Personality

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personality

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enduring patterns of thought, feeling, motivation and behaviour that are expressed in different circumstances

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aims of personality psychologists

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1. structure of personality - organisation of enduring patterns of thought, feeling, motivation and behaviour.

2. individual differences - the way people differ from one another.

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psychodynamic

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psychological dynamics analogous to dynamics among physical forces.

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Frued's topographic model

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believes the mind is separated into sectors (metal processes), 3 types: conscious, preconscious and unconscious.

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conscious mental processes

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rational, goal-directed thoughts at centre of awareness.

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preconscious mental processes

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are not conscious but could become conscious at any point, such as the knowledge of the colour of robins.

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unconscious mental processes

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are irrational, organised along associative lines rather than by logic.

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ambivalence

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conflicting feelings or motives

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compromise formations

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how people solve problems. solutions people develop to maximise fulfilment of conflicting motives simultaneously.

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drive model

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focuses on what drives or motivates people. Freud proposed 2 drives: sex and aggression. defined sex as libido (pleasure seeking, sensuality).

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developmental model

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model of how children develop, their evolving desire for pleasure and growing realisation. Consists of psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital.

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oral stage (0-18 months)

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children explore world through their mouths and they wrestle with dependence. difficulties that can develop include: fixations (can persist through developmental period).

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anal stage (2-3)

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conflicts with parents about compliance, wordlessness, cleanliness, and defiance, children desire pleasure from their anus.

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phallic stage (4-6)

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enjoy pleasure from touching their genitals and masturbating. personalities develop through identification with others (especially same-sex). experience Oedipus complex.

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Oedipus complex

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they want an exclusive relationship with their opposite-sex parent.

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latency stage (7-11)

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they repress their sexual impulses/aggression and continue to identify with their same-sex parent.

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genital stage (12+)

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sexuality resurfaces and genital sex becomes the main goal. able to have mature sexuality and relationships (emotional intimacy).

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structural model

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described conflict in terms of desires and dictates of conscience of constraints of reality.

Id, ego and superego.

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id

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reservoir of sexual and aggressive energy. driven by impulses, characterised by primary process thinking: wishful, illogical and associative. works with pleasure principle, seeks immediate gratification and no consideration for long term ramifications.

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superego

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counterbalance of id, acts as conscience and source of ideals. is the parental voice, established through identification.

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ego

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tries to balance desire, reality, and morality. operates using reality principle: that immediate desire for pleasure needs to be offset against the realities of the consequences. uses secondary process thinking, rational, logical and goal directed.

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defence mechanisms

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unconscious mental processes aimed at protecting the person from unpleasant emotions (particularly anxiety), or blistering pleasurable emotions.

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repression

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person keeps thoughts or memories that would be too threatening to acknowledge from awareness.

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denial

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person refuses to acknowledge external realities or emotions.

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projection

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person attributes his own unacknowledged feelings or impulses to others.

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reaction formation

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person fails to acknowledge unacceptable impulses and overemphasises their opposites.

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sublimation

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converting sexual or aggressive impulses into socially acceptable activities

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rationalisation

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person explains away actions in seemingly logical way to avoid uncomfortable feelings, especially guilt or shame.

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displacement

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person directing their emotions, especially anger, away from real target to a substitute, vent their emotions onto another object, animal or person.

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regression

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a person reverting back to an earlier stage of psychological development, typically when they're under a great deal of stress.

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passive aggression

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indirect expression of anger towards others.

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object relations theories

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enduring patterns of behaviour in intimate relationships and to the motivational, cognitive and affective processes that produce those patterns.

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relational theories

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the need for relatedness is central motive in humans and people will distort their personalities to maintain ties to important people in their lives.

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assessing unconscious patterns

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tapping into a persons motives and conflicts. personality can be measured by life-history methods or projective tests.

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life-history methods

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aim to understand the whole person in the context of his of her life experience and environment.

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projective tests

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present participants with an ambiguous stimulus and to give a definition of it. the Rorschach inkblot test - ask participants to view inkblots and tell tester what it resembles.

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encoding

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to respond to a situation they must first encode it. George Kelly proposed personal constructs - mental representations of the people, places, things and events that are significant to a person: influences their behaviour.

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personal value and goals

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people focus on and select behaviour and situations that have personal value to them, and that are relevant to their goals or life tasks (conscious, self-defined problems people try to solve).

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expectancies

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behaviour-outcome expectancy - belief that a certain behaviour will lead to a particular outcome. self-efficacy expectancy - persons conviction that she can perform the actions necessary to produce the desired outcome.

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competences

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skills and abilities used for solving problems.

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self-regulation

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setting goals, evaluating performance and adjusting behaviour to achieve these goals in the context of ongoing feedback.

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trait theories

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traits are emotional, cognitive and behavioural tendencies that constitute underlying personality dimensions on which individuals vary.

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eysenck's theory

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identified 3 overarching psychological types, or constellations of traits: extroversion (tendency to be sociable, active and willing to take risks), neuroticism (emotional stability or negative affect), and psychoticism (tendency to be aggressive, egocentric, impulsive and antisocial).

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five-factor model (FFM)

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personality reduced to five factors: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. each includes several lower level factors. many appear to be cross-culturally universal.

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consistency across situations

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situational variables - the circumstances in which people find themselves: largely determine their behaviour. using principle of aggregation.

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temperament

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that is, a basic personality disposition heavily influenced by genes.

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person-by-situation interactions

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that is, people express particular traits in particular situations.

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Barnum effect

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when interpretation of a personality test is so broad it could apply to anyone, so people are willing to accept the results as fact.

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(humanistic approach) Roger's person-centred approach

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psychology should try to understand individuals - phenomenal experiences: the way they conceive reality and experience themselves and their world - through empathy.

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existential approach to personality

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existentialism - people have no fixed nature and must essentially create themselves. must make meaning in their life by creating commitments. existential dread - the recognition that life has no absolute value or meaning and that we all face death.

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heritability

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the proportion of variance in a particular trait due to genetic influences.

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culture and personality

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culture-pattern approach - sees culture as an organised set of beliefs, rituals and institutions that shape individuals to fit its pattern. interactionists approaches - view causality as multi-directional, with personality, economics and culture mutually influencing one another.