Personality Flashcards
Traits
durable dispositions to behave in a particular way across a variety of situations
- 100s of traits
- core traits: 5-10 traits identified with self
Personality
person’s unique constellation of consistent behavioural traits
Temperment
physiological dispositions in response to the environment
- infants differ in temperament
- Reactivity, soothability, positive and negative emotionality
- Not due to prenatal influences (nutrition, drugs, pregnancy)
- Stable over time
Mental illness
unexpected sexual and aggressive urges in the unconscious
Personality results from
- Early childhood experiences
- Unconscious motives and conflicts
- Coping strategies (to deal with anxiety)
Behaviour
interactions among three components of the mind: Id, Ego, superego
Id (and its principles and process thinking)
primitive instinctive component
- pleasure principle: immediate gratification of biological urges (going pee, chocolate)
- primary process thinking; irrational and fantasy oriented
- unaware of negative consequences
Ego (and its principles and process thinking)
decision making component
- reality principle: delay gratification until appropriate outlet and situation located
- secondary process thinking: rational and realistic; considers norms and rules in society
- Both id and ego want to maximize gratification; ego wants to avoid negative consequences
superego
morality component (3 to 5 years)
- Internalization of norms and rules
What are the levels of awareness
- conscious
- preconscious
- unconscious
Conscious (level of awareness)
content we are aware of
- current train of thought
- content of working memory
Preconscious
content beneath awareness, easy to access
- current physiological state
- long term memory storage
Unconscious
content well beneath awareness, difficult to access
- dangerous thoughts, memories and desires
“evidence” for the unconscious
Freudian slips: reveals a person’s true feelings
- Dreams express hidden desires
- Psychoanalysis revealed previously unknown conflicts
Anxiety
conflicts building up in the unconscious begin to appear in the preconscious/conscious
(conflicts between the id and the ego/superego)
Conflicts about sexual and aggressive urges are powerful because they are thwarted more regularly
Defence mechanisms
unconscious reactions that protect a person from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and guilt
see slide 8 for examples
Fixation (psychosexual development)
failure to progress to later stages
- Excessive gratification of sexual urges
- Excessive frustration of sexual urges
- Affect adult personality (determined by age 5)
Psychosexual development
Developmental periods with a characteristic sexual focus that influences adult personality
- sexual urges (physical pleasure) shift as children progress through early life (ex. eating, hug)
Psychosexual stages and personality
- Oral stage (0-1 years): fixation can lead to obsessive eating or smoking as adult
- Anal stage (2-3 years): punitive training can lead to hostility toward the trainer and generalized to others later ; tendency towards neatness, organization and detail
- Phallic stage (4-5 years): Oedipal complex; erotic desire for opposite sex parent and hostility towards same-sex parent
- Resolution of oedipal complex: purge desire for opposite sex parent and identify with same-sex parent (formation of superego)
- Failure to resolve complex leads to personaility disturbances (psychopaths; no morals)
Carl Jung
Felt freud was too dogmatic
- Analytical psychology: unconscious composed of two layers
Alfred Adler
Felt freud too obsessed with sexual urges
- Individual psychology: people strive for superiority
Jung’s Analytical psychology
- unconscious determines personality
- Personal unconscious: thoughts, memory and desires that have been repressed or forgotten
- Collective unconscious: storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from people’s ancestral past
- Archetypes; emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning
- First to describe extroverted and introverted personality types
Adler’s individual psychology
- Striving for superiority: universal drive to adapt, improve oneself and master life’s challenges “best version of yourself”
– Not dominance over others
– Derives from childhood inferiority - Compensation: effort to overcome real or imagined inferiority thought self-improvement
– Inferiority complex: exaggerated feelings of inferiority resulting from parental pampering or neglect
– Overcompensation: attempts to hide feelings of inferiority from self and others (attain material goods and flaunt achievements) - First to suggest that birth order affected personality (bc they live in different environments)
Criticism to psychodynamic perspecitves
- Poor testibility: too vague and subjective to test empirically
- Inadequate evidence: based primarily on case studies
- Retrospective accounts require memory, which is fallible
- sexist: tend to be male oriented
Important contributions of psychodynamic perspectives
- Unconscious influences of personality
- Internal conflicts contribute to psychological distress
- Childhood experiences contribute to adult personality
- Defense mechanisms
Humanism (humanistic perspective)
humans are unique in having freewill and the potential for growth
- humans control biological urges
- Humans are rational and conscious; unconscious has little effect
- Phenomonenological approach: must understand each individual’s subjective experiences to explain behaviour
Carl Roger’s Person centred theory; self concept
collection of beliefs about oneself (nature, unique qualities, typical behaviour)
Incongruence: the degree of disparity between the self-concept and actual experience
- We distort experience to be consistent with self-concept
Anxiety results when experience conflicts with self concept; ignore, deny, twist reality
Carl Roger’s Person centred theory: Development of the self
Need for affection and acceptance;
- conditional affection depends on achievement; fosters incongruence (leading to recurrent anxiety)
- unconditional affection is not dependent on anything; fosters congruence
Maslow’s Theory of Self-Actualization
- Focused on describing healthy personality
- self actualization: need to fulfill one’s potential; feel frustrated when thwarted (different for each person)
- hierachy of needs
Behaviorist perspective
- Empirical approach that excluded the mind from investigation: study stimulus response; consequences of behaviour
- Personality acquired through principles of learning :
– No personality “strucutre”
– History of reinforcement and punishment
– Personality development is continuous
— No stages
— No emphasis on childhood experience
operant conditioning in personality
personality is collection of response tendencies tied to stimulus situations
- some responses reinforced, others punished
- accounts for differences between situations
Types
personalities as categories
- Everyone of the same type is alike
- Everyone of other types is different
Dimensions
having more or less of an attribute
- everyone rated on dimension from low to high
Informal Tests of personality; Myers-Briggs Type indicator
- Typological theories of Carl Jung
- 16 different types based on 4 dichotomies
- Low test-retest reliability
- Weak relationship between type and behaviour
Myers Briggs Type indicator; the 4 dichotomies
Extraversion/introversion
Sensing/intuition (information gathering)
Thinking/feeling (decision making)
Judging/perceiving
Formal Tests of personality (Dimensions)
Established reliability and validity
- Test-retest; self/other correlations
- predict behaviour
Control for impression management
Single dimension inventories:
- Rosenberg Self-esteem scale
- Sensation seeking:
Formal Tests of Personality ; Sensation seeking ..
Thrill seeking (adrenalin)
Experience seeking (variety)
Disinhibition (sex, drugs, alcohol)
Personality Dimensions; Gordon Allport
- Emphasized present context over past experience
- Individuals are unique
- “Lexical Hypothesis”; 4500 traits
– central traits: apply to everyone
– Secondary traits: apply to some people, must have experience
Personality Dimensions; Factor Analysis (Raymond Cattell)
- Many traits reflect the same underlying factor: ex. honesty, honor, integrity, probity
–correlational technique used to identify factors
–16 basic dimensions of personality
What happen to personality as we age
Dimensions are stable after age 30
Become more agreeable, more conscientious, less extroverted, and less open to experience as we age
What are the Big 5 Personality Factors
Extroversion vs. Introversion
Neuroticism vs. Emotional bond
Agreeableness vs. Antagonism
Conscientiousness vs. Impulsiveness
Openess vs. Resistance
Personality of firstborns
identifies with parents
- conventional and achievement oriented
- prominent scientists in history tend to be firstborn
Personality of later borns
attempt to differentiate themselves from firstborn
- less conscientious but more agreeable and open to experience
- more rebellious
- revolutionaries in history tend to be later-born
What makes up the dark triad
- Machiavellianism
- Narcissism
- Psychopathy (Sociopathy)
Machiavellianism
- Manipulative personality
- Machiavelli (“The Prince”)
- Mach Scale (20 items)
Narcissism
- Grandiosity, entitlement, dominance, superiority
- Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI: 40 items)
Psychopathy (Sociopathy)
- Impulsivity, charming, low guilt, low anxiety, low empathy, arrogance, egocentric, antisocial behaviour
- Self report psychopathy scale
