Chapter 11 Personality Psychology

Personality

Refers to an individual’s unique set of consistent behavioral traits

Personality Trait

A durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations

Factor Analysis

Correlations among many variables are analyzed to identify closely related clusters of variables

Five Factor model of personality traits (Robert McCrae and Paul Costa)

Extraversion

Neuroticism

Openness to Experience

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness

Id

The primitive, instinctive component, operates according to the pleasure principle (Primary process thinking)

Ego

The decision-making component, operates according to the reality principle (secondary process thinking)

Superego

The moral component that incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong.

Levels Of Awareness

Conscious

Preconscious

Unconscious

Conscious

Consists of whatever one is aware of at a particular point in time

Preconscious

Contains material just beneath the surface of awareness that can easily be retrieved

Unconscious

Contains thoughts, memories, and desires that are well below the surface of conscious awareness, but exert great influence on behavior

Defense Mechanisms

They are largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from unpleasant emotions

Rationalization

Creating false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behavior

Repression

Keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious

Projection

Attributing one’s thoughts, feelings or motives to another

Displacement

Diverting emotional feelings (usually anger) from their original source to a substitute target

Reaction Formation

Behaving in a way that’s exactly the opposite of one’s true feelings

Regression

Reversion to immature patterns of behavior

Identification

Bolstering self-esteem by forming an imaginary or real alliance with some person or group

Development

The basic foundation of an individual’s personality has been laid out by age 5

Psychosexual Stages

Developmental Periods with a characteristic sexual focus that leave their mark on adult personality

Fixation

A failure to move forward from one stage to another

Causes of Fixation

Excessive Gratification or Excessive Frustration

Oral

First psychosexual stage, from 0 - 1

Anal

Second psychosexual stage, from 2 - 3

Phallic

Third psychosexual stage, from 4 - 5

Latency

Fourth psychosexual stage, from 6-12

Genital

Fifth psychosexual stage, puberty onward

Personal Unconscious (Jung’s Theory)

Material that is not within one’s awareness

Collective Unconscious (Jung’s Theory)

Storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from people’s ancestral past

Archetypes

Emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meanings

Adler’s Theory

The source of human motivation is striving for superiority

Compensation

Efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one’s abilities

Determinism

Behavior is determined by environmental stimuli

Behaviorism

Psychology should only study observable behavior

Response Tendencies

Fairly consistent patterns of behavior, acquired through experience

According to Behaviorist Personality is

A collection of response tendencies that are tied to various stimulus situations

Self-Efficacy

One’s belief about one’s ability to perform behaviors that should lead to expected outcomes

Self Concept

A collection of beliefs about one’s own nature, unique abilities and typical behavior 

Congruence

Self-concept is accurate with reality

Incongruence

The degree of disparity between one’s self-concept and one’s actual experience

Needs for self-actualization

The need to fulfill one’s potential, the highest need in the motivational hierarchy

Eysenck model of personality structure

Described personality structure of traits

A few higher-order traits determine lower-order which determine a person's habitual responses

Personality is shaped by one’s genes through conditioning

David Buss takes on the Big Five personality traits

The big five personality traits are important across cultures because they have significant adaptive implications

David Nettle states

Traits are products of evolutions that were adaptive in ancestral environments

Narcissism

Personality trait marked by inflated sense of importance, a need for attention and admiration. A sense of entitlement and a tendency to exploit others

What are the two types of Narcissism

Granidose- Obsessive and Vulnerable- Shy

Terror Management Theory

Awareness of the inevitability of death fosters a need to defend one’s cultural worldview and one’s self esteem, which serves to protect one from mortality-related anxiety

Mortality Salience

The degree to which subjects’ mortality is prominent in their minds

Markus and Kitayama find on American and Asian concepts of self

Independent Self = American Culture

Interdependent Self = Asian Cultures