Psych of Personality Exam 1

First-born children:

Responsible, leader, bossy, controlling, motivated, conscientious, cautious, reliable

• Adler

Middle-born Children (Adler)

feels left out, peacemaker, people-pleaser, rebellious, independent, adaptable, social

Last-born children

uncomplicated, manipulative, self-centered, attention-seeking, fun, outgoing

Only-Children

approval-seeking, sensitive, leader, confident, center of attention, responsible, perfectionist, mature for their age

Secure adult attachment

Comfortable with intimacy and autonomy; self-confident; resolves conflict constructively

• positive model of the self and other

Preoccupied Attachment

Overly invested in relationships; dependent on others for self-worth; demanding, needy

• negative model of the self, positive of the other

Strengths of Psychoanalytic Theory

• Provides for the discovery and investigation of many interesting phenomena

• Develops techniques for research and therapy (free association, dream

interpretation, transference analysis)

• Recognizes the complexity of human behavior

Limitations of Psychoanalytic Theory

Fails to define all its concepts clearly and distinctly

• Makes empirical testing difficult, at times impossible

• Endorses the questionable view of the person as an energy system

• Tolerates resistance by parts of the profession to empirical research and

change in the theory

Defining Personality

refers to the psychological systems that contribute to an individual's enduring and distinctive patterns of experience and behavior.

Disposition

Tendencies that are enduring (persist over time) and distinctive (differ across people)

Inner Mental Life

System of beliefs, emotions, values, goals, skills, memories, experiences, and motivations

Intraindividual Functioning

How psychological systems operate within a person

Core task of personality psychology

Identify psychological systems (inner mental life) that explain people's distinctive experiences and actions (dispositions).

Four Areas of Personality Study

structure, process, growth and development, psychopathology and change

Part 1 - Structure

What are the "building blocks" of personality?

• Traits, Types, Units of analysis

PS Part 2 - Process

How does personality operate and change?

• Motivation, emotion, cognition shifts

PS Part 3 - Growth & Development

How do we become who we are?

• nature vs nurture

Challenges: finding universal patterns, understanding factors that explain individual differences

PS Part 4 - Psychopathology & Change

How does personality lead to success and distress? How do people change/RESIST change?

• Therapy, behavior change, dysfunction

Evaluating Personality Theories

Theories should:

1. Organize information about personality

2. Generate new knowledge

3. Identify new areas of study

Additional criteria:

• Systematic — concepts are logically connected

• Testable — can generate falsifiable hypotheses

• Comprehensive — must account for the whole person

Sources of Data

L - Life data (records)

O - Observer data

T - Task data
S - Self report

• Language (computerized text analysis), Social Media, Brain Data (EEG, fMRI).

Nomothetic Measures

• “fixed”

• Everyone gets the same items; structured (e.g., True/False)

Idiographic Measures

• “flexible”

• Participants can indicate level of relevance; structured or open-ended

Freud's View of People

• Not inherently "good" — born with certain instinctual drives

• Pleasure Principle: Driven to seek pleasure and avoid pain

• Society exists to restrict and keep pleasurable drives in check

Mind as an Energy System

• Conservation of Energy (influenced by Helmholtz): Energy can be transformed but not destroyed

• Needs create tension → person is driven to reduce tension → return to calmer state

• Central question: How is mental energy released, and how does it impact the person?

Model of the Mind

• Conscious — current awareness

• Preconscious — outside awareness but accessible

• Unconscious — inaccessible

Id

entirely unconscious; pleasure principle

Ego

mediates Id and Superego; reality principle

Superego

conscience; internalized morals

Psychoanalytic Perspective on unconscious motives

• illogical, irrational unconscious processes

• motives and wishes

• motivated aspects of unconscious functioning

Cognitive Perspective on unconscious motives

• No fundamental difference between conscious and unconscious processes

• Content emphasis on thoughts

• Focus on nonmotivated aspects

Life Instinct

• impulse to life

• manifested through love and s3x

• libido:life-maintaining energy seeking pleasure through s3xual gratification

• If flow is blocked → neurotic problems

Death Instinct

• desire to die or destroy

• manifested through cruelty, aggression, and suicide

• creates conflict and anxiety

Free Association

Thoughts without inhibition or falsification; reveals hidden associations; both therapy and scientific method

Catharsis

Release and freeing of emotions by talking about problems

Transference

Development of attitudes toward analyst based on earlier-life attitudes toward significant others; used as an agent of change

• directing feelings toward something else

Manifest Content - Dreams

storyline

Latent Content (Dreams)

Unconscious ideas, emotions, drives

Repression

Unconscious blocking of threatening thoughts

• ex. Oedipal aggressive thoughts repressed

Denial

Blocking external events from awareness

• ex. smoker refuses to admit smoking is bad for you

Projecting

Attributing own unacceptable thoughts to others

• ex. blaming someone else for your own short-comings

Displacement

Satisfying impulse with a substitute object

• “misplacing” anger

• ex. kicking dog when mad at boss

Regression

Moving back psychologically under stress

• acting like a baby when mad

Sublimination

Satisfying impulse in a socially acceptable way

• martial arts class for your anger issues

Oedipal Complex:

• Occurs during Phallic Stage

• Repressed, unconscious sexual desire for opposite-sex parent; rejection of same-sex parent

• hatred/jealously towards same-sex parent

• Freud (duh)

Fixations

“Stuck” in a psychosexual stage because of too much/too little gratification

Oral Stage Fixation

Demanding, impatient, envious, jealous, rageful, depressed (feels empty), mistrustful, pessimistic

Anal Stage Fixation

Rigid, striving for power/control, concerned with possessions, anxiety over waste/loss of control

Phallic Stage Fixation

Male: exhibitionistic, competitive, macho, potent

Female: naive, seductive, exhibitionistic, flirtatious

Subliminal Perception

Duck image within tree branches presented rapidly → influenced subsequent drawings

Exposure Therapy

Exposure to fears outside awareness shows promise (e.g., spider phobia)

• with subliminal perception

Perceptual Defense

Physiological responses to emotionally charged words (whore, penis) vs. neutral (apple, dance)

Subliminal Psychodynamic Activation

Women with disordered eating ate more crackers after "Mama Is Leaving Me" vs. control phrases

• ED’s are tied to stress/emotional neglect

Challenges of Psychological Assessment

• Free Association could take weeks to months

• Assumes most aspects of personality are unconscious

• Defense mechanisms may prevent direct measurement

Projective Tests

Core assumption: When interpreting ambiguous stimuli, individuals "project" their own personality onto the test item.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

• Hermann Rorschach (Swiss psychiatrist)

• 10 inkblot cards

• Assessor interested in content (animals? humans? affection? hostility?) and process (repeated questions? changed answers?)

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

• Henry Murray & Christina Morgan

• Show scene cards → person makes up a story

• Can be scored systematically (Murray's scheme)

• Particularly strong in assessing achievement motives

Challenges of Projective Tests:

• Responses impacted by sociopolitical forces

• May not generalize to everyday life

• Rater-to-rater reliability questionable

• Some argue they should not be used in clinical settings

Alfred Adler

• Social drives & conscious thoughts over s3xual instincts

• inferiority feelings

• "will to power"

• birth order

Carl Jung

• viewed libido as life energy (pleasure and creativity) rather than s3xual

• Less emphasis of childhood conflict, focused on drive

• “Collective Unconscious” → experience of past generations are stored in the mind

• dual aspects of the self

• used to be close w freud

Karen Horney

• importance of culture on gender

• Coping with basic anxiety was either: 1. Moving toward (anxious for acceptance), Moving Against(Hostile to others, or Moving Away (detached)

• rejected freud’s view of women

• “womb envy”

Henry Stack Sullivan

• emotional experiences are based in relationships, not biological drives

• importance of early interactions in forging the self: appraisals vs rejections, good me vs bad me

• social acceptance is important even past adolescence

Attachment Behavioral System (ABS)

innate biological drive to be close to caregivers; "secure base" for exploration

• Bowlby

• early separation

"Strange Situation" study

• Mary Ainsworth

• 70% secure, 20% anxious-avoidant, 10% anxious-ambivalent

Dismissing Attachment style

Compulsively self-reliant; distant in relationships; downplays importance of intimacy

• positive model of the self, negative of the other

Fearful Attachment style

Dependent on others but avoids intimacy due to fear of rejection; low self-esteem, high attachment anxiety

• negative model of the self and other

Neuropsychoanalysis

Seeks a brain-based understanding of psychoanalytic structures and processes.

Instinctual Drives

Neural systems in subcortical regions contributing to emotional states (anger, sexual desire)

Defense Strategies of the ego

Studies show false memories/beliefs in individuals with frontal lobe damage

Dreams

Dreaming may be distinct from REM sleep; high-level brain mechanisms (memory, thinking) associated with dreaming

Alternative therapeutic methods

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) — small electrical device implanted in specific brain regions to treat disorders and distress

Nature

• Temperament

• Biological and physiological factors (e.g., heritability of traits

Nurture

our environment, which is equally important in shaping who we become

• Culture

• Social class

• Peer relationships

Catharsis

The process of releasing strong, pent-up, or repressed emotions which leads to a lot relief after talking about it

• Sigmund Freud used early cathartic methods to help patients bring buried trauma into conscious awareness to reduce anxiety

According to Freud, during which psychosexual stage does the Oedipal Complex occur?

phallic stage

Anna O's case was significant to Freud's work because it demonstrated

The role of hysteria and conversion disorder in understanding the unconscious

22. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) asks participants to:

tell a story based on images