Psychology Exam 4

What is personality?

An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

What are the theories of personality?

* Psychoanalytic theory
* Humanistic theory
* Trait theories
* Social-cognitive theories

How do psychodynamic theories view personality?

With a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences.

What do psychodynamic theories descend from?

Freud’s psychoanalysis

What does Freud’s psychoanalysis do?

Attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts

What does Freud’s psychoanalysis perspective say?

Without realizing the source, we may speak of ego, repression, projection, complex (as in “inferiority complex”), sibling rivalry, Freudian slips, and fixation.

What are the two terms attached to Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective?

Unconscious and free association

What is the unconscious?

According to Freud, it is a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.

What is free association?

In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

What are the terms associated with Freud’s view of personality?

Ego, superego, and id

What is the ego?

The largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality.

What is the superego?

The part of the personality that represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations.

What is the id?

A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives.

What is the preconscious?

The outside awareness, but acceptable.

What are the stages of personality development?

* Oral
* Anal
* Phallic
* Latency
* Genital

What age is the oral stage?

0-18 months

What age is the anal stage?

18-36 months

What age is the phallic stage?

3-6 years

What is the latency stage?

6 to puberty

What is the genital stage?

Puberty and onward

What is the focus of the oral stage?

Pleasure centers on the mouth

What does the oral stage include?

Sucking, biting, and chewing

What is the focus of the anal stage?

Pleasure focus on bowl and bladder elimination

What are children in the anal stage coping with?

Demands for control

What is the focus of the phallic stage?

Pleasure zone is the genitals

What are children in the phallic stage coping with?

Incestuous sexual feelings

What is the focus of the latency phase?

Dormant sexual feelings

What is the focus of the genital phase?

A maturation of sexual interests

What is the Oedipus complex?

A boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.

Some psychoanalysts in Freud’s era believed that girls experience a parallel of the Oedipus complex. What was this called?

The Electra Complex

What is identification?

The process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos.

What is fixation?

A lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

What are defense mechanisms?

The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

What are the defense mechanisms?

* Regression
* Reaction formation
* Projection
* Rationalization
* Displacement
* Denial

What is regression?

Retreating to an earlier psychosexual stage, where some physic energy remains fixated.

What is an example of regression?

A little boy reverts to the oral comfort of thumb sucking in the car on the way to his first day of school.

What is reaction formation?

Switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites.

What is an example of reaction formation?

Regressing angry feelings, a person displays exaggerated friendliness

What is projection?

Disguising one’s own threatening impulses by attributing them to others

What is an example of projection?

A thief thinking everyone else around them is also a thief.

What is rationalization?

Offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one’s actions

What is an example of rationalization?

A habitual drinker says she drinks with her friends “just to be sociable”.

What is displacement?

Shifting sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person.

What is an example of displacement?

A little girl kicks the family dog after her mother puts her in time-out.

What is denial?

Refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities

What is an example of denial?

A husband denies the evidence of his loved one’s affair

What did Alfred Adler believe?

Much of our behavior is driven by efforts to conquer childhood inferiority feelings that trigger our strivings for superiority and power.

What did Karen Horney believe?

Childhood anxiety triggers our desire for love and security.

What did Carl Jung believe?

We have a collective unconscious, which is a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history.

What are some ways of assessing unconscious processes?

Projective tests, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), and the Rorschach inkblot test.

What are projective tests?

Personality tests that provide ambiguous images designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.

What are Thematic Apperception Tests (TAT)?

People express their feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

What is the Rorschach inkblot test?

A set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach.

What does the Rorschach inkblot test seek?

To identify people’s feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.

Today’s developmental psychologists see our development as lifelong. How did Freud see it?

Fixed in childhood

Freud’s theory offers after-the-fact explanations of any characteristics. What does it fail to do?

To predict such behaviors and traits

What do modern researchers content about repression?

If it ever occurs, it is a rare mental response to terrible trauma.

Researchers found that sometimes high stress and associated stress hormones enhance what?

Memory

According to both research and Freud, how do we defend ourselves against anxiety?

Unconsciously

What are traits?

A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act in certain ways, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports.

What is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)?

A sorting of personality types by Carl Jung, based on responses to 126 questions.

What are personality inventories?

A questionaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and ehaviors; used to assess selected personlity traits.

What is an example of a personality inventory?

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

What is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)?

The most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests.

What are the Big Five factors?

* Openness
* Conscientiousness
* Extraversion
* Agreeableness
* Neuroticism

What is openness?

Being curious, original, intellectual, creative, and open to new ideas.

What is conscientiousness?

Being organized, systematic, punctual, achievement, oriented, and dependable.

What is extraversion?

Being outgoing, talkative, sociable, and enjoying social situations.

What is agreeableness?

Being affable, tolerant, sensitive, trusting, kind, and warm.

What is neuroticism?

Being anxious, irritable, temperamental, and moody.

How is our behavior influenced?

By the interaction of our inner disposition with our environment

How can we reveal our distinct personality traits?

Averaging our behavior across many occasions

What is the social-cognitive perspective?

A perspective of behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits, including their thinking, and their social context.

How do social-cognitive theorists believe we learn many of our behaviors?

Through conditioning or by observing and imitating others.

What is reciprocal determinism?

The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and the environment.

What are the different ways individuals and environments interact?

* Different people choose different environments.
* Our personalities shape how we interpret and react to events
* Our characters help create situations to which we react

Who coined the “psychoanalytic” personality theory?

Freud

What are the assumptions of the psychoanalytic theory?

Emotional disorders spring from unconscious dynamics, such as unresolved sexual and other childhood conflicts, and fixation at various developmental stages. Defense mechanisms fend off anxiety.

What is the view of the psychoanalytic theory?

Personality consists of pleasure-seeking impulses (the id), a reality-oriented executive (the ego), and an internalized set of ideals (the superego).

Who coined the personality theory “psychodynamic”?

Alder, Horney, and Jung

What are the assumptions of the psychodynamic personality theory?

The unconscious and conscious minds interact. Childhood experiences and defense mechanisms are important.

What is major depressive disorder?

A disorder in which a person experiences, in the absence of drugs or another medical condition, two or more weeks with five or more symptoms, at least one of which must be either depressed mood or loss of interest/pleasure.

What are the two symptoms someone must have to have major depressive disorder?

Depressed mood or loss of interest/pleasure.

What are the major symptoms of major depressive disorder?

* Depressed mood most of the time
* Dramatically reduced interest or enjoyment in activities most of the time
* Significant challenges regulating appetite and weight
* Significant challenges regulating sleep
* Physical agitation or lethargy
* Feeling listless or with much less energy
* Feeling worthless, or feeling unwarranted guilt
* Problems with thinking, concentrating, or making decisions
* Thinking repetitively of death and suicide

What are the symptoms of persistent depressive disorder?

* Difficulty with decision making and concentration
* Feeling hopeless
* Poor self-esteem
* Reduced energy levels
* Problems regulating sleep
* Problems regulating appetite

How long has persistent depressive disorder been occurring before diagnosis?

Two or more years

Which depressive disorder is consistent and long-term?

Persistent depressive disorder

What is bipolar disorder?

A disorder in which a person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania.

What is mania?

A hyperactive, wildly optimistic state in which dangerously poor judgment is common.

What changes accompany depression?

Behavioral and cognitive

Women’s risk of major depressive disorder is nearly ______ than men’s.

double

Most major depressive episodes do what?

Self-terminate

For you to have a major depressive disorder, you cannot have something else “depressive” occurring. (Ex. Lost of a family member).

True

Compared to generations past, depression does what?

Strikes earlier (teens) and affects more people.

Where are the highest rates of depression?

Young adults in developed countries

If a parent of sibling has a depressive disorder, your chance of having it decreases.

False, it increases

What physical affects can depressive disorder have?

Diminished brain activity during slowed-down depressive states and more activity during periods of mania

In people with bipolar disorder, what have neuroscientists found?

Altered brain structures such as decreased white matter (less axons)

How does diet affect depressive disorder?

People who eat heart-healthy diets are at low risk for developing the disorder.

Excessive alcohol use correlates with what?

Depression