Personality Flashcards
Personality Definition
an individual’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behaviour, together with the psychological mechanisms behind those patterns
Strengths of Psychoanalytical approaches to studying personality
- Links childhood to lifelong impacts
- One of the most complete theories to date despite it’s age
Weaknesses of Psychoanalytical approaches to studying personality
- Not really a theory
- Unmeasurable
- Information based on interactions with patients
- Staggering
The ID
- First part of mind
- Instinctive
- Subconscious
- Desires food, sleep and sex – avoids pain, not patient
- No sense of right and wrong
- Present from birth
Superego
- Second part of mind
- All about morality – makes us do the right thing
- Conscience and learns the values from parents/society
- Subconscious but slightly conscious
- Not present at birth (develops around age 4)
Ego
- Third part of mind
- Sensitive to reality
- Compromise between desire and morals
- Conscious mind
- Determines what we actually do
Behavioural Approach (personality) PROS
- Establishing psychology as an objective science that focuses on things that can actually be measured and manipulated
- considering how environmental influences shape our personality
Behavioural Approach CONS
- Can personality really be reduced to just conditioned behaviours?
- overlooks the role of genes in determining behaviour
Behavioural Approach (Personality)
- We are born as blank-slates
- How contingency pairings, rewards, and punishments all shape our personality
- Any amount of training can change you to any sort of person
- Your parents may have also used reinforcement to shape who you are
Childhood experience has personality determinant
Adverse events during a particular stage of development could result in a person’s unconscious mind becoming stuck, or fixated, in that stage
Freudian Slip
Speech mistakes aren’t random but reflect desires or worries in unconscious mind
Dreams
hidden meanings that speak to some desire or concern we’re probably not even aware of
Defense Mechanisms
Ego could respond to psychological distress by employing psychological defense mechanisms
- Denial
- Repression
- Rationalization
- Projection
- Sublimation
Denial
o Refusing to accept information
o Entered conscious awareness
o Problematic
Repression
o Prevents you from consciously processing information (facts, feelings, memories)
o Problematic
Rationalization
o seemingly logical arguments are used to justify behaviour that is really motivated by unsavoury id impulses
o Problematic
Projection
o moves the focus away from you and on to someone else
o Believing someone is worse than you are
o Problematic
Sublimation
o Mature defense mechanism
o an individual find a socially acceptable outlet for desires of the id that would otherwise be problematic.
Cognitive Approach (personality)
- someone doesn’t only learn when their actions are being reinforced – they can also observe the actions of others then we model behaviours
- If you see a behaviour being praised, you’ll be motivated to do the same
Cognitive Approach PROS
Addresses reductionist tendences of behavioural model
Cognitive Approach CONS
Does not account for effects of biological factors on personality
Trait Approach
Personality characteristics that are consistent, stable, and varies from person to person
- Traits exists on a continuum, so people often fall somewhere b/n the two extremes of each trait
Big Five (OCEAN)
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Openness
Creativity and Adventure
High → Experiences, inquisitiveness, creative endeavours
Low → Traditional, routine, resistant to change
Conscientiousness
Thoughtfulness
High → Self-control, concrete plans, goal oriented, neat & organized
Low → Casual, unscheduled, unrestricted
Extraversion
Enthusiasm & Sociability
High → Outgoing, energized by company, talkative
Low → Reserved, introspective, enjoys alone time
Agreeableness
Compassion
High → Compassionate, polite, well-liked, trusting & helpful
Low → Antagonistic, competitive, secretive, suspicious
Neuroticism
Emotional stability
High → Hypersensitive, anxious, self-conscious, insecure
Low → Relaxed, self-assured, stable
Extreme Scores of Big Five
Problematic to score in the extremes of any of the Big Five
* High Agreeableness = lack of self-advocation
* High Conscientiousness = overly rigid
* Low Neuroticism = too mellow even when stress responses are warranted
Are the big five stable over time?
Relative: children who are extroverted stay extroverted
Absolute: change depending on stage of development (conscientiousness)
Traits Approach PROS
Strong scientific evidence, simple & intuitive, quantifies individual behavioural differences
Traits Approach CONS
- Overlooks how personality is situational
- Doesn’t address how individual personality differences emerge, only describes existing differences
Biological Approach (personality)
Examines how brain structures, neurotransmitter levels & genes contribute to personality
* Theories about potential evolutionary origins of personality traits
Amygdala & Personality
Involved in feelings of anxiety & fear
▪ Especially active in people who are shy & pessimistic
Lateralization of Frontal Lobe
Caused by differences in left-brain & right-brain activity
▪ Left-brain activity → Emotional Stability, Optimism, Anger
▪ Right-brain activity → Neuroticism
Neurotransmitters & Personality
the Big Five were divided into 2 groups
▪ Dopamine (Plasticity) → Extroversion, Openness
▪ Serotonin (Stability) → Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism
Trait Heritablity
Degree to which genetic differences correlate to variation in traits
* Genetic studies suggest the Big Five are heritable/have a strong genetic comp.
▪ Openness = most heritable; Agreeableness = least heritable
Evolution & Origin of Personality Traits
Extraversion → useful for consolidating social support, seeking out new mates and passing genes on
Moderate Neuroticism → useful for anticipating responding to stressors
Rorschach Inkblot Test
Developers believed that a participant’s response revealed what was really on their mind (conscious & unconscious)
* Low validity & reliability
* Timely & expensive
Self-Report Assessments
Extremely common
* Cheap & easy to administer, reasonably accurate
* Purpose behind questions may be obvious
* Social Desirability Bias → wanting to present better to society
* Participants may be unaware they possess certain traits
Behavioural Assessments
Allow researchers to perform proper experiments and manipulate situations to see how people react
* Difficult to implement
* Situational
Myers-Briggs Test
Widely used
* 16 M.B. personalities are said to view the world differently and that by knowing your type could help guide life decisions
* Low validity & reliability
MMPI
- Most widely used clinical assessment of pers.
- Used to diagnose severe personality problems & mental health disorders
- Consists only of true/false questions
- Large bank of questions, which weren’t written to probe a particular aspect of pers.
- Use existing personality populations to predict pers. types of interest
