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C82PIN 18/19 > History and background > Flashcards

History and background Flashcards

1
Q

Define personality.

A

An individual’s characteristic patterns of behaving, thinking and feeling.

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2
Q

What are the main elements of most trait notions of personality?

A
  1. Comprise a set of traits and mechanisms
  2. Has some organisational structure
  3. Has relative stability
  4. Influences interactions and adaptations to:
    a) Internal (intrapsychic) system
    b) Social environment
    c) Physical environment.
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3
Q

At what three levels did Kluckhohn and Murray (1948) distinguish between individual, group differences and universals?

A
  1. Universality/human nature
  2. Particulars/similarities
  3. Uniqueness
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4
Q

What does Kluckhohn and Murray (1948)’s definition of individual differences on a universality level focus on?

A

What makes us the same as everyone else and different from animals, e.g. the ability to combine and recombine information to solve problems and build multifunctional tools.

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5
Q

What does Kluckhohn and Murray (1948)’s definition of individual differences on a particulars level focus on?

A

Under which criteria we are like ‘some’ others, e.g. introversion, risk taking, self-esteem, anxiety.

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6
Q

What does Kluckhohn and Murray (1948)’s definition of individual differences on a uniqueness level focus on?

A

On what grounds we are like others. Debate between nomothetic and idiographic (individual instances of general characteristics, or single unique cases).

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7
Q

What are the four main types of personality theories?

A
  1. Psychoanalytic
  2. Social
  3. Traits
  4. Interactionism
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8
Q

Psychoanalytic approaches to personality

A

Human behaviour motivated by innate instincts - drive for life and drive for desruction
Concerned with how people cope with sexual/aggressive instincts in civilised society
Influence of early childhood experiences
Centrality of unconscious motivations

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9
Q

What is regression?

A

Caused by childhood unresolved issues - a person reverts back to a childhood behaviour, for example a 6yr old sucking thumb when new child introduced to the family.

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10
Q

What is repression?

A

The psychological attempt by an individual to repel one’s own desires and impulses towards pleasurable instincts by excluding the desire from one’s consciousness and holding or subduing it in the unconscious. Memories become inaccessible.

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11
Q

What is sublimation?

A

A type of defence mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are consciously transformed into socially acceptable actions or behaviour.

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12
Q

According to psychoanalytic approaches, what are our two main drives or instincts?

A

Survival (sexual) and death (aggressive).

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13
Q

What are the roles of the id, ego, and superego according to psychoanalytic approaches?

A

The id (pleasure principle), ego (reality principle), and superego (conscience) interact, with the ego mediating and using defence mechanisms to reduce stress.

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14
Q

What does the idea of unconscious modulation involve?

A

Dreaming allows us to see what’s going on in the unconscious mind.

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15
Q

What are the defence mechanisms according to psychoanalytic theory?

A

Repression, regression, sublimation, reaction formation (behaving opposite to feelings), projection (attributing own thoughts to others), rationalisation (creating excuses to justify behaviour), and denial.

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16
Q

What are some of the main psychoanalytic methods?

A

Free association, hypnosis, dream analysis, transference and projective tests (e.g. ink blot tests).

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17
Q

What are the psychoanalytic stages of development?

A 
• oral (up to 1yr)
• anal (2-3 yrs)
• oedipal/phallic (4-6 yrs)
- latency (6 years - puberty)
- genital (puberty-adulthood)
Any of these can be fixated at, which can be problematic for adult life.
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18
Q

What do psychoanalytic approaches to personality do?

A

Give a universal account of fundamental human psychological processing and motivations, with the id, ego, and superego as the underlying core.
They are part of a ‘grand theory’ approach to personality.
While they are used today, they’re not indicative of most cutting edge research.

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19
Q

What do social (constructivist) theories of personality take into account?

A

While most theories examine the actor, constructionists also take into account the perspectives of the observer and the self observations of the actor.

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20
Q

What are the main principles of social (constructivist) theories of personality?

A

We form associations between different behaviours, which form implicit personalities.
Personality is constructed by people as they meet and interact (Hampson, 1988).
Personality is therefore simply a social artefact.

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21
Q

According to social theories of personality, how do people vary?

A

In terms of:
• what they display (explicit personality, how they choose to act)
• what others perceive (implicit personality)
• what they think of themselves (self-perception)

22
Q

What is meant by the statement that social theories of personality are implicit?

A

They are essentially ‘automatic’ - they’re controlled by our social interactions.

23
Q

Who found evidence to support social theories of personality?

A

Lee, Jussim, & McCauley (1995) found evidence to support implicit theories.

24
Q

According to Mehr, Gosling & Pennebaker (2006), how does the accuracy of self and observer ratings of personality differ by traits?

A

In the Big Five, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion correspond well, but neuroticism an openness don’t.

25
Q

Who thought of the Act Frequency Approach, and what kind of theory is it?

A

Buss and Craik (1984), a social theory.

26
Q

What does the Act Frequency Approach state?

A

• traits are not stable
• identifying traits is a process of labelling rather than explaining
E.g. If someone is described as neurotic, they are labelled as neurotic more often than comparable others.

27
Q

What problem with social theories do lab studies (Fazio et al., 1981) support?

A

Expectancy effects - observers can moderate and influence the ‘personality’ of the actor: label -> consequent questions -> label reinforcement -> consequent treatment -> actor feels label is accurate.

28
Q

What is a trait?

A
  • relatively stable over time
  • affects behaviour
  • cross-situational consistency
  • internality - attributable to the person (biological basis)
  • inter-individual differences
  • minimum overlap
29
Q

What are the five main factors supporting the biological underpinning of traits?

A
  1. Physiological substrate
  2. Hereditary or genetic contribution
  3. Similar traits in non-humans
  4. Cross-cultural evidence
  5. Temporal stability
30
Q

In a hierarchy of behaviours and traits with neuroticism as the domain, what are the facets?

A

Anxiety, anger, depression, impulsivity, vulnerability, and self-consciousness. These lead to behaviours.

31
Q

What is the difference between traits and types?

A

Traits are continuous dimensions (Eysenck), whereas types are a narrow bracket of dimensions (Myers-Briggs).

32
Q

What clinical diagnostic tools are related to personality?

A
  • type D
  • health anxiety
  • PCL-R (psychopathy)
33
Q

What is taxometrics?

A

A diagnostic tool using taxon and complement vs dimension.

34
Q

What is interactionism?

A

Mischel’s (1968 onwards) critique of trait approach - B=f(PxS).

35
Q

What does Mischel’s interactionism formula mean?

A

Behaviour is a function of personality multiplied by situation.

36
Q

What did Shoda, Mischel, & Wright (1994) state about situational specificity?

A

That behaviour is determined by If… If… Then statements - if the person is in the situation, then the behaviour is displayed.

37
Q

What approaches can be taken to the investigation of personality?

A

Factor analysis, experimental, cross cultural and correlational.

38
Q

What is factor analysis?

A

Sets of statistical procedures to identify factors or linear groups of variables that measure the same construct. Uses questionnaires.

39
Q

What is factor analysis used for?

A

To group behaviours/adjectives into facets and facets into domains.

40
Q

What does a factor not mean?

A

Dimensionality.

41
Q

How can personality be investigated in an experimental setting?

A

By establishing behavioural tasks that can assess trait-relevant behaviour.

42
Q

Give examples of measures of impulsivity.

A

BART (balloon analogue risk task)
Go-no go
SSRT (stop signal response time)
Information sampling task

43
Q

Are dispositions culturally universal?

A
  • individualist vs. collectivist
  • threats to validity
  • cultural universals (gendered traits)
  • experiencing and expressing
44
Q

What two approaches to personality are traditionally used, first by Cattell and then by Eysenck?

A

Experimental (ignores individual differences through random allocation),
Correlational (explores the relationship between traits and behaviours).

45
Q

When experimental and correlational approaches are integrated, what is found?

A

Individual differences interact meaningfully with experimental manipulations - Iowa gambling task, anxiety with attention and memory, monitoring and blunting and provision of information.

46
Q

What are some applications of personality and individual differences?

A

Occupational, health, clinical, economic games

47
Q

What are the occupational applications of research into personality and individual differences?

A
  • Selecting individuals or jobs, training and education.
  • Profiles of academic, personality and intellectual traits.
  • Equal opportunities and cultural fairness.
  • Issues of age, sex and disability discrimination.
48
Q

What are the health applications of research into personality and individual differences?

A
  • predicting health outcomes (physical and psychological)
  • biological, behavioural and social mediators of health outcomes (e.g. risk taking correlates with health)
  • relationship to traditional predictors of health
  • use as a diagnostic preventative tool.
49
Q

So why do we study personality?

A
  • to explain the motivational basis of behaviour
  • to understand the basic nature of humans
  • to assist in the development of behaviour change interventions
  • to understand how personality develops
  • to provide categorisations of human behaviour
  • to assess the effect of heredity versus environment.
50
Q

Define individual differences

A

The study of the characteristics that vary between people

51
Q

Define personality traits

A

Small and exclusive set of characteristics studied in particular theories

C82PIN 18/19 (11 decks)

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