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90 Cards in this Set
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- Back
- 3rd side (hint)
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What is personality?
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-To understand people what they are like.
-We also try to understand people who do unique things |
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Nellie McClung’s group of ‘Famous Five’
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-fought a long judicial battle for women’s status.
-women were declared as ‘persons’ on October 18, 1929 |
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Assumptions of personality psychologists
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description of individuals in terms of characteristics that make up their personalities.
Is personality inborn or shaped by experience? |
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Definition of personality
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-an individual’s unique constellation of thinking, feeling, and acting which leads one to behave consistently across situations
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-People are not consistent in behaviour by chance.
-Processes inside our head or in the external environment shape our actions |
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The Psychodynamic perspective
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-Psychodynamic theories include the diverse theories originated from the work of Freud.
-focus is on the unconscious mental forces |
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Freud’s psychoanalytic theory
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-sexual repression and aggressive hostilities of World War I left their mark on Freud’s view of human nature
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Psychoanalytic theory explains personality, motivation, and psychological disorders.
-focuses on the early childhood experiences. -unconscious motive and conflicts. -methods people use to cope with their sexual and aggressive urges |
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Unconscious is the sprouting ground for hidden conflicts and repressed memories (Freud)
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instinctual drives for self-preservation and sex are inborn
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Cases of hysterics formed the bases for Freudian ideas
-psychodynamic theory of personality and mind. -method of treatment known as psychoanalysis |
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Three pillars of Freud’s theoretical paradigm
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(1) Structure of mind (typography of mind).
Unconscious; preconscious; conscious (2) Structure of personality. Id; superego; ego (3) Psychosexual development. oral stage; anal stage; phallic stage; latency period; genital stage |
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Structure of personality
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Freud’s tripartite division of personality structure
-id, ego, and superego |
Human personality arises from a conflict.
-between pleasure seeking biological and aggressive impulses and the internalized social norms |
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Personality is an outcome
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-our attempt to resolve this conflict.
-to express these impulses in ways that bring satisfaction without bringing feelings of guilt |
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Id (unconscious, primitive part of personality)
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-reservoir of unconscious psychic energy.
-strives to satisfy sexual drives; id dominated live in present). -Humans are born with life and death instincts |
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Ego (largely conscious, executive part of personality).
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-mediates among the demands of id, superego, and reality.
-develops through interaction of the child with environment |
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Superego (moral component of personality)
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-provides standards for judgement and for future aspirations.
-judges our actions; threatens ego with guilt (punishment) |
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Defence mechanisms
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-Healthy personality is characterised by a balance between three interacting forces (Freud).
-Conflicts arise between sexual impulses and the demands of the society |
-conflicts play in the unconscious; without our awareness.
-produce anxiety that slips to conscious awareness. -to ward off anxiety defence mechanisms are used. -‘ego’s methods of protecting from anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality’. -those unable to deal with themselves and the social environment suffer from anxiety |
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Personality development
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Basic foundations of an individual’s personality are laid down by the age of five (Freud).
Freud’s stage theory of development -three stages are oral, anal, and genital |
Sexual urges shift in focus as children progress from one stage of development to another
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Psychosexual development
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the childhood stages of development during which id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
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-Dilemmas during the phallic phase.
-Oedipus complex. |
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Child’s erotically tinged desires for the opposite-sex parent; feelings of hostility toward the same-sex parent (Greek tragedy of Oedipus)
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-as imagining intensifies, an inner conflict builds; father is seen as threatening figure who might punish such feelings.
-castration anxiety: a main component of Oedipus complex |
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Electra complex (not endorsed by Freud)
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-girls become attracted to their fathers.
-(mythical Greek Electra: hated/conspired to kill her mother) |
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Healthy psychosexual development hinges on the resolution of oedipal conflict
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-continued hostility toward the same-sex parent may prevent the child from identifying with that parent.
-without identification sex typing, conscience, and other aspects of the child’s development won’t progress |
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Identification
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process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos
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Identification serves social functions
-cultural norms are passed on from one generation to the next |
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Fixation
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-libidinal energy devoted to the concerns of an earlier stage.
-not shifted to later stage (even after maturation) |
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Fixation occurs in two ways
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1. child gains excess gratification from a stage.
2. child becomes excessively frustrated |
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Foundations for adult personality are laid at the genital stage
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later conflicts are replays of crises from childhood
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Jung and Adler’s disagreement with Freud
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-the role of sexuality in personality development.
-psychosexual origin of psychological disorders |
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Repression
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-keeping distressing thoughts (sexual) and feelings buried in the unconscious called ‘motivated forgetting’.
-forgetting the name of someone one does not like. |
Denial is related to repression: refusal to believe information that leads to anxiety.
-a drinker an addict deny that they have a problem. |
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Regression.
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-reversion to immature patterns of behaviour.
-nail biting under stress |
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Reaction formation
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-behaving in a way that’s exactly the opposite of one’s true feelings.
-person you hate becomes the target of your love |
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Projection
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Attributing one’s own feelings or motives to others
-a person harbouring sexual feelings toward a married neighbour projects his or her feelings onto the neighbour |
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Rationalization
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-creating false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behaviour.
-after cheating, one may rationalize, ‘everyone does it’ |
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Displacement
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Diverting emotional feelings (anger) from their original source to a substitute target
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shifting aggressive impulses toward a less threatening object or person.
anger toward ones boss is displaced toward spouse |
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Sublimation
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Sublimation is linked with displacement; displacement results in some socially acceptable or beneficial activity
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progress of civilization; primitive, instinctive drives are redirected into constructive, productive activities
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Neo-Freudians accepted Freud’s basic ideas
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1. the personality structure; id, ego, superego.
2. the importance of unconscious. 3. the shaping of personality in childhood. 4. dynamics of anxiety and defence mechanisms |
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Neo-freidians differed from him in two important ways.
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-placed more emphasis on the role of the conscious mind both in interpreting experience and coping with the environment.
-doubted sex and aggression as all-consuming motivations. -gave more importance to ones motives and social interactions |
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Assessment of unconscious processes
-Assumptions of the tests |
-test takers project unconscious conflicts and motives onto an ambiguous stimulus.
-Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and Rorschach Inkblot test |
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Rorschach inkblot test
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Ambiguous stimuli are used
-persons are asked to report what they see in the picture. -the things one see are projected from inside of one’s self |
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Thematic apperception test
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Person tells a story about the characters in the picture
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The test is based on Murray’s personality theory.
-people are distinguished by the needs that motivate their behaviour. |
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Humanistic perspective
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Emerged as a backlash against the behavioural and psychodynamic theories.
-both are dehumanizing and deterministic. -fail to recognize the unique qualities of human beings |
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Criticism of Freud
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-behaviour is dominated by primitive drives.
-dark and pessimistic view of human nature |
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Criticism of behaviourism
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preoccupation with animal research and mechanistic, fragmented view of personality.
Focus of humanism |
unique qualities of humans: their freedom and potential for personal growth.
(1) people can control their primitive and biological urges. (2) people are conscious and rational beings not dominated by irrational needs and conflicts. -focuses on human capacity for self-awareness, choice, responsibility, growth self-actualization. |
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Humanistic approach
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our personal view of ourselves and the environment guide and motivate our actions.
Prominent founders of the humanist movement -Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Rollo May |
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Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs
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-basic needs must be met before higher needs are aroused.
-Maslow studied healthy and creative individuals rather than psychologically disturbed or sick people. -basic needs must be met before higher needs are aroused. -Maslow studied healthy and creative individuals rather than psychologically disturbed or sick people. |
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Characteristics of healthy people
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-self-aware, self-accepting, spontaneous, loving and caring.
-not paralyzed by others’ opinion, problem centred and not self-centred |
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Maslow regards these as mature adult qualities
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Self-actualization is one’s striving for a life.
-meaningful, challenging, and satisfying |
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Rogers devised a new approach to psychotherapy called ‘person-centred theory’
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emphasizes person’s subjective point of view
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The best vantage point for understanding behaviour is from the internal frame of reference of the individual himself (Rogers, 1951).
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Rogers’s personality structure is based on one construct ‘the self’ called ‘self-concept’
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beliefs about one’s own nature, unique qualities, thoughts, feelings and typical behaviour
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Healthy self-concept is congruent with one’s true feelings and experiences
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-any discrepancy between one’s self-concept and sum of one’s experiences causes anxiety.
-leads to psychological problems called ‘incongruence’. -people are basically ‘good’. -endowed with ‘self-actualizing’ tendencies. |
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Conditions for a growth promoting environment (Rogers, 1951)
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genuineness, acceptance, and empathy
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According to Rogers, people nurture our growth
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1. being genuine, i.e., open with their feelings, transparent and self-disclosing.
2. offering unconditional positive regard; ‘valuing a person despite of knowing his/her failings’. 3. being emphatic – by sharing our feelings |
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Assessing the self through self-description
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-the person you would like to be (ideal self).
-the person you actually are (actual self). -similarity between the two is considered as an indicator of personal growth. |
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Rollo May believed in the free will of human beings
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attended to the problematic aspects of human nature, i.e., loneliness, anxiety and alienation
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Focused on the challenges of human existence.
-search for the meaning of life; need to confront death. -living with the burden of responsibility for our actions |
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Similarities between Rollo May and Rogers’s ideas
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-humans are basically good.
-society creates problems for the individual. -culture is evil or good because we who make the culture are evil or good |
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Evaluating humanistic perspective
-A reason for its popularity is its emphasis on ‘individual self |
Criticized concepts.
1. Potential for growth and self-actualization. -where do these tendencies come from? -under what conditions these are expressed? 2. Emphasis on subjective experience. self-reports which are subjective and unreliable. 3. Emphasis on self-actualization. -leads to self-indulgence, selfishness, and erosion of moral constraints. -Those who focus beyond self, enjoy social support and cope with stress effectively. 4. People are liked and accepted for who they are, not just for their achievements. 5. Adopts optimistic view of human nature. -neglects the human capacity for evil |
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Rogers was aware of evil nature of humans
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-evil does not spring from human nature.
-comes from toxic cultural influences such as prejudices, education system, and exploitation -It is better to adopt a more balanced approach |
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Trait theories of personality
-Personality is defined and measured with the help of behavioural dispositions called traits. |
Trait approach
-a system for assessing how people differ in their tendencies to act consistently across situations. -uses a psychometric approach by identifying stable individual differences along various dimensions. |
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Allport (1937) defined personality in terms of identifiable behaviour patterns
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personality is a measure of one’s uniqueness as an individual
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Allport’s classification of traits
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-Cardinal traits.
-Central traits. -Secondary traits. |
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Cardinal traits
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ruling passions which dominate an individual’s life
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Central traits
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lasting characteristics that control people personalities
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Secondary traits
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less obvious and may not appear in an individual’s behaviour
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Factor analysis in exploring traits
-Cattell’s (1990) factor analysis reduced the traits to 16 basic dimensions of personality |
an individual’s personality can be described by measuring just 16 traits, called ‘16 PF’
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Traits are along a bipolar dimension marked by opposing traits
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-reserved-outgoing; trusting-suspicious; relaxed-tense
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McCrae & Costa (2003) used factor analysis to arrive at five-factor model of personality called “Big Five”.
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-Others reduced individual variations to two or three dimensions, including extraversion–introversion and emotional stability–instability (Eysenck, 1992).
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Biology also influences personality
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-extraverts seek stimulation because their normal brain arousal is low.
-differences in children’s shyness and inhibition may be because of autonomic nervous system reactivity. -research discovered genes involved in neuroticism, pessimism and anxiety. -a study of twins in Canada, Germany and Japan discovered a gene related to neuroticism and non-agreeableness (Jang et al., 2001). |
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Measuring personality (Assessing traits)
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two types of tests used are objective and projective
-Objective tests (inventories) -Personality inventories |
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Objective tests (inventories)
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Standardized questions requiring written responses.
-scales on which people are asked to rate themselves |
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Personality inventories
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-longer questionnaires covering a wide range of feelings and behaviours - assess several traits at once
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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): Test Profile
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-Used in clinical & employment settings.
-Measures aspects of personality along various dimensions. -Extreme responses on a dimension suggest a problem. -The ‘Big Five’ Personality Factors -Evaluating the trait perspective. |
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The person-situation controversy
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Behaviour is influenced by the interaction of our inner disposition with our environment.
-person-situation controversy looks for personality traits that persist over time and across situations. |
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Some are impressed with personality change while others are struck by personality stability
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-personality trait scores correlate with scores obtained several years later.
-people do not act with predictable consistency |
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*In a novel situation our traits may not be expressed
*In a familiar situation we act as we are, i.e., express our traits |
-immediate situation powerfully influences a person’s behaviour, especially, when the situation makes clear demands.
-parents inculcate beliefs and values, especially, religiosity and moral behaviour in their children (Shah, 2004). |
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Social-cognitive theories
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A product of interaction of personality traits, cognitive processes and the environment called ‘social-cognitive theory
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Human experience and not the human nature is the primary cause of personality growth and development
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-the social side is the role of experiences delivered by the environment.
-the cognitive side is the schemas, memories, interpretations and expectation about the events. |
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Personality is largely shaped through learning (Bandura, 1999)
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People are self-organizing, proactive, self-reflecting and self-regulating not just reactive organism.
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Bandura‘s (1986) ‘reciprocal determinism’
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internal mental events, external environmental events, and overt behaviour influence one another.
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Ways in which individual and situation interact.
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1. Different people choose different situations.
-the environment we select influences us. 2. Personalities shape how we interpret and react to events. -an anxious person perceives the environment as threatening. 3. Personalities help create situations to which we react. -a helpful person causes others to respond in a friendly way. |
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Personal control
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-Our learning to see ourselves as controlling, or as controlled by, our environment.
-Ways of studying the effect of personal control |
-correlating people’s feelings of control with their behaviours and achievements.
-experiment, by raising or lowering people’s sense of control and noting the effects. |
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Internal- external locus of control
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-Theory of “locus of control” (Rotter, 1990).
-One’s general expectation about whether one can control the things that happen to him/her; ‘internals’ versus ‘externals’ |
-internals: believe that they are responsible for what happens to them, that they control their own destiny.
-externals: believe that their lives are controlled by luck, fate, or other people. |
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Internals achieve more in school and work, enjoy better health, feel less depressed, perform better at work, and are more helpful than do ‘externals’ (Ng et al., 2006)
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Learned helplessness versus personal control
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Seligman proposed that depression results from acquired expectation of lack of control called “learned helplessness”.
-people who are exposed to uncontrollable events become, in many ways, like depressed individuals. -discouraged, pessimistic about the future, and lacking in initiative. Thus, he saw depression as a form of learned helplessness. |
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Excess of freedom in Western cultures
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-decreasing life satisfaction, increased depression, and sometimes decisional paralysis (Schwartz, 2004).
-tyranny of choice brings information overload and a greater likelihood of feeling regret over some of the unchosen options. |
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Assessing behaviour in situations
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To predict behaviour, researchers often observe behaviour in realistic situations
-some organizations assess the behaviour on simulated working conditions rather than using paper-and-pencil tests. -this assessment of behaviour in a realistic situation helps predict later success on actual task related behaviour. |
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The logic of these procedures
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-best means of predicting future behaviour is neither a personality test nor an interviewer’s intuition.
-it is the person’s past behaviour patterns in similar situations |
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Evaluating the social cognitive perspective
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-focuses too much on the situation and fails to consider person’s inner traits.
-our emotions, unconscious motives and traits exert more influence than the situation |
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Cultural influences on personality
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The values and norms in a culture shape personality characteristics.
-Culture, values, and traits. |
Cross cultural research has found both continuity and variability of traits across cultures.
-Big Five when administered in other cultures showed the same traits. |
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The self-concept
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Self is an important object of our own attention.
-“cock-tail party effect” – the tendency of people to pick a personally relevant stimulus out of a complex environment. |
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Self-beliefs are self-schemas that include knowledge about oneself
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The term self-concept refers to the sum total of beliefs that people have about themselves.
-guide the processing of self-relevant information. used to compare someone else’s performance with our own` |
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Self-esteem.
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An affectively charged component of the self.
-consists of a person’s positive and negative self-evaluations. -refers to our positive and negative evaluations of ourselves. |
Some individuals have higher self-esteem than others do.
-impacts the way we think and feel about ourselves. -individuals view parts of the self differently: some parts are judged more favourably than the other parts. |
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Benefits of self-esteem
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Satisfying the need of self-esteem is critical to our entire outlook on life.
-people with positive self-image tend to be happy, healthy, productive, and successful (Orth et al., 2009). -confident, bringing to new challenges a winning and motivating attitude. -persist longer at difficult tasks, sleep better at night, maintain their independence in the face of peer pressure, and suffer fewer ulcers (McKay, 2000). |
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The dark side of self-esteem
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-people with elevated self-esteem may think that they are superior, may be sensitive to threats, insults, and challenges.
-high self-esteem may be an inflated egotism (Ybarra, 1999). -may be volatile, may use violent action to reassert his superiority and to dominate those who challenge him. -those filled with high self-esteem are more likely to lash out angrily and violently in response to criticism, rejection, and bruises to the ego |
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Self-serving bias
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-People’s tendency to attribute failure and other bad events to external causes, but to attribute success and other good events to themselves
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one of the most consistent biases in people’s everyday causal assessment (Brown & Rogers, 1991).
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Tendency to perceive positively causes a series of biases.
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-people accept more responsibility for good deeds than for bad, and for successes than for failures.
-most see themselves as better than average. |
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