Lecture 3 Flashcards
Personality
Collection of lasting characteristics that makes a person unique.
Trait Theory of Personality
Personality consists of a set of traits and are stable over the course of the lifetime, regardless of environmental factors. People’s actions will align with their traits the majority of the time.
Traits
Characteristics that vary between people. Continuous variables rather than categorical.
Biological Theory of Personality
Focuses on biological contributions to certain traits. Assumes that a person’s genome contributes to the formation of personality and that personality traits differ in the extent to which they are influenced by heredity versus environment.
Psychoanalytic theory
Personality is determined by the flow of psychic energy between three systems that reside in different levels of consciousness: id, superego, and ego. Crucial personality processes take place outside of conscious awareness.
Behaviorist Theory
Personality is constructed by a series of learning experiences that occur through interactions between the individual and their environment. Personality is behavior.
Social Cognitive Theory
Focuses on learning experiences and observable behaviors. Different from behaviorist theory by considering the contributions of an individual’s mental life and personal choices. Explores how thought and emotion affect both the learning process and the experiences. Includes observational learning.
Humanistic Theory
People continually seek experiences that make them better, more fulfilled individuals. Self-actualization is central to this theory. Points to the role of an individual in shaping his or her own personality. (Conscious decisions make people who they are)
Self-actualization
The development and realization of one’s full potential in life.
Situational approach to explaining behavior
Concept of enduring personality traits is fatally flawed because of the variations in behavior that occur cross different situations. Still allows for stability in personality because people behave according to their interpretations of situations. People tend toward certain interpretations adds an element of stability even though situations differ
Identity
Person’s view of who they are in terms of both internal factors and social or external factors. Differs from personality by placing a larger emphasis on the individuals own perception of self. Allows individuals to see themselves as constant but also maintains enough flexibility to change in response to experience
Self-Concept
Most personal aspect of identity. Knowledge of one-self as a person both separate from other people and constant throughout changing situations. Person’s view of their own personality.
Social identity
Perception of oneself as a member of certain social groups. Characteristics that are associated with the group come to be seen as a part of the self, thus influencing the individuals personal sense of identity. Flexible. (race/ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, and class)
Influence of culture and socialization
Culture is the guiding force of socialization. Socialization and culture facilitate identity formation as individuals gain an awareness of themselves as functioning members of society.
Influence of individuals
Smallest unit of socialization. Involved in both socialization and identity formation. Both a method of socialization and a source of variation among people.
Role-Taking
adopting the role of another person, either by imitating behaviors associated with specific social roles or by taking the other person’s point of view in a social interaction.
Reference Group
Group that provides them with a model for appropriate actions, values, and worldviews. For a group to serve as a person’s reference group, the individual must either be or aspire to be a member of that group. (has to be an in-group)
Self-Esteem
Person’s overall value judgement of themselves. (very high in children)
Self-efficacy
Feeling of being able to carry out an action successfully. Affects the types of experiences that people choose and how well they perform.
Locus of Control
Person’s belief about the extent to which internal or external factors play a role in shaping their life.
Twin Study Purpose
Determine the degree to which genetic inheritance influences a trait.
Freud’s theory of developmental stages
Psychosexual stages in early childhood framed in terms of the impulses of the id. (oral, anal, phallic, latent, genital)
Erikson’s Developmental Stages
Psychosocial stages that involve the interaction between self and society that is experiences across the lifespan. Two opposite ways of viewing the word and if the crisis is successfully navigated, the individual develops a perspective somewhere along a spectrum between the two opposites.
Lev Vygotsky Developmental Stages
Goes further in recognizing the involvement of social and cultural factors in development. Learning takes place through interactions with others that promote the acquisition of culturally valued behaviors and beliefs. Does not have a series of sequential developmental stages.
