Test 3 Flashcards
Personality
A characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and
behaving that is unique to each individual, and remains relativelyconsistent over time and
situations
Trait
a characteristic of an individual, describing a habitual way of behaving, thinking, or feeling
Idiographic Approach
Creating detailed descriptions of a specific person’s unique personality characteristics in an attempt to understand that person better
Nomothetic Approach
Examining personality in large groups of people, with the aim of making generalizations about
personality structure
Psychodynamic theories of personality
Relate personality to the interplay of conflicting ‘energy dynamics’ within the individual
Why learn about Freud? legacy, famous, influential:
Started psychotherapy
Freud: some things we do have much evidence for
- Much of mental life is unconsciousness
- Some of his defense mechanisms have been empirically verified
How is the psychodynamic approach represented?
Iceberg metaphor
The mind consists of three structures:
the id, ego, and superego
Unconscious mind
- most of your mental life is unconscious
- A vast and powerful but inaccessible part of your consciousness, operating without your
conscious endorsement or will to influence and guide your behaviours
Conscious mind:
- Your current awareness, containing everything you are aware of right now
- We are not aware of the push-pull that we go through every day
Id
- Represents a collection of basic biological drives, including those directed toward sex and aggression
- operates on pleasure principle
What is id feuled by?
libido
Pleasure principle
do what feels good
Superego
- Comprised of our values and moral standards
- Internalized values telling us what we ought to do
If the ____ tells us to engage in acts of sex and aggression, but the _________ is telling us not to do things that are wrong, this produces a ________
id; superego; conflict
Ego
- The decision maker, frequently under tension,
trying to reconcile the opposing urges of the id
and superego - Do vs don’t
- must navigate reality
Reality principle
Can’t have everything you want because it’s
ultimately harmful for you
“personality”
emerges from the interplay of the id, superego, and ego
Anxiety
is produced when the components are
imbalanced (e.g., when the id and superego are in conflict)
Defense Mechanisms
Are unconscious strategies the Ego uses to keep the Id’s impulses out of conscious awareness and balance the competing demands of pleasure, reality, and morality
Process of defense mechanisms, wishes and desires:
- The Id wants its wishes to get into consciousness but the Ego is trying to keep them out
- When wishes threaten to pop into consciousness it creates anxiety
- Freud lists many defense mechanisms that the Ego uses against the Id’s wishes
- Defense mechanisms push those pesky wishes back into the unconscious where they
belong
Defense Mechanisms
- Denial
- Reaction formation
- Rationalization
- Repression
- Projection
- Displacement
- Identification
- Sublimation
Denial
- when people refuse to admit something unpleasant is happening, that they have a
problem, or that they are feeling a forbidden emotion - Protects self image and preserves illusion of
invulnerability
Reaction Formation
- Behaving in a way that is exactly the opposite
of one’s true feelings - Classic example: Expressing feelings of purity when experiencing unconscious feelings about sex
Rationalization
creating false but plausible excuses to justify
unacceptable feelings or
behaviours
Repression
Keeping distressing desires or wishes from
conscious awareness by burying it in the unconscious
Projection
seeing one’s own traits in other people, especially if seeing that threatening trait in
others helps the individual to avoid recognizing it in their self
Displacement
- Altering the target of one’s urges
- e.g. Angry at boss: come home and yell at children instead
from displacement comes the idea of ________
“catharisis”
* i.e., that one can reduce these anxieties by “working them out” on unrelated targets
* Not supported by research
Identification
- Alleviate concerns about self-worth by unconsciously assuming the characteristics of
another person - Can be good too!
- E.g., identification with one’s parents results in the formation of the superego
Sublimation
- Transforming unacceptable impulses into
socially acceptable or even pro-social alternatives - e.g., Aggressive impulses channeled into sports – or there are obvious careers like surgeon, butcher, dentist
Another example of sublimation
- Could have lustful feelings that are channeled into a work of art with subtle or not-so-subtle erotic or phallic undertones…
In a review, Baumeister, Dale &Sommer (1998) proposed a slightly modified idea:
- Suggest that defense mechanisms protect self-esteem – Keeps us feeling good about ourselves
- They don’t prevent aggressive or sexual urges that violate one’s standards
- The authors suggested that when viewed this way, there is empirical evidence for reaction formation and projection
- But NOT for displacement and sublimation
Projection
Attributing qualities you (or fear you) possess to others
False consensus effect
Overestimating how many people share your
traits, opinions, preferences, and motivations (similar to projection)
How does personality develop?
Freud had the idea that many of the problems that people have with their personalities (e.g., the defense mechanisms they particularly like to employ) are due to unresolved issues from growing up
Stage Theory of Psychosexual Development
- Freud believed that childhood could be divided into a series of important stages that focused on sexual energy, which he called “libido”
- At each developmental stage, the libido manifests in particular areas of the body, characterized by certain psychological conflicts that need to be resolved
- The goal is to transition from one stage to the next, and in order to do so, you need to resolve the psychological conflict of that stage
Freud’s psychosexual stages
- A series of different forms of sexual energy into which personality develops as the child matures
- Stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital
- Conflict and anxiety at each stage that must be resolved or will become fixated at that level
A physical focus
where the child’s energy is concentrated and their gratification obtained
A psychological theme
- this is related to both the physical focus and the demands being made on the child by the outside world as he/she develops
- For each stage, there can be two extremes in psychological reaction: either doing too much or not enough of what is ideal
Am adult character type
in the first three stages this adult character type is one that is related to being fixated or stuck at that stage
Fixation
a pre-occupation with obtaining the pleasure associated with a particular stage
Oral Stage
- Timeframe: 0-18 months of age
- Physical pleasure focus: Actions of the mouth—Sucking, chewing, swallowing
- Psychological theme: basic dependence & trust
Oral Stage
- Timeframe: 0-18 months of age
- Physical pleasure focus: Actions of the mouth—Sucking, chewing, swallowing
- Psychological theme: basic dependence & trust
orally-fixated person
The infant who is neglected (insufficiently fed) or who is over- protected (over-fed) in the course of being nursed
Oral Sadistic
A neglected baby will be mistrustful of others
->
envy (wanting more), manipulation of others (using the mouth to hurt), and suspiciousness
Oral Dependent
While a coddled or over-fulfilled baby will find it hard to cope with a world that can’t meet all its demands
->
dependence, indulgence, entitlement, immaturity
Anal Stage
- Timeframe: 18-36 months of age
- Physical: Bowel elimination & control
- Psychological: sense of control & competence
Anal personality types
- is caused if the anal stage is improperly resolved
- Which type depends, in part, upon whether parents were too strict or too lenient with toilet
training and other issues of impulse control
Anal retentive
- need too much control “holding in”
- Creates rigidity, inflexibility, stinginess: An obsession with cleanliness, order and control
Anal Expulsive
Problem with “letting it out” - sloppiness and/or a general disregard for order
Phallic Stage
- Timeframe: 3-6 years of age
- Physical: curiosity about one’s own body and others bodies (parents, siblings peers)
- Psychological: Stage is necessary for moral identity and superego formation—identification with parents; internalization of parents values
Penis Envy
- Children learn differences between boys and girls, start to ask where babies come from
- for girls “That thing seems great, why don’t I have one?”
- Girls redirect their sexual interest to their fathers, and then to men in general, because having a child with a man provides the girl with a penis
Castration Anxiety
- Children learn differences between boys and girls, start to ask where babies come from
- for boys “she doesn’t have one? how did she
lose it? OMG.” - a big part of resolving the oedipus complex
- Boys are distressed that their mother doesn’t have a penis and assume that their father cut it off
- They fear that their father will cut off their penis too
Oedipus complex
- The critical psychological conflict in the phallic stage
- According to Freud, Children develop sexual feelings for the opposite sex parent at this stage and feel some hostility to the same-sex parent
Phallic character in men
someone who is vain or over-ambitious – they continue to be too focused on their self and
self-pleasure
Phallic character in women
someone who is overly dominant over men or unusually seductive – argued to be rooted in
continued penis envy
Latent Period
- Timeframe: From age 6 until puberty
- The sexual and aggressive drives are less active and there is little in the way of psychosexual conflict
- Period of relative calm
- Cooties!
Genital period
- Timeframe: From puberty onwards
- Physical focus is on the genitals and partnered intercourse
- Adult sexual experiences, focused on other people
The psychological theme
- maturity and creation of life
- Not just about reproduction, but also about intellectual and artistic creativity (the products of sublimated libido)
The psychological theme
- maturity and creation of life
- Not just about reproduction, but also about intellectual and artistic creativity (the products of sublimated libido)
The genital personality is not fixated at an earlier stage
- This is the person who has worked it all out
- This person is psychologically well-adjusted and balanced
- According to Freud to achieve this state you need to have a balance of both love and work
Phrenology
- Franz Joseph Gall thought bumps on the head = IQ
- Gall focused his attention upon the detailed configuration of the human head
- Gall slowly increased the number of areas he attributed to specific localizations of cerebral functions which he thought were indicative of the underlying attributes of the human personality
Based in Carl Jung’s writings
he argued that people have preferences about how they use their mental capacities
Jung suggested we are all different types of
- Introverts vs. Extroverts
- Perceivers vs. Sensors
- Thinkers vs. Feelers
- People who prefer judging or intuition
A test is reliable if:
it produces the same results from different
sources
Why are MBTI scores unreliable
- As many as three-quarters of test takers
get a different personality type when tested a second time - Partly because the test assigns you to one type or the other, but people don’t work that way; traits are normally distributed
A test is valid if:
it predicts outcomes that matter
is it really the case that you either like thinking or feeling
No. People engage in both thinking and feeling
The four scales used un MBTI do have some correlation with four of the Big personality traits, But….
the test is missing a major component of personality: Negative emotionality or neuroticism
What are the big five personality traits?
“OCEAN”
* Openness
* Conscientiousness
* Extroversion
* Agreeableness
* Neuroticism
Forer effect
- The tendency to see ourselves in vague or general statements
- sometimes called the Barnum effect
Why is Myers-Briggs popular?
- Offers simplistic answers (“you’re this type”)
- Descriptions are vague, hard to argue with
- Results are usually positive: People like being told they’re outgoing, idealistic, thinkers, feelers
Gordon Allport
one of the most influential psychologists in the empirical study of personality
* tailed nearly 18,000 english words that could be used to describe an individuals physical and physiological attributes
Personality trait
A person’s habitual patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving
* Example: Being Shy
Central traits
aspects of personality that reflect a characteristic way of behaving, dealing with others, and reacting to new situations