Introduction to personality

Question 1

Why is personality important in health?

Answer 1

Compliance - more obediant, better health outcomes
Risk factors - adventuorous or extroverted, smoking, alcohol, extreme sports
Health seaking behaviour - how nervous, how early you seek help, how honest you are with information
Persepective on illness and what it means for you - success driven are less likley to admit they are ill
Present to others - quite, loud, how this influence health care professionals decision making based on unconcscious bias

Question 2

What is personality?

Answer 2

The combination of characterisitcs and qualities that form an individual person, causing individual differences in thinking, feeling and behaviour patterns
Tends to be stable but can change
Influenced by nature and nurture.

Question 3

Why is personality important for an indivuals health?

Answer 3

Social support - maintaining relationships and communicating with people around you
Social well-being - personality will influence your sense of belonging, meaning, purpose, and transcendence.
Tone of mood - how interact with healthcare and how they expect to be treated by healthcare. Optimistic or pessimisitic
Impulsive choices - lifestyle
Success and aspiration - socioeconomic status
Low Neuroticism and high extraversion are most likley to be happy and satisfied.

Question 4

What is self identity?

Answer 4

Our understanding and recognition of our own characteristics , traits, qualities and personality. Our sense of who we are.
No judgement just what we know about ourselves

Question 5

What is self esteem?

Answer 5

Our appraisal of what we know about ourself, comments on our identity.
Opinions on our self

Question 6

What are our core beliefs?

Answer 6

Fundamental things we believe about ourself, the world and others.
Have large influence over our pattern of thinking, actions and behaviour.

Question 7

What are the two diffferent approaches to measuring personality?

Answer 7

The indivudal approach - recognises pesonality as fluid and unique, can’t be compared with anyone else, humanis and indivdual view.
The General approach - personality is a recipie of characteristics that can be measured and compared between indivudals, scientif and generalisable

Question 8

What appraoch to personality is commonly used in healthcare?

Answer 8

The general approach - is faster and easier to interpret than the individual approach.
Fits within the time constraints of the NHS and allows results to be shared quickly between health care staff and understand what to expect from a patient.

Question 9

What is the trait approach to personality?

Answer 9

People vary from one antoher based on the strength and presence of set personaility traits
The main traits are:
Openess
Conscientiousness - wishing to do work or duty thoroughly
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism - tendency to experience negative thoughts of anxiety, sensisitve and nervous personality.

Question 10

What is the humaninistic approach to personality?

Answer 10

Emphasises looking at the full indivudal in context, focues of free will, self efficacy and self actualisation.

Question 11

What is Maslow’s hierachy of needs?

Answer 11

A humanist approach to healthcare
A hierachy of things that people need in order to be safe and satisfied in life
Physiological - food, water etc
Safety - home, protection
Love/belonging - family and freinds
Esteem - value of self
Self - actualisation - recongition and want to be the best version of themselves
Decisions made is the self actualisation phase show the personality of the person, what they determine to be the best and want to do for themselves

Question 12

What are the 16 personality types?

Answer 12

Splits personalities into four groups, each containg four different types based on the sepctrum between four different characteristics
1. Intravert v extravert
2. Sensing v intuition
3. Thinking v feeling
4. Judging v perceiving

Question 13

What is Freidman and Rosenmans theory of personality?
Type A and type B personalities.

Answer 13

A - are competitive, ambitious and aggressice
B - are laid back, relaxed and flexible
Type A personalities are thought to have a greater number of heart attacks but comply more to treatment so overall health outcomes are the same.

Question 14

What is a personality disorder?

Answer 14

When a persons processes of thinking feeling, emotions and behaviour are very different from the normal.

Question 15

What are the three different clusters of personality disorders?

Answer 15

Cluster A: difficult to relate to others, viwed as odd or eccentric, includes paranoid, schizoid and schizotypal disorders
Cluster B: Difficult to control emotions, oftens een as aggressive or antisocial, emotionally unstable, narcissistic and histrionic
Cluster C: anxious and fearful, Anakastic, avoidant and depresseive, overly negative emotions.

Question 16

What are the key features of a personality disorder?

Answer 16

Diagnosied based on the persons traits
Must impair interpersonal relationships (mainting friendships stic)
Must have a functional impact (unable to continue life as normal)
Must cause distress to them or others.

Question 17

How do personality disorders fit into the life course?

Answer 17

Adverse childhood experiences or poor treatment and conditions as a child can effect the neurological development
Thought to cause lasting changes to the brain
This alters cognition
More likley to be suicidal or develop mental health problems.

Question 18

What is meant by the brain default network and why is it important in personality?

Answer 18

Network of what we know, not what we need to remember.
What we know baout ourselves has strong influence over the decision we make.
Make active during passive cognition processes.
Active when day dreaming, thinking about the future or other peoples perspectives
Affects our cognition and vulnerabliility to mental illness.

Question 19

What is emotion?

Answer 19

A transcient and subjective state
Associated with an event of stimuli
Results in physiological, cognitive and behavioural changes
Evolutionary and adaptive
May be kept private or communicated
What we feel in the moment

Question 20

What are the three components of emotion?

Answer 20

Awareness - our cognitive appraisal of how we feel, then how we subjectively label and experience a response to stimuli.
Physiological awareness - limbic system, neurochemical, autonomic nervous system
Behaviour - how this meotion shows, expressions and actions

Question 21

What is the common sense theory to emotion?

Answer 21

A stimulus generates a feeling which generates an arousal

Question 22

What is the James-Lang physiological theory of emotion?

Answer 22

A stimulus generates and arousal which makes a feeling
I feel upset because I am crying

Question 23

What is the Cannon-Bard dual physical and psychological theory?

Answer 23

A stimulus generates an arousal and a feeling at the same time
I am scared and crying.

Question 24

What is the Schachter-Singer two factor theory of emotion?

Answer 24

I stimulus generates an arousal, which we then appraisl and decide how we feel about it.

Question 25

How is emotion related to health?

Answer 25

Positive emotions are related to positive health outcomes including immune functioning, health choices etc
Negativ emotions are related to poor health outcomes such as insomnina, inflammation and somatic symptoms.

Question 26

What is broken heart syndrome?

Answer 26

Known medically as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy
When the heart muscles suddenly become weakened due to large emotional or physical stress.
Left ventricle changes shape, narrowed neck and a widened ballon like bottom.
Medical condition, with a risk of heart failure.

Question 27

What is mood?

Answer 27

A generalised view of emotions over a long time
Still changeable
Less intense
Emotions are the weather, mood is the climate.

Question 28

What is the link between personality, mood and emotions?

Answer 28

Emotions are averaged into a mood
A persons mood influence how we see them and how they see themselves hence their personality.

Question 29

What influences our motivation and behaviour?

Answer 29

Intrinsic goals - self worth, knowledge, growth, passion etc
Extrinsiv goals - deadlines, social status, money, prizes, respect from others

Question 30

What are modifiers of emotion and personality?

Answer 30

Parsons Sick Role - seeking help for illness, a lot of mental patients do not know they are ill or do not want treatment so do not follow the sick role.
Illness - severe illness causes changes to personality, alters esteem.
Society and environment - foster certain characteristics, school and conscientiousness.

Question 31

What are the different categories of atypical behaviour that we use to recognise that someone may be ill?

Answer 31

Function - hygiene, sleep, physical bodily processes
Deviation - change from normal behaviour, loss in activities we find interesting
Violate - become violent, threat to yourself or others
Ideal - do not follow social accetable behvaiours, appearance and ideas etc.