Personality Flashcards
Anna O
the first talking patient
Hysteria and Freud
Hysteria: Early psychoanalytic theory - early psychoanalysts often based their theories off of highly unstable individuals
1. Source of problem stems from the unconscious
2. The mind is a place of conflict (victorian control context)
3. Emphasis on childhood experiences
4. Emphasis on sexuality
The Topographic Model
popularised by Freud
Conscious (above surface) - thoughts and perceptions
Preconscious (slightly below surface) - memories and stored knowledge
Unconscious (deep below surface) - unacceptable sexual desire, violent motive, fears
Desires to make ends form, or to desire things to be less objectionable through:
Freudian Slip: unintentional error regarded as revealing unconscious feelings
Dreams: manifest and latent content
- thinking and doing
The Structural Model
Id - desire to do anything
- pleasure principle
- immediate gratification
- operates by “primary process”: libido and death
Ego - manages Id and Super-Ego
- reality principle
- defense mechanisms
- “secondary process”
Super-Ego - voice of conscious
- socialisation
- internalised standards and values
- conscience & guilt
The Genetic (or Developmental) Model
“psychosexual stages”
- sexuality centred on mouth, anus, genitals
fixation: staying in one stage too long
0-2- Oral, 2-4- Anal, 4-5- Phallic, 6-puberty- Latency, puberty-onward- Genital.
Limitations of Psychoanalytic Theory
topographic, structural and genetic models are based on soft evidence
- Data are not publicly available
- Objectivity is compromised
- Interpersonal expectancies
Data Supports
unconscious mental processes can influence behaviour, conflict between unconscious and conscious processes
Core Freudian ideas
- Early development is important
- Deeply rooted motives
- Body as source of pleasure and shame
- Personal conflicts
- Self-mystery
- Importance of the unconscious
Behaviourist Approach to Personality
personality is observable and measurable
- Behaviourist movement as reaction against psychology’s focus on unmeasurable phenomena, such as freud’s unconscious
- “Look into your own way of thinking to know yourself”, flawed in its extent
Radical Behaviourism
the contents of the organism are not important in explaining behaviour, the environment completely shapes the person, a personality is the sum of all their experiences (tabula rasa)
Moderate Behaviourism
the contents of the organism are important in explaining behaviour. They use terms describing activities inside the organism, such as habits, motives, drive, expectancies, thoughts
- much more consistent with modern psychology
Three Elements of Radical Behaviourism
- Stimulus
- Response
- Reinforcement/Punishment
Stimulus-response Contingencies or Classical Conditioning (Radical Behaviourism)
- Extinction
- Systematic Desensitisation
- Aversion Therapy
unconditioned stimulus –> unconditioned response
conditioned stimulus –> conditioned response
Extinction - more time with the conditioned stimulus in a safe environment will re-teach the conditioning
Systematic Desensitisation - If there is fear from thinking of the dog then the relaxation response alongside fear will lower the fear of the conditioned stimulus
Aversion Therapy - pairing stimulus with aversive stimuli that remove associations with that stimulus, nauseating substances on cigarettes creates nausea therefore cigarettes will be seen as creating nausea
Reinforcement-contingencies or Operant/Instrumental Conditioning (Radical Behaviourism)
rewards and punishments
Reinforcement: increasing probability of behaviour after change to a stimulus
Punishment: decreasing the probability of a behaviour after change to a stimulus
Positive reinforcement: increasing the frequency of a behaviour by presenting an appetitive stimulus
Negative reinforcement: increasing the frequency of a behaviour by removing an aversive stimulus
Positive punishment: decreasing the frequency by adding an aversive stimuli
Negative punishment: decreasing the frequency by adding an appetitive stimuli
Variable Ratio Reinforcement (Reinforcement-contingencies)
a partial schedule of reinforcement in which a response is reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses. E.g. social media or gambling, highly potent surrounding addiction
Variable Ratio – Fixed Ratio – Fixed interval – Variable Interval (alters addiction to the unpredictability of the variability)
Humanistic Theories
- Carl Rogers Theory
- Abraham Maslow’s Theory
focuses on phenomenology - subjected experiences are unique to everyone, understanding an acceptance of differing views on the world
Rogers Theory of Personality
people want to behave in ways that are consistent with our real self and our ideal self.
incongruence = neurosis
The Fully Functioning Person - Rogers Theory of Personality
- Openness to Experience
- Expanded consciousness
- Able to tolerate ambiguity, not black and white
- Existential Living
- “Flow”, “flow state”, happiness: taking personal responsibility for finding meaning and enjoyment in our ongoing experiences
- Loses self-consciousness, loses a sense of time, achieves a sense of personal control, concentrate only on the task at hand - Organismic Trusting
- Allowing ourselves to be guided by things that are good as opposed to bad
4.. Experiential Freedom
- We feel free when we have choices
- Creativity
highly unmeasurable