Personality Unit 10 (X) Flashcards
Personality
-An individual’s unique pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that persist over time and across situations
Sigmund Freud
- Father of psychoanalysis
- Started as a medical doctor
- Had patients with physical ailments he could not find a physical cause for
- Maybe physical problems= manifestation of unaware occurrences
- Leads to study of the unconscious mind
Unconscious mind
- Reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories
- Higher mind= tip of iceberg= conscious
- Thoughts we are aware of
- Iceberg under water= unconscious mind
- Sexual urges, largest driving factor
- Higher mind= tip of iceberg= conscious
Methods of Psychoanalysis
- Free association
- Hypnosis
- Dream Analysis
Free association
- Individual freely responds to stimuli
- 1st thing that comes to mind w/ word or picture
Hypnosis
- Way to get unconscious mind to forefront
- Doesn’t work
Dream analysis
- Best method
- Have someone report dream and interpret them
Personality Structures
- Concept about different elements involved in personality
- Id, Ego, Superego
Id
- Part of mind, purely unconscious
- Selfish
- Driven by whatever happens in the present (Pleasure principle)
- Motivated by aggressive, carnal tendencies
- Part of personality that wants what it wants now (present oriented)
- Impulsive (doesn’t think about consequences)
- Truest self is what the Id wants
- Most people= Id driven
Ego
- Mediator
- Contemplates what the Id wants, takes input from the superego, and makes a decision that is best for the real world
- Operates on the reality principle
- We live in the real word= consequences
- Compromises (is there a way I can act this out?)
Superego
- Ideal principle
- All internalized values and ideals (uptight)
- Sense of pride when we do what is right
- Doesn’t listen to Id (always in conflict)
Id, ego, and superego at work
- At work all the time
- Ego= under constant stress (taking both sides)
- All work done unconsciously
- Decision= conscious
- Some people= more id driven, superego driven, or balanced (ego)
Fixation
- Experiences in each psychosexual stage shape development (determine adulthood)
- Too much/too little gratification at a certain stage= some sexual energy becomes tied in that stage
- Def: Partial or complete halt in the individual’s psychosexual development
Oral Stage
- Birth–>18 months
- Pleasure comes from sucking, biting, chewing, swallowing
- Too much: overly optimistic, gullible, dependent adults
- Too little: pessimistic, sarcastic, argumentative, hostile adults
Anal Stage
- 18 months–> 3.5 years
- Primary source of sexual pleasure shifts from mouth to anus
- Toilet training occurs
- Too strict= anal retentive
- Obstinate, stingy, excessively orderly
Phallic Stage
- After age 3
- Discovers genitals
- Develop a preference for parent of opposite sex, jealous of same sex parent (Oedipus/Electra complex)
- Resolved by identifying w/ same sex parent
- Living through their parent and adopting their values
- Resolved by identifying w/ same sex parent
- Fixation: vanity, egotism or low self-esteem, shyness, worthlessness
Phallic Stage Problems
- Castration anxiety= fear of father’s actions for desiring mother
- Penis envy= feeling of inferiority, anger at mother for her apparent cassation due to desiring father
Latency Period
- Appears to have no interest in opposite sex
- Ages 5/6–> 12/13
- Boys hang with boys, girls with girls
Genital Stage
- At puberty
- Sexual impulses reawaken
- Gratification–> mature sexuality, sense of responsibility, caring for others
- How to relate to others, caring, empathy
Critics of Freud
- Some say he is too male-centric
- Developed theory with men in mind, added women as afterthought
- Questions whether genders developed along same lines
Defense Mechanism
- How ego protects against anxiety
- Anxiety is the product of the inner war between id and superego
- Allow the ego to reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality
Repression
- Banishes troublesome things from consciousness
- Repressed things seep out in dream symbols and slip of the tongue
Regression
-Retreats to an earlier, more infantile stage of development
Ex: 1st day of college–> want mom
Reaction Formation
- Ego unconsciously switches impulses into their opposites
- People may express feelings that are opposite of their anxiety- arousing unconscious feelings
- Ex: I hate him–> I love him
Stockholm Syndrome
- Phenomenon where kidnapped victim or hostage “falls in love” with the feared and hated person who has complete power over them
- Ex of Reaction formation
Projection
- Disguises threatening impulses by attributing them to others
- Ex: Projecting “he doesn’t trust me” to “I don’t trust him”
Rationalization
- Unconsciously generate self-justifying explanations to hide from ourselves the real reasons for our actions
- Ex: alcoholics say they drink w/ friends to be sociable
Displacement
- Diverts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable/ less threatening object or person, redirecting anger to safer outlet
- Ex: angry at parent, take it out on sibling
Denial
- People refuse to believe or perceive painful realities
- Ex: denying evidence that spouse is cheating on you
NeoFreudians (How it agreed with Freud)
- Psychodynamic got it’s start w/ this movement
- Accepted Freud’s basic ideas
- Id, ego, superego= at work
- Unconscious (anxiety, defense mechanisms)
- Personality shaped by childhood
NeoFreudians (How they differed from Freud)
- Emphasis on conscious mind’s role in interpreting experience and in coping with the environment
- Doubted that sex and aggression were all consuming motivation (too negative/ limiting)
Alfred Adler
- Childhood social tensions are crucial for personality formation
- Inferiority complex: behavior driven by efforts to conquer childhood feelings of inferiority
- Strive for superiority and power
- Neofreudian
Karen Horney
- Emphasized childhood social tensions
- Challenged Freud on the idea that women have weak superegos and suffer from penis envy (Freud= too male-centric)
- Men have “womb envy”
- Real self vs ideal self
- Real personality= contact of the two
- Created textbook: Feminine Psychology
- Neofreudian
Carl Jung
- Turned on Freud (disciple turned decenter)
- Less emphasis on social influences
- Unconscious exerts a powerful influence
- Collective Unconscious: Shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history
- Explains why some themes (archetypes) are universal (Mother earth)
- Neofreudian and Trait Theorist
- Personality types:
- Extraversion vs Introversion
- Sensing or intuition
- Thinking or feeling
- Judging or Perceiving
NeoFreudians/ Psychodynamic: How they assess unconscious processes
- Projective tests: personality test that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics
- Individual’s response has to be interpreted by analyst
- individual does not know their own personality, has to be interpreted for them
- Ex: TAT (Thematic Apperception Test)
- Story based on what u see
- Rorschach Inkblot Test (What do you see?)
- Individual’s response has to be interpreted by analyst
Humanistic Psychology
- Psychological perspective
- Potential of healthy people
- How we meet our needs for love and acceptance
Freud vs Humanistic Perspective
- Freud focused on sick and problems
- Humanistic disagreed (called people clients)
- Believed in self-determination, self-realization
- Did self-reports of who you are instead of scientific observation
- Humanistic disagreed (called people clients)
Abraham Maslow
- Self-actualization: the motivation to fulfill one’s full potential
- Studied healthy, creation people (self-actualized individual’s)
Self-actualized people
- Shared traits
- Self-aware, self-accepting
- Open and spontaneous
- Loving and caring
- Ex: Lincoln, Ghandi, Roosevelt, Jefferson
Carl Rogers
- People are inherently good
- Like seeds
- Need a growth promoting climate to grow well and good
- Like seeds
Growth Promoting Climate is…
- Genuine
- Accepting
- Empathetic
Genuine
- Nurtures growth by:
- Open w/ feelings
- Transparent
- Self-disclosing
- Drops the façade
Acceptance
- We nurture growth by:
- Offering unconditional positive regard
- An attitude of total acceptance toward another person (acknowledging persons worth and value)
- Found in marriage, intimate friendships, close families
- Offering unconditional positive regard
Empathy
- We nurture growth by:
- Share and mirror another’s feelings and reflect our meanings
Self-Concept
- All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question “Who am I”
- Central feature of personality in Humanistic Perspective
- Positive or negative self concept can lead to positive or negative world view respectively
Humanistic Perspective Assessments
- Self-concept questionnaires
- Ideal vs Real self
- Interviews and conversations are better indicators
- Standardized questionnaires are depersonalizing
Trait
-Characteristic pattern of behavior, or a disposition to feel and act
Allport
- Anti-psychoanalysis (Trait theorist)
- Description over explanation
- Counter trait-words in dictionary (over 18,000)
- Wanted to find a way to talk about personality in a meaningful way (Factor Analysis)
Factor Analysis
- A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items on a test
- Condenses clusters into basic, identifiable traits
Hans and Sybil Eysenck
- Variation can be reduced to 2-3 dimensions
- Believed dimensions to be genetically influenced
- Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
MBTI
- Based off Jung’s types
- Isabel Briggs Myers and Kathleen Briggs
- 4 Dichotomies
- Not used as a research instrument
- Counseling, leadership training, team development
MMPI
- Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory
- Assess abnormal personality tendencies rather than normal personality traits
- Good way of developing a personal inventory
- Created by Starke Hathaway
- Most widely used
- Empirically derived
- Large pool of items, selected those which different in diagnostic groups
- Assessed 10 clinical scales (depressive tendencies, masculine/feminine etc)
- True or false questions
- Used in court cases and government jobs
MMPI’s Objectivity
- Scoring
- Lie scales
- Measures of way rest is instructed to incorporate people who lie
- Ex: I never lie (true or false) answer= meaningless
- Questions have difficult wording
- Measures of way rest is instructed to incorporate people who lie
McCrae and Costa
The Big 5
- Conscientious (organized?)
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism (calm or no)
- Open to experience (open or close minded)
- Extraversion (introvert or extrovert)
- Shows where we fall on 5 dimensions- Best approximation of basic trait dimensions
Stability of the Big Five
- Quite stable through adulthood and universal
- CA rise a bit during early/ middle adulthood (C- 20s, A 30-60s)
- NOE lowers
Biology and Personality
- Extraverts seek stimulation because their normal brain arousal is relatively low
- PET scan: frontal lobe (behavior inhibition)= les active in Extraverts than introverts
- Dopamine and its related neural activity= higher in Extraverts
- Genes define our personality
- Shyness and inhibition in children= autonomic NS reactivity
- Respond to stress w/ greater anxiety and inhibition
- Shyness and inhibition in children= autonomic NS reactivity
Personality Inventories
- Longer questionnaires that cover a wide range of feelings and behaviors
- Assess several traits and once
- Ex: MMPI
- Scored objectively (doesn’t guarantee validity)
- Lie scales
How Heritable are the Big 5?
- Extent to which individual differences attributed to genes
- Varies with the diversity of people studied
- 50% in each dimension
- Genetic influences are similar in different nations
- Many genes combine to influence traits
Do the Big 5 Predict our actual behavior?
- Yes
- Examples:
- Shy introverts are more likely than extroverts to prefer communicating by email than face to face
- Conscientious people earn higher high school and university grades
Person-Situation Controversy
- Our behavior is influenced by the interaction of our inner disposition with our environment
- Look for persistent traits across time and situations
- Traits stabilize as we get older
- Interests, careers, and relationships may change
- Traits= socially significant (influence health, thinking, job performance)
- Behavior: WE DO NOT ACT WITH PREDICABLE CONSISTENCY
- Mischel: college students conscientiousness= varied on occasion
- Average happiness, outgoingness, or carelessness over many situations= predictable (Mehl: Extraverts talk more)
Genetically influenced personality traits
- Music preferences
- Bedroom and office cleanliness
- Personal websites/ online profiles
- Electronic communication
Behavior and Social Cues
- Social cues needed in unfamiliar situations to know how to act
- Informal situations: behavior is consistent
Psychosexual Stages
- The childhood stages of development
- Oral
- Anal
- Phallic
- Latency
- Genital
- During which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
Oedipus Complex
-According to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father
Identification
-The process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos
Psychodynamic Theories
- Modern-day approaches that view personality as a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences
- Same as NeoFreudian psych
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
-A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up and ambitious scenes
Rorschach Inkblot Test
- The most widely used projective test
- A set of 10 inkblots designed by Hermann Rorschach
- Seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots
False Consensus Effect
-The tendency to over-estimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and our behaviors
Terror-Management Theory
- A theory of death-related anxiety
- Explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death
Empirically Derived Test
- A test (Such as MMPI)
- Developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups
Social Cognitive Perspective
- Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social (situational) context
- Personality= product of biopsychosocial system
Reciprocal Determinism
- The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment
- Ex: TV viewing habits (past behavior) influences viewing preferences (internal factor), which influences how TV (environmental factors) affect current behavior
Reciprocal Determinism examples
- Different people choose different environments
- Choose dif activities based on interests, they shape u - Our personalities shape how we interpret and react to events
- How we deal with things - Our personalities help create situations to which we react
- Self-fulfilling prophecy–> Expectations make things come true
Biopsychosocial Approach in Personality
- Biology:
- Genetically determined temperament
- Autonomic NS reactivity
- Brain activity
- Psychology:
- Learned responses
- Unconscious thought processes
- Expectations and Interpretations
- Social-Cultural:
- Childhood experiences
- Influence of the situation
- Cultural expectations
- Shows that people= complex systems
- Personality should reflect this
Optimism vs Pessimism
- Can be a way to assess how helpless or effective you feel
- Optimism= linked to higher health
- ties into our locus of control
Excessive Optimism
- Blinds us to risks
-Especially adolescents (false sense of invincibility)
-Ex: texting and driving (accident won’t happen to me) - Blind to incompetence
-In order to judge properly our performance on a task, we need to be competent in it
Ex: students who score the worst on tests believed they scored in the top half
-Lack of competence-> inability to judge properly what we don’t know
-Why evaluation from others= crucial
Self-Control
- The ability to control impulses and delay gratification
- Marshmallow test
- As a child predicts:
- Good social adjustment
- Better grades
- Social success
Benefits of Personal Control
-Under conditions of personal freedom and empowerment, people thrive
Examples:
-Ability to personalize workspace–> higher engagement in work
-Citizens of democracies–> happier
-Prisoners allowed to move furniture–> higher morale
-Reason why tests have “pick 5 out of 10”
-Do better because in control
Too Much Control
- Sometimes we have too many options (excess of freedom)
- Can be overwhelming/ think too much about finding an answer
- Ex: people= more likely to buy jam when given 6 choices instead of 30
Self
- In contemporary psych, assumed to be the center of personality
- The organizer of thoughts, feelings, and actions
Hazel Markus & Possible Selves
- The ideal selves we would like to become, we could become, and are afraid of becoming
- Give us:
- Specific goals
- Motivation and energy
- Dreams can lead to achievement
Spotlight Effect
-Thomas Gilovich
-Over-estimating others’ noticing and evaluating of our appearance, performance, and blunders
-Experiment:
-Student wore embarrassing shirt in front of peers, estimated 50% of people would notice
-23% noticed
Makes us overestimate when people notice:
-appearance
-nerves, irritation, attraction
-Variability
-Noticeable blunder
Self-Esteem
- One’s feeling of high or low self-worth
- Types:
- Defensive
- Secure
Outcomes of High Self-Esteem
- Better sleep
- Conform less
- Persevere
- Less shy, anxious, lonely
- Happier
- Predicts achievement
- Employment, salary, job satisfaction
Experimentation with Self-Esteem
- Deflate self-image, people become critical of others
- Heightened racial prejudice
Self-Serving Bias
- Readiness to perceive oneself favorably
- Success is due to internal factors, failure is due to external factors
- Ex: People accept more responsibility for good deeds than bad
- Professors see themselves as better than average (90%)
Low Self-Esteem with a Self-Serving Bias
- Self-criticism:
- Elicits reassurance
- Preps for failure
- Helps us learn from our mistakes
- Pertains to old self
Defensive Self-Esteem
- Fragile
- Failures and criticisms feel threatening
- Linked with aggression and antisocial behavior
Secure Self-Esteem
- Studier
- Doesn’t rely on external evaluations
- Achieved by looking beyond the self
Behavioral Approach
- In personality theory
- Perspective focuses on the effects of learning on our personality development
Positive Pyschology
- The scientific study of optimal human functioning
- Aims to discover and promote strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive
Self-Efficacy
-One’s sense of competence and effectiveness
Narcissism
-Excessive self-love and self-absorption
Individualism
- Giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals
- Defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications
Collectivism
-Giving priority to the goals of one’s group (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly
Unconscious Mind Includes
- Seething passions and repressive censoring
- Shemas (automatically control our perceptions and interpretations)
- Priming of stimuli unconsciously
- Right hemi activity that enables left hand to carry out instruction
- Implicit memories, even in people with amnesia
- Emotions that activate instantly
- Self-concept and stereotypes that influence the way we see ourselves
