Lecture 3 - History of Personality Flashcards
1
Q
What is everyday personality?
A
- In evaluating other people, in context of social attractiveness, we make value judgements about them
- To make sense of the world, we construct theories to help us understand them to help interaction
- Implicit personality theories are not built from systematic science = unreliable
2
Q
What is Allport’s definition of personality?
A
- A dynamic organisation inside the person of psychophysical systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns of behaviour, thoughts and feelings.
3
Q
What things are key about personality?
A
- Active, responsive and changes over time
- Organised in internal structure
- Characteristic patterns show stability which is key for personality measures
- Central component for driving behaviour
4
Q
Why would you study personality?
A
- Explain the motivational bias of behaviour
- Provide descriptions/categorisations of how individuals behave
- Investigate what causes the development of certain personality characteristics
What contributes more? Genes or environment
5
Q
What is Physiognomy?
A
- Physical appearance is representative of inner character
- Racism is a modern variant of this
e.g upper body represents morals
6
Q
What is Craniometry?
A
- Idea that brain size = psych traits
- Ethnicity and rights were being discussed and rich people wanted to keep their slaves, so said the brains of white people > black people
- Abandoned as miscalculations made
- Brain size has little to do with intelligence or other human functions
7
Q
What is Phrenology?
A
- Shape of brain was important
- Would physically examine bumps on head
- Abandoned as skull shape has no relation to brain shape
- Studies say no psychological attributes have no relationship to bumps the human scalp
8
Q
What was the Psychoanalytic approach?
A
- Made of conscious, pre-conscious, and unconscious
- Made of id, ego, superego, and if they have conflict = anxiety
- Develops through psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latent, genital
9
Q
What did Adler claim?
A
- As humans are helpless, we strive for power
- When we fail/succeed we have a superiority/inferiority complex
10
Q
What did Jung do?
A
- Developed Psyche
- Extraversion/Intraversion
- Myer-Briggs test, measuring Jung’s ideas
11
Q
What did Horney do?
A
- Looked at the role of culture and parenting
- Came up with 3 categories
- Compliant, aggressive, detached
12
Q
What does Learning Theory say?
A
- Differences in personality are due to differences in learning experiences
- Env is main contributor to who we become
- Key players: Pavlov, Watson & Skinner
13
Q
What is the Trait Approach?
A
- Trying to find the structure of personality
- Looking at somatypes: relationship between physicality and temperament
- Endomorph = relaxed, sociable = plump
- Mesomorph = Active, asserive = muscular
- Ectomorph = quiet, fragile = lean, delicate
14
Q
What are the two underlying assumptions of trait theory?
A
- Personality traits should be stable across time AND context.
