Test 3 Flashcards
What is personality?
When you describe something that is happening, or someome.
Indiviudal traits and characteristics
Phares, 1988 Definition
That pattern of characteristic thoughts, feeling, and behaviors that distinguishes oneperson from another and that persists over time and situations
Burger, 1997
Consistent behavior patterns and intrapersonal processes originating within the indiviudal
When did personality become popular?
40s, 50s, 60s
How do we go about determining the nature of personality? What falls under the banner?
Survey them about emotional tendencies, and those around them.
How do we decide what goes into that, to actually ask people?
How someone will react to a scenario.
Open-ended, ask people to describe themselves
Observing people, what might we get out of that
- Looking at people’s behaviors
- How they treat other people
Different social group memberships
Alport defined social psychology
What can overlap in personality?
Punctual & Particular
Caring, Nice & Empathetic
Energetic & Enthusiastic
What is factor analysis
Suite of statistical tools that allow us to look at patterns underlying responses to things we’re interested in
Pythagoras
“Disposition follow bodily characteristics”
Hippocrates
The Pillars of Temperament
Wet x Dry x Hot x Cold
Wet x Hot = Blood
Wet x Cold = Phelgm
Dry x Hot = Yellow bile
Dry x Cold = Black bile
Galen with the Four Humors
Personality reults from balance of these four fluids (humors)
Blood - sanguine
Black bile - Melancholic
Yellow bile - Choleric
Phelgm - Phlegmatic
Psychoanalysis
FREUD
Humanism
MASLOW
Behaviourism
WATSON, SKINNER
Structuralism
WUNDT
Functionalism
JAMES
What is the psychodynamic perspective?
The psychodynamic perspective emphasizes unconscious psychological processes, and contends that childhood experiences are crucial in shaping adult personality.
Core assumptions of the psychodynamic perspective
ASSUMPTION 1: Primary of the unconscious
ASSUMPTION 2: Critical importance of early experiences
ASSUMPTION 3: Psychic causality
Evolution of psychodynamic theory
Topographic Model
The psychosexual stage model
The structural model
Object relations theory
Contends that personality can be understood as reflecting the mental images of significant figures that we form early in life in response to interactions taking place within the family
Ego defenses
Mental strategies, rooted in the ego, that we manage anxiety.
Neuro-psychoanalysis
An integrative, interdisciplinary domain of inquiry seeking to integrate psychoanalytic and neuropsychological ideas and findings to enhance both areas of inquiry.
Primary of the unconscious
The hypothesis - supported by contemporary empirical research - that the vast majority of mental activity takes place outside conscious awareness
Psychic causality
The assumption that nothing in mental life happens by chance, that there is no such thing as random.
Psychosexual stage model
Probably the most controversial aspect of psychodynamic theory. (oral, anal, oedipal, latency, genital)
Structural Model
Developed to complement and extend the topographic model, the structural model of the mind posits (id, ego, superego)
Topographic model
Freud’s first model of the mind, which contended that the mind could be divided into three regions:
Conscious
Preconscious
Unconscious
Wundt
Suggested that we could characterize the dimensions as strong vs. weak emotions.
Suggested that horizontal was something to do with changeable / unchangeable.
Francis Galton
Discovered correlation analysis.
Charles Spearman
IMPORTANT for intelligence
Described and developed the formula for calculating correlations that are non-parametric.
Gordon Alport
First textbook on psychology.
Eysenck
Structure of personality;
Neuroticism
Extroversion
Psychoticism
Didn’t have a tool to test empirically.
Raymond B. Cattell
Developed 16PF.
Worked with Neurosis
Conscious
Things that are available right now
Preconscious
memories, recollections, experiences that we have to think about
Id
Initial set of identity, reaches for somethign without thinking.
Ego
The ‘hand break’ for the ego
Superego
Internalization of expectations that important others in society have of us.
Triebe
Drives, instincts.
Defense mechanisms
Repression: bury in the unconscious
Sublimation
Denial: not happening, haven’t dealt wiht symptom of distress
Reaction formation
Intellectualization
Projection
Psychosexual stages of development
Oral stage (0-18 months)
Anal stage (18 months - 3 years)
Phallic stage (3 years - 6 years)
Latency stage (6 years - puberty)
Genital stage (post puberty)
Oedipus complex
Boys realize that dad is in charge, he may worry about me competing for mum.
Competing for love of parents, fear of consequences if caught.
Freud’s theory of humor
Jokes and their relation to the unconscious.
A way to laugh or externalize things that worry us
Projective tests
Rorschach
Critcisms of psychodynamic theory
It wasn’t revolutionary
It wasn’t testable
It’s not realistic that personality is fixed around by age 6
It overemphasis innate instincts and ignore culture and environment
Negative and pessimistic tone
Carl Jung
The collective unconscious, primordial images and archetypes, extroversion
Psychological ‘types’
Two basic attitudes, extraversion has become a major pillar.
Four basic ‘functions’
Irrational (sensation, initiation) - reflecting perception
Rational (thinking, feeling) - reflecting reason and judgement
Alfred Adler
Striving for superiority (“inferiority complexes”)
Parental influences, birth order
Karen Horney
Neurosis
Moving towards people
Moving against people
Moving away from people
Model of other x Model of self
Postive x Positive = SECURE: comfortable with intimacy and autonomy
Positive x Negaitve = PREOCCUPIED: with relationships, not sure they are worthy
Negative x Positive = DISMISSING of intimacy and counterdependence, cannot trust others to care
Negative x Negative = FEARFUL of intimacy and socially avoidant
Erich Fromm
Escape from Freedom
Mechanisms of Escape
- Authoritarianism
- Destructiveness
- Automaton conformity
Positive freedom
HUMANISM
Existential Philosophy
Often ofucses on resolving extistential anxiety; developing a mature approach to life, emphasizing freedom to choose a life that has less emptiness, anxiety, boredom.
Carl Rogers
Naturally good, happy, honest people.
Assessing self-concepts: Q-sort
A forced-choice distribution task in which clients describe their real and ideal selves.
Sort attributes into piles for real self, and ideal self.
Rogers could then correlate the congruence over time, showing clients real and ideal selves correalted.
Modern take on selves; E. Tory Higgins
Three selves
ACTUAL (how I am)
IDEAL (how I want to be)
OUGHT (who I think I should be)
Actual + Ideal + Ought
= HAPPY
Actual + Ideal
= DEPRESSED
Actual + Ought
= ANXIOUS
Abraham Maslow
Considered an important figure.
Developed Hierarchy of needs:
1. Need for self actualization
2. Esteem needs
3. Belonging and love needs
4. Safety needs
5. Physiological needs
Two basic motives for satisfaction
Deficiency (satisfaction upon attainment)
Growth needs (satisfaction through expression)
Maslow studied psychologically happy people. They…
Accept themselves, and admit their weaknesses
Less bound to culural norms, they express themselves
Display self-actualizing creativity (enculturalization)
Peak experience
Critcisms of Maslow
If it comes to free will, is there space for predicting behavior?
Poor definition of key concepts
Supportive research open up to criticism.
The trait approach to personality
What kind of person are you?
Type - I’m an independent person
Trait - I’m studious, zealous, friendly
Seeks to identify types or traits that can be used to understand and predict behavior.
Sheldon’s “Constitutional Psychology”
Endomorph - Slow moving, complacent
Mesomorph - Competitive, energetic
Ectomorphh - Self-conscious, restrained
Problems with types
Assumes we all fit into oner personality category, and that the other categories are alike.
Personality as Trait dimensions
Identify a trait that can be represented as different points on a continuum - people differ levels of this trait.
Measure enough people, typically find a normal distribution - some at extremes, most in the middle.
Assumptions of personality
- Personality characteristics are relatively stable over time
- Personality characteristics show relative stability across situations
What is a trait
A trait is a dimension of personality used to categorise people in terms of the extent to which they manifest a particular characteristic
The Nomothetic approach
Identification, measurement and description of common traits across indiviudals
The ideographic approach
Identification of the unique combination of traits that account for an indiviudals personality
Hans Eysenck dimensional model of personality
Saying that people differ in ways in which they control their impulses.
Developed a personality measure, 3D, extroversion, introversion and neuroticism.
Big Five (OCEAN) model
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism (Emotional Stability)
Personality criticisms
What do the factors actually mean? What is the role of language?
How many factors are correctly ‘named’?
Its theoretical - maybe they’ve arisen through adaptation, or have neurological substrates, but those are predictions that post-date the development of the strucutre.
Pearson-Situation Debate RESPONSES
Claiming no consistency.
Aggregating data - reliability of behavioral measures.
Identification of relevant traits - Allport’s centrality
The importance of 10% of the variance
Julian Rotter
Developed the idea that when things are paired together we associate them.
As well as the process of shaping
Shaping
Shape behavior by progressively reinforcing behaviors that are similar to what we want.
Behavioral tendency
= expectancy + reinforcement value
