Personality Flashcards
What are traits?
o Relatively enduring predisposition that influences our behaviour across many situations
What is personality?
• People’s typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving
What is the fundamental attribution error?
o Tendency to attribute too much of other’s behaviour to their disposition (including personality), and not enough to the situation
What are the behaviour genetic methods?
- 3 broad influences over personality
- Genetic factors
- Shared environmental factors
- Nonshared environmental factors
What do twin and adoption studies tell us about personality?
Twins Reared Together
• Significant influence from genes, but correlation is not 1 so there must be nonshared environmental factors at play
Twins Reared Apart
• Identical twins reared apart are about as similar as if they were raised together
• Shared environment plays little to no role in adult personality
• Shared environment has some effect on us as kids, but dissipates as we get older
Adoption Studies
• Correlation from biological parents about 0.2, and less than 0.1 for adoptive parents
• Shows shared environment plays very little role in personality
What are nonshared environmental factors? What is an example of one?
- Experiences that make individuals within the same family less alike
- None identified so far
- Birth order was proposed but no strong evidence it matters
What is the nomothetic approach?
- Scientific approach that seeks out general principles in nature, rather than principles specific to an individual
- Traditional way of looking at personality
What is the idiographic approach?
- Scientific approach that focuses on identifying the unique configuration of characteristics and life history experiences within a person
- May be needed to capture full impact of environment
What is behaviour genetic studies?
- Specific genes don’t directly affect a behaviour, but they can affect them indirectly
- Twin studies show that heritability is involved but not which genes are responsible for those changes
What is a molecular genetic study?
• Part of behaviour genetic studies
• Investigation that allows researchers to pinpoint genes associated with specific personality traits
• Premises
o Genes code for proteins that may affect neurotransmitter function
o Neurotransmitter function associate with personality traits
• So far, few replicated associations between specific genes and personality traits
What is determinism?
- The theory that free will is an illusion
- We are not consciously aware of thousands of subtle environmental influences
- Our behaviours are completely determined, caused by preceding influences
What is psychic determinism?
Part of psychoanalytic theory
• The assumption that all psychological events have a cause
• Specific case of determinism
What was symbolic meaning in psychoanalytic theory?
- No action is meaningless
* Every action must mean something, likely sexual in nature
How do psychoanalysts view unconscious motivation?
- We don’t’ understand why we do what we do as we are doing it
- Far more important to our personality than what we are consciously aware of
How does psychoanalytic theory stand up to scientific evaluation?
- Not falsifiable for the most part
- Parts that can be falsified often have been
- Doubtful that the unconscious exists as Freud conceived it
- Used atypical population samples and overgeneralized it to the population
- Believed in shared environment influence which twin studies have debunked
Describe the id
• Most primitive impulses o Especially sex and aggression • Entirely unconscious • Pleasure principle o Tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification
What is the pleasure principle associated with the id?
o Tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification
Describe the superego
- Sense of morality
- Believed overdevelopment results in guilt-prone individuals
- Guilt free people at risk for developing psychopathy
Describe the ego
• Psyche’s executive and principal decision
• Resolve competing demands of id and superego
• Reality principle
o Tendency of the ego to postpone gratification until it can find an appropriate outlet
• Anxiety is ego experiencing danger
What is the reality principle of the ego?
o Tendency of the ego to postpone gratification until it can find an appropriate outlet
According to the psychoanalyst structure of personality, what is anxiety?
• Anxiety is ego experiencing danger
Describe the interactions between the id, ego, and superego
- Generally the 3 are in harmony
- Freud believed psychological distress results from conflict in the 3 agencies
- Believed dreams were id and in symbols in your dreams (again, mostly sex)
According to Freud, what are defense mechanisms?
• Unconscious manoeuvres intended to minimize anxiety
• Performed by the ego
• Freud believed necessary for psychological health
o Too little leads to uncontrollable anxiety, too much is pathological
List the defense mechanisms Freud identified.
Repression Denial Regression Reaction formation Projection Displacement Rationalization Intellectualization Sublimation
What is Freuds description of repression?
• Motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses
• Most critical defense mechanism for the psychoanalyst
• Triggered by anxiety
• Causes infantile amnesia
o Inability to remember anything prior to age 3
What is Freuds description of denial?
- Motivated forgetting of distressing external experiences
- Most often seen in individuals with psychotic disorders
- May occur in individuals undergoing extreme stress
What is Freuds description of regression?
• Act of returning psychologically to a younger, and typically simpler and safer, age
What is Freuds description of reaction formation?
- Transformation of an anxiety-provoking emotion into its opposite
- Unconscious impulse is considered unacceptable by the individual, so it is transformed into an observable emotion that is opposite from the original impulse
What is Freuds description of projection?
• Unconscious attribution of our negative characteristics to others
What is Freuds description of displacement?
• Directing and impulse from a socially unacceptable target onto a safer and more socially acceptable target
What is Freuds description of rationalization?
• Providing a reasonable-sounding explanation for unreasonable behaviours or for failures
What is Freuds description of intellectualization?
• Avoiding the emotions associated with anxiety-provoking experiences by focusing on abstract and impersonal thoughts
What is Freuds description of sublimation?
• Transforming a socially unacceptable impulse into an admired goal
What were erogenous zones to Freud?
Sexually arousing zone of the body and were the focus of the stages of psychosexual development
What were the 5 stages of psychosexual development?
Oral Anal Phallic Latency Genital
Describe the oral stage of the psychosexual development
• Focuses on the mouth • Birth – about 12 to 18 months old • Fixated symptoms o Impatient and demanding o Unhealthy oral behaviours such as smoking
Describe the anal stage of psychosexual development
- Focuses on toilet training
- About 18 months – 3 years old
- Fixated symptoms may be either excessive neatness, rules, and regulations or messiness, aggression, and loathing
Describe the phallic stage of psychosexual development
- Focuses on the genitals
- About 3 – 6 years old
Oedipus Complex in Boys
• Conflict in which boys supposedly love their mothers romantically and want to eliminate their fathers as rivals
• Suggests they have to befriend daddy to get mommy to resolve this conflict
Electra Complex in Girls
• Conflict in which girls supposedly love their fathers romantically and want to eliminate their mothers as rivals
• Penis envy
o Girls desire to posses a penis like daddy
o Girls feel “inferior” to boys because of their missing “organ”
o Sense of inferiority can persist for decades
Describe the latency stage of psychosexual development
- Sexual impulses submerged into the unconsciousness
- About 6 – 12 years old
- Find members of opposite sex to be unappealing
Describe the genital stage of psychosexual development
- Sexual impulses awaken and typically begin to mature into romantic attraction toward others
- Begins about age 12
- Difficulties with love attachments occur if earlier issues not resolved
Describe the Oedipus complex according to Freud
- Conflict in which boys supposedly love their mothers romantically and want to eliminate their fathers as rivals
- Suggests they have to befriend daddy to get mommy to resolve this conflict
Describe the Electra complex (although Freud didn’t use this term)
• Conflict in which girls supposedly love their fathers romantically and want to eliminate their mothers as rivals
• Penis envy
o Girls desire to posses a penis like daddy
o Girls feel “inferior” to boys because of their missing “organ”
o Sense of inferiority can persist for decades
What are Neo-Freudian theories?
• Theories derived from Freud’s model, but that placed less emphasis on sexuality as a driving force in personality and were more optimistic regarding the prospects for long-term personality growth
Describe the striving for superiority Neo-Freudian theory
• Alfred Adler
• Main motive for human personality
• Results in a better self
• Style of life
o Each person’s distinctive way of achieving superiority
• Inferiority complex
o Feelings of low self-esteem that can lead to overcompensation for such feelings which may include dominating others
Describe the collective unconsciousness Neo-Freudian theory
• Carl Jung
• Shared storehouse of memories that ancestors have passed down to us across generations
• Accounts for similarities in myths and legends
• Archetypes
o Cross-culturally universal symbols
Describe the feminist psychology Neo-Freudian theory
- Karen Horney
- First feminist personality theorist
- Took exceptions to penis envy and Oedipus complex