Personality Flashcards
What are the two major drives Freud thought were the primary motivating forces of human behaviour?
Sex and aggression
What are Freud’s three parts of consciousness?
Conscious Level - normal awareness
Preconcious level - easily brought to consciousness
Unconscious level - hidden thoughts and desires
What are the three parts of personality according to Freud?
• The Id
- Unconscious level
- Present at birth
- Home to sexual and aggressive drive,
- Governed by the pleasure principle
• The Ego
- Conscious, preconscious, and unconscious levels
- Develops in childhood (before superego)
- Cognitive functions – problem solving etc
- Acts as a referee between id and superego
- Governed by the reality principle
• The Superego
- Preconscious and unconscious levels
- Develops in childhood
- Home to morality and conscience
- ego ideal – ultimate standard.
What are Freud’s thoughts on personality development?
- We must pass through psychosexual stages successfully
- Each stage focuses on how we receive pleasure
- Failure to pass through a stage leads to fixation
- In times of stress, we regress to that stage
What are Freud’s 5 Psychosexual stages?
• Oral stage (birth to 1 year) • Anal stage (1 to 3 years) • Phallic stage (3 to 6 years) (Oedipus and Electra) - Oedipus and Electra complexes • Latency period (6 to puberty) • Genital stage (puberty +)
Freud: Defence Mechanisms
name 3 of the 8 and give a description of how it works
- Denial
threatening thoughts are denied outright and truly believed. - Intellectualization
threatening thoughts or emotions are kept at arm’s length by thinking about them rationally and logically - Projection
threatening thoughts are projected onto (attributed to) others - Rationalization
creating explanations to justify threatening thoughts or actions - Reaction formation
unconciously changing an unacceptable feeling into its opposite - Repression
anxiety-provoking thoughts, impulses and memories are prevented from entering consciousness - Sublimation
threatening impulses are directed into more socially acceptable activities - Undoing
your actions try to ‘undo’ a threatening wish or thought
what do each of Freud’s followers believe?
Carl Jung
Alfred Adler
Karen Horney
Carl Jung
- collective unconscious for all humans
- Stored in the collective unconscious are Archetypes like God, the mother and the shadow
Alfred Adler
- Strive for superiority - source for all motivation instead of sex and agression
-Inferiority complex
Karen Horney
- Basic anxiety - when parents don’t provide consistent interest, warmth and respect in early childhood.
- Privilege envy not penis envy
What are some critiques of Freud’s theory?
Not scientific - hard to test
Too broad - claims are hard to falsify
Based in limited sample - female patients of upper class in 19th century Vienna
Describe situationism
situationism, a person’s behaviour is mostly governed by the particular situation, not by internal traits.
Situationism recognizes that people create their own situations because of who they are.
Natalie is basically a shy person who avoids conflict. When someone tried to grab her
cellphone when she was waiting at a bus stop, she fought back by hitting her assailant
until they ran away. Theorists would say that this departure from Natalie’s normal
personality was due to situationism
Trait view
We think and behave consistently across situations
Situationist view
Our thoughts and behaviours change with the situation
Interactionist view
Both traits and situations affect thoughts and behaviour
• Trait theorists all have the following ideas in common
- We possess broad predispositions – traits.
- High levels of a trait - tendencies to behave in certain ways.
- Direct correspondence between performance on trait-related actions and possession of trait.
- Human behaviour and personality organised into a hierarchy.
What does OCEAN stand for?
Openness Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism
What are the 3 personality dimensions identified by Hans Eysenck?
Extraversion
Neuroticism
Psychoticism
What are the some of the 16 personality dimensions identified by Raymond Cattell?
Reserved - outgoing less intelligent - more intelligent affected by feelings - emotionally stable submissive - dominant serious - happy-go-lucky expedient - conscientious timid - venturesome tough minded - sensitive trusting - suspicious
What are the Big Five?
Extraversion Neuroticism Agreeableness Conscientiousness Openness
idiographic procedures
specific to the individual
nomothetic procedures
population level of personality traits
what are some types of personality tests (idiographic)
Interviews
- structured set of questions
- focus on specific thoughts ans behaviours
Pros of interviews: give very in depth personal information.
Cons: hard to generalise beyond the interview setting. Relies on honesty
Observation
- looking at behaviour of someone than what they say what they do
- best if the judge knows the subject
- several observations over different periods
When would you be benefited by using an interview technique?
Job interview -cost effective
a lot of detail about that person
will you work well with them.
more expensive in a research to do an interview than to give 100 people a questionere
nomothetic personality inventories
Questionnaires
- computer: fast, inexpensive
- used to create personality profile
con: Social response bias
Mini-IPIP6 personality survey
longitudinal study
similar to the Big 5 with the addition of humility.
“am I the life of the party?”
response to questions used to calculate personality types.
Use negatives of questions to catch out people who are answering in socially desirable ways
Series of questions put in to catch out lies “I’ve never told a lie”
Rorschach Test
Ink blot test:
Participant is shown one at a time 10 ink blots and asked to say the first thing that comes to mind.
The judge will use a scoring system to make up a personality profile.
The ink blots are ambiguous and therefore reduce any form of social response bias
Cons: Several scoring systems are used
TAT test
Participant is shown several cards of ambiguous scenes and asked to tell a story describing the scene, including what is happening, how the characters are feeling, and how the story will end. The examiner then scores the test based on the needs, motivations, and anxieties of the main character as well as how the story eventually turns out
Decribe possible influences of genetics on personality
Heritability is at a population level rated between 0-1. 1 being heritable, 0 environment.
.5 for work and leisure interests
.44-.8 for happiness
Remember - heritability refers to populations, not individuals.
Heritability estimates are not fixed – changes in environment or in the gene pool can increase or decrease the percentage contribution of either factor
Describe the Minnesota twin study and the results
Over 100 twin pairs from all over the world (identical and non identical).
Separated mostly during childhood.
Typically for most of their lives until that point.
1 week of testing (Psych & Medical).
Limitations: even though they were raised in different environments the environments were so similar that it was hard to establish if it was environment that affected the traits.
Discuss the role of gender on personality
Female
More empathic
More neurotic
Greater social connectedness
Male
Greater individuality
More aggressive
More assertive
Research was based on male and female and not to people identifying as non-binary
Personality differences between males and females is not very large. E.g. the difference between most extraverted female and least extraverted female will be greater than the extravetiedness of males and females.
Socialisation: Young girls are encouraged to play together and have tea parties, boys are encouraged to be competitive and outgoing
Social desirability: males more aggressive than females, but not actually a large difference. Male aggression may be more physically evident
People’s expectations affect how people grow. These differences are more likely to affect a persons personality than hereditary or gender
Discuss the role of family and birth order on personality
First born and only children:
More responsible, ambitious, organised, academically successful, energetic, self-disciplined, conscientious
More temperamental, more anxious about their status
More assertive, dominant
More agreeable to parental authority
Middle child:
More rebellious and impulsive, Less conscientious
Less closely identified with family, Less likely to report having been loved as a child
Less likely to ask for parental help in an emergency, More likely to live farther from parents and less likely to visit parents
More competitive
Youngest child:
More agreeable and warmer, More tender-minded, easy-going, trusting, accommodating, altruistic
More adventurous, prone to fantasy, attracted by novelty, untraditional
More sociable,
affectionate, excitement-seeking, fun-loving
More self-conscious (Saroglou & Fiasse, 2003; Sulloway, 1996)
More open to new ideas and excel to difference
Personality and culture
Measuring personality is by language, thus making comparison across culture is difficult
Possible that the word or trait doesn’t exist (isn’t used)
e.g. Agreeableness: hard to find equivalent in mandarin
Collectivist culture may score higher on agreeableness as their brought up in a culture where it is important for groups to have similar goals. Compared with individualist cultures where you believe that your idea is better than others.
