Personality theory

Question 1

What are some of the general premises and assumptions of interpersonal personality theories?

Answer 1

1. Personality is highly interpersonal: can only be described in relation to others
2. Psychological needs (e.g. Murray, Adler, Maslow) tend to have a clear interpersonal emphasis
3. Expression & perception of one’s personality play an important role in the quality of relationships
4. Parental styles & peer influences are central to personality development
5. Personality development is based on interactions between the concept of the self and the concept of others
6. Persona: The “masks” worn when one publicly expresses their personality

Question 2

Who was Harry Stack Sullivan?

Answer 2

• Developed the 1st systematic personality theory (entirely interpersonal): “Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of recurrent interpersonal situations, which characterise a human life”
  
  • Personality has meaning only in how people interact with each other
  • Parents and interpersonal relationships shape personality
  • Variability is due to changing social situations
• Anxiety: central to self and development
  
  • Theorum of escape: we tend to resist anxiety provoking situations
  • Theorum of reciprocal emotions: other people influence our emotions and vice versa
• Personifications = mental prototypes (cognitive categories) that influence the perceptions of self/others etc:
  
  • Good-me, Bad-me and Not-me

Question 3

Who was Timothy Leary and what was his contribution personality theory?

Answer 3

• Timothy Leary (1920-96): interpersonal personality theorist:
  
  • Interpersonal behaviour can be represented on 2 othogonal dimensions
  • A healthy balance on these dimensions leads to personal adjustment
• Affiliation vs Hostility: aka Love vs. Hate or Communion.
  
  • Nurturance, warmth, solidarity, dissociation, remoteness, coldness
• Power vs Submission: (aka Dominance vs. Submission or Agency)
  
  • Dominant, independence, status-driven, passivity, weakness, submission

Question 4

Who was Gerry Wiggins and what was his interpersonal circumplex?

Answer 4

• Gerry Wiggins: Legacy of Luis Guttman (mathematician).
  
  • Used Leary et al.s dimensions to mathematicall generate a circular representation of personality
  • Further subdivided in eight major octants:
  • Scores further away from the centre indicate dominant, intense & rigid personality traits - more likely to have mental disorders

Question 5

What is attachment theory?

Answer 5

• Developed by Ainsworth and Bowlby: Attachment = the tendency of humans to form strong affectional bonds to differentiated and preferred others
  
  • Attachment is a modulator of anxiety: increased anxiety = more attachment-based behaviour.
  • Early attachment shapes one’s concept of the self as either worthy or unworthy, and of the others as reliable or unreliable
  • Frames future expectations about others and interpreting others’ behaviour and motives
• Adult Attachment styles: self-schemata, which represent the measure of the quality of the attachment bond
  
  • Hazan & Shaver: adult attachment is primarily viewed through romantic love (similar to child-caregiver attachement- touching/babytalk)

Question 6

What is Bartholemews model of attachment styles?

Answer 6

• Bartholemew proposed 4-style model developed from Hazan & Shaver’s typology and Ainsworth/Bowlby’s model of the self and the other.
• 2-measures: Dependence (model of self) and Avoidance (model of other)
  
  • Secure: (low/low) People comfortable with intimacy and autonomy
  • Preoccupied: (low A high D) strives for self acceptance
  • Fearful: (high A high D) avoids close relationships
  • Dismissing: (high A low D) maintains independence/invulnerability
• Extended by Brennan, Shaver & Tobey: Represented as a two-dimensional higher structure
  
  • Anxiety: need for approval
  • Avoidance: discomfort with closeness

Question 7

What are some issues with attachment styles?

Answer 7

• Categories or dimensions?
• Stability over time: possible changes in response to events, fluctuations, healthy individuals more likely to adapt.
• Attachment and personality: Attachment theory offers both descriptive and interactive explanations of emergence and stability of personality
  
  • Insecure attachment linked to N, P, introversion (N reduces with stable relationships)
  • Attachment has genetic markers similar to personality
• Attachment injury: Specific acts of injury
• Styles and traits: individual centred approach
• Psychopathy: Insecure attachments have been linked to anxiety, mood disorders, BPD, other PDs.
  
  • Early attachment styles in families can be catalytic in development

Question 8

What is the difference between natural selection and sexual selection?

Answer 8

• Natural Selection: Variation in a species is largely heritable, competition for resources means that adaptive individuals produce more offspring
  
  • Biological fitness= offspring, Social fitness=social impact
  • Adaptations are functional, domain specific and numerous (various)
• Sexual Selection: Result of competition for mates (not resources). Adaptive traits = preferred by opposite sex. Buss compiled traits in order of preference:
  
  • Female: Ambition, high-status job, good health
  • Male: Lustrous hair, smooth skin, clear eyes
  • Both: healthy, loving, kind.
• Buss et al. Sexual Strategy Theory: Mating strategies vary according to sex and relationship sought (short/long term)
  
  • 3 strategies: Competitor derogation, deception/selfpromotion, coercion

Question 9

What is Buss’ theory of personality and adaptation?

Answer 9

• Sought theory of personality based on fundamental, nonarbitary principles.
• Evolutionary theory provides framework for personality through
  
  • Understanding goals of humans,
  • Describing mechanisms evolved to meet goals,
  • Identifing individual differences in these mechanisms.
• (Certain) Traits have evolved to help with human survival.
  
  • Eg low N, activity/socialisation (E), cooperation (low P), knowledge/curiousity (O).
• Dysfunctional traits are the result of context failure:
  
  • ie activation of adaptive traits in response to the wrong situations.
  • eg drugs signall resource gain (fitness) but is illusory

Question 10

What is the k-factor in evolutionary personality theories?

Answer 10

• K-factor = ratio of parental investment over mating effort.
  
  • In most animals this is binary, and sexually dimorphic.
  • Eg Coolidge effect: males renew sexual interest when presented with new available partners.
• Kin-Selection: Helping close relatives to survive can result in an increase in inclusive fitness
  
  • Direct fitness = viable offspring, Indirect fitness = viable relatives
• Relation to personality:
  
  • High investment/low effort: higher childhood attachment, lower machiavellianism, lower risk-taking
  • Low investment/High effort: Opposite of above, plus medium relationship to P and small relationship to N

Question 11

What is Gosling’s argument for study of personality in animals?

Answer 11

• If personality is evolutionarily driven, it shouldn’t be exclusive to humans
  
  • Emotional, motivational and behavioural traits are evident in many other species.
  • Suggests Big-5 but problems with language based approach.
• Within species variation helps uncover nature of evolution of traits,
• Between species variation helps examine adaptation of particular traits.
  
  • ie shared pressures led to same trait.

Question 12

What are some methods and results of animal personality research?

Answer 12

• Coding: how animals respond to particular behavioural tests (can’t directly assess personality)
  
  • States (time spent doing X) vs events (# of occurances of X)
  • Eg. Three personality dimensions found in octopuses: activity, reactivity and avoidance
• Ratings: by expert observers
  
  • eg 5 dimensions in hyenas: assertiveness, excitability, aggreeableness with humans, sociability, curiousity.
• Presence of traits (and facets) vary at ‘evolutionary level’
  
  • Most fundamental trait = anxiety.
  • Higher end of spectrum = openness, conscientiousness

Question 13

What are some considerations in animal personality research?

Answer 13

• Validity: especially predictive validity is quite high. Eg. sociability in young rhesus monkeys predicted future antagonism.
• Reliability: very big problem. Inter-observer reliability extremely low, within subjects (same observer new animal) also pretty low. Several reasons:
  
  • Acquaintance with animal/familiarity
  • Age of animal (stability of personality development)
  • Differential interactions
  • Personality-based sampling
  • Trait assessibility in different species (shy animals hide)
• Anthropomorphism: projecting human characteristics. Problems:
  
  • Humans unique language and social structure (interpersonal models)
  • Humans advanced physiology (psychobiological models)

Question 14

What are some general premises and patterns in the relationship between personality and health?

Answer 14

• Personality plays a role in health-related behaviours: short term vs long term effect differences
• Individual differences in how people respond to and cope with stressful and traumatic experiences
  
  • Coping styles: problem-, emotion-, avoidance-focussed
• Known Patterns:
  
  • Links between emotional disorders and high N, low E
  • Link between C and life expectancy
  • Associations between personality factors and risky behaviours (drugs, unsafe driving, risky sex)

Question 15

What are the four main theoretical models of the health/personality link?

Answer 15

• Constitutional Risk Factor Model: aka the etiologic model.
  
  • Both personality and health are influenced by biology. Personality is an independent risk factor. IDs are largely genetic.
  • eg sensation seeking as consititional risk factor
• Illness Behaviour Model: aka health process model
  
  • Healthy behaviours mediate personalite-disease link. Behaviour + personality have predictable associations.
  • Emphasises role of personal choice/responsibility
• Stress Moderation-Mediation Model: personality mediates or moderates impact of stress on health outcomes.
• Stress Generation Model: tendancy of some people to make things more stressful for themselves. Avoid “wasting time”

Question 16

Name the four causal models in the picture:

Answer 16

Question 17

What are the different ‘personality types’ in health psychology?

Answer 17

• Type A: Achievement oriented (type B is opposite). Intense, high levels of trait aggression/hostility, need for recognition, alertness.
  
  • Proneness to cardiovascular disease
  • Models: uncontrollability (need for control), self-evaluation (persuit of high standards) and social learning (need to prove oneself)
• Type C: Emotionally contained people. History of early loss, stress prone, disrupted social support, sense of hopelessness
  
  • Affects cancer proneness and increases disease progression
• Type D: Distress-Prone. Negative, affect, socially inhibited, high interpersonal distress. High N + P, low E.
  
  • Up to 6x increase in risk of coronary heart disease.
• “Hardy” personality : hardiness= orientation toward self + world, protective resilent factor. Emphaisis on positive psychology.
  
  • 3 requirements: control (internal locus), commitment (sense of purpose), challenge (recognition of obstacles)

Question 18

What are some of the issues/concerns with the study of heath and psychology?

Answer 18

• Categorical vs continuous health variable:
• Cross sectional vs longitudinal changes: temporal antecedance
• Biases in self reporting of illness:
  
  • Frequency vs Intensity: Naiive realism = mistaken belief that self reports are accurate
  • Effects of Neuroticism:
    
    • Psychosomatic hypothesis: N exaggerates problems
    • Disability hypothesis: illness causes higher N
    • Symptom perception hypothesis: N increases attention to cues
• Optimism vs pessimism:
  
  • Defensive pessimism: pessimism motivates anxiety over negative outcomes
  • Naiive optimism: High E low N underestimating likelihood of bad outcome

Question 19

What is Cloningers Tridimensional model of psychopathology?

Answer 19

• Also known as Temperament and Character model, is a classification towards healthy aspects of personality. Can be viewed as extension of Grays BIS/BAS
• Consists of 4 temperament factors and 3 character factors
  
  • Temperament= development of disorder (pathogenesity)
    
    • Biological biases in automatic responses to emotional stimuli
    • moderately heritable and stable through life
  • Character = specific type of disorder (pathoplasticity)
    
    • One’s understanding of themself in their world through insight learning and experience
    • Develop fully after temperament, not directly biological

Question 20

What are the 4 temperament and 3 character factors in Cloningers tridimensional model?

Answer 20

• Temperament factors: largely independent dimensions
  
  • Novelty Seeking: impulsiveness, excitability, behavioural activation in response to novel stimuli
    
    • Cluster B related, Dopamine influenced
  • Harm Avoidance: worry, shyness, fear of uncertainty, tendency to respond intensely to aversive stimuli
    
    • Cluster C related, Serotonin influenced
  • Reward Dependence: attachment, dependence, tendency to respond intensively to reward stimuli
    
    • Cluster A related, Norepinephrine influenced
  • Persistence: motivational temperament component, reflects IDs in 1st 3
• Character factors: Low self directedness and cooperativeness in all PDs
  
  • Self-directedness: ones concept of how autonomous one is (self esteem, integrity, leadership)
  • Cooperativeness: concept of how they fit into society (ethics, morality)
  • Self-transcendence: concept of unity and connection with universe

Question 21

What is Kernbergs model of levels of personality organisation?

Answer 21

Question 22

In what ways are personality factors related to psychopathology?

Answer 22

• 1. Personality factors are seen as vulnerability to the aetiology, development and manifestation of PDs (eg Kernbergs model, Eyseckian continuum)
  
  • Under extreme stress, normal traits may appear or become pathological
• 2. Traits exist in both clincial and non-clinical samples (eg anxiety)
  
  • Biology and heritability are the same for normal and abnormal traits
  • The same systems are responsible for normal traits/PDs
  • Elements of N, E, A and insecure attachment are consistent across PDs
• 3. Personality influences PD expression including
  
  • Persistence/long term stability of PDs
  • Symptom profile differences/heterogeneity
  • Response to treatment
  • meta-analysis both high and low ends of OCEAN affect PDs

Question 23

According to Millon, what factors influence dimensional differences between PDs and normal traits?

Answer 23

• 3 main cognitive/behavioural dimensional differences between PDs/normal
  
  • Rigidity/Inflexibility in behaviour and thought
  • Increased levels of habitual self-defeating behaviour
  • Structural instability and fragiliy of self, especially under stress
• 3 ecological/evolutionary dimensions of personality differentiation. All should exist to a balanced degree in normal individuals.
  
  • Aim of Existence (Pain-Pleasure polarity): life preservation (pain avoidance) vs life enhancement (pleasure seeking)
  • Modes of Adaptation (Passive-Active polarity): ecological accomodation vs ecological modification
  • Strategies of Replication (Self-Other polarity): reproductive nurturance (kfactor) vs reproductive propagation (r-strategy)

Question 24

What is the definition of a personality disorder?

Answer 24

• Enduring pattern of inner experience and behaviour that deviate markedly from the expectations of the individuals culture, are pervasive and inflexible.
• Deviance in 2 or more of the following areas:
  
  • Cognition: perception, interpretation, formation of images
  • Affect: range, intensity, appropriateness
  • Interpersonal functioning: relating to others, handling situations
  • Impulse control: impulses, gratification of needs
• General differential hypothesis:
  
  • Symptoms are not better accounted for by other clinical disorders, substance use or medical conditions.

Question 25

What are the common features of all PDs?

Answer 25

• Common features across PDs:
  
  • extreme deviations from specific cultural norms
  • onset in adolescence or early adulthood,
  • Stable across time and inflexible across situations
  • Considerable distress and impairment in functioning
• Common features according to the evolutionary perspective:
  
  • Inneffectiveness: suboptimal functioning in self-preservation, exological adaptation, and/or reproductivity
  • Uncooperativeness: frictional features lead to fitness costs

Question 26

What PDs are in Cluster A (Odd/Eccentric)?

Answer 26

• Symptoms similar to schizophrenia, high levels of introversion and psychoticism
• Paranoid: distrustful, suspicious, unforgiving
  
  • Optimal criterion: Suspect without sufficient basis that others are exploiting, harming or decieving them
• Schizoid: detached, restricted emotional range, anhedonia
  
  • Optimal criterion: neither desires nor enjoys close relationships, including family
• Schizotypal: cognitive disturbances, social anxiety, inappropriate affect
  
  • Optimal criterion: Odd thinking + speech, Odd behaviour/appearance
  • Most researched in cluster A, not in ICD (subclass of schizophrenia)

Question 27

What PDs are in Cluster B (dramatic/emotional)?

Answer 27

• Highly varied behaviours, high levels of trait impulsivity, BAS
• Antisocial (psychopaths): disregard/violate others rights, failure to conform
  
  • Optimal criterion: criminal, aggressive, impulsive, irresponsible behavior
• Borderline: interpersonal emotional instability, feelings of emptiness, suicidality. Border P and N.
  
  • OC: (unreasonable) expectations of meeting personal goals, and or maintaining close relations
• Histrionic: excessive emotionality, attention seeking, suggestible, nymphomania
  
  • OC: uncomfortable in situations where they arent centre of attention
• Narcissistic: grandiosity, need for admiration, interpersonally exploitative
  
  • OC: grandiose sense of self importance, need admiration, lack empathy.

Question 28

What PDs are in Cluster C (anxious/fearful)?

Answer 28

• High levels of insecure attachment traits, BIS. First 2 will probs be merged.
• Avoidant: social inhibition, fear of criticism, shame
  
  • Optimal criterion: avoids activities that involve significant interpersonal contact, fearing criticism, disaproval or rejection
• Dependent: submissive, clinging, fear of being alone, needs reassurance
  
  • OC: needs others to assume responsibility for most major areas of their lives
• Obsessive-Compulsive: perfectionism, preoccupied with details, NOT OCD
  
  • OC: shows perfectionism that interfers with task completion.
  • Note: not due to compulsion/fear, but high standards.

Question 29

What characteristics are on Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist?

Answer 29

Question 30

What is the prevalence and aetiology of PDs?

Answer 30

• Prevalence
  
  • Figures for PD prevalence vary wildly in the population (from 0.05% to 13%)
  • In clinical samples (more reliable) 25-40%
  • Problems: people with PDs aren’t reliable self reporters, and there can be sexist biases in diagnosis (less recently)
• Aetiology: Attentuated forms of mental disorders
  
  • Eysenckian model: Quantitative/qualitative exaggerations of normal variations
  • Psychobiology: Anomalies in neurotransmitters, brain structure, nervous system, genetic predispositions (particularly for BPD, APD, Schizotypy)
  • Non-Shared Environment: trauma, attachment, diseases, diet etc

Question 31

What are some of the major problems with classification and diagnosis of PDs?

Answer 31

• Problems with the catagorical (clinical) approach
  
  1. Not evidence based (cluster C is poorly defined) more of a heuristic device for descriptive purposes
  2. Diagnostic reliability (FA on combined symptoms gives apha as low as 0.1)
  3. Construct validity (Cluster A vs axis 1 common symtoms)
  4. Low agreement on abnormal/normal distinction
  5. Limits scientific enquiry (large N required, single genes studies)
  6. Commorbidity: greater dysfunction leads to > PDs diagnosed, 75-85% chance of multiple PDs, 50-80% BPD symptoms accounted for by axis1

Question 32

What are some problems with treatment and intervention for PDs?

Answer 32

• No clear evidence of effective therapies: Concentration for research is on clinical illnesses.
• PDs are egosynctonic: People with personality disorders see their behaviours as normal, as a part of who they are.
• PDs have an external locus of distress: People with PDs unlikely to see themselves as the cause of their distress
• Unlikely people with PDs will seek treatment, if they do they may cause problems during therapy

Question 33

What is the hybrid model of personality disorders?

Answer 33

• Alternative PD classification system- quasidimensional approach
• PD definition: PDs represent failure to develop a sense of self (identity and direction) and the capacity for interpersonal functioning (empathy and intimacy) that are adaptive in the context of developmental stage and culture.
  
  • ​can be partly (not exclusively) related to other disorders
  • impairments must be stable across time and context
  • impairment is traced to adolescence/early adulthood (dont diagnose kids)
• Specifier = trait responsible for heterogeneity but not in itself dysfunctional
• 6 PDs + 1 trait specific PD. Antisocial/psychopathic, avoidant, borderline, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive and schizotypal.

Question 34

What are the diagnostic criteria for PDs in the hybrid model?

Answer 34

• Criterion A: Levels of impairment/functioning across 4 dimensions (5 severity levels). Dimensions not independent.
  
  • Self: Identity (stability, regulation) and Direction (goals, reflection)
  • Interpersonal: Empathy and Intimacy (desire for, quality)
• Criterion B: 5 related personality domains and subfacets. Impairment in at least one domain and specific trait.
  
  • Negative affect, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition + Psychoticism
• Criterion C + D: Pervasiveness and stability
• Criterion E, F + G: differential diagnosis

Question 35

What is the Claridge model of schizotypal PD?

Answer 35