Week 11 Flashcards
Define personality
Enduring patterns of thought, feeling, motivation and behaviour that are expressed in different circumstances (westen, Burton and Kowalski, 2006).
Distinctiveness, consistency, behaviour.
What is personality often conceptualised as?
A cluster of traits: relatively stable and long lasting tendencies that influence behaviour across environments.
What’re the two broad areas that the study of personality focuses on?
Nomothetic: understanding individual differences in particular personality characteristic
- assess individual differences in personality
- i.e the way people vary one from another
Ideographic: understanding how the various parts of a person come together as a whole
-constrict general theories of personality
Freud and the psychodynamic approach in personality
Freud developed a number of models of personality: topographic, drive, developmental and structural.
Three core assumptions:
- Psychic determinism: we are at the mercy of our underlying drives and conflicts, which shape our behaviour. Although hidden, they can be seen through Freudian slips and dreams.
- Symbolic meaning: all actions (even minor) reveal our underlying drives.
- Unconscious motivation: we are mostly unaware of our motivations.
Freudian slips - definition
Parapraxis
- error in speech, memory, or physical action
- In Freudian terms believed to be caused by the unconscious mind
Psychological conflict bubbling to the surface
-thoughts are (un)consciously repressed and then unconsciously released “when you say one thing, and mean your mother…”
Freuds topographic model in personality
Theee types of mental processes
-conscious: rational, goal directed, centre of awareness
-preconscious: could become conscious at any given time, e.g knowledge base
-unconscious: irrational, not based in logic, repressed and thus inaccessible
Still plays a role in governing behaviour
Opposing motives = ambivalence
Different aspects of consciousness have conflicting feelings or motives
Resolution=compromise
Formations developed to maximise fulfilment of conflicting motives
Freud drive (instinct) model is personality
Based on Darwin’s work, Freud suggested human behaviour is motivated by two drives (or instincts)
- aggressive drive
- sexual (libido) drive (libido refers to pleasure seeking and sensuality as well as desire for intercourse)
Freuds developmental model
Libido follows a developmental course during childhood
- stages of psychosexual development
- fixes progression of change from stage to stage
- notion of fixation at a particular libidinal stage
Freud’s psychosexual stages - developmental model
Stage - Age -Conflictsandconcerns
Oral-0-18 months-Dependency
Anal-2-3 years-orderliness, cleanliness, control, compliance
Phalic-4-6 years-identification with parents especially same sex) and others,Oedipus complex, establishment of conscious
Latency-7-11 years-Sublimination of sexual and aggressive impulses
Genital-12+ years-Mature sexuality and relationships
Structural model - a change in freuds thinking - morality governs behaviour
Conscious (contact with the outside world): ego
Preconscious (material just beneath the surface of awareness): physiological component (reality principle)
Unconscious (difficult to retrieve material; well
Describe Freuds structural model
Id: our basic desires and drives
Ego: interacts with the ‘real world’ and makes decisions
Superego: sense of right and wrong, directing us to behave morally
According to Bannister, Freuds model of personality is “basically
Defence mechanisms (Freud) in personality
- people regulate their emotions and deal with conflicts by employing defence mechanisms
- unconscious, sum is to strengthen or reinforce positive emotion, and protect from negative or unpleasant emotion
- the use of defence mechanisms is normal
- as a temporary coping mechanism can be healthy
- they can be useful
Types of defence mechanisms (Freud in personality)
Repression - memories or thoughts kept out of conscious awareness: a traumatised soldier has no memory of a close brush with death
Denial - refusal to acknowledge external reality: not accepting that a child or loved really dies in a car accident
Displacement - emotions directed towards a substitute target: after a parental scolding an older brother takes it out on a younger sibling
Regression - return to an earlier stage of psychosexual development: an adult has a temper tantrum when they don’t get their way
Reaction formation - unacceptable feelings or impulses turned into opposites: a parent unconsciously resents a child and spoils them
Rationalisation - actions explained away to avoid uncomfortable feelings: a student watches TV before an exam and says “more study won’t help”
Assessing unconscious patterns
-life history methods: aim to understand the whole person in the context of life experiences (e.g case studies)
- projective tests: assume that persons presented with a vague stimulus will ‘project’ their own impulses and desires into a description of the stimulus
- eg. Rorschach ink blot test
- eg. Thematic apperception test (TAT)
What’re neo freudians?
Shifted focus from sexual drives to social drives
Suggested personality was more malleable - could change over time