definition and stages according to Freud (3), oedipal and electra complexes

Answer 14

• psychosexual development: our personality develops during the first 6 years of our life; our libido is focused on different parts of the body
• oral stage: from birth to 18 months; the libido is focused on the mouth; the breast is the primary object of desire; critical conflict is weaning
• anal stage: from 18 to 36 months; the libido is focused on the anus; defecation is the primary source of sexual gratification; critical conflict is toilet training
• phallic stage: from 3 to 6 years; the libido is associated with the genitals; adopting values, norms, prescriptions, and proscriptions of parents
• oedipal complex: discussed with respect to male children; acting like dad because they like mom
• electra complex: discussed with respect to young girls; making themselves like mom because they like dad

Question 15

fixations in personality (definition, what happens when one is poor in oral stage, anal retentive, anal expulsive, phallic fixation)

Answer 15

• fixations: with too much or too little gratification, children can become locked into these stages.
• poor in oral stage: strong desires to smoke, drink, bite fingernails
• anal retentive: overly punctual, stubborn, overcontrolled
• anal expulsive: rebellious, messy, disorganized
• phallic fixation: entirely self-centered, vain, arrogant, in need of constant attention

Question 16

defense mechanisms (definition)

Answer 16

psychological tools that we have to deal with the anxiety represented by the clash among our urges, morals, and reality

Question 17

defense mechanisms (repression, denial, reaction formation, projection, displacement, rationalization, sublimation)

Answer 17

• repression: anxiety-provoking thoughts come up; they are then pushed out of awareness and forgotten; not very effective
• denial: when we encounter threatening material, the psyche simply shuts down
• reaction formation: involves converting unacceptable feelings into their opposites
• projection: we project our own unacceptable/unwanted urges onto others
• displacement: we take sexual and aggressive impulses and displace/direct them onto an easier target
• rationalization: involves making excuses for one’s failures and shortcomings
• sublimation: we take our sexual and aggressive urges and channel them into socially acceptable outlets; best defense mechanism according to Freud

Question 18

non-Freudian theorists (Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Carl Jung)

Answer 18

• Alfred Adler: personality is more a function of social conflicts than it is of sexual conflicts; believed Freud was overly ambitious with the sexual hypothesis
• Erich Fromm: unconsciously, humans seek to escape from freedom (i.e. joining religious groups)
• Karen Horney: humans have a basic need for love and security; people become highly anxious when they feel isolated or alone
• Carl Jung: humans possess not only a personal unconscious but also a collective unconscious; he fell out of favor with Freud; there are unconscious psychic contents that unite the human species (archetypes)

Question 19

archetypes

Answer 19

universal symbols; memories from our ancestral paths; unconscious psychic contents that unite the human species; founded by Carl Jung

Question 20

humanistic approach

Answer 20

the “third force” in psychology; some sought to bring attention to the conscious mind, free will, subjective experience, and self-reflection; the so-called “brighter sides” of psychological theorizing

Question 21

Carl Rogers, actualizing tendency and problem, effective components of therapy (3)

Answer 21

• Carl Rogers: first self-proclaimed humanistic theorist; considered people to be basically good and endowed with an actualizing tendency
• actualizing tendency: founded by Rogers; all living things are biologically prepared to realize their potentials; conditional positive regard
• problem: we need love and positive regard; these may be given freely and unconditionally, but they may also be given with conditions; we may change how we think, feel, or behave in order to maintain the approval from others
• effective components of therapy: genuineness (transparency, self-disclosure), empathy, unconditional positive regard (not conditional)

Question 22

self-actualization (founder and definition) and its effects

Answer 22

• founder: Abraham Maslow
• self-actualization: the satisfying of our potentials fully
• effects: we become more spontaneous, playful, loving, accepting of others, creative, energetic, self-governing

Question 23

founder of the trait approach

Answer 23

Gordon Allport

Question 24

traits

Answer 24

characteristic patterns of behavior and conscious motives

Question 25

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), attitudes, functions (exploring traits)

Answer 25

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): an early attempt to sort people into different personality types; based on the work of Carl Jung; people can be classified by a combination of attitudes and functions
• attitudes: extraversion (people who direct their psychological energy to the outside world) and introversion (psychological energy is directed more inward)
• functions: concern how we obtain information from the world around us (thinking, feeling, sensing, intuition)

Question 26

factor analysis, Hans and Sybil Eysenck (exploring traits)

Answer 26

• factor analysis: used to identify trait clusters that describe an individual’s personality
• Hans and Sybil Eysenck: came up with two basic dimensions of personality (extraversion vs introversion, emotional stability vs emotional lability (instability))

Question 27

biological influences on personality (exploring traits)

Answer 27

neuroanatomical and neurochemical differences (i.e. extroverts seeking stimulation because they lack it)

Question 28

personality inventories and MMPI (assessing traits)

Answer 28

• personality inventories: longer questionnaires that cover a wide range of feelings and behaviors; designed to test several different traits at once
• MMPI: Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory; used to assess abnormal traits

Question 29

the big five personality traits (list and definitions)

Answer 29

• neuroticism: measures/assesses emotional instability
• extraversion: people who are strong extroverts are social and outgoing
• openness to experience: people who have this are independent in their thinking, imaginative, creative
• agreeableness: people who are predisposed to trust and help others
• conscientiousness: people who are highly conscientious are organized and disciplined

Question 30

founder of the social-cognitive approach

Answer 30

Albert Bandura

Question 31

triadic reciprocal determinism (definition and behavior, social, and cognitive parts)

Answer 31

• triadic reciprocal determinism: the environment is not the only thing that controls our behavior; proposed by Albert Bandura
• the “behavior” part: how we interact with the environment influences our behavior
• the “social” part: we learn much of our behaviors either through conditioning or by observing others and modeling our behavior on the behavior of others
• the “cognitive” part: how we think about our situation affects our behavior

Question 32

locus of control (founder and definition), internal and external, correlates (internal and external)

Answer 32

• founder: Julian Rotter
• definition: describes whether we see ourselves as in control of the environment or controlled by the environment (2 types)
• internal locus of control: we see our behavior as leading to a desired outcome (yielding direct consequences); applicable across domains but also domain specific
• external locus of control: we see nothing that we do as leading to a desired outcome (no control over their life)
• correlates of internal locus of control: people tend to be happier and more proactive, and they enjoy better health
• correlates of external locus of control: people tend to be amotivated, more anxious, and more depressed

Question 33

the “learned helplessness” phenomenon (founder, definition, study)

Answer 33

• founder: Martin Seligman
• definition: perceived independence of behaviors and outcomes; people become helpless when behavior is independent of outcomes
• Seligman and Maier (1967): Dogs in group 1 were put in an experimental room, put in a harness for a small period of time, and released. Dogs in group 2 were put into a harness, and the floor on which they stood was electrified but had a lever that they could use to directly control the shocks. Dogs in group 3 were put into a harness and exposed to painful electric shocks. Whatever the group 2 dog experienced, the group 3 dog experienced the same thing. The group 3 dogs had a lever, but the shocks seemed to be random. After, the dogs were placed into a shuttle box apparatus. Groups 1 and 2 got out of the box. The dogs in group 3 laid down and received the shocks. This demonstrated that animals can learn the lack of contingency between behaviors and outcomes. In such states, animals become amotivated.

Question 34

promoting perceived control (Schultz’s study, Langer and Rodin’s study)

Answer 34

• Schultz: In the first condition, the old folks had no control over the outcome. In the second condition, the old folks had control. Those who had control over the visits felt more alive and energetic. They showed more physical health. The ability to control outcomes has positive effects on physical and psychological health. Later, those who were given control showed worse outcomes after the students stopped visiting because their control was taken away.
• Langer and Rodin: In group 1, the elderly could choose from a variety of activities. In group 2, the elderly were provided for by the staff. A year and a half later, those positive physical and psychological consequences were maintained and amplified.

Question 35

pessimistic attributional style (internal vs. external, stable vs. unstable, global vs. specific)

Answer 35

• internal vs. external: internal attribution for negative events (failures) promotes depression
• stable vs. unstable: interpreting negative events with a stable attribution style (i.e. being a poor student all of the time) promotes depression
• global vs. specific: interpreting failures globally (i.e. not just a bad student, but bad in life) promotes depression

Question 36

learned and excessive optimism

Answer 36

• learned optimism: People live better lives when they believe that they are in control of their life. Optimists are happier than pessimists, and there are physical benefits to optimism.
• excessive optimism: Too much unrealistic optimism can blind people to life’s risks.