Human Nature: A Brief tour of the Mind and Brain.

Intro to personality exam 1

McAdams and Pals definition of personality

Personality is an individual’s variation on human nature expressed through dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and self-defining life narratives situated in culture and social context.

Every person is

Like all others, like some others, and like no others.

Human Nature (McAdams and Pals)

Fundamentally the result of our evolved biology

Humans are like all other organisms:

Survival and reproduction

Humans are like some other organisms:

K life strategy (Refers to a pattern of having fewer offspring but investing more resources in making sure that those offspring can be successful.)

Information is stored in goal oriented structure:

What is → How should we act → What should be

Cerebral cortex

Outer wrinkly matter of the brain, has 4 lobes. (Complex thinking/sensory processing.)

1) Frontal lobe

Helps you plan, make decisions, and control behavior

2) Parietal lobe

helps you process information about your body and surroundings (touch, body sensations).

3) Temporal lobe

Helps you process information from the environment, including hearing/language

4) Occipital lobe

Helps you process visual information that can influence how you respond to your environment.

Limbic System overall

Learning, motivation, and emotion

Hypothalamus main function

Controls basic motivated behaviors related to survival and reproduction.

Amygdala

Helps with classical conditioning, emotional meaning, and stimulus–stimulus associations. (Biased towards fear)

Hippocampus

Helps form stimulus–context associations and provides context information to the amygdala

Classical conditioning

Process of learning what predicts what (what things and stimuli go together)

US

Unconditioned stimulus (naturally produces a response).

UR

Unconditioned response (natural response to the US)

CS

Conditioned stimulus (previously neutral stimulus that becomes meaningful through learning)

CR

Conditioned response (learned response to the CS)

Operant conditioning

Learning how we should act based on the consequences of our behavior. (voluntary)

Positive reinforcement

Increase behavior by adding something rewarding

Negative reinforcement

Increase behavior by removing something unpleasant

Positive punishment

decrease a behavior by providing something unpleasant

Negative punishment

decrease a behavior by removing something pleasant

Reciprocal determinism

Environment influences behavior, behavior influences environment