personality psychology ♡

personality

an individual’s consistent patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving

why does personality matter?

guides behavior

fundamental attribution error

ascribing personality traits to others without carefully weighing the impact of the situation

traits

relatively enduring characteristics that influence our behavior across many situations (introversion, friendliness, conscientiousness, and honesty help explain consistencies in behavior)

what are some traits that predict behavior?

1. authoritarianism

2. individualism-collectivism

3. internal versus external locus of control

4. need for achievement

5. need for cognition

6. regulatory focus

7. self-esteem

8. sensation seeking

authoritarianism

people who are more authoritarian believe it is important to follow conventional values strictly, and anyone who appears to deviate is met with hostility

individualism-collectivism

• individualism is the tendency to focus on oneself and one's personal goals

• collectivism is the tendency to view ourselves as part of a larger social group

internal versus external locus of control

• those with more of an internal locus of control are more likely to believe that life events are due largely to their own efforts and personal characteristics

• those with more of an external locus of control are more likely to believe life events are due to luck or other outside forces

need for achievement

the desire to make significant accomplishments by mastering skills or meeting high standards

need for cognition

the extent to which people engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities

regulatory focus

refers to differences in the motivations that energize behavior, varying from promotion orientation (seeking out new opportunities) to a prevention orientation (avoiding negative outcomes)

self-esteem

high self-esteem means having a positive attitude towards oneself and one’s capabilities

sensation seeking

the motivation to engage in extreme and risky behaviors

Gordon Allport

• began his work by reducing the 18,000 traits to a set of about 4,500 trait-like words that he organized into three levels according to importance

  • ‘cardinal traits’ - most important traits

  • ‘central traits’ - basic and most useful traits

  • ‘secondary traits’ - less obvious and less consistent ones

Raymond Cattell

• used a statistical procedure known as factor analysis to analyze the correlations among traits and to identify the important ones

• on the basis of his research, he identified what he referred to as ‘source’ (more important) and ‘surface’ (less important) traits

• developed a measure that assessed 16 dimensions of traits based on personality adjectives taken from everyday language

Hans Eysenck

• particularly interested in the biological and genetic origins of personality,

• made an important contribution to understanding the nature of fundamental personality traits; extroversion versus introversion

• proposed that people who are extroverted have lower levels of naturally occurring arousal than do introverts

big five model of personality

this trait model says that there are five fundamental underlying trait dimensions that are cross-culturally shared and predict behavior, consisting of

1. openness to experience - a general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience

2. conscientiousness - a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement

3. extroversion - interests are ‘toward the outer world of people and things rather than the inner world of subjective experience’

4. agreeableness - a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others

5. emotional stability (or emotionality; formerly neuroticism) - the tendency to experience negative emotions less frequently, such as anger, anxiety, or depression

hexaco model

h - honestly-humility

e - emotionality

x - extraversion

a - agreeableness

c - conscientiousness

o -  openness to experience

myers-briggs type indicator (mbti)

categorizes people into one of four categories on each on the four dimensions

1. introversion (i) vs extraversion (e)

2. sensing (s) vs intuiting (n)

3. thinking (t) vs feeling (f)

4. judging (j) vs perceiving (p)

how many different personality types are there?

16

minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (mmpi)

a widely used test for assessing personality and maladjustment

barnum effect

the observation that people tend to believe in personality descriptions that are supposedly specific to themselves, but that could, in fact, describe almost anyone

gene

the basic biological unit that transmits characteristics from one generation to the next

instincts

‘an innate, species-specific biological force that impels an organism to do something, particularly to perform a certain act or respond in a certain manner to specific stimuli’

behavioral genetics

‘the study of familial or hereditary behavior patterns and of the genetic mechanisms of behavior traits’

family study

starts with one person who has a trait of interest— for example, a developmental disorder such as autism spectrum disorder— and examines the individual’s family tree to determine the extent to which other members of the family also have the trait

twin study

researchers study the personality characteristics of twins

adoption study

compares biologically related people, including twins, who have been reared either separates or apart

molecular genetics

the study of genes at the molecular level (i.e., knockout study and genome-wide association studies)

knockout study

in this approach, researchers use specialized techniques to remove or modify the influence of a gene in a line of ‘knockout’ cells

genome-wide association studies

map the genomes of thousands of individuals, where each individual’s genome has hundreds of thousands of genetic markers

psychoanalysis

the assumption that much mental activity is unconscious and that understanding people requires interpreting the unconscious meaning underlying their overt, or manifest, behavior

Sigmund Freud

• one of the first psychiatrists (psychiatry is ‘the medical specialty concerned with the study, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of personality, behavioral, and mental disorders’)

• believed that to control our behavior, we had to become aware of the unconscious forces that were motivating us

• ‘slips of the tongue’ in which he believed people reveal their unconscious desires in language

• argued that we rarely understand why we do what we do, although we can make up explanations for our behaviors after the fact

mind as iceberg

in Sigmund Freud’s conceptualization of personality, the most important motivations are unconscious, just as the major part of an iceberg is underwater

according to Freudian theory, the mind is divided into components:

1. id

2. ego

3. superego

id

the component of personality that forms the basis of our most primitive impulses

ego

the largely conscious controller or decision-maker of personality

superego

our sense of morality and oughts

defense mechanisms

unconscious psychological strategies used to cope with anxiety and to maintain a positive self-image

major defense mechanisms as conceptualized by Freud

1. displacement

2. projection

3. rationalization

4. reaction formation

5. regression

6. repression (or denial)

7. sublimation

displacement

diverting threatening impulses away from the source of the anxiety and toward a more acceptable source

projection

disguising threatening impulses by attributing them to others

rationalization

generating self-justifying explanations for our negative behaviors

reaction formation

making unacceptable motivations appear as their exact opposite

regression

retreating to an earlier, more childlike, and safer stage of development

repression (or denial)

pushing anxiety-arousing thoughts into the unconscious

sublimation

channeling unacceptable sexual or aggressive desires into acceptable activities

stages of psychosexual development as believed by Freud

1. oral

2. anal

3. phallic

4. latency

5. genital

oral stage

pleasure comes from the mouth in the form of sucking, biting, and chewing

• birth to 18 months

anal stage

pleasure comes from bowel and bladder elimination, and the constraints of toilet training

• 18 months to 3 years

phallic stage

pleasure comes from the genitals, and the conflict is with the sexual desires for the opposite-sex parent

• 3 years to 6 years

latency stage

sexual feelings are less important

• 6 years to puberty

genital stage

if prior stages have been properly reached, mature sexual orientation develops

• puberty and older

neo-freudian theories

theories based on Freudian principles that emphasize the role of the unconscious and early experience in shaping personality and are more optimistic concerning the prospects for motivating force in person and change in personality as adults

Alfred Adler

• a follower of Freud who developed his own interpretation of Freudian theory

• proposed that the primary motivation in human personality was not sex or aggression, but rather the striving for superiority

• we desire to be better than others and we accomplish this goal by creating a unique and valuable life

• believed that psychological disorders begin in early childhood

• argued that children who are overly nurtured or overly neglected by their parents are likely to develop an inferiority complex— a psychological state in which people feel that are not living expectations, leading them to have low self-esteem, with a tendency to try to overcompensate for the negative feelings

• most psychological disorders result from misguided attempts to compensate for the inferiority complex in order to meet the goal of superiority

Carl Jung

• developed his own theories about personality

• argued that in addition to the personal unconscious, there was also a collective unconscious

collective unconscious

a collection of shared ancestral memories

Karen Horney

• a German physician who applied Freudian theories to create a personality theory that she thought was more balanced between men and women

• believed that parts of Freudian theory, and particularly the ideas of the Oedipus complex and penis envy, were biased against women

• argued that women’s sense of inferiority was not due to their lack of a penis but rather their dependency on men, an approach that the culture made it difficult for them to break

• underlying motivation that guides personality development is the desire for secuirty, the ability to develop appfropriate and supportive relationships with others

Erich Fromm

• focus was on the negative impact of technology, arguing that the increases in its use have led people to feel increasingly isolated from others

• believed that the independence that technology brings us also creates the need to ‘escape from freedom,’ that is, to become closer to others

humanistic psychologists

an approach to psychology that embraces the notions of self-esteem, self-actualization, and free will

self-concept

the set of beliefs about who we are

self-esteem

our positive feelings about ourself

Abraham Maslow

• conceptualized personality in terms of a pyramid-shaped hierarchy of motives

• argued that only when people are able to meet that lower-level needs are they able to move on to achieve the higher-level needs of self esteem, and eventually self-realization

self-realization

the motivation to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent

maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Abraham Maslow conceptualized personality in terms of a hierarchy of needs; the highest point of these motivations is self-actualization

• self-actualization

• self-esteem

• love and belonging

• safety and belonging

• safety and security

• physiological needs

Carl Rogers

• a humanistic theorist, who was positive about human nature, viewing people as primarily moral and helpful to others, and believed that if we can achieve our full potential for emotional fulfillment if the self-concept is characterized by unconditional positive regard

unconditional positive regard

a set of behaviors including being genuine, open to experience, transparent, able to listen to others, and self-disclosing and empathetic