Personality Processes Part One Flashcards
What is the Personality processes?
the mechanisms that unfold over time to produce the effects of personality traits; a sequence of steps through which a personality trait produces an outcome
What do the personality processes include
Includes perception, thought, motivation, and emotion
Understanding these will help us understand someone’s personality
What is personality (Noun, Verb or Adjective)
VERB!!!!
The Historical Roots of Research Into Personality Processes : LEARNING
but ignoring cognition is too limited
Social Learning
focused on cognitive processes such as interpretation, evaluation, and decision making
Phenomenology:
emphasizes importance of the way an individual thinks about the world for shaping personality and behavior
Psychoanalysis
levels of consciousness and the need for compromise
Biological Approach
how representations of the self may be organized in the brain
Trait Approach
people have different traits based on different thoughts, feelings, and desires
What is an example of how People are predisposed to perceive the world in different ways
Example: dominant people are more sensitive o visual displays on the vertical dimension than on the horizontal dimensions
Priming
activation of a concept or idea by repeatedly perceiving it or thinking about it; affects speed at which concepts come to mind; helps to explain differences in perception
Chronic Accessibility
the tendency of an idea or concept to come easily to mind
Perception is Part of our Personalities…
- -May come from evolution, temperament, or experience; Experience: probably the biggest influence; based on importance of traits to others whom one is around frequently (e.g., parents)
- -Different people have a predisposition to be primed for certain concepts
Rejection Sensitivity:
People are especially aware of suggestions of impending rejection.
- —Affects interpretation of ambiguous signals
- —Often creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: because high rejection sensitive people respond to ambiguous cues with anxiety and even panic
- —-Can result in seemingly inconsistent behavior: depending on whether or not cues to rejection are present
Aggression
related to the tendency to perceive others as having hostile intentions or as a threat; memory may be related to hostile themes for hostile people (but this automatic perception could be overcome if someone slows down and thinks before responding)
Perceptual Defense
screening out information that might make the individual anxious or uncomfortable
–Similar to psychoanalytic defense mechanisms
What are physiological reactions and what do they do?
People can have physiological reactions to emotionally charged words before they are consciously aware of them: when presented very briefly, people started sweating before they said they could see the words
Implication
We might be able to avoid conscious awareness of things we find threatening.
Why do some people tend to see exactly what they fear most? (shy and social rejection)
Possible answers: their defense mechanisms don’t work well enough so they perceive the threatening stimuli consciously; people differ in the degree to which they are perceptually vigilant vs. defensive
What is Thought
Determines many, but not all, actions Not all thinking is conscious Consciousness: whatever the individual has in mind at the moment Short-term memory (STM) Limited capacity: 7 ± 2 chunks
What is STM and thinking
Chunking can work with ideas
Funder’s Fifth Law: the purpose of education is to assemble new chunks
STM is the only part of the mind with a limited capacity
What are constructs and chunks?
similar ideas, and are both based on experience and culture.
A person’s unique set of constructs or chunks influences how they think about the world
Consciousness and psychological health:
don’t fill up consciousness with the wrong things (negative thoughts about worries); instead, use consciousness to appreciate the good things in life and for constructive planning