Unit 4: Personality (Part 2)

Personality

Our unique and persistent patterns of thinking and feeling

Psychoanalytic Theory

Childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence out personality

Humanistic Theories

Focused on our inner capacities for growth and self-fulfilment

Trait Theories

Examine characteristic patterns of behavior (Traits)

Social-Cognitive Theories

Explore interactions between people’s traits (including their thinking) and social context

Psychodynamic Theory

• View personalities with a focus on unconscious mind and the importance of childhood experience

• Interactions between the conscious and unconscious mind

Psychoanalysis

• Proposed by Sigmund Freud

• Focus on the understanding and resolving conflicts and desires that influence a person’s thoughts, emotions, and behavior

Free Association

• Method in psychoanalysis where a person says whatever comes to their mind

• Through this method, Freud thought he would be able to explore patient’s unconscious, usually childhood memories

Id

• Operates on the Pleasure Principle (Seeks immediate gratification)

• ex. people with addictions would rather part now than sacrifice temporary pleasures for future success

Ego

• Satisfy Id’s impulses in realistic ways that bring long-term benefits

• Mediates between impulsive Id and restraining demands of Superego

Superego

Represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement

Defense Mechanism

• How the ego protects itself

• Reduces / Redirect anxiety by distorting reality

Repression

• Basic defense mechanism

• Banishes anxiety causing feelings from conscious

Neo-Freudians

• Adopted his basic ideas of personality being structured by Id, Ego, and Superego

• Importance of unconscious anxiety . defense mechanisms

Collective Unconscious

Shared / inherited revivor of memory that traces from history

Reaction Formation

Trading unacceptable impulses for their opposite

Projection

Attributing our own threating impulses to others

False Consensus Theory

Tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our behavior & beliefs

Terror Management Theory

Thinking about death can lead to terror management defenses

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

• A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up

• Shows reliable map of a person’s Implicit Motivations

• ex. Participant has to explain what’s happening in the photo

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Identifies people’s inner feelings by analyzing how they interpret the ink blots

Third-Force Perspective

• Discovered by Abraham Maslow & Carl Rogers

• Emphasize our potential for healthy personal growth

Humanistic Theories

• Emphasize the ways people strive for self-determinism / self-actualization

• Use questionnaires (Self-Concept) where people describe their ideals and actual selves

Person-Centered Perspective

People are already good and have self-actualizational tendencies already

Self-Concept

• Understanding of who you are

• If positive, you will perceive the world as positive ; vice versa

Trait

Behavior/disposition to feel and act in certain ways

Myber-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Sorts people into their personality types based on their answers to questions (ex. 16 personalities)

Factor Analysis

• Statistical procedure

• Identifies clusters (factors) of test items that tap basic components of a trait

Personality Inventories

Longer questionaries that cover a wide range of feelings and behaviors while assessing several traits at once

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality

• Most widely used / clinical use

• Originally used to identify mental disorders, but now used to find personality types

Empirically Deprived

Created by selecting from a pool of items (ex. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality)

Big 5 Factors

Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeable, Neuroticism (OCEAN)

Social Psychology

Focus on external factors on behavior

Personality Psychology

Focuses on internal factors that affect behavior

Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Proposed by Albert Bandura

• Emphasizes the interaction of our traits with our situations

Reciprocal Determinism

Interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and the environment

Behavioral Approach to Personality Development

Emphasizes the meaning of learning, how we are conditioned, and learning through observation

Gene-Environment Interactions

Genetically influences traits evoke responses (ex. having a specific gene associated with aggression and being raised in a difficult environment = can lead to antisocial behavior)

Social-Cognitive Theories

• Built on well established concepts of learning and cognition

• However, have been faulted for underemphasizing the importance of unconscious motives, emotions, and biologically influenced traits

Self

• Center of psychology

• Organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions

Spotlight Effect

Overestimating how much others notice our appearance, blunder, and performance (as if a spotlight shines on us)

Self-Esteem

Our feelings of high or low self worth

Self-Efficacy

Our sense of competence on a task

Self-Serving Bias

Readiness to perceive ourselves favorably (ex. people take credit for good deeds rather than bad ones)

Individualist Culture

• Focus on people’s own goals, rather than the goals of the group

• Encourages people to express themselves

Collectivism

• Prioritizes foals of important groups

• Focus on tradition and harmony

Motivations

Need / desire that energizes and directs behavior

Instinct Theory

• Now replaced by Evolutionary Perspective

• Focus on genetically predisposed behaviors

Drive-Reduction Theory

How we respond to inner pushed and external pulls

Arousal Theory

Focus on finding right level of stimulation

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Focus on priority of some needs over others

Instinct

Fixed pattern throughout a species (ex. imprinting, rooting in babies)

Drive Reduction Theory

When a physiological need increases, our drive to reduce it also increased (ex. when we feel hungry, we feel more motivated to find food to eat)

Incentives

• + or - environmental stimuli that lure or repel us

• causes our dopamine levels to increase, which causes our underlying drives that become active impulses

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Moderate arousal leads to optimal performance

Self-Actualization

We seek to realize our own potential

Self-Transcendence

We try to find meaning and purpose beyond self

Self-Determinism Theory

We feel motivated to satisfy needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness

Intrinsically Motivated

Perform behavior for ourselves; meaningful

Extrinsically Motivated

Perform behavior to avoid punishment or for external factors

Achievement Motivation

Desire for accomplishment of skills / ideas

Set Point

When body falls below this weight, body hunger increases and lowers metabolism to restore weight lost

Basal Metabolic Rate

Body’s Resting rate of enegery output

2 Factor Theory

Physical arousal + Cognitive Appraisal = Emotions

Facial Feedback Effect

Tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings such as anger, fear, or happiness

Behavior Feedback Effect

Tendency of behavior to influence our own and other’s thoughts, feelings, and actions