Personality Psychology chapter 1

exam 1

Psychological determinism

all psychological processes - thoughts, feelings, behavior - derive casually from underlying forces. (free will is an illusion).

Internal structure

mind is compartmentalized into independent parts based on their function. (id, ego, superego).

Psychic conflict and compromise

much of psychology involves competing drives (self control). 

Mental energy

drives, mainly libido (drives the eros life instinct, self preservation, sex) and thantanos (death instinct, aggression, self destruction) use up psychic energy and bottle up if not released (catharsis). 

Id

unconscious, what YOU want to do. Cravings. Primitive instinct, sex, aggression, hunger.

Ego

  (conscious) what YOU ought to do and end up doing.manages desires of id and superego. Self must refrain from acting strictly in id-orientated or super-ego-orientated fashion in order to function in a social world (self control).

Superego

 (preconsious) extremely moral, what a good YOU does. Ideal self.

Freud

bizarre but influential. He talked about CONTRADICTION. Every person is good and bad, weak and strong, smart and dumb. More to people than what is displayed on the outside. Jewish. Smoker. 

Opponent processing account

 life instinct (eros) needs death instinct (thantanos). Happiness needs sadness. Good needs evil. Love needs pain.

Anhedonia

absence of pleasure in something that once brought happiness. 

Feelings and motivation

The more positive an experience, the greater the motivation to achieve it. The more negative an experience, the greater the motivation to avoid it.

Affective forecasting

process of predicting your future emotional states, key aspect in human decision making. 

Affect intensity measure (AIM)

measures the degree to which people experience both

positive and negative emotions extremely. Measures one’s proneness experiencing ”opposite” emotions as an individual difference measures.

Fixation

psychologically stuck on a developmental stage. 

Arrested development

a condition where an individual's psychological and emotional development stalls or stops at a particular stage, typically in childhood or adolescence. 

Regression

reverting back to a particular stage in times of anxiety or stress (biting nails, sucking thumb).

Oral stage

(birth to 18 months). Id focus. Interest in oral gratification through sucking, eating, mouthing, biting. Virtually helpless. 

Oral fixation

defense mechanism in which people use oral stimulation to cope during times of stress (e.g., nail biting, smoking, thumb sucking).

Anal stage

 (1-3.5 years) Ego focus (potty training is our first major experience with self control). Gratification from expelling, withholding feces. Coming to terms with society's control. 

Anal character

level for self control and social obedience. Highly organized or highly disorganized. Overly obedient or highly disobedient. 

Phallic stage

(3.5-7 years) Penis focus. Understanding gender differences. Development of superego. Development of empathy and feelings for others. 

Oedipus complex

 infant boys develop sexual lust at the phallic stage time. Lust is directed toward the female with whom he has the most experience – his mother. 

Castration anxiety

fear that father will castrate son if found to be lusting after his own mother. Because of this the boy accepts defeat and begins identifying with his father. 

Penis envy

girls envy young boys who have a penis because they were forced to live in a man's world and being a girl puts them in a lower social position. 

Electra complex

 little girls initially resent mom for not providing them with a penis, but eventually come to identify with mom because they share the same terrible penis-less fate. 

Latency

 (7-Puberty) sexual concerns become dormant. Kids get to be kids. Calm before the hormonal storm.

Genital stage

(Puberty and beyond) Love and sex become explicitly more important during adolescence and beyond. Not only are these things super important to people, people now can fully acknowledge the role of these aspects in everyday life. Legacy becomes more important.

Lapse

forgetting as a means to avoid anxiety. 

Self handicapping

 cognitive strategy where individuals intentionally create obstacles or excuses that may hinder their performance or success in a situation.

Slips

mental “leakage” from the consciousness. What one really thinks or how one really feels when defenses are down. Id. 

Sexual slippage

when someone says the most inappropriately sexual word at precisely the wrong time. This is super embarrassing for the slipper – but usually not so much for the audience.

Defense mechanisms

 minimizes anxiety produced during conflict (guilt) usually without conscious awareness. 

Repression

unknowingly placing an unpleasant memory or thought in the unconscious.

Displacement

redirecting unacceptable feelings from the original source to a safer, more acceptable target.

Sublimation

replacing socially unacceptable impulses with socially acceptable behavior. 

Reaction formation

acting in the opposite way to one's impulses. 

Projection

attributing one's own unacceptable thoughts and feelings to others and not themself.

Rationalization

creating excuses for one's unacceptable thoughts and feelings or behavior. 

Self threat

When applying cognitive dissonance theory to self-threat, the source of negative feelings is cognitive inconsistencies, not simply negative information. If one has a generally negative self-image, then positive information is inconsistent and potentially threatening. 

If you have a difficult time accepting praise or compliments, then you can relate. 

Humor

 successfully maneuvering around the superego in order to tap into the sensitivities of the id (i.e., nailing the punchline). Taking pleasure in others' misery. Makes light of very serious issues. 

Psychoanalysis

first major wave of counseling.