Lecture 2 - Extra reading information

Types of conflict:

• Dollard and Miller explored how conflict influenced personality and behaviour and outlined four types of conflict:

  • Approach-Approach: Choosing between two attractive options.

  • Avoidance-Avoidance: Choosing between two unpleasant ones.

  • Approach-avoidance: One option has both positive and negative aspects.

  • Double approach-avoidance: Multiple conflicting goals with both positive and negatives.

• This explains much of human decision making and emotional stress especially when dealing with competing desires.

Julian Rotter and locus of control:

• Focuses on whether the individuals believe the outcomes of their actions are under their own control, internal, or controlled by external forces like luck or authority (external).

• Internals feel more control of their lives and are more likely to take proactive actions.

• Externals tend to feel powerless and are more likely to blame external circumstances for outcomes.

Locus of control has broad applications:

• Mental health: Externals are more prone to depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation.

• Physical health: Internals adopt healthier behaviours and recover better from illness.

• Education: Internals generally perform better academically due to attributing success to effort.

Walter Mischel and person situation debate:

• Found that trait behaviour correlations were low, a phenomenon he called the personality coefficient.

• People’s behaviour often changes across different situation, raising concerns about trait based assessments.

• This led to the person-situation debate: Do people behave as they do because of their personality traits, or because of the situation they’re in.