Personality

Question 1

What is personality?

Answer 1

An individual’s unique set of consistent behavioral traits

Question 2

What are personality traits?

Answer 2

• Consistent pattern of thought, emotion, and behavior
• Dispositions to think, act, or feel

Question 3

What are the four temperaments of Galen?

Answer 3

• Melancholic
  
  • Black bile from kidneys/spleen
  • Depressed
• Phlegmatic
  
  • White phlegm
  • Calm
• Choleric
  
  • Yellow bile from liver
  • Angry
• Sanguine
  
  • Red blood
  • Happy

Question 4

Nomothetic VS Idiographic approaches

Answer 4

• Nomothetic: Common traits and dimensions across individuals
• Idiographic: Individual lives and how characteristics integrate into unique persons

Question 5

Situationist VS Interactionism

Answer 5

• Walter Mischel
• Situationism: Behaviors determined more by situations than by personality traits
• Interactionism: Behaviors influenced by both situations and traits

Question 6

What is the lexical hypothesis?

Answer 6

• The most significant individual differences in human transactions encoded as simple terms in language
• Prime trait terms
• 4504 stable traits
• Allport and Odbert

Question 7

What is 16PF?

Answer 7

• Cattell
• Categorized traits using factor analysis (orthogonal and independent)
• Identifies broad personality dimensions
• 16 primary factors under 5 second-order scales

Question 8

What are the Big Five personality traits?

Answer 8

• Robert McCrae and Paul Costa
• Openness to Experience
  
  • Depth and breadth of intellectual, artistic, and experiential life
• Conscientiousness
  
  • Capacity to organize, complete tasks, and work towards long-term goals
• Extraversion
  
  • Social, positive outlook
• Agreeableness
  
  • Social, empathy
• Neuroticism
  
  • Proneness to experience negative emotions and moods

Question 9

How do the Big Five personality traits tend to change with age?

Answer 9

• Reduction in N, E, O
  
  • Less neurotic: More self-control and emotional stability
  • Less extraverted
  • Less open to new experiences
• Increase in A, C
  
  • More agreeable
  • More conscientious

Question 10

How does personality develop?

Answer 10

A combination of genetics, brain function, environmental interactions, and life choices

Question 11

What are evolutionary perspectives on personality?

Answer 11

• Adaptation of traits based on selection pressures
• Eg mate competition, resource availability
• Sexual Selection
  
  • Signals desirable qualities in potential mates
  • Eg extraversion in males may attract females
• Group Selection
  
  • Diversity in personality traits relates to group social skills
  • Eg Agreeableness facilitates cooperation
• Genetic Influences
  
  • Twin studies: Genetics accounts for 40-60% of variance in personality traits

Question 12

What are temperaments?

Answer 12

• Innate tendencies to feel or act in certain ways
• Broader than personality traits
• Activity level: energy, behavior
• Emotionality: intensity of emotional reactions
• Sociability: tendency to affiliate with others

Question 13

What is Freud’s theory of personality?

Answer 13

• Innate biological drives (Id) VS Aquired internal socialized control (Superego)
• Id: Wants instant gratification regardless of consequences
• Superego: Behave in socially accepted ways
• Ego: Mediator between Id and Superego
• Id VS Superego unresolved conflicts cause:
  
  • Neurosis (anxiety)
  • Catharsis
  • Ego defense mechanisms

Question 14

What are defense mechanisms according to Freud?

Answer 14

• Unconscious strategies used by the ego
• Protect against anxiety
• Denial
  
  • Refusing to accept real events
• Displacement
  
  • Diverting emotional feelings to a substitute target
• Reaction formation
  
  • Behave oppositely from beliefs
  • Eg parent who unconsciously resents a child spoils them with gifts
• Regression
  
  • Return to immature coping strategies
  • Eg adult has a temper tantrum
• Rationalization
  
  • Justifying behaviors with false, plausible excuses
  • Eg Blaming a failing grade on the professor
• Repression
  
  • Suppress distressing thoughts and feelings
• Projection
  
  • Attributing thoughts/feelings/motives to another
• Sublimation
  
  • Redirecting unacceptable desires through acceptable channels
  • Eg joining community support groups

Question 15

Describe Freud’s Psychosexual development theory

Answer 15

• Personality and behaviour shaped by childhood experiences
• Failure to resolve conflicts results in fixation
• Oral personality
  
  • Weaned too early or too late
  • Adult who smokes, drinks, overeats, or bites nails
• Anal-retentive personality
  
  • Too harsh toilet training
  • Over-control, stingy
• Anal-expulsive personality
  
  • Too lenient toilet training
  • Messy, careless, emotional outbursts
• Oedipus complex
  
  • Conflict when the boy feels desire for mother
  • Jealousy and hatred towards father
  • Resolution: to identify with his father
  • Failure to resolve: vain, overly ambitious
• Electra complex
  
  • Girl’s version
  • Penis envy
• Latency period
  
  • Sexual feelings are suppressed (dormant)
  • Child focuses on other activities
• Genital Stage
  
  • Puberty onset
  • Sexual urges resurface
  • Redirected to socially acceptable partners

Question 16

What are Alfred Adler’s key contributions to psychology?

Answer 16

• Individual Psychology
  
  • Social connections > Freud’s psychosexual stages
• Inferiority Complex
  
  • Inferiority in childhood motivate individuals to seek superiority
• Three Social Tasks
  
  • Occupational (careers)
  • Societal (friendships)
  • Love (intimate relationships).
• Influence of Birth Order
  
  • Shapes feelings of inferiority and drives for superiority

Question 17

What are Carl Jung’s key contributions to psychology?

Answer 17

• Analytical Psychology
  
  • Rejected sexual drive as primary motivator
  • Unconscious mind, expands on Freud’s theories
• Collective Unconscious
  
  • Archetypes (ancestral memories)
  • Universal themes across cultures
• Persona
  
  • “Mask” to hide socially unacceptable aspects
• Attitudes
  
  • Extroversion VS Introversion

Question 18

Define self-efficacy in the context of personality.

Answer 18

• Individual’s belief in their ability to achieve specific outcomes
• Influences motivation and behavior

Question 19

What is the locus of control ?

Answer 19

• Julian Rotter
• Beliefs about power we have over our lives
• Internals VS Externals: Direct result of own efforts OR Beyond control
• Stable VS Unstable: Cause can be changed OR Permanent
• Global VS Specific: Inadequacy in everything OR Specific area

Question 20

Describe the humanistic approach

Answer 20

• Innate capacity for self-directed change
• Emphasis on individual choices
• Hierarchy of needs theory
  
  • Abraham Maslow
  • Basic needs: Physiological, safety
  • Psychological needs: Belongingness and love, esteem
  • Self-fulfillment: Self-actualization (potential)
• Self-concept
  
  • Carl Rogers
  • Thoughts and feelings about oneself
  • Ideal self VS Real self
  • Congruence: self-worth, productive life
  • Incongruence: maladjusted behaviour/personality

Question 21

Describe the behaviorist perspective (B.F. Skinner)

Answer 21

• Rejected that internal processes result in certain personalities
• Personality reflects learned responses to patterns of reinforcement
• Considered an extreme form of situationism

Question 22

Describe observational learning

Answer 22

• Vicarous capability: learning indirectly by observing and imitating others
• Depends on personal (cognitive) factors

Question 23

Describe the Social-Cognitive Theory of Albert Bandura

Answer 23

• Reciprocal determinism
• learning and cognitive processes as sources of individual differences in personality.
• Our behaviour (rewarded/punished), cognitive factors (learned beliefs, expectations, biases, personal cognitive factors), and situational context all influence each other.