Personality Flashcards
Personality
A given person’s characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Personality disorders: long-lasting patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that deviate from relevant cultural norms.
Personality traits: thinking, feeling, and behaving; relatively consistent and enduring over time.
Personality states: transient and ephemeral.
Cultural norms
The term culture refers to attitudes and patterns of behavior in a given group. Norm refers to attitudes and behaviors that are considered normal, typical or average within that group. All societies have cultural norms. Even though norms influence every facet of our lives, including what we value, our attitudes, and how we behave, we are often unaware that we are influenced at all.
Neuroticism
A general tendency to experience negative emotions; 80% from biological factors.
Behavioral genetics
Study of the heritability of traits in animals and humans: family studies (proband–>1st degree relatives–>2nd degree relatives); twin studies, with fraternal and identical twins (Eyesenck’s); adoption studies.
Concordance rates: indicate the proportion of pairs in given studies in which both individuals exhibits the trait in question.
Correlation coefficient: measures the extent to which the prevalence of a trait in one person matches or diverges.
Internal conflicts (Freud)
ID: childish and impulsive; pleasure principle (aims to increase pleasure and decrease pain).
Super ego: moralizing, judgmental; controls sense of right and wrong; inspires socially appropriate ways to behave.
Ego: mediator between the two other parts of personality; reality principle: takes input form both parts and inspires realistic actions.
Freudian (unconscious) defense mechanisms
Levels of defense mechanisms (sorted and extended by George Vaillant):
Pathological: distance yourself from reality; gets you irrational, insane to people around you (e.g.: denial).
Immature: prevalent in adolescents, people with personality disorders and depression (e.g.: projection, passive aggression).
Neurotic: quite common; semi-effective in short term (e.g.: displacement, repression).
Mature: healthy ways to cope with reality, solve problems (e.g.: sublimation, humor).
Freud’s stages of psychosexual development
Personality develops through stages that have to do with sexuality, with fixations on certain erogenous body parts; driven by instinctual libido. A fixation is an unhealthy attachment, in this case, to one of the erogenous zones.
Oral stage (birth-2): id-driven; breast feeding –> learning of delayed gratification (through weaning); wrong timing may lead to oral fixation.
Anal stage (15m-3): toilet training; ego starts developing; anal compulsive / anal repulsive (as delayed gratification is still being learned).
Phallic stage (3-6): realization of gender; Oedipus/Electra complexes help develop the super ego.
Latency stage (6-puberty): things that went wrong in childhood get turned into a real personality during this stage.
Genital stage (after puberty): independence from parents; ego and super ego are fully developed.
Carl Rogers’ humanistic self-concept
Self-concept = self-worth + self-image + ideal-self
Self-worth: beliefs we hold about ourselves; influenced by unconditional positive regard; a lack of it results in incongruence.
Self-image: how we see ourselves.
Ideal-self: whom we would like to become.
Aims to support people in finding their ways to become fully-functioning persons.
Humorism
Ancient Greeks; 4 humors:
Black bile (melancholic); yellow bile (choleric); phlegm (calm, stolid); blood (optimistic, sanguine)
Phrenology
Frank Joseph Gall; the association of measurements and features of particular areas in the human skull with certain personality and character traits.
Japan’s blood type-related personality assessment
TypeA: serious, meticulous; typeB: optimistic, curious; typeAB: rational, discriminating; typeO: sociable, hard-working
Physiognomy
Judging of a person’s personality through their appearance (facial appearance especially).
Trait assessment testing
Openness Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism
Fundamental attribution error
To assume that people’s actions are indicative of their personalities.
