WEEK 6- PERSONALITY Flashcards
Personality
- Enduring patterns of thought, feeling, motivation and behaviour that are expressed in different circumstances.
- Personality psychologists have two aims.
- The first is to construct theories that describe the structure of personality — that is, the organisation of enduring patterns of thought, feeling, motivation and behaviour. - The second aim is to study individual differences in personality — the way people differ from one another.
Freud’s psychosexual stages overview
- Freud proposed theory of psychosexual stages- stages in development of personality, sexuality and motivation
- The psychosexual stages define Freud’s developmental model- model of how children develop
- 5 stages- oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital
Freud’s psychosexual stages: Oral (0-18 months)
- Children explore the world through their mouths
- Sucking the breast or bottle is means by which infants gain nourishment and also avenue of social nourishment (warmth and closeness)
- Children develop wishes and expectations about dependence because they are totally dependent on their caretakers
- Difficulties during oral sage→ can lead to fixations (conflicts or concerns)
- People with fixations at oral stage may be extremely clingy and dependent with an exaggerated need for approval, nurturance and love
Freud’s psychosexual stages:
Anal (2-3 years)
- Characterised by conflicts with parents about compliance and defiance
- Conflicts form the basis of attitudes towards order and disorder, giving and withholding and messiness and cleanliness
- Freud proposed that at this stage the child discovers anus can be a source of pleasurable excitation→ but within a few years seen as disgusting
- People with anal fixations may be overly orderly, neat and punctual, or on the other hand, extremely messy, stubborn or constantly late
Freud’s psychosexual stages: Phallic (4-6 years)
- Children enjoy the pleasure they can obtain from touching their genitals and even from maturbating
- Children become very aware of the differences between boys and girls
- Child identifies with significant others
- Identification→ means making another person part of oneself; imitating the person’s behaviour, changing the self concept to see oneself as like the person and trying to become more like the person by adopting his or her values and attitudes
- Girls develop penis envy; the belief they are inferior as they lack a penis
Freud’s psychosexual stages: Latency (7-11 years)
- Children repress their sexual impulses and continue to identify with their same-sex parent
- Learn to channel their sexual and aggressive drives into socially acceptable activities such as school sports and art
Freud’s psychosexual stages: Genital (12+ years)
- Conscious sexuality resurfaces after years of repression and genital sex becomes primary goal of sexual activity
- People become capable of relating to and loving others on a mature level, and carrying out adult responsibilities such as work and parenting
Health Psychology
Directly challenges the biomedical model of health and illness
Biomedical Model of Health asserts that
- Illness and disease are the result of an individual’s biology
- Illness is within the individual not the social environment
- The body is like a machine and has parts
Illness has a specific cause and treatment eliminates symptoms - The mind and the body function independently of each other
- Health is the absence of disease
- Treatment is the focus rather than prevention
(Willis & Elmer 2011)
Health Psychology
If we reverse the assumptions of the biomedical model, the new assumptions reflect the bio-psycho-social model of health and illness
The field of health psychology addresses how one’s behaviour can influence health, wellness and illness in a variety of ways
Specifically health psychology examines how psychological factors influence the experience of stress and people’s psychological reactions to stress, affect the promotion and maintenance of health, influence coping with and treating pain and disease…and affect how individuals respond to health-care recommendations as well as health-promotion messages
ILLNESS AND BEHAVIOUR
- Health is a construct that can be defined in both broad and narrow terms
Models of health - Biomedical→ pathogens, genetics, biochemical, hormonal, injury and environment
- Psychological health→ thoughts, feelings, behaviour, unconscious drives, learning and environment
- Sociological→ social, cultural, ethnicity, economics, politics and environment
- Disease→ something of the organ, cell or tissue that denotes a physical disorder or underlying pathology
- Illness→ what the person experiences
Why do we take notice of some symptoms and not others?
- This is largely influenced by our perception
- Sensation→ receiving information through our senses
- Through transduction sensory inputs are changed into electrical impulses that travel to the brain, where they are interpreted (known as perception)
- Perception is the conscious experience of objects and events→ can be influenced by many variables
The perception of illness
Each person will have a personal theory about their symptoms or illness
Illness perceptions have a major effect on reactions to illness and we often assume our perceptions are true and correct, but our perceptions may not be accurate
Gestalt Principles→ stimuli perceived as belonging to an object are perceived as the ‘figure’ and the other elements as ‘ground’ ; principle of grouping and similarity
The study of perception is complex and involves physiological, biochemical processes, cognitive processes and personality
Perception of other people involves many of the same processes as the perception of objects
3 main processes are used in the perception of others
Consistency over time
Consistency across the characteristics of an individual
Consistency across categories of similar individuals (Stereotypes)
Perception related to symptoms and illness, as well as how we see others can follow the same perceptual rules as those for objects. As with illusions, they may not reflect reality
Symptom perception is influenced by;
Attentional states Public attention on certain diseases Social influences Individual differences (gender, emotions, coping style) Lifespan influences Illness representations Culture Individual differences Disease prototypes Identity Causal attributions Lifespan influences Symptoms alone are unreliable indicators of the need for medical attention
