Personality Flashcards
Summarise the Psychodynamic Theory of personality
It says that the cause of behaviour patterns, thoughts and feelings arise from:
- Unconscious internal conflicts associated with childhood experiences
- Unsonscious conflicts between pleasure-seeking impulses and social restraints/demands
The main focus are the unconscious motives and importance of childhood.
What did Freud say about the 3 levels of awareness?
- The conscious mind (contact with the outside world)
- The preconscious mind (things just below the surface of awareness)
- The unconscious mind (difficult to retrieve things, well below the surface of awareness)
In Psychodynamic personality theory, what is the id (instincts)?
- Primitive thinking
- Driven by basic biological urges
e. g. hungry infant will cry to be fed
Seeks pleasure and avoids pain
2 major instincts:
- Eros: Life instinc
Thanatos: Death instinct
In psychodynamic personality theory, what is the ego?
Ego (reality)
- Conscious processing
- Intelligent consideration of reality
- Rational decision making/problem solving
- Considers the consequences of behaviour
- Controls higher mental processes
In psychodynamic personalty theories, what is the superego?
The superego (morality)
- Partly conscious, partly unconscious
- Internalised rules of society/family
Stops us from gratifying every whim because they are immoral (not just because we might get caught!)
- Consience: notion of right and wrong
- Ego ideal: how we ideally like to be
What are the defence mechanisms of personality?
Repression: removal of threatening thoughts from awareness
Projection: attribution of unacceptable impulses to others
Denial: refusal to recognise a threatening situation or thought
Reaction Formation: expression of the opposite of disturbing ideas
Displacement: substituting a less threatening object for impulses
Sublimation: channeling of impulses to socially acceptable outlets
Regression: return to a less mature, anxiety reducing behaviour
What are Freud’s stages of personality development?
Oral (0-18 months)
Anal (18-36 months)
Phallic (3-6 years)
Latency (6-puberty)
Genital (puberty on)
Personality develops during the first few years of life, rooted in unresolved conflicts of early childhood.
What do Carl Jung and Alfred Adler say about personality?
What are the Humanistic Theories of personality?
Focuses on subjecting human experience and perspective
Rejected psychodynamic and behaviourlist view of personality as ‘dehumanising’
People have free will (to make choices)
People are basically ‘good’
Optimistic view focusing on positive human capacity to overcome hardship and pain
Fulfilment and personal growth are a basic human motive (self-actualisation)
Objective reality is less important than the perception of understanding of the individual
In the humanistic theory of personality, what does Carl Rogers theories?
Self concept: our own image or perception of ourselves and comprimises self-image, self-esteem and ideal self.
We need positive regard/approval from others and we change our behaviour to obtain it (particularly unconditional positive regard)
- Anxiety indicates conflict in not being true to our ideal self
- Fully functioning person is: Open to experience, able to live for the moment, able to trust their own feelings, creative and fulfilled (happy and satisfied)
What is Maslow’s humanistic theory of personality?
- Self actualisation: the realisation of personal potential, becoming everything one is capable of becoming.
Characteristics of the ‘self-actualised person’
- Creative and open to new experiences
- Comitted to a higher cause or goal
- Trusting and caring of others, but not dependent
- Have the courage to act on their own conviction
What are the trait theories of personality?
These are theories that have tried to identify the most basic enduring dimensions in which people differ from one another - these dimensions are known as triats.
Started with Jung: Extroversion vs Introversion
Subsequently build upon by
Eysenck: Three facotor theory
Cattell: Source and surface traits 16PF
What is Eysneck’s Three factor theory?
States that there are three fundamental factors to determine personality, determined by heredity:
Introversion vs Extroversion
Emotional Stability vs Neuroticism
Impulse Control vs Psychosis
What are Cattell’s 16 personality factors?
Cattell argued that a much larger number of factors need to be considered:
Cattell collected data afrom a range of people through three sources of data:
L data - school grades, absence from work etc.
Q data - questionaire designed to rate an individual’s personality (16PF)
T-data = this is data from objective tests designed to tap into a personality construct
What are the 5 dimensions for each trait according to Cattell?
Give a description of each of the 5 personality traits
What are social cognitive theories of personality?
- Based on the interrelationship of individual and others and the environment
- Influenced by social learning theory and emphasises the role of learning in the development of personality
- classical conditioning, operant conditionaing, modelling
Basically - how environment shapes personality
In terms of social cognitive theories, what are the internal and external loci of control?
Internal world + external world = individual
This is Rotter’s theory of locus of control
Interal Locus Of Control:
You control your own destiny.
External Locus of Control:
Luck/fat/chance or others with power control your destiny
Learned helplessness
‘A sense of hopelessness in which an individual thinks they are unable to prevent bad things from happening’
What are the types of personality disorder?
