Week 1 - Introduction to Personality Flashcards
What is a state?
are temporary behaviours or feelings that depend on a person’s situation and motives at a particular time.
e.g. restless
What is a trait?
are characteristic behaviours and feelings that are consistent and long lasting.
e.g. kind
How did Allport define personality?
A dynamic organisation inside the person of psychophysical systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns of behaviour thoughts and feelings
What does Allport’s definition mean in regards to personality?
- Personality has an organisation
- personality is an actively influencing process
- it has a biological basis
- it is a causal force, it helps determine how a person relates to the world
- personality shows up in patterns, occurrences and consistencies
- personality is displayed in many different ways in behaviours, thoughts and feelings
- stable and enduring
What is Jung’s Approach to Personality?
We can be shaped by our aspirations and the future that we want to have.
• Influenced by Freud & Adler
• Influenced by clinical observations
• Self-observations
Freud – instinctual drive and development experiences together.
Adler – social context and societal roles determine how we behave
Self-realisation is the endpoint of this development.
Psyche consists of – the ego, the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious, archetypes
What are the key components of Jung’s model?
Extraversion/Introversion Sensing/Intuition Thinking/Feeling Judging/Perceiving These categories place us in a box, you can’t be a little bit of one and a bit of the other, Dichotomous.
What is an application of Jung’s model?
Application can be seen in the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator test. However, validity of Myer-Briggs indicator based on Jung’s psychodynamic approach. Not a lot of scientific principal underpinning this approach
What is Eysenck’s approach to personality?
The biological big 3:
• Emotionally unstable/stable
• Introversion/Extraversion
• High impulse control/Low impulse control
Human brain has 2 sets of neural mechanisms, excitatory and inhibitory
Excited and alert, inactivity and lethargy. We seek to maintain a balance between these 2 systems, via the Ascending reticular activating system. The ARAS in the brain stem in connected to the Thalamus, Hypothalamus and Cortex
What are the key components of Eysenck’s approach?
All of this depends of how active 2 systems are.
Reticulo-cortical system
- Manages arousal generated by incoming stimuli
- High arousal = introvert
- Low arousal = extrovert
Reticulo-limbic system
- Manages and controls arousal to emotional stimuli
- High arousal to emotional stimuli = neurotic
- Low arousal to emotional stimuli = emotionally stable
Note: A higher basic level of arousal will push you past optimal level with lots of external stimuli from the world quicker.
Application of Eysenck’s model?
Green 1984, effects of music selection on task ability in introverts and extroverts.
Neuroticism seminar paper
What is Gray’s approach to personality?
Biological approach. Proposed that personality is based on the interaction between a behavioural approach system and behavioural inhibition system.
What are the key components of Gray’s approach?
BAS – Behavioural approach system. Tendency to seek rewards and view events as having potential for rewards. Leads to impulsive/not impulsive. Motivation to approach.
BIS – Behavioural inhibition system. Tendency to avoid punishment and to view events as having potential for punishment. Leads to highly anxious/non-anxious
Fight-flight-freeze system – Threat system. Represents more natural response to aversive stimuli to which the individual shows a fight response to the aversive stimuli, or a fear response.
Note: this model is not an ‘either or’ You can have both traits. BIS regulates the 2 other systems.
What is Costa & McCrae’s approach to personality?
Note – this is the most widely accepted model
Allport used the lexical approach to identify 18,000 words which described 4500 personality traits. The feeling was that all words to describe personality already existed in the English language.
Costa & McCrae’s model is a result of everyone’s work in 1 factor analysis. It mashed it all together to produce a 5 factor traits model. A supermodel.
What are the key components of Costa & McCrae’s approach?
Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.
Each of these had fascists.
fascists fall under traits
What is a psychoanalytical approach to personality?
An approach based on the mind only. Works by Freud and Jung
What is the lexical approach to personality?
That the words to describe meaningful personality traits exist within the English language. Allport highlighted 1800 words to convey 4500 personality traits.
What is a factor analytical approach to personality?
Statistics (not a theory). Factors are found through mathematical formula to provide overarching themes of fascists. This gives us the big 5, in the 5 traits approach.
What is the biological approach to personality?
That personality has biological underpinnings. Neurophysiological defined model. BIS, BAS, FFFS.
What is the basic criteria for evaluating personality models?
Description Explanation Empirical Validity Testable concepts Comprehensiveness Parsimony Value
What is description?
A theory should bring order into the complexity of behaviours that have been observed and/or measured. It should simplify, identify and clarify the important issues
What is Explanation?
Help us understand ‘why’ of behaviour
What is Empirical Validity?
Generate predictions so that it can be empirically tested and shown to be valid. Can it predict future events or behaviour in particular situations?
What is comprehensiveness?
should be able to encompass and explain a wide variety of both normal and abnormal behaviour. Decisions have to be made about the importance of behaviour and limits to be set by general consensus with statistical evidence.
What is Parsimony?
economical in terms of the number of explanatory concepts it includes. All concepts included should be demonstrated to be necessary to explain the phenomena under study.
What is Heuristic Value?
stimulates research and interest in the area.
What is applied value?
the practical usefulness of the theory is judged. Does it lead to beneficial changes? Does it provide a qualitative leap in knowledge a judgement? Does it lead to new approaches to solve problems?
