Week 5 Flashcards
Define Personality
“Individual patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that tend to persist across time and contexts”
Lilienfeld et al., 2015
- The mind and how it interacts with the world
- Generally fixed through a lifetime
- Persists - Personality is fairly stable
- Abstract psychological constructs that can’t be measured
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Key points of Personality
- Distinctive - each person has a unique personality
- Consistent - Fairly stable in relation to our behaviours
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Two Methods to Study Personality
- Nomothetic
- Idiographic
Nomothetic Personality
- Attempts to understand personality through general laws
- These governed across all individuals
Idiographic Personality
Understand Personallity by finding unique blend of characteristics and experiences of single individuals.
Why Study Personality?
Understand individual differences in characteristics
Understand how a persons parts come together holistically
Can we predict what we might expect someone to do in certain situations
Psychic Determination
- All psychological constructs have a cause and this will determine behaviour
- Freud developed models to understand cause of behaviour
* Topographic model
* Structural model
* Developmental model
* Drive Model
Freud - Psychoanalytic Approach
- Infulence is considered historical
- no longer relevant and outdated
- He developed the first theory of personality
Psychic Determination - Topographic Model
- Conscious
- Centre of Awareness
- Rational and Goal Driven
- Preconscious
- Could become conscious at any time
- Tip of the toungue concept
- But is tip of thebrain
- Unconscious
- Bulk of our mental processes
- These thoughts are irrational
- Play important role in governing behaviour
Freud Ambivalence
- Conscious and unconscious are often in conflict
- Different motives from different levels of topographic iceberg
- This can cause ambivalence
- When Id, Ego & Superego are in conflict
Compromise Formations
- Resolve ambivalence by fulfilment from conflicting motives
- Address and appease both kinds of thoughts
- This can be negative such as in mental illness
- Or positive such as working hard to acheive a goal
Freudian Slips
- When you accidently say one thing and mean another
- Error in speech, memory, or physical action
- Thought to be reflective of the unconscious
Assessing Unconscious Topographic Patterns
- Life History Methods
- Freud observed many case studies to try to work out why people behaved the way they did.
- Not a really able to back up scientifically
- Try to understand the whole person
- Review in context of life experiences
e.g. case studies
Drive or Instinct Model
- Based on Darwin’s work
- Human Behaviour is motivated by two drives
1. Aggressive Drive
2. Sexual/Libido Drive - Libido is about pleasure seeking and sensuality as well as sex.
- Hedonistic drive
- All psychic energy originates in the unconscious
Structural Model
- exists on top oof the structural model
- Id, Ego & Superego
- run across unsconscious, preconscious and consciousness
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Id
- Mostly unconscious
- Pleasure principle
- Assessed by perception test
- Seeks all different kinds of pleasure, not just sexual.
Ego
- Primarily in our conscious
- Decision maker
- Bound by reality principle
- Decides what we can and can’t do
Superego
- covers breadth of our awareness
- In preconscious and unconscious
- Concerned with our sense of morality
Defence Mechanisms
- Ego engages these defences to resolve stress
- attempts to reinforce positive emotion
- attempts to protect from negative or threatening emotion
- Temporary coping mechanisms
10 Defence Mechansims
- Repression
- Denial
- Projection
- Reaction Formation
- Sublimation
- Rationalisation
- Displacement
- Regression
- Identification
- Intellectualisation
Repression
- Keeps memories or thoughts apart from conscious awareness
- Blocking out traumatic memories or events
Denial
- Refusal to acknowledge external reality
- Existence of disruptive thoughts, memories or feelings
Projection
- Attribution of our own feelings and impulses on to others
- We do not acknowledge them in ourselves
Reaction Formation
- Turning unacceptable feelings or impules into their opposites
e.g when a parent unconsciouls resents their child and spoils them in response
Sublimation
Converting sexual or aggressive impulses into more socially acceptable activities
e.g. a person with anger issues takes up boxing
Rationalisation
- Avoiding uncomfortable feelings by explaining them away
- Unconscious attempt to avoid bad feelings by using reasons or excuses
- Logical reasons given to justify innapropriate behaviour
Displacement
Directing negative emotions to a substitute target
e.g. when angry with partner, mother lashes out on their child
Regression
- Returning to an earlier stage of psycho sexual development
e.g. an adult having a temper tantrum, or “I don’t want to talk about this any more”
Identification
Identifying with a threatening person or group to become accepted or boost self esteem
Intellectualisation
- Focus on abstract or impersonal ideas to avoid anxiety provoking situations
- Allows memories to move through conscious and unconscious analysis
- uses abstract thinking to detach oneself from feelings