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
What was neo Freudian Alfred Adlers opinion on personality?
Alfred Adler:
- primary motive is not sex or aggression but to strive for superiority
- Origin of the phrase - inferiority complex
What was neo Freudian Carl Jungs opinion personality?
Carl Jung:
-collective unconscious- ancestral memory that explains similarities in beliefs across cultures
What was neo-Freudian Karen Horneys opinion on personality?
Feminist perspective
Penis envy and oedipal complex are the symptom of women’s ‘enforced’ dependancy on men
What was neo freudian Erich Fromms opinion on personality?
Escape from freedom - I creasing technology means humans are able to live independently of others but what we crave is closer connection. This leaves us vulnerable to making bad choices in relationships and leaders.
Contributions and limitation in the Freudian psychodynamic approach
-acknowledgement of unconscious forces and their p
Behavioural approaches in personality
- differences in our personalities stem largely from our learning histories
- personalities are bundles of habits acquired by classical and operant conditioning
- personality is controlled by genes and contingencies: determinism but different from psychoanalytic because there are external forces as well as internal and the internal forces are learned behaviour patterns not instinctual droves
Cognitive social personality theories
- the way people encode, process and think about information determines their personality
- several necessary conditions for a behaviour:
- situation encoded as relevant and meaningful
- belief in own ability and actual ability
- self regulation of ongoing activity
Albert Bandura - social learning theory
We learn to be the person we are by watching other people and seeing who/what gets rewarded and who/what does not.
A child who sees others involved in helping and being rewarded will emulate this behaviour
Reciprocal determinism: personality is a constant interplay between environment, behaviour and our beliefs.
Behaviour -> environment-> personal/cognitive factors(expectations, beliefs, self efficacy) -> behaviour -> etc
Social cognitive - locus of control (rotter)
Internal locus of control
- life outcomes are under personal control
- positively correlated with self esteem
- internals use more problem focused coping
External locus of control
-luck, Chance, and powerful others control behaviour
Sample locus of control scale items
- Many people live miserable lives because of their parents (true or false)
- If you set realistic goals, you can succeed no matter what (true or false)
- One can climb the professional ladder just by being around at the right time (true or false)
- If I study enough, I can pass any exam (true or false)
Answering ‘true’ to items 1 and 3 would score toward and external LofC.
Answering ‘false’ would count toward and internal LofC.
Items 2 and 4 score in the opposite direction
Contributions and limitations
H
Humanistic approaches in personality
Emerged as an alternative to psychoanalysis and behaviourism
Focus on those aspects that are distinctly human
- trying to find meaning in life
- being true to the self
Rogers person centred approach
Existential theories of personality
What is Rogers model in personality?
Three major components of personality:
- The organism (innate, generic blueprint)
- The self (set of beliefs about who we are)
- Conditions of worth (expectations we place on ourselves
Rogers person centered approach
- attempt understanding of individuals phenomenological experience - the way they conceive of reality and think about the world
- fundamental tool o
