Chapter

Personality

a person's characteristic thoughts, emotional responses, behaviors

Personality Trait

a pattern of thought, emotion, behavior that is relatively consistent over time and across situations

Two adopted siblings even in the same household are no more alike in personality than two randomly picked strangers

Parenting has less of an impact on personality than genetics

Parenting decisions (not style) have a stronger effect on personality (where they live, how many children, change in socioeconomic status, moving)

Dispositions

behavioral, mental, emotional response tendencies to stimuli, no single gene accounts for personality

Temperaments

general tendencies to feel/act in certain ways, broader than personality traits (which can be altered by life experiences) while temperaments are innate biological structures of personality and are relatively stable

Activity Level

overall amount of energy and action

Emotionality

intensity of emotional reactions

Sociability

the general tendency to affiliate with others

Factor Analysis

grouping items according to their similarities to identify the basic dimensions of personality

Five Factor Theory

identifies five basic personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism)

There is a continuum for each factor and each factor describes a broad trait made up of several related specific traits

Biological Trait Theory

Eysenck proposed personality traits have 3 major dimensions

Believed intro/extraversion was due to difference in arousal

Everyone operates at some specific level of arousal

Jeffery Gray

personality is rooted in two motivational functions

Behavioral Approach System (BAS)

brain structures that lead organisms to approach stimuli in pursuit of rewards "go" system

Related to extraversion, extraverts are more sensitive to rewards than punishment

Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS)

"slow down" system, sensitive to punishment, inhibits or slows behavior when there are signs of danger, threats, pain, BE CAUTIOUS/VIGILANT/CAREFUL

Related to anxiety

Related to people that are neurotic

Humanistic

emphasize personal experience, belief systems, uniqueness of each human, inherent goodness, seek to fulfill their potential for personal growth through greater self understanding (self actualization)

Carl Rogers

create a supportive, accepting environment, importance of how parents show affection to their children, how parental treatment affects personality development

Unconditional Positive Regard

parents should accept and prize their children no matter how they behavior (express disapproval and love at the same time) to develop healthy self esteem and become a fully functioning person

Dan McAdams’s narratives

stories that we tell ourselves about where we came from and where we are going = is understanding of our own identity (redemption, contamination, meaning-making)

Behavioral Psychology

B.F. Skinner, idea that personality is NOT a result of internal processes but LEARNED responses to reinforcement

Julian Rotter

behavior is a function of a person's expectancy that a reward will result from a behavior (reinforcement) and the values a person ascribes to particular rewards

Locus of control

how much control people believe they have over what happens in their lives

Internal

believe they can bring about their own rewards

External

rewards and fates result from forces beyond their control

Albert Bandura’s reciprocal determinism

three factors influence how a person acts

Mischel

behaviors are determined more by situations than by personality traits (situationism)

Self monitoring

being sensitive to cues of situational appropriateness, alter their behavior to match the situation = low levels of consistency

Strong Situations

mask differences in personality due to the rules of a strong social environment/expectation (ex

Weak Situations

reveal differences in personality (ex

People tend to be more conscientious as they age, increased self control and emotional stability (less neurotic), less extraverted, less open to new experiences, become more agreeable

Canadians are known to be very agreeable but Canadians self report that they are as agreeable as anyone else B/C the people around them are very agreeable as well so it’s hard to see yourself as very agreeable/above average if everyone around u is also agreeable/above average

Idiographic

person centered, focused on individual lives, how various characteristics are integrated into unique persons, the way they tell the story of their life, uniqueness of each individual, NARRATIVE

Nomothetic Approaches

focus on characteristics common among all people but vary from person to person, compare all people and their relative standing, TRAIT

Projective Measures

maps out response patterns by having people describe or tell stories about ambiguous stimulus items (too imprecise for diagnostic purposes BY ITSELF)

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (a self report questionnaire)

used to assess psychopathology (assess a person's personality generally) and to compare a person's scores to the average to assess whether this person is likely to have a psychological disorder

Q Sort

asked to sort cards into nine piles according to how accurate the statements describe them, BUT to ensure the validity (no lying to distort the truth to make favorable impressions), fewer cards are allowed at the extreme ends) TO SEE which are central and not secondary traits

Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR)

device that unobtrusively tracks a person's real world moment to moment interactions, revealed self reports on the Big 5 do predict real world behavior

David Funder

a person's close acquaintances are accurate in trait judgments in some circumstances probably because we tend to explain our bad behaviors in terms of situation factors rather than personal ones, ESPECIALLY OBSERVABLE traits!!!

Evaluative traits

Vazire, argues people have blind spots about the aspects of their personalities because they want to feel good about themselves, especially for highly valued traits in society

People are more accurate in rating themselves for hard to observe traits (internal)

Self schema helps you remember information that is relevant to yourself easily accessible, when people think about adjectives in a self referential way they are more likely to recall them

People are especially likely to mention characteristics that distinguish them from other people

Mark Leary

self esteem is a mechanism for monitoring the likelihood of social exclusion

Dark Triad

narcissism, psychopathy (general lack of caring for the welfare of others), machiavellianism (manipulative for their own gain, lack concern when harming others)

related to career success (more money, leadership, political election winning)

Light Triad

humanism (valuing the worth and dignity of every person), faith in humanity (believing in the inherent goodness of humans), Kantianism (never use other people, don't manipulate others)

Most people rate themselves as above average

better than average effect

Positive Illusions

overly favorable, unrealistic beliefs about themselves (better than average effect, strong internal locus of control for positive outcomes, unrealistically optimistic about their future)

Downward Comparison

comparing yourself to someone worse than you feels good but provides little information

Upward Comparison

contrasting yourself to someone better than you feels bad but provides information on how to improve

Self Serving Bias

people with high self esteem tend to take credit for their success but blame failure on external factors

Heine

self serving bias is more common in Western cultures than Eastern

Americans show a bias for listing successes while Japanese students listed successes and failures equally (Americans explained failures using external factors while Japanese students used external factors to explain successes)

YOUR NON SHARED environment has more impact on your personality 50-50 genes and environment!

socially inhibited babies

are more likely to commit suicide, be unemployed, etc.

babies become startled and upset when shown new objects

likely to be shy as teens

Groups with diverse skills > limited skills which is why everyone is different from each other rather than just high in everything and low on neuroticism (best traits)

Psychodynamic/Freudian Approach

To hide us from our unconscious which will cause of anxiety, the mind tricks us using defense mechanisms

Displacement

repressed forbidden urges but we cope with them by replacing them with more socially acceptable ones

Projection

your unconscious thoughts are not recognized as your own so you push it on someone else or attribute them to someone else

Reaction Formation

convincing yourself that you feel the opposite of what you actually feel

elector complex

in the phallic stage, girls are in love w/ their father…

oedipus complex

in the phallic stage, boys are in love w/ their mother…

Latency stage

libido goes dormant (nothing happens)

Certain kids cheated on the school test while different kids tended to cheat on the athletics test

One’s behavior in one situation doesn’t tell us about their behavior in another situation

Extroverts in America are a lot happier but in Germany/Japan extroverts are the same happiness as introverts

Self reports often don’t match up with stereotypes

National reports are more accurate while self reports aren’t (biased comparisons of themselves with their national reputation)

Self serving biases are more common in the Western culture

Ego

conscious level, attempts to satisfy id’s wishes while being responsive to superego as well, reality principle

Id

conscious level, operates according to pleasure principle

Superego

preconscious level, develops in childhood, internalization of parental and societal standards of conduct, stops the id