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.
Kohlberg’s theory of moral development
Developing children progress through a predictable sequence of stages of three general levels of moral reasoning.
Preconventional Level
Describes moral judgments that are based solely on consideration of the anticipated consequences of behavior. Punishment and reward. (Consequences for the individual who carries out a certain action)
Conventional level
Takes into social judgments. A person in this stage will refrain from breaking a law not because it is the right thing to do but because it is the law. Social disapproval and rule following.
Postconventional Level
Universal principles and fully-developed ideas about right and wrong. Moral reasoning is guided by the recognition of a social contract that is in place for the good of society as a whole (social contract). Stage six individuals have their own beliefs about what is right or wrong and commitment is beyond consideration of consequences (universal ethics)
Attribution Theory
one attempts to understand the behavior of others by attributing feelings, beliefs, and intentions to them. Conscious and unconscious processes both contribute to the formation of ideas about what caused another person to behave in a particular way.
Dispositional Attribution
Assigning the cause to an inherent quality or desire. (comparable to assigning an internal locus of control)
Situational Attribution
Assigning the cause to environmental forces. (Similar to assigning an external locus of control)
Fundamental Attribution Error
Inherent constraints on our ability to accurately judge the causes of behavior when we have incomplete info about the other person’s mental processes and life circumstances. (automatically favor dispositional over situational ones)
Self-Serving Bias
Tendency to attribute one’s success to internal factors while attributing one’s failures to external factors. Supports self-esteem. (links attribution theory to identity formation)
Psychological Disorders
Sets of psychological abnormalities that are maladaptive to the individual
Somatoform Disorders
Characterized by bodily symptoms such as pain, fatigue, and motor problems along with associated psychological symptoms that cause significant problems for the individual.
Anxiety Disorders
Experience of unwarranted fear and anxiety, physiological tension, and behaviors associated with the emotional and physical experience of anxiety.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Characterized by obsessions which are recurrent and intrusive thoughts, and compulsions which are ritualistic or repetitive behaviors that serve the purpose of reducing anxiety associated with the obsessions.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Associated with re-experiencing of the event through dreams, flashbacks, and even hallucinations. Can be caused by exposure to any life-threatening or traumatic event.
Mood Disorders
Category of psychological disorders that deal with disruptions in emotion that influence personal functioning. (like anxiety disorders.
Depressive Disorders
Defined by two extremes along the spectrum of emotional experience: extreme sadness and despair (depression) versus excitement so intense that is detrimental to well-being (mania).
Bipolar Disorders
Characterized by episodes of mania and usually involve episodes of depression as well
Schizophrenia
Debilitating and rare disorder that can have a wide variety of clinical presentations but is fundamentally characterized by psychosis, an impaired connection with reality.
Dissociative Disorders
Defined by the experience of dissociation: a split between different aspects of psychological functioning. Disruption in identity, memory, or consciousness.
Personality Disorders
Defined by their tendency to endure across different situations and over the course of a lifetime. Involve the development of personality traits that cause psychological and social dysfunction.
Prevalence of Anxiety disorders
18%
Prevalence of Mood disorders
9.5%
Prevalence of Schizophrenia
1%
Prevalence of Personality disorders
9%
Cultural differences with fundamental attribution error
Eastern subjects favor situational attributions when situational factors are emphasized. When not emphasized, eastern and western subject make similar attributions.
