Personality Flashcards
What is Personality?
- people’s typical way of thinking, feeling, and behaving
- intrinsically motivated (whereas social psychology is about social contexts - sometimes social overrides personal)
- these traits account in part for consistencies in our behaviour across time and situations
- ex. agreeable, extroverted
Causes of Personality
- genetic factors
- shared environmental factors
- when 2 people (siblings) are similar to each other bc. they grew up in same environment
- non-shared environmental factors
- different individual experiences (ex. Malvern for me vs bro)
Twin Studies
Genetic Influence
- identical twin pairs are more similar than the fraternal twins
Non-shared environment influences
- correlations are much less than 1.0 - this tells us there’s more to it than genetics
Shared environment plays little to no role in adult personality
- identical twins reared apart show similar personality traits
- correlations for identical twins reared apart are similar to identical twins reared together
Personality Theories
Four Major Theories:
- Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality
- Behavioural and Social Learning Theories
- Humanistic Theories
- Trait Models
All models seek to address 3 main questions:
- how do personalities develop?
- what are the driving forces? what make us tick?
- what accounts for individual differences?
Sigmund Freud
- founder of psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalysis
- 1st to bring the idea that experiences in childhood influence who you become/ adulthood into Western Scientific Thinking
- and mental disorders are caused psychologically rather than physical (groundbreaking at the time)
- 1st to bring the idea that experiences in childhood influence who you become/ adulthood into Western Scientific Thinking
- he was more interested in similarity rather than our individual differences
Freud Psychoanalytic Theory: 3 Main Parts
-
Psychic Determinism
- all psychological events (thoughts, feelings, behaviour) have a cause (no free will)
-
Symbolic Meaning
- no action is meaningless
-
Unconscious Motivation
- most of what we do is driven by unconscious factors
Freud Psychoanalytic Theory: Structure of Personality
ID
entirely unconscious - only one we are born with
- primitive impulses
- driving force for most of our behaviours
- sex drive libido
- aggressive drive
- operates by means of the pleasure principle
SUPEREGO
both unconscious and conscious
- moral standards
- internalizations of right and wrong that we learn (from external influences like family & society)
- overly developed superego = guilt-prone
EGO
both unconscious and conscious
- “the mediator”
- resolve competing demands of superego and id
- governed by the reality principle
mental disorders were when these three parts began working inharmoniously
Freud Psychoanalytic Theory: Defence Mechanisms
Function of Ego:
- deal with threats, lower anxiety
- defence mechanisms are unconscious maneuvers to minimize anxiety
- we need these mechanism in our scary/ stressful world
Repression
- motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses
- ex. infantile amnesia
- we actually typically remember negative events more than positive ones
- this event is something we experience personally
Denial
- motivated forgetting of a distressing external experience
- ex. death of a loved one
- this event is not about us but emotionally distressing
Reaction Formation
- transformation of anxiety-producing experience into its opposite
- ex. a married person is sexually attracted to their coworker; feels dislike toward the coworker
Projection
- unconscious attribution of our negative qualities onto other
- ex. someone with adulterous feelings might accuse partner of infidelity
Displacement
- directing an impulse from a socially acceptable target onto a more acceptable one
- ex. frustration at work taken out at the gym
Sublimation
- transforming a socially unacceptable impulse into an admired and socially valued goal
- ex. someone who is fascinated with dead bodies becomes a funeral director
Stages of Psychosexual Development
Oral Stage: birth to 18 months
- infants primarily receive pleasure by sucking and drinking
- adults:
- impatient, demanding, dependent on others
- unhealthy “oral” behaviours (smoking, drinking, overeating)
Anal Stage: 18 months to 3 years
- young ego and id
- child wants to alleviate tension and experience pleasure by moving their bowels
- learning to control as part of toilet training
- Adults: “anal” personality (excessive neatness, rules, stubbornness)
Phallic Stage: 3 to 6 years
- most important in explaining personality
- key erogenous zone = genitals
- attraction to opposite sex parents
- Oedipus Complex
- Electra Complex
- resolved by children repressing the attraction to the opposite sex parent and identify with same sex parent
Latency Stage: 6 to puberty
- sexual impulses are repressed
- sexual energy is sublimated toward other activities
Genital Stage: puberty to adulthood
- seeks pleasure from other
Scientific Evaluation of Psychoanalytic Theory
-
unfalsifiability (untestable) - many aspects of it are
- he thought a lot of personality was unconscious
- you can say Lisa does this bc. ___ but how can we be sure?
- he thought a lot of personality was unconscious
-
failed predictions
- toilet training was research and it is not correlated with anal personality
-
conceptions of unconscious - he was kinda right
- implicit or automatic
-
emphasis on shared environment
- he thought it was all about parents (esp. mom)
-
reliance on unrepresentative samples
- a lot of his research was with Victorian Upperclass Women suffering from Hysteria
Neo-Freudians
- people who worked with Freud and developed/ follow his Psychoanalytic Theory
- later theories (like from Carl Jung) focused on…
- unconscious influence
- importance of early experience
- less on sexuality
- more on social drives
- much more optimistic - not everything is about sex and aggression
Humanistic Models of Personality
- 3rd wave of Personality Theory - 1950s
- Determinism (like Freud or Behaviourism) vs Free Will
-
Self-actualization - develop to fullest potential
- we all have the drive to reach our fullest potential
- 2 Key Humanists:
- Abraham Maslow
- Carl Rogers
Carl Rogers
3 Major Components
-
Organism
- innate blueprint (*genetically influenced)
- will eventually become your adult personality but it can develop differently based on experiences
-
Self
- self concept
- our set of beliefs about who we are/ what kind of person we are
- can think of it as our true self - without any conditions of worth
- product of organism + experiences
- self concept
-
Conditions of Worth
- expectations we place on ourselves for behaviour
- similar to Freud’s superego
- we have ideas about what behaviours are right and wrong
- Rogers thought these were placed on us when our parents made their acceptance/ love of us conditional for behaving a certain way
- conditions of worth can interfere with our ability to be our true selves
- expectations we place on ourselves for behaviour
Maslow: Self-Actualization
- self-actualization as the goal of living
- difficult to achieve self-actualization if other needs are unmet
- he studied historical figures that were self-actualized
- MLK, Ghandi, Abraham Lincoln
- they had similar traits:
- creative
- spontaneous
- accepting of themselves and others
- self-confident but not self-centred
- prone to have peak experiences
- intense feelings of joy, peace, tranquility
Scientific Evaluation: Humanistic Models
- paved the way for positive psychology (modern movement in psychology)
- human nature is complex
- not only positive…
- Freud may have focused on negative things like aggression and sex but Humanists are too positive/ not realistic about the complexity of human nature
- Maslow - Confirmation Bias
- he was looking for people who were self-actualized and then seeing what they had in common
Trait Models of Personality
- structure of personality
- 17,000 terms describing personality traits
- stubborn, shy, impulsive, greedy, cheerful, lively, sociable
- factor analysis
- distilling the 17000 terms to a few underlying commonalities/ factors
The Big Five Model
- personality is composed of 5 underlying traits
- well-researched
- lexical (linguistic/ emerging from language) approach
OCEAN:
Openness
Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
Extraversion
Neuroticism
Extraversion
de/energized from the outside world
High
- enjoys being the centre of attention
- likes to start conversations
- enjoys meeting new people
- wide social circle of friends acquaintances
- finds it easy to make new friends
- energized when around other people
Low
- prefers solitude
- feels exhausted when having to socialize a lot
- finds it difficult to start conversations
- dislikes making small talk
- carefully thinks things through before speaking
- dislikes being the centre of attention
Openness to Experience
unconventional, imagination
High
- very creative
- open to trying new things
- focused on tackling new challenges
- happy to think about abstract/ theoretical things
Low
- dislikes change
- does not enjoy new things
- resists new ideas
- not very imaginative
- dislikes abstract or theoretical concepts
Conscientiousness
responsible, goal directed
High
- spends time preparing
- finishes important tasks right away
- pays attention to detail
- enjoys have a set schedule
Low
- dislikes structure and schedules
- makes messes and doesn’t take care of things
- falls to return things or put them back where they belong
- procrastinates important tasks
- fails to complete necessary/ assigned tasks
Neuroticism
sensitivity to stress & negative emotional triggers
High
- experiences a lot of stress
- worries about many different things
- gets upset easily
- experiences dramatic shifts in mood
- feels anxious
- struggle to bounce back after stressful events
Low
- emotionally stable
- deals well with stress
- rarely feels sad or depressed
- doesn’t worry much
- is very relaxed
Agreeableness
**getting along with others **
High
- has a great deal of interest in other people
- cares about others
- feels empathy and concern for other people
- enjoys helping and contributing to the happiness of other people
- assist others who are in need of help
Low
- takes little interest in others
- doesn’t care about how other people feel
- has little interest in other people’s problems
- insults and belittles others
- manipulates other to get what they want
Support for The Big 5 Model
- the Big 5 appear when people rate other people
- implicit personality theories
- Predict important real-world behaviours
- job performance, good grades, enhanced health behaviours
- high on both openness and agreeableness and low on neuroticism predicts good job performance well
- conscientiousness → physical health and lifespan
- job performance, good grades, enhanced health behaviours
- Cross cultural research
- identifiable in many different cultures ( but not all)
- openness to experience doesn’t pop out in certain cultures
- 6th trait in China about traditional values (ie. respecting elders)
- identifiable in many different cultures ( but not all)
