Final Exam: Personality Flashcards
Personality
consists of traits: relatively enduring characteristics that influence our behavior across many situations
-personality theory runs counter to social psychology and social influences
Personality theorists
believe it is personality that determines behavior and not the social forces impinging on us to act accordingly
Three Influences on Behavior
- Genetic Factors
- Shared environmental factors (ex parents raise their children similarly)- experiences that make individuals within the same family more alike
- Nonshared environmental factors (ex. parents treat one child more affectionately)- experiences that make individuals within the same family less alike.
Psychic Determinism
(The Psychoanalytic Theory
of Personality (Sigmund Freud))
- all psychological events have a cause. Most causes are unconscious to us
Freudian Slip
Accidental mistake, usually the use of the wrong work in a sentence, thought to betray somebody’s subconscious preoccupations
Symbolic Meaning (The Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality (Sigmund Freud))
- all actions are meaningful
Unconscious Motivation (The Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality (Sigmund Freud))
we rarely understand why we do things.
- the unconscious is much more influential in determining our behavior and personality than the conscious mind
- we do not have free will
Three components of the mind
- The interplay between the three components gives rise to our personalities, and differences in the strength of these components help account for individual differences in personality.
- Id
- Ego
- Superego
Id
- The “It”: basic instincts; the reservoir of our most primitive impulses including sex and aggression.
- it is entirely unconscious
Ego
- The I; the psyche’s/mind’s executive and principal decision-maker
- mediates between the Id’s wishes and Superego’s judgement
The Ego is ruled by:
- ruled by the reality principle: the tendency of the ego to postpone gratification until it can find an appropriate outlet
The Id is ruled by:
-ruled buy the pleasure principle: the tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification (seeking fulfillment of sexual and aggressive impulses)
Superego
-the “Above I”: our sense of morality/ right and wrong (internalized from our society, particularly our parents)
Psychological distress
- Freud believed that these three agencies (Id, ego, superego) interacted continuously
- and that psych distress is caused by a conflict between these three agencies of the psyche
Dreams
- All dreams are wish fulfillments: expressions of the id’s impulses
- Dreams give us insight into the internal struggle among the three agencies
- the superego commands the ego to convert these wishes into symbols to disguise our real wishes/Id impulses
Defense Mechanisms
unconscious maneuvers intended to minimize or defend against anxiety (a function of the ego
- defenses always distort our perception fo reality
Repression
- motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses (internal thoughts emotions)
- e.g. repression of the impulse to hit or hurt a friend who betrayed you. Instead you maintain this friendship
Denial
- motivated forgetting of distressing external experiences
- e.g. denying unpleasant news (death etc)
Regression
- act of returning psychologically to a younger, and typically simpler and safer age when we are under enormous stress
- e.g. crawling into fetal position in bed
Reaction-formation
- transformation of an anxiety-provoking emotion into its opposite
- e.g. a married woman who is sexually attracted to her boss starts treating him poorly
Projection
- unconscious attribution of our negative characteristics onto others
- e.g. a man who is thinking about cheating on his wife suddenly starts accusing his wife of cheating on him
Displacement
- directing an impulse from a socially unacceptable target onto a safer and more socially acceptable one
- e.g. your boss yells at you, you go home and yell at your roomate
Rationalization
- providing reasonable-sounding explanations for unreasonable behaviors or failures
Psychosexual stages: theory of development
- personality develops in psychosexual stages in the different erogenous zones, the sexually arousing areas of the body
Oral Stage
- 12-18 months
- infants obtain sexual gratification by sucking and drinking
- people fixated here are intensely dependent on others, just as infants are dependent on their mothers during this period
- e.g. smokers and people who still suck their thumbs
Anal stage
- 18 months- 3years
- focuses on toilet training and conflict around training
- Gratification- through alleviating tension by expelling feces- but learn that they can’t do this nay time they feel like it
- people fixated here are dealing with issues of control
- anal personalities- retentive/total control (excessive neatness, stinginess, stubbornness) and expulsive/no control- (messy, impulsive and reckless)
Phallic Stage
- 3-6 years
- focuses on genitals
- most influential of all stages
Oedipus complex
the complex of emotions aroused in a young child, typically around the age of four, by an unconscious sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex and wish to exclude the parent of the same sex. (
Electra Complex
-equivalent to the Oedipus complex for girls
Latency Stage
- 6-12 years
- sexual impulses are submerged into the unconscious (sexuality is dormant)
Genital stage
- 12 years/puberty- adulthood
- sexual impulse awaken and begin to mature into romantic attraction toward others
Fixation or “stuck”
-stuck in a stage as a result of deprivation of gratification (all ways seeking it out) or excessive gratification (not wanting to leave the stage)
Neo-Freudian theories
- theories derived from Freud’s model
-emphasize unconscious influences on behavior
-early experiences are important in shaping personality
-place less emphasis on sexuality/pleasure as a driving force in personality
-
Behavioral, Social Learning, and Humanistic Theories
- focus more on our experiences, emotions, social interactions, and conscious motivations
Behaviorists
believe personality is influenced by both genetic factors and contingencies (reinforcers/punishers)
-our personalities are a collection of habits acquired through classical conditioning (learning by association) and operant conditioning
Reinforcement
increases likelihood of a behavior
Determinists
- believe all of our actions are products of preexisting causal influences
- Similar to Freud- free will is an illusion
- believe unconscious variables play a role in causing the behavior, however, the variables lie outside us, not inside us
Social Learning Theories of Personality
- emphasize thinking as a cause of personality (in essence our thoughts determine our personality)
- how we interpret our environments affects how we react to them; if we interpret others as threatening, we will typically display hostile and suspicious personality
Observational Learning
- learning can occur by watching others
- we watch others be selfish- we think about what we observe and then decide whether we want to behave selfishly ourselves
Locus of Control
the extent to which people believe/think that life events lie inside or outside of their control
Internal locus of control
- believe that life events are due largely to their own efforts and personal characteristics
- e.g. if I work hard, I can get an A
External locus of control
- believe that life events are largely a product of chance or fate (out of one’s control)
- e.g. it does not matter how hard I work the prof hate me
Humanistic Models of Personality
- we are perfectly free to choose either socially constructive or destructive paths in life
- We have free will
- founded by Carl Rogers
Three Components of Personality (Humanistic Model)
- organism
- self
- conditions of worth
1.Organism
- innate genetic blue-print- like the ‘Id’, but Roger’s believe people are inherently good and helpful to others
- Self
Our self concept, our set of beliefs of who we are
- Conditions of Worth
- expectations we place on ourselves for appropriate and inappropriate behavior
- derived from our parents and society, and eventually, we internalize them
- E.g. parents place on us conditions of worth-“you are valuable if you go to college. You are not as valuable if you drop out of college”
- Can lead to INCONGRUENCE= not being true to ourselves-> distress
Trait Theories or Models of Personality
- proponents of trait models are interested primarily in describing and understanding the structure of personality
- not interested in where they came from
- E.g. shy, greedy, and cheap can be considered traits to describe an individual’s personality
Factor Analysis
- statistical technique that analyzes the correlations among responses on personality inventories
- used to reduce a large diversity of personality traits into as few as three to five factors
- e.g. shy reserved introvert= all go into forming one trait called introversion
Walter Mischel
- argued that personality traits did not predict behavior very well across situations
- the situation matters just as much as one’s personality in determining behavior
- e.g. one may be shy at work but not at home with one’s family
Seymour Epstein
-demonstrated that while Mischel was correct for specific events, he found that personality traits can predict aggregated behaviors (on average over time)
Models of Personality Structure: Big Five
Traits that have surfaced repeatedly in factor analysis of personality measures
- internet dating website E-Harmony using the Big Five in their personality measure
OCEAN
- Openness to experience: intellectually curious
- Conscientiousness: careful and responsible
- Extraversion: social and lively
- Agreeableness: friendly as easy to get along with
- Neuroticism: tense and moody
Big Five and Behavior
- able to predict real-world behavior
- does not include a morality trait: morality is often included in personality theories
- there appear to be limits to the cross-cultural universality, especially openness to new experiences
- individualistic vs collectivistic societies
Structured Personality Tests
- paper and pencil tests consisting of questions that respondents answer in one of a few fixed ways
- T/F, scale 1-5
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2)
- most widely used structured test designed to assess symptoms of medical disorders
- built using empirical method of test construction
- have a low face validity
- the scale detects response sets
Empirical method of test constructon
an approach in which researchers begin with two or more criterion groups (people with or without a disorder) and examine which items best distinguish them
Face Validity
the extent to which respondents can tell what the items are measuring
-hard to tell what the test is assessing
Response Sets
the tendencies to distort responses to items
e.g. Impression management making ourselves looking better that we really are and Malingering- making ourselves appear psychologically disturbed
Rational/theoretical method of test
construction
requires test developers to begin
with a clear-cut conceptualization of a trait
(anxiety or anger) and then write items to assess
that conceptualization.
Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ)
- assesses positive emotions, negative emotions, and impulse control
- The MPQ has strong validity, but not all rational/theoretical tests do, such as MBTI(Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)
- Beck Depression Inventory (10 items)- high validity
Projective Tests
consist of ambiguous stimuli that examinees must interpret
Projective hypothesis
- examinees project aspects of their own personality onto the ambiguous stimulus
- Most controversial- validity and reliability is still disputed
- E.g. inkblot test
P.T. Barnum Effect
The tendency of people to accept high base rate descriptions or descriptions that apply to almost everyone- as accurate- demonstrates that personal validation(subjective judgments of accuracy) is a flawed method for evaluating a test’s validity. (must research to validate test)
