L11 - Personality Flashcards
Personality
- Patterns of thought + behaviour that make a person react to certain situations in relatively consistent ways
- i.e. stable cognitions, emotions, behaviours
Reification
When abstract constructs are treated as if they are real or tangible
Bumps - PHRENOLOGY
Judging character by reading “bumps” on the head
Bumps - GALL argued:
Skull bumps were a sign of specific brain enlargements
Bumps - PSYCHOGRAPH
- Machine to measure bumps on head
- Gives rating for each of the 35 personality categories from the brain map
Blots
Projective tests were used to uncover hidden thought processes…
- Rorschach Inkblot = the themes ppl see across many slides/ink images, How do people compare it to the Norms
- Draw a person, Person-House-Tree
- Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) = Tell me a story about the image
Bodies (Draw a person test)
Head
Center for intellectual power, social balance, impulse control
- Disproportionate head:
-> suggest subject has difficulty in one of these areas (or brain damage, severe headaches) - Large head:
-> paranoid narcissistic - Small head:
-> feelings of weakness, inferiority
Bodies (Draw a person test)
Neck
Represents connection btw head and body
- Under-emphasis:
-> feeling of disconnection btw these 2 things suggesting schizophrenia or feelings of inadequacy
Bodies (Draw a person test)
Arms + Hands
- Omitted:
-> complete withdrawl from the env.
-> If male omits females arms, then is unaccepted by females or lack of confidence in social contexts
Bodies (Draw a person test)
Fingers
- Too long = overly aggressive
- Too short = reserved
Bodies (Draw a person test)
Toes
- If included, sign of aggression
- Female show painted toenails = heightened female aggression
Bodies (Fluid types)
Temperament related to 4 body fluids
- Sanguine: excess of blood
-> vigour athleticism/manic - leaching to reduce amount of blood in your body/cutting - Choleric: excess of urine
-> easily angered - Melancholic: excess of feces
-> depressed/sad - Phlegmatic: excess of mucus
-> tired/lazy
Historical Approaches - Bodies (Body somatotypes)
- Endomorph: overweight = jolly, extraverted, slow
- Mesomorph: muscular = athletic, aggressive
- Ectomorph: skinny = thinking, withdrawn, fearful
Psychoanalytic (Freud’s 3 levels of awareness)
- Conscious mind
- What you are presently aware of
- Preconscious mind
- Not presently aware of, but can gain access to
- Unconscious mind
- Part of our mind which we cannot become aware
-> Primary motivations for actions & feelings
-> Biological instinctual drives (food and sex)
-> Repressed unacceptable thoughts, memories, feelings
Id - “the original personality”
- PLEASURE PRINCIPLE (no care for consequences)
- Only part present at birth - the 2 other parts of our personality grow out of the Id
- Primitive parts of our personality in the unconscious
- Instincts for survival, reproduction, and pleasure
- Death instincts, destructive and aggressive drives detrimental to survival
Ego
- REALITY PRINCIPLE (Realistic and socially acceptable outlets for the Id’s needs)
- Starts developing during 1st year of life
- Partially unconscious (Id), partially preconscious and conscious (external world)
- Uses “defense mechanisms”: processes that distort reality and protect us from anxiety
Superego
- MORALITY PRINCIPLE
- Conscience and idealized standards/morality of behaviour in their culture
Unhealthy personalities develop when
- We become too dependent upon defense mechanisms
- When the Id or Superego is too strong (overly hedonic or overly moralistic)
- When the ego is too weak (bad mediator)
Freud’s phychosocial stages of personality development
- Oral (mouth, lips, tongue)
-> Sucking, biting chewing - Anal (anus)
-> Bowel retention/elimination - Phallic (genitals)
-> Identifying with same-sex parent to learn gender - Latency (no errogenous zone)
-> Cognitive and social development - Genital puberty to adulthood (genitals)
-> Development of sexual relationships, moving toward intimate relations
Anal retentive/expulsive personality
Develops when child reacts to harsh toilet training by withholding bowel movement
- Traits of orderliness, neatness, stinginess, and stubbornness develops
- Controlled adult
Develops when child rebels against the harsh training and has bowel movements whenever and wherever he desires
- Impulsive adult
Psychoanalytic theory made indisputable steps towards answering questions about what makes up personality
- Existence of unconscious thought
- Importance of early development
- Mind-body influence
-> Psychosomatic symptoms: stress in physical symptoms - Talking cure
-> Psychotherapy
Phallic Stage Conflicts
- Oedipus conflict:
-> little boy becomes sexually attracted to his mother and fears that his father (his sexual rival) will find out and castrate him - Electra conflict:
-> little girl is attracted to her father because he has a penis; she wants one of her own and feels inferior without one (penis envy)