Gen Psych: Personality

Personality

an individual's unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behavior

Freud's first theory of personality

psychoanalytic perspective

What does the psychoanalytic perspective emphasize about the mind?

The existence of an unconscious region of the mind.

What are the psychosexual stages of development?

Stages that describe the development of personality through childhood.

What are defense mechanisms in psychology?

Psychological strategies used to cope with anxiety and maintain self-esteem.

Unconcious

unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.

3 Levels of Awareness

1. Conscious

2. Preconscious

3. Unconscious

Freud's 3 systems of personality

id, ego, superego

What is psychoanalysis?

The techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.

Who developed the concept of psychoanalysis?

Sigmund Freud

What did Freud believe about the unconscious?

holds troublesome feelings and ideas that influence us in disguised forms.

True or False: according to Freud, behaviors can be accidental

False, Freud believed that nothing was accidental.

What is Free Association in psychoanalysis?

A method of assessing the unconscious.

How do patients participate in Free Association?

By spontaneously reporting mental images, thoughts, and feelings as they come to mind.

What did Freud once refer to dreams as?

royal road to the unconscious

What is the Id in psychology?

constantly strives to satisfy basic drives.

What principle does the Id operate on?

the pleasure principle and immediate gratification.

Ego

Gratify the id's impulses in realistic ways. It's the 'executive' part of personality

What does the ego operate on?

Reality principle

superego

The voice of our conscience, creates feelings of pride or guilt.

Focuses on how one has to behave.

What does the superego strive for?

Perfection.

What are the psychosexual stages?

What does the id focus on during the psychosexual stages?

Pleasure-seeking energies focused on distinct erogenous zones.

5 psychosexual stages

(oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital

Oral

0-18 months, pleasure centers on the mouth- sucking, biting, chewing

Anal

(2-3 years) pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control

Phallic

(3-6 years) pleasure zone is the genitals; differentiate between gender

Latency

6-puberty, sexual feelings are repressed

Genital

(puberty on) maturation of sexual interests

Oedipus Complex

a boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred towards their father who they view as a rival

Electra Complex

Conflict during phallic stage in which girls supposedly love their fathers romantically and want to eliminate their mothers as rivals

Identification

children incorporate their parents' values into their developing superegos

Fixation

a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies.

ego defense mechanisms

tactics to reduce, avoid, or redirect anxiety by distorting reality

Repression

banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness

Regression

when faced with anxiety to retreat to a more infantile stage of development

Reaction Formation

a person expresses the opposite of their true feelings or impulses

Projection

disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others

Rationalization

offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real reasons for one's actions

Displacement

pushing sexual or aggressive impulses onto a less threatening object or person (taking the anger out on someone/something else)

Denial

refusal to acknowledge disturbing aspects of reality

Undoing

trying to take back or make up for a behavior or impulse that was hurtful to someone

Intellectualization

avoidance of feelings by overly focusing on the intellectual aspects of an issue to avoid the emotional reactions

Neo-Freudians

Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Carl Yung accepted a portion of Freud's ideas but placed more emphasis on the conscious mind and rejected some of his notions all together

Alfred Adler and Karen Horney

believed thatsocial, not sexual tensions are crucial forpersonality formation

Adler Inferiority Complex

believed that behavior is driven by efforts to conquer childhood feelings of inferiority (healthy or unhealthy)

Karen Horney

emphasized the importance of human relationships in personality development

Horney and Adler

agreed that faulty parenting contributed significantly to faulty personality development.

Carl Jung

Agreed with Freud about the unconscious but believed it contained more than repressed feelings and thoughts

collective unconscious

images derived from our species' universal experiences (inherited experiences). ex: universal fear of snakes & spiders

Jung's 3 Levels of Consciousness

conscious, unconscious, and collective unconscious

Freud vs. Neo-Freudians

in contrast Freud's pessimistic view of people, the humanistic psychologists saw people as being innately good and naturally strive to fulfill his or her unique potential.

Humanistic Perspective

focuses on the way "healthy" people strive for self-determination and self-realization. (encouragement rather than external factors or past trauma)

Carl Rogers

-known for the Person-Centered perspective -contended that the most basic human motive is to maintain and enhance the human organism (actualizing).

3 conditions to promote self actualization according to Maslow & Rogers

to be genuine, accepting, and empathetic

unconditional positive regard

the sense of being unconditionally loved and valued

Describe the belief of Rogers regarding healthy personality development.

he believed that healthy personality development is the result of unconditional love

Conditional positive regard

the sense that you will be valued and loved only if you behave in a way that is acceptable to others

Rogers' Theory on Psychological Health

Consistent unconditional positive regard leads to a psychologically healthy, fully functioning person with a flexible self-concept.

What did Maslow and Rogers identify as a central feature of personality?

one's self-concept

How do Human psychologists assess personality?

by asking people to describe themselves as they would ideally like to be and who they actually are. When alike, self-concept is positive.

Who proposed the social-cognitive perspective of personality development?

Albert Bandura

The social-cognitive theory of personality emphasizes (5)

-observational learning

-conscious cognitive processes

-social experiences

-self efficacy beliefs

-reciprocal determinism

Bandura's self-system

guides how we perceive, evaluate, and control our behavior in different situations.

Self-Efficacy

Your belief in your ability to handle a situation effectively.

When does Self Efficacy Begin?

begins in Childhood and continues through life

Reciprocal Determinism (Bandura)

the interaction of behavioral, cognitive, and environmental factors.

What did Bandura contribute to behavior and personality?

reciprocal determinism

positive psychology Seligman

the scientific study of optimal human functioning

Possible Selves

includes your visions of the self you dream of becoming and the self you fear of becoming

Gordon Allport: trait perspective

describes personality in terms of fundamental traits

Traits

relatively stable, enduring tendency to behave in a certain way.

People's characteristic behaviors and conscious motives

Big Five Traits

The Factor Five model specifies where you fall in five dimensions: conscientious, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion.

Neuroticism

Calm/worrying, unemotional/emotional

Extraversion

Reserved vs affectionate,

loner vs joiner,

quiet vs talkitive

openness to experience

down to earth vs imaginative ,

conventional vs original,

uncreative vs creative,

prefer routine vs prefer variety

Agreeableness

antagonistic vs compliant

suspicious vs trusting

conscientious

lazy vs hardworking

ruthless vs softhearted

quitting vs perservering

Psychological tests

a test that assesses a person's abilities, aptitudes, interests, or personality

Two Basic goals

1. Accurately and consistently reflects a person's characteristics on some dimension.

2. Predicts future psychological functioning or behavior.

Projective Tests

a personality test that uses a person's ambiguous image used to assess unconscious motives and personality traits (dreams

What is the main strength of projective tests

they provide qualitative info about someone that is helpful in psychotherapy

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

people view ambiguous pictures and make up stories about them

self-report inventory

A psychological test when a person's responses to standardized questions are compared to established norms.

which is better self-report inventory or Projective test

self report inventory because the scoring is not subjective

What does MMPI stand for?

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

What type of assessment is the MMPI?

A self report inventory

What does the MMPI assess?

Personality characteristics and psychological disorders

In which populations does the MMPI assess psychological disorders?

Both normal and disturbed populations

Which is the most widely researched and clinically used personality test.

MMPI

California Psychological Inventory (CPI)

self-report inventory that assesses personality characteristics in normal populations.

Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF):

generates a personality profile with ratings on 16 trait dimensions.

Main problems with all self-reports/personality inventories

-Can lie to give more desirable answers

.-People may misjudge their own attitudes and behaviors.

-hundreds of items, so people may not answer every item carefully and accurately.

What is the person-situation controversy?

The debate over whether personality traits are stable over time or if behavior changes depending on the situation.

Are personality traits stable over time?

Yes, personality trait scores tend to correlate with newer scores years later, showing stability.

Are personality traits consistent across situations?

No, behavior can vary across different situations, making personality test scores weak predictors of behavior.