personality Flashcards
Personality
a typical way of thinking, feeling and behaving
trait
an enduring predisposition that influences our behaviours across many situations
twins reared togethe
- anxiety proneness, impulse control, and traditionalism are influenced by genetics
- identical twin correlations are below 1 so non-shared environmental influences are also important
Identical vs fraternal (meaning of data)
- since identical have same genes, but fraternal and identical are both subject to same environment. if higher correlation between identical, it means that it is because of genes and not environment
- if correlation is the same between fraternal and identical it points to environmental factors
Twins reared apart
- identical twins reared apart are about as similar as those reared together, which means that shared environment plays little role in adult personality
Adoption study results
The sociability scores of adopted children correlate more strongly with their biological parents scores than with their adoptive parent’s scores
core assumptions of psychoanalytic theory
- psychic determinism
- symbolic meaning
- unconscious motivation
psychic determinism
the asssumption that all psychological events have a cause.
- we arent free to chose or actions because were at the mercy of powerful forces that lie outside of our awareness
symbolic meaning
no action, no matter how seemingly trivial, is meaningless and is symbolic of something else
unconscious motivation
we rarely understand why we do what we do although we quite readily cook up explanation for our actions after the fact
3 component model of the psyche
- ID: unconscious filled w drives (pleasure principle)
- Ego: decision maker (reality principle)
- superego : sense of morality
dream theory
Freud thought they were about unconscious struggles
- reflect wish-fulfillment
- used symbols that could mean different things for different people
defense mechanism
used by ego to minimize anxiety
- helpful but overeliance could be harmfuul
1. repression
2. denial
3. reaction-formation
4. projection
5. displacement
6. rationalization
7. intellectualization
8. sublimation
repression
- unconscious mechanism employed by the ego to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious
- ex: not acting on ur feelings for your bffs bf
denial
involves blocking external events from awareness. if some events are too stressful you may refuse to experience it
- drinking/smoking is bad for you but you refuse to admit it
projection
attributing their own unacceptable thoughts feelings or motives to another person
- ex: saying someone hates you when u hate them
displacement
satisfying an impulse with a substitute object
- if someone makes u angry and u take that anger out on someone else
regression
a movement back in psychological time when one is faced with stress
- ex: after a bad day cuddling up with your parents or sucking your thumb
sublimation
satisfying an impulse with a substitute object but in a socially acceptable way.
ex: like going to the gym, or doing something constructive rather than taking it out on someone else
reaction-formation
transforming an anxiety inducing experience into its opposite
-ex: a married man attracted to his co worker will turn that feeling into hate
rationalization
providing reasonable sounding explanation for unreasonable behaviors or failure
- someone loses a position and then says they didnt want it anyways
intellectualization
avoiding the emotions associated with anxiety producing experiences by focusing on abstract and impersonal thoughts
- ex: a woman who gets cheated on convinces herself that that is what men evolutionarily do
Psychosexual development
- freud thought we passed through stages which are each focused on an erogenous zone
- insisted that sexuality begins at infancy
- too little or too much gratification can be problematic
- can get stuck in a stage and become unable to progress
psychosexual stages
- oral
- anal
- phallic
- latency
- genital
oral stage
birth to 12-18 months
- sucking and drinking
- puts everything in mouht
- become dependent on others for reassurance
anal stage
- 18 months to to 3 years
- focuses on toilet training and alleviating tension with bowel movements
- anal personalities ar prone to neatness and stubborness
Phallic stage
- 3 to 6 years
- focuses on genitals
- penis and clit become primary erogenous zones
- oedipus and electra complexes conflict during this stage
Latency stage
- 6 to 12 years
- psychosexual stage in which sexual impulses are submerged into the unconscious
- find members of the other sex to be yucky
genital stage
- 12 and older
- sexual impulses awaken and typically begin to mature into romantic attraction towards others
criticisms of freud
- unfalsifiable
- failed predictions (not a lot of support for defense mechanisms)
- questionable conception of the unconscious (no proof for the presence or location of it)
- reliance on unrepresentative samples (limited external validity)
- fawed assumptions of shared environmental influence (environment plays a small role)
Neo-freudians
- differ from freuds because they have less emphasize on sexuality and more on social drives. also more optimistic about personal growth
- adler
- do things because of progression or personal growth, not because of past trauma
style of life
each individual’s way of achieving superiority
- adler
inferiority complex
low self esteem that can lead to overcompensation
- adler
collective unconscious
- shared storehouse of memories from ancestors who have passed them down
- jung
archetypes
contained in the collective unconscious,
- cross culturally universal emotional symbols
reciprocal determinism
people influence each others bahaviors
self actualization
drive to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent
- roger
- rejected determinism
- self: set of beleifs about who we are
-conditions of worth: expectations we place on ourselves can result in incongruence
big 5 personality traits
- openness to experience: intellectually curious and unconventional
- conscientious: careful and responsible
- extraversion: social and lively
- agreeable: friendly and easy to get along w
- neuroticism: tense and moody
big five and behavior
- predict irl behaviours like job performance, grades and physical health and life span
- reltively stable traits across cutures but different prevalence rates
- individualistic vs collectivist societies (focus on youself or relation to others)
can personality change
- before 30 personality changes a bit but levels of most traits dont change much afterwards
trait theories
try to identify the structure of personality by pinpointing fundemental traits.
factor analysis: reduce diversity of personality descriptors to underlying traits
- 5 traits commonly reappear from these studies
projective tests
- based on projective hypothesis where ambiguous stimuli like ink blots are interpreted to project aspects of personality
thematic apperception test
- subject builds a story based on pictures
- little evidence for reliability and 3validity
pt barnum effect
people accept high base rate descriptions (descrptions that apply to everyone as accurate)
- i.e tarot card, astrology, palm reading
