Psychology Ch. 11/12/14

Personality

An individual’s unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving

Personality Theory

A theory that attempts to describe and explain similarities and differences in people’s patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving

Psychoanalytic Perspective

Emphasizes the importance of unconscious processes and the influence of early childhood experience

Humanistic Perspective

Represents an optimistic look at human nature, emphasizing the self and fulfillment of a person’s unique potential

Social Cognitive Perspective

Emphasizes learning and conscious cognitive processes, including the importance of beliefs about the self, goal setting, and self-regulation

Trait Perspective

Emphasize the description and measurement of specific personality differences among individuals

Psychoanalysis

Freud’s theory of personality that stresses the influence of unconscious and mental processes, the importance of sexual and aggressive instincts, and the enduring effects of early childhood experience on later personality development

Unconscious

Freud’s term to describe thoughts, feelings, wishes, and drives that are operating below the level of conscious awareness

Psychosexual Stages

Freud’s theory, age-related developmental periods in which the child’s sexual impulses are focused on different body areas and are expressed through the activities associated with those areas

• Oral (Birth/Infancy to one year): weaning

• Anal (1 to 3 years): potty training

• Phallic (3-6 years): sexual identity

• Latency (7-11 years or to puberty onset): learning (repressed sexual impulses)

• Genital (adolescence through adulthood): genital intercourse

Defense Mechanisms

Largely unconscious distortions of thoughts or perceptions that act to reduce anxiety

Repression

Complete exclusion from consciousness of anxiety-producing thoughts, feelings, or impulses; the most basic defense mechanism

Displacement

Redirection of emotional impulses toward a substitute person or object, usually one less threatening or dangerous than the original source of conflict

Sublimation

Form of displacement in which sexual urges are rechanneled into productive, nonsexual activities

Rationalization

Justifying one’s actions or feelings with socially acceptable explanations rather than consciously acknowledging one’s true motives or desires

Projection

The attribution of one’s own unacceptable urges or qualities to others

Reaction Formation

Thinking or behaving in a way that is the extreme opposite of unacceptable urges or impulses

Denial

The failure to recognize or acknowledge the existence of anxiety-provoking information

Regression

Retreating to a behavior pattern characteristic of an earlier stage of development

Id

The completely unconscious irrational component of personality that seeks immediate satisfaction of instinctual urges and drives (pleasure)

Ego

The partly conscious rational component of personality that regulates thoughts and behavior, and is most in touch with the demands of the external world (reality)

Superego

The partly conscious, self-evaluative, moralistic component of personality that is formed through the internalization of parental and societal rules (morality)

Pleasure principle

The fundamental human motive to obtain pleasure and avoid tension or discomfort

Reality principle

The capacity to postpone gratification until the appropriate time or circumstances exist in the eternal world

Freudian Slip

Unconscious slips of tongue, such as saying the name of an ex when in a romantic situation with a new person

Fixation

Result of an unresolved developmental conflict

Oedipus complex

A child’s unconscious sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent, usually accompanied by hostile feelings toward the same-sex parent

Karen Horney

• trained in psychoanalysis.

• regarded as the founder of feminine psychiatry focusing on the psychiatric of women and feminist psychology

• advocated that the differences between men and women were in culture and socialization rather than biology

• highly critical of Freud's theories of psychosexual development

Carl Jung

• rejected the belief that human behavior was fueled by instinctual drives

• believed that personality continues to develop throughout the lifespan

• studied different cultures to develop his theory, "analytical psychology."

• believed the deepest part of the individual psyche is the collective unconscious

Collective Unconscious

The hypothesized part of the unconscious mind that is inherited from previous generations and that contains universally shared ancestral experiences and ideas

Alfred Adler

• founder of "individual psychology"

• emphasized the importance of conscious thought processes

• inferiority complex

• striving for superiority

Social Cognitive Theory

Bandura’s theory of personality, which emphasizes the importance of conscious cognitive processes, social experiences, self-efficacy beliefs, and reciprocal determinism

Albert Bandura

• research demonstrated that we learn many behaviors by observing others, imitating

• our environment influences our thoughts and behaviors and our thoughts and behaviors influence the environment

Self-efficiacy

Beliefs that people have about their ability to meet the demands of a specific situation; feelings of self-confidence

Reciprocal Detirminism

Bandura’s model that explains human functioning and personality as caused by the interaction of behavioral, cognitive, and environmental factors

Carl Rogers

Focused on growth and potential

Congruence

Sense of self is consistent with their emotions and experiences

Self-concept

The set of perceptions and beliefs that you hold about yourself

Actualizing tendency

The basic human motive; the innate drive to maintain and enhance the human organism

Conditional Positive Regard

The sense that the child is valued and loved only when they behave in a way that is acceptable to others

Unconditional Positive Regard

The child’s sense that they will be valued and loved even if they don’t conform to the standards and expectations of others

Abraham Maslow

• we all strive to fulfill our full potential

• self-actualization

• peak experiences

• hierarchy of human needs

Trait

Relatively stable, enduring predisposition to consistently behave in a certain way

Trait theory

A theory of personality that focuses on identifying, describing, and measuring individual differences in behavioral predispositions

Surface traits

Personality characteristics or attributes that can be easily inferred from observable behaviors

Source traits

The broad, basic traits that are hypothesized to be universal and relatively few in number

“Five-Factor” Model of Personality Traits

Robert McCrae and Paul Costa, Jr. (1996, 2003, 2004)

1. Openness to experience - the extent to which people are original, imaginative, questioning, artistic, and capable of divergent (creative) thinking

2. Conscientiousness - the degree to which people are responsible, persevering, steadfast, tidy, and scrupulous

3. Introversion versus Extroversion - the extent to which people are outgoing or shy

4. Agreeableness - the extent to which people are good-natured, gentle, cooperative, and secure

5. Neuroticism - the extent to which people are emotionally unstable, anxious, impulsive, unrealistic, and negative

Behavioral genetics

An interdisciplinary field that studies the effects of genes and heredity on behavior

Psychological Test

A test that assesses a person’s abilities, aptitudes, interests, or personality based on a systematically obtained sample of behavior

Objective tests

Type of psychological test in which a person’s responses to standardized questions are compared to established norms

Reliability

Consistency of the results

Validity

That the tests measure what they purport to measure

Standardization

The process of making something conform to a standard

Projective Tests

A type of personality test that involves a person’s interpreting an ambiguous image

Social Psychology

A branch of psychology that investigates how a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by the presence of other people and by the social and physical environment

Sense of Self

Sense of who you are in relation to other people, a unique sense of identity influenced by social, cultural, and psychological experiences

Person Perception

Mental processes we use to form judgments about other people

Social Cognition

Mental processes people use to make sense of their social environments

Social Categorization

Mental processes of categorizing people into groups (or social categories) on the basis of their shared characteristics

Implicit Personality Theory

Associates physical attractiveness with a wide range of desirable characteristics, particularly with respect to faces

Atrribution

Mental process of inferring the cause of someone’s behavior, including one’s own

Stereotype

A cluster of characteristics that are associated with all members of a specific social group, often including quantities that are unrelated to the objective criteria that define the group

Explicit Cognition

Conscious mental processes involved in perceptions, judgments, decisions, and reasoning

Implicit Cognition

Unconscious or automatic mental processes that influence perceptions, judgments, decisions, and reasoning

Interpersonal Context

Situations that involve interactions between two or more people

Social Influence

The effect of situational factors and other people on an individual’s behavior

Social Norms

Unwritten “rules,” or expectations, for appropriate behavior in a particular social situation

We tend to believe that physical attractiveness equates to

Intelligence, happiness, and better adjustment

Attitudes have ____ components

Three

The three components of attitudes are

cognitive, behavioral, and emotional

Cognitive component of attitude

beliefs, thoughts, ideas about the attitude object

Behavioral component of attitude

predisposition to act in a particular way

Emotional component of attitude

Feelings and emotions and the attitude object

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to attribute the behavior of others to internal, personal characteristics, while ignoring or underestimating the role of external, situational factors

Blaming the victim

The tendency to blame an innocent victim of misfortune for having somehow caused the problem or for not having taken steps to avoid it

Hindsight bias

The tendency, after an event has occurred, to overestimate the extent to which one could have foreseen or predicted the outcome

Self-serving Bias

The tendency to attribute successful outcomes of one’s own behavior to internal causes and unsuccessful outcomes to external, situational causes

Intersectionality

The ways in which a person’s different group identities combine to influence their experience in the world

Stereotype Threat

Fear that you will be evaluated in terms of a negative stereotype about a group to which you belong creates anxiety and self-doubt, lowering performance

Cognitive Dissonance

The discomfort experienced when holding two or more conflicting cognitions (ideas, beliefs, values, or emotional reactions)

Conformity

Adjusting opinions, judgements, or behaviors so that they match those of other people, or the norms of a social group or situation

Normative Social Influence

Behavior motivated by the desire to gain social acceptance and approval

Informative Social Influebce

Behavior motivated by the desire to be correct

Solomon Asch Experiment on Conformity

Consisted of a group “vision test”, where study participants were found to be more likely to conform to obviously wrong answers if first given by other “participants”, who were actually working for the experimenter

Obedience

The performance of a behavior in response to a direct command

Milgram Obedience Study

Controversial series of experiments examining the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to shock a fake test subject who pretended to feel pain

Stanford Prison Study

Carried out August 15-21, 1971 in the basement of Jordan Hall, the Stanford Prison Experiment set out to examine the psychological effects of authority and powerlessness in a prison environment. The study, led by psychology professor Philip G. Zimbardo, recruited Stanford students using a local newspaper ad.

Robbers Cave Experiment

• two groups of boys participated in a series of competitive games

• group rivalry was ended when groups had to work together to achieve common goal

• experiment demonstrated how group hostility could be created and overcome

• group differences were artificial differences; groups were very homogeneous

Prejudice

A negative attitude toward people who belong to a specific group

In-group

Social group to which one belongs

Out-group bias

Social group to which one does not belong “them”

Bystander Effect

Phenomenon in which the greater number of people present, the less likely each individual is to help someone in distress

Diffusion of Responsiblity

Obligation to intervene is shared among all the onlookers

Altrusim

helping another person with no expectation of personal reward or benefit

Prosocial behavior

Any behavior that helps another person, whether the underlying motive is self-serving or selfless

Agression

verbal or physical behavior intended to cause harm to other people

Deindividuation

reduction of self-awareness and inhibitions that can occur when a person is part of a group whose members feel anonymous

Psychopathology

The scientific study of the origins, symptoms, and development of psychological disorders

The DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual)

Set of guidelines for diagnosing psychological disorders

In 2021, ______ of Americans had a mental illness within the past year.

one/fifth

Psychological disorder

A pattern of behavioral or psychological symptoms that causes significant personal distress, impairs the ability to function in one or more important areas of life