Psych 9C Ch 13: Personality Psychology

Theories of Personality

Trait Approach, Psychodynamic Theories, Humanistic Approach, Cognitive-social approach

Trait Approach

an approach to studying personality that focuses on how individuals differ in personality dispositions

Personality types

discrete categories of people based on personality characteristics; continue to be maintained over time and across circumstances

Biological trait theory (Eysenck)

personality is composed of traits that occurs in three dimensions: extraversion/introversion, emotionally stable/neurotic, and high constraint/ low constraint (originally called psychoticism)

Five-factor theory (OCEAN/The Big Five)

Personality consists of five major personality traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism

Behavioral approach system

aka Bas; the brain system involved in the pursuit of incentives or rewards; associated with extraversion

Psychodynamic Theories

Based on the idea that our personalities are based on our unconscious conflicts and desires

Sigmund Freud

Was a sexually repressed Victorian doctor who believed women had physical problems due to repressed desires (hysteria); used free association to help bring those repressed memories to light; Emphasis on unconscious and dynamic processes

Behavioral inhibition system

aka BIS; the brain system that is sensitive to punishment and therefore inhibits behavior that might lead to danger or pain; associated with neuroticism

Freudian personality structure

Consists of the id, ego, and superego

Id

The most basic level of our personality; submerged in the unconscious; operates on the pleasure principle and is driven by our wants and desires; most often seen in young children with no impulse control; Libido is the energy that drives us to pursue pleasurable activities or objects

Superego

Located in our conscious level of operation; consists of societal/parental regulations; helps limit the id's desires and needs; we experience pride if we are able to live up to goals and guilt if we don't

Ego

Located in the preconscious level; operates on the reality principle and logical/rational thought; helps balance out the id's neediness in a practical way and the superego's strict regulatory tendencies

Defense mechanisms

Ways we cope with conflict between the id and superego; consist of reaction formation, displacement, projection, denial, sublimation, rationalization, and repression

Reaction formation

Warding off an uncomfortable thought by overemphasizing its opposite; e.g. Person with unacknowledged homosexual desires makes homophobic remarks

Displacement

Shifting the attention of emotion from one object to another; e.g. Person yells at children after a bad day at work.

Projection

Attributing unacceptable qualities of the self to someone else; e.g. Competitive person describes others as supercompetitive.

Sublimation

Channeling socially unacceptable impulses into constructive, even admirable, behavior; e.g. Sadist becomes a surgeon or dentist.

Denial

Refusing to acknowledge source of anxiety; e.g. ill person ignores medical advice

Repression

Excluding source of anxiety from awareness; e.g. Person fails to remember an unpleasant event

Rationalization

Concocting a seemingly logical reason or excuse for behavior that might otherwise be shameful; e.g. Person cheats on taxes because "everyone does it."

Psychosexual stages

Sexual stages Freud claimed that each person went/goes through when developing a personality; focus libido on erogenous zones of the body; consists of oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital stages

Oral stage

birth to 18 months; Baby gains pleasure through the mouth; e.g. sucking a bottle/ mother's breast; people can become fixated at this stage and are known to have "oral personalities" where they tend to use their mouths (e.g. smoking) and are needy

Anal Stage

2-3 years old; Child gains pleasure through the anus; e.g. potty training and releasing bowels; people can become fixated at this stage and have anal-retentive personalities where they are uptight and stubborn.

Phallic Stage

Occurs at 3-5 years; Child gains pleasure by rubbing their genitals against objects; the Oedipus complex in boys and the Electra complex in girls occurs during this stage

Oedipus/Electra Complex

child desires their opposite-sex parent and finds the same sex parent to be a rival, eventually represses their desire for the opposite-sex parent and identifies with the same sex parent; girl loves her father until she realizes he has a penis (penis envy) and identifies with her mother, boy loves mother until he realizes his father will castrate him (castration anxiety) and identifies with his father

Latency Stage

Occurs when a child is 6-12 years old; represses sexual desires and focuses on friendships and school

Genital Stage

Occurs from 13 to adulthood; teenagers/adults focus their energy on sex and reproduction

Neo-Freudians

Believe that unconscious conflict is important to understanding personality, but don't believe all of Freud's findings; include Horney, Adler, Bowlby, etc.; primary neo-freudian theory is object-relations theory

Object relations theory

People develop personalities in response to how they interact with important people around them; primary attachment figure plays an important role in object relations theory as displayed in the strange situation task; People can develop secure attachments (60%), insecure ambivalent attachments, and insecure avoidant attachments; ambivalent personalities fret over relationships and end up isolating themselves whereas avoidant personalities put no effort into their relationships and aren't interested; these personalities can change over time

Humanistic Approach

Emphasize integrated personal experience

Maslow & self-actualization

Developed the hierarchy of needs with safety at the bottom and self-actualization at the top; self-actualization occurs when a person reaches their full potential and is happy with what they are doing with their lives; largely criticized because the steps can occur out of order; humanistic approach focuses on how a person can achieve self-actualization

Rogers & person-centered approach

Emphasized people's subjective understandings of their lives; encouraged parents to show their children unconditional positive regard by accepting them and prizing them no matter how their children behave; If they behave poorly, children should be punished with love; if unconditional positive regard is used; the child will become a fully functioning person

Phenomenology

Refers to a technique in the humanistic approach where psychologists try to understand someone's life from their first-person experiences (walking in their shoes); People should look at other individual's construal, they ways in which they make sense of and interpret the world

Positive psychology

Focuses on how people can better themselves and their lives; founded by Martin Seligman; character strengths benefit individuals without harming others; Flow occurs when a person is completely immersed in a complex task motivated by intrinsic motivation

Cognitive-social approach

emphasize how personal beliefs, expectancies, and interpretations of social situations shape behavior and personality

Cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS)

Developed by Walter Mischel; based on "encodings," or a set of construals

Self-regulatory capacities

Refers to someone's ability to regulate their own actions and emotions; demonstrated through the marshmallow experiment; young children have more trouble delaying gratification than older children and adults do; delayed gratification is associated with good work ethic and other positive attributes

Between family effects

Less likely to display differences in personality; describe personality between individuals' shared environments; e.g. twins raised apart vs. raised together, relationship between adoptive siblings and their adoptive parents, etc.; examine differences between families as units

Within family effects

More likely to display differences in personality; describe personality differences between individuals' non-shared environments; e.g. birth order, peer groups, etc.; examine differences between individuals within a family unit

Temperament

An aspect of personality that is biologically determined and likely to determine a person's behavior; predicts a child's future personality; broader than a personality trait; types include activity level, emotionality, and sociability; In Finland study, children high in activity level were more likely to move far away, children high in emotionality were more likely to stay close to home, and children high in sociability were likely to move to urban areas; Females are more likely to control attention and resist impulses, boys are more likely to be physically active and experience more high-intensity pleasure

Inhibition

Developed by Kagan, refers to a child's likelihood to be shy as an adult; seen at 2 months; characterized by lack of positive emotions, easy arousal, less likely to explore the environment, and less likely to make direct eye contact; not entirely true because 1/3 who were inhibited grew up to be extraverted; children raised in a supportive environment were more likely to be extraverted/outgoing

Idiographic approaches

Examine one's unique characteristics; e.g. asking someone to name 10 characteristics that describe them

Nomothetic approaches

Examine one's traits in comparison to the entire population; e.g. NEO Personal Inventory

Projective measures

Examine one's personality through their unconscious thought patterns about objects; include the Rorschach inkblot test and the thematic apperception test (TAT)

Rorschach inkblot test

A card displays an ambiguous inkblot and the person has to say what they believe it represents; criticized for misdiagnosing psychological disorders and for being too subjective

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A card displays an ambiguous picture and the person has to make up a story about it; accurately display's one's motivations and interdependence

Objective measures

directly assess personality, usually through self-report questionnaires or observer ratings; include self-reports, life history, and behavioral data

self-report

A method of assessing personality in which the individual rates themselves to determine their personality; criticized for being inaccurate because of faking good and faking bad; include MMPI and the California Q-Sort

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

A questionnaire of 567 questions that determine one's personality; consists of 10 scales for diagnosing psychological disorders; alleviates issues of faking good and faking bad through a validity scale that assesses it

California Q-Sort

A person is given a set of 100 cards with personality traits and is asked to separate them into 9 piles ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree"

Life History

Psychologists look at people's lives and the actions they take during them to determine their personalities; Narrative psychologists look at people's life stories and the personal myths created during them

Behavioral data

Psychologists have created technologies such as the EAR to observe people's behaviors and how they display one's personality

Informant Reports

Observer reports of an individual's personality; close acquaintances may give more accurate reports of people's personalities because they watch them more often and don't fall prey to giving biased reports

Situationism

The theory that behavior is determined more by situations than by personality and cannot be reliably predicted without understanding the situation

Interactionism

According to interactionists, behavior is determined jointly by situations and personality traits; people choose their environments

Self-awareness

Refers to one's self concept or how they perceive themselves to be, made up of the self-schema, who one was in the past, who one is now (working self-concept), and who one may be in the future

Real self

The aspect of the self-schema that dictates who you really are

Ought self

The aspect of the self-schema that dictates who others think you should be

Ideal self

the aspect of the self-schema that dictates who you wish you were

Self-esteem

An aspect of the self-concept that refers to whether we find ourselves worthy or not (high self-esteem keeps us from realizing we will eventually die); high self-esteem correlated with violence and narcissism (characterized by bad relationships, anger when challenged, abusive behavior, and unfaithfulness)

Sociometer

Refers to an internal device we use to measure our self-esteem in group situations; we have high self-esteem when we will potentially be accepted by a group and low self-esteem when we will potentially be rejected by a group

Strategies to maintain positive sense of self

Consist of better-than-average effect, tendencies to believe we have control over events that occur in our lives, positive illusions; Social comparisons, and self-serving bias

better-than-average effect

People (Americans) tend to believe they are better than others at certain things

positive illusions

Being unrealistically optimistic about the future

social comparison

Comparing yourself to others around you; occurs when we don't have enough criteria to judge ourselves on; people make upward or downward comparisons based on their levels of self-esteem

Upward comparison

Comparing yourself to others who are superior to you; occurs with people who have low self-esteem

Downward Comparison

Comparing yourself to others who are inferior to you; occurs with people who have high self-esteem

interdependent self-construals

The tendency to perceive one's self in relation to others; seen in collectivist cultures

independent self-construals

The tendency to perceive one's self as a unique individual; occurs in individualist cultures

Developmental changes in personality

As a person gets older openness decreases, conscientiousness increases, extraversion decreases, agreeableness increases, and neuroticism decreases; people are also able to have more self-control and emotional stability as they get older

Cultural influences on personality

collectivist cultures tend to be less contentious, less extraverted, less agreeable, and more neurotic; individualist cultures tend to be more contiencious, more agreeable, and less neurotic; how people rate themselves does not match stereotypes because compared to others of their culture, individuals see themselves as normal

Cultural difficulties in assessing personality

problems in translating questions and the interpretation of said questions due to collectivist/individualist notions of personality traits

Adaptiveness of Personality

personality adjusts based on the environment; Personality traits related to survival and reproduction include traits like Competitiveness; If the skills of a group are diverse, they are more adaptable because they can achieve more things; It has been proven that animals have personalities like people do because they display individual differences in behavior; in one study, people were asked to assess hyenas' personalities and used words that would describe human personalities (assertiveness, excitability, sociability, curiosity, and agreeableness)

Genetic component of personality

40-60% of personality is heritable; monozygotic (identical) twins show more similar personalities than dizygotic (fraternal) twins because they share 100% of genes rather than 50%; adopted children do not show similar personalities to their adoptive siblings or parents; Parents are still important to a child's personality because a minimum level of parenting is required for a child to strive

Personal Myths

The argument that self-schemas are stories people make up about themselves and their lives; Positive personal myths lead to success but negative personal myths lead to failure

Personality Psychology

how people respond differently from others but consistently across different situations

Personality

an individual's characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling

Elements of personality theory

Motivation, structure, growth and development, psychopathology & therapy

psychogenic

originating in the mind

concious

In Freudian terms, thoughts or motives that a person is currently aware of or is remembering

Preconscious

in Freud's theory, the level of consciousness in which thoughts and feelings are not conscious but are readily retrieveable to consciousness

unconcious

according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.

psychodynamics

• structural model is dynamic (3 forces in conflict, behavior results from ego finding compromise to satisfy id and superego)
• id impulses are like a pressure cooker (anxiety as signal)
• energy must be released somehow (either "slips" out -- particularly under stress; or is transformed to hide unacceptable content)

freudian slip

AKA a parapraxis, a verbal mistake that is thought to reveal an unconscious belief, thought, or emotion

mechanisms of defense

• strategies ego uses to keep unacceptable id impulses out of consciousness (+ the watchful eye of the superegos)

Anna Freud (1936)

• repression
• displacement
• denial
• rationalization
• projection
• reaction formation
• sublimation

Motivation

the key motivation is gratification of instinctual desires related to to survival and procreation

structure

id, ego, superego
Conservation and compromise

psychophysical system

The dynamic of the psycho- (mental nature) and -physical (biological processes and external factors) in determining personality

Twin Studies

researchers assess hereditary influence by comparing the resemblance of identical twins and fraternal twins with respect to a trait

Adoption Studies

Two biologically unrelated siblings who are raised together are no more alike in personality than two strangers. Parenting style has no effect on personality, but parents play an important role in selecting environments that affect children's personality

temperament

basic emotional style that appears early in development and is largely genetic in origin

Basic Characteristics of Temperament

Activity level, emotionality, sociability

Temperament in Boys vs Girls

Girls are more able to control their attention and resist their impulses.
Boys are more active and gain more pleasure from physical activity.

strong situations vs weak situations

strong situations (elevators, religious services, job interviews) tend to mask differences in personality because of the power of the social environment. Weak situations (parks, bars, one's house) tend to reveal differences in personality

rank order stability

In terms of personality, the lack of change in where a person stands on the trait relative to other people

mean level change

a type of general change that affects nearly all people as they grow from infancy to adulthood, although traits are stable over a lifespan, they do undergo developmental change

Developmental changes

caused by changes in self-perception generated by life experiences

Common Developmental changes

Decreased neuroticism, extraversion and openness
Incresased agreeableness and conscientiousness