Unit 11 (Chapter 12) Flashcards
What is personality?
Relatively consistent patterns of thought, feelings, and behaviour that characterize a person.
- Shapes how we interact with the world and other people.
Freud’s psychodynamic theories of personality
Psychodynamic theories emphasize the interplay between mental forces (psycho=mind, dynamic=energy or force).
Two main premises:
1) People are often unconscious of their motives
2) Defense mechanisms keep anxiety-producing motives outside of consciousness.
Personality differences arise from variations in unconscious motives, their manifestations, and defense mechanisms.
Three components of personality (according to Freud)
- The Id
- The Ego
- The Superego
Personality is sort of like a closed energy system = always conserved.
Id
Unconscious & instinctual drives/needs.
- Operates by the pleasure principle (do what feels good).
- Develops very early in life.
Pizza ex: “I want ALL the pizza NOW”
Superego
Internalized cultural rules & ideals guiding moral conscience; the “seed” of our moral conscience; the “goodie-two-shoes” of one’s personality.
Pizza ex: “It’s rude & selfish to grab food until everyone has been served. Besides, we are trying to eat healthy.”
Ego
Mediates needs of the id within the constraints of the reality. It is our largely conscious awareness of reality.
- Rational, decision-making part of the mind operating by the reality principle.
- Practical mediator between Superego + Id.
Pizza ex: “We will politely wait to be served and take one slice of pizza with some salad.”
Defense mechanisms
The various ways in which the ego is thought to cope with conflict between the unconscious desires of the Id and moral constraints of society.
- According to Freud, defense mechanisms operate unconsciously.
- Havitual employment of defense mechanisms is though to shape personality (ex: you might have a repressive coping style).
Defense mechanism: Repression
Defense mechanism via which ego keeps unwanted feelings, thoughts, & memories out of conscious awareness.
Defense mechanism: Displacement
Defense mechanism via which the ego redirects unacceptable wishes, drives, and impulses of the id from their intended targets to more acceptable alternatives. I.e. using a scapegoat.
Ex: If you’re furious at your boss, you might take your aggression out on a family member or a pet.
Defense mechanism: Sublimation
Occurs when displacement results in the redirection towards activities that are particularly valued by society (e.g., artistic or scientific endeavours).
I.e. finding an outlet through “aproved” activities by society.
Defense mechanism: Reaction formation
Conversion of an anxiety-provoking desire or impulse into its opposite.
Ex: Being extremetly angry at your mom and wishing her dead may turn into extreme love for her.
Defense mechanism: Projection
A defense mechanism in which people, instead of acknowledging an unconscious desire or impulse in themselves, attribute it to others.
Ex: Frat studies- Rate dothers higher on a characteristic they’re high on, and rated themselves low.
Defense mechanism: Rationalization
Use of conscious reasoning to explain away anxiety-provoking feelings or thoughts.
Ex: Father beating his child “for the better of the kid”.
Critiques of Freud
- Theory based exclusively on case studies, not systematic research (not very generalizable).
- Lack of testable theories, subjective approach (e.g., interpretation of dreams), prone to confirmation bias. This means it was hard to falsify, and could kind of read whatver you wanted into your client’s dreams.
(E.g., Gordon Allport’s anecdote about meeting Freud: tended to assume everything meant something else on another level.) - Overemphasis on sexuality
- Sexist views (E.g., “penis envy” - women had feelings of inferiority towards males leads to resentment towards mother).
Freud’s contributions
- The existence of unconscious processes
- Focus on and insight into mental processes
- Empirical support for some cognitive biases & defensive processes described by Freud:
§ Rationalization as a way of reducing cognitive dissonance
§ Frustration can lead to aggression
§ Although concept of recovered memories has been questioned, some evidence that some people may strive to keep distressing material out of awareness (intentional forgetting) - The importance of early development
- The influence of mind on the body
- The talking cure (therapy)
Traits
Habitual patterns of behaviour, thought, and emotion that can be used to describe a person and that are observable in a wide range of situations.
Traits shape how a person interprets situations and can lead people to behave in similar ways across different situations.
Traits are something individuals vary along a continuum, rather than in an all-or-nothing fashion (ex: no one is just an introvert or just an extrovert!).
Functionally equivalent situations
Situations that cue a similar response from a
person.
Ex: For an introvert, being on a plane, sitting in a coffee shop, and going to a museum are functionally equivalent situations, as they all give them the opportunity to meet people (interpretation), and start conversations (behaviour).
Lexical hypothesis
Personality traits that are useful for differentiating among people will be reflected in language.
- Allport’s collation of words that could be used to describe human characteristics yielded an unwieldy 4,500 terms with lots of overlap between words.
Factor analysis
Statistical technique that involves analyzing the interrelations among different variables to look for the common factors underlying the scores.
Steps:
1) Collect data on various traits from large group of people
2) Identify patterns: which traits are correlated?
3) Group traits: group correlated traits into factors (what do they have in common)?
I.e. calculating a bunch of correlations; comparing the correlations and extracting common factors from them.
Factor analysis example: Step 1 (Collecting data)
- Ask participants to rate themselves on the following dimensions on a scale of 1 to 5 (1=not at all true, 2=somewhat untrue, 3=neither true nor untrue, 4=somewhat true, 5=very true):
- I am someone who is: Thorough, careless, dependable, talkative, outgoing, reserved…
Usual caveats about self-report apply here (e.g., social desirability bias). In subsequent stages, may want to collect additional data from individuals who know the target.
Factor analysis example: Step 2 (Grouping traits)
Highly correlated traits have a larger magnitude. Disregard the r-coefficient’s + or - sign!
Factor analysis example: Step 3 (Group traits)
Creating two clusters -> factors.
The big five (five factor model)
The dominant model in the trait approach to personality, which
posits five key dimensions along which humans vary:
o Open-mindedness to experience
o Conscientiousness
o Extraversion
o Agreeableness
o Neuroticism
Mnemonic: OCEAN
Openness to experience
Low: Prefers known to unknown; conventional, traditional.
High: Creativity, imagination, curiosity, inventiveness, deep thinking. Ex: artists.
Conscientiousness
Low: Disorganized, poor timekeeping, careless, impulsive. Ex: Jake from B99.
High: Thorough, dependable, focused, high capacity for self-regulation. Ex: Amy from B99.
Extraversion
Low (a.k.a. introvert): Reserved, low key, quiet, lower social engagement and energy.
High: Talkative, energetic, enthusiastic, assertive, outgoing, social. Ex: Alexis from Schitt’s Creek.
Agreeableness
Low: Critical, quarrelsome, harsh, aloof, blunt
High: Helpful, selfless, sympathetic, kind, considerate, trusting. Ex: Ted Lasso
Neuroticism
Low: Handles stress well, emotionally stable, calm, relaxed. Ex: Bob Ross.
High: Anxious, easily ruffled/upset, worried, moody. Ex: Eyore.
Heightened activation is shown in the amygdala and the hippocampus. The insula is also involved.
Measurement validity of the big 5
According to various studies, it looks as though we are measuring what we think we’re measuring!
Personality traits: stability and change
Fair amount of evidence for stability over time. Relative ranking of personality traits remains consistent.
- E.g., if you are more conscientious than your peers in high school, you will likely be more conscientious than your peers in adulthood even if your overall level of conscientiousness changes.
However, some average shifts in personality over the lifespan have been observed:
- Increases in agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability (mellow out, increased responsibilities in adulthood).
- Increases in open-mindedness in young adulthood, then reduction in late adulthood
- Extraversion is mixed: Social vitality (social activity) stays the same, but social dominance (how assertive you are) increases until middle adulthood then levels off.
Personality change can occur after counselling (positively) or traumatic events (negatively).
Social cognitive approach
Social cognitive theories of personality emphasize role of cognitive processes and social interaction in shaping personality.
o Offer several critiques of the trait approach.
Social cognitive critiques of the trait approach
- Correlations between traits and behaviors are modest (around r=.30).
- Individual consistency across situations is lower than imagined.
- E.g., Observed 19 forms of behaviour presumed to be related to conscientiousness like class attendance, assignment punctuality, room neatness, personal appearance neatness. Found high consistency within measures, but relatively low consistence across measures. Ex: student may attent classes but have a very messy room. - Traits can be reframed as templates used to perceive and categorize others, rather than internal forces that shape our behavior—this creates the illusion of consistency in people’s traits (schemas).
- While traits do predict behaviour, we overestimate the strength of the relationship between traits & behaviour
- E.g., extraversion correlates r=.30 with tendency to talk more, but perceived extraversion correlated r=.67 with tendency to talk more. (We have this idea that extroverted people talk more, and thus label people who talk more as extroverts).
