personality Flashcards
what is personality?
-characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving
-universal patterns
-individual differences
what are the early (classical) approaches to personality?
-psychodynamic/freud
-neo-freudian
-behaviorist
-humanistic
what does Freud’s psychodynamic approach propose?
-3 pieces to personality: Id, superego, ego
- also preconscious, conscious, and unconscious
What is the Id, superego, and ego?
-Id: primitive drives; present at birth; more unconscious
-superego: internalized rules for right and wrong; conscious/preconscious
-ego: the self that others see; preconscious
what are defense mechanisms?
-protective behaviors of the ego
-manage threats to the balance of id and superego
what is denial?
refusing to acknowledge source of anxiety
what is repression?
excluding source of anxiety from awareness
what is projection?
attributing unacceptable qualities of the self to someone else
what is reaction formation?
warding off an uncomfortable thought by overemphasizing its opposite
what is rationalization?
concocting a seemingly logical reason or excuse for behavior that might otherwise be shameful
what is displacement?
shifting the attention of emotion from one object to another
what is sublimation?
channeling socially unacceptable impulses into constructive, even admirable, behavior
what do freud’s psychosexual stages of development describe?
how developing personality deals with sexual impulses of Id
what are the psychosexual stages of development?
- oral: pleasure centers on the mouth (sucking, biting, chewing)
- anal: pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination (coping w/demands for control)
- phallic: pleasure zone in the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings
- latency: dormant sexual feelings (identification process– gender identity
- genital: maturation of sexual interests
what is the oedipus complex?
boys falling secretly in love w/mom and want to kill dad
what is a freudian slip?
verbal or memory mistake linked to the unconscious mind
why is freud’s idea of psychosexual development no longer used?
too much emphasis on sexual issues as root of personality types and psychological problems
what is the neo-freudian psychodynamic approach?
-social competence instead of sexuality as major motivation for behavior
who were the 2 important people talked about for neofreudian approaches?
-carl jung: collective unconscious; introversion and extroversion
-Karen Horney: different views from Freud on men and women
what is the behaviorist approach?
-learning as a major influence on personality
ex. learning to be conscientious through operant conditioning
what is the humanistic approach?
-response to psychodynamic and learning approaches
-views behavior as basically good
-de-emphasize abnormal behavior; focus instead on successes
what is Maslows Hierarchy of needs?
need to fulfill basic (lower) needs before the psychological needs above are met
Bottom to top:
physiological needs
safety needs
belongingness and love needs
esteem needs
self-actualisation
what is trait theory? what is a trait?
-clusters of characteristics to help explain individual differences in personality
-factor analysis
trait: personality characteristic that meets 3 criteria
consistent
stable
varies from person to person
what is Eysenck’s two factor model?
has 2 dimensions:
-introversion/extroversion
-neuroticism/stability
what is the current dominant model?
the big five theory: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism
what are the biological bases of personality?
-temperament
-genetics
-evolutionary approaches
what is temperament?
-recall Kagan’s reactivity test
-individual differences in activity level, emotionality, sociability
what is genetics?
-measures of heritability
-monozygotic (identical, MZ) vs. dizygotic (fraternal, DZ) twins
-adoption studies
what is heritability?
-degree of variation in a personality trait in a population that is due to genetic variation between individuals in that population
-ranges between 0-100%
what do adoption studies show?
-twins similar in traits regardless of whether they were raised together
-adopted siblings are no more alike in personality than randomly selected persons
-personalities of adopted children largely unrelated to those of adoptive parents
what are evolutionary approaches to personality?
-view personality traits as adaptive
-roots of personality in animals temperaments
what are the 3 types of personality assessments?
-direct observation
-self-report inventories
-projective tests
direct observation has high reliability but is what?
1)time consuming and expensive
2)some aspects of personality can be concealed
what are self-report inventories?
-must be tested for reliability and validity
-rely on self-report: problems with social desirability
