Cognitive and Biological Perspectives on Personality

Individual Traits

The unique organization of a particular person's personality.

Common Traits

Similarities in adjustment styles in similar cultures.

Functional Autonomy

The development of personality traits in response to life's demands, eventually developing its own autonomy independent of the original stimuli.

The Proprium

Our sense of self, develops in childhood, includes sense of body, self identity, and our subjective experience of ourselves.

Bodily Self

One of the eight parts of the proprium.

Self-identity

One of the eight parts of the proprium.

Self-esteem

One of the eight parts of the proprium.

Self-extension

One of the eight parts of the proprium.

Self-image

One of the eight parts of the proprium.

Self as a rational coper

One of the eight parts of the proprium.

Propriate striving

One of the eight parts of the proprium.

Self as a knower

One of the eight parts of the proprium.

Well-developed Proprium

Involved in some vital issue that gives us purpose in life, capability to have close and trusting relationships, development of a realistic assessment of the world, ability to focus on and solve life problems, able to be objective about yourself but still have a sense of humor, accepting a unifying life philosophy with ethical/religious values.

Propriate Striving

Developed by interacting with and exploring the world around us, leads to continual growth of the proprium, is not static.

Social Learning Theory

Learn by observing others; personality = person + environment; don't need direct reinforcement.

Expectancy (E)

Anticipation for being rewarded for particular behaviors.

Behavior Potential (BP)

The likelihood of engaging in specific behaviors in specific situations.

Reinforcement Value (RV)

The importance of a specific reinforcement for a person in a given situation; high RV = more important and favored.

BP = f(E + RV)

The equation for behavior, shows that we have control over our own lives and can choose based on the likelihood and quality of rewards.

Locus of Control

How someone gets reinforcement and the source of it, includes beliefs around whether you think you're the primary agent of your life vs being influenced by someone else.

Internal Locus of Control

Believes that success and failure comes from one's own abilities and efforts.

External Locus of Control

Believes that outcomes are set no matter how hard you try to change it.

Psychotherapy Views

Psychological problems are created by poor learning experiences that result in faulty expectations; treatment involved learning adaptive behaviors and cognitions.

Self-reinforcement

Capable of reinforcing ourselves; believe people can reinforce themselves because they have the ability to decide when they are reinforced and what reinforces them.

Self-reward

Key element of successful coping; comes from self initiating the reward and delaying gratification.

Free Will

The ability to choose how/when to act.

Intentionality

Acting according to your own intentions, your conscious choices.

Forethought

The ability to plan for the future and choose your path in life.

Self-reactiveness

The ability to make plans and follow through with them.

Self-reflectiveness

The ability to think/evaluate your own thought process/intentions, thinking about your own thinking aka metacognition.

Personal Agency

Your own capacity to take action.

Proxy Agency

The process of reaching out and getting help.

Collective Agency

The agency of a group of people, you need more than 1 person to make a big decision.

Social Learning

Learning through observing the behavior of others.

Attention (Social Learning)

You have to pay attention to other people's actions to be able to imitate/learn from them.

Retention (Social Learning)

The ability to retain information and integrate it into your pre-existing models of the world.

Motor Reproduction

The ability to perform the action you observed.

Motivation (Social Learning)

Related to reinforcement, the desire to imitate behaviors.

Aggression

Something that is learned like any other behavior.

Bobo Doll Experiment

Children who were exposed to seeing other people beat up a clown doll (the Bobo doll) were more likely to beat up the doll too.

Self-Efficacy

Perception of effectiveness in dealing with life.

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy is your assessment of your performance in life, self-esteem is your assessment on your worth as a person.

Mastery (Self-Efficacy)

Success is the basis of self-efficacy, repeated/major successes are related to the strongest sense of self-efficacy.

Vicarious Experience

Watching others succeed leads to feelings of your own potential success, especially from peers.

Verbal Persuasion

Self-efficacy can come from people who appear to sincerely believe in the listener's abilities; positive persuasion can raise it but negative persuasion can diminish it.

Physiological or Affective States

People's physical limits/abilities affect self-efficacy, emotional limits like anxiety/depression/life stress do the same thing.

Idiographic Methods

Focus on unique aspects of a person, uses case studies, sees the impacts on individuals.

Nomothetic Methods

Inference and information about a lot of people, focuses on human behavior as a whole.

Hypothetico-Deductive Method

The scientific method: **** around → find out → write it down.

Social Darwinism

The rules of natural selection apply to society, the group/society/race of people most fit will survive.

Genetic Drift

Example - Monk parrots in US; gene pool is more limited, changes not to environment.

Speciation without Mutation

New species from one original one purely from natural selection.

Evolutionary Psychology

Human behavior and cognition have a genetic basis.

Adapted Mind

Our minds have adapted to solve the problems of survival.

EPM

Evolved psychological mechanisms: any aspect of human/animal psychology w/ a specific purpose from natural selection to help us survive.

Pleiotropy

Genes can have roles in multiple traits w/ different roles in different traits.

Epistasis

Multiple genes interact to affect one trait.

Zahavian handicap

Traits that seem unhelpful for survival but are actually helpful in other ways.

Epigenetics

Aka 'above the genome', an outside factor that changes DNA/genomes from the environment.

Heritability

Ratio of genes to environment, a statistical measure of whether difference in traits is from genes or the environment.

Reciprocal altruism

Altruism done with the expectation that it will be reciprocated later on, mutual helping = survival.

Kin selection

The genetic predisposition to help close family to enhance the survival of mutually shared genes.

Prisoner dilemma

A scenario where mutual cooperation is analyzed, showing that people who were more selfish gained less over time.

Reward center of the brain

Players of the prisoner's dilemma found high activity in the reward center of the brain from cooperating with other humans but not players they perceived to be computers.

Genes and behavior

Genes can activate and suppress other genes, impacting personality and behavior.

Role of environment

Expression of genes depends on the environment, making it hard to see what genes affect which traits.

Studies with twins

Identical twins aren't fully alike because of epigenetics and environmental factors.

Altruism

Shows that altruism can be advantageous when reciprocation is expected.

Genetic/ingroup relatedness

Predicts helping behavior based on familial or genetic connections.

Payoff of altruism

Must be higher than the cost for altruistic behavior to be beneficial.

Cheating behaviors

Wason selection task: a logic test that proves that scenarios where you're trying to find who is breaking social rules is easier to do in social contexts.

Personality

Evolves by natural selection, traits are viewed in terms of adaptive advantage.

Evolution of social behaviors

Demonstrates that social behaviors can evolve to enhance survival through cooperation.

Indirect role of genes

Genes can influence behavior indirectly by activating or suppressing other genes.

Identical twins reared together vs apart

Show the heritability of personality traits including gender identity, sexuality, mating/social preferences, loneliness, self-esteem, and patterns of aggression.

Handicapping behaviors

Some might do handicapping behaviors to demonstrate physical genetic fitness.

Examples of Zahavian handicap

Peacock tails, gazelles jumping, meerkats standing on lookout while being easy to see.

Temperament

Traits endure in life, easy to see throughout life.

Types of temperaments

Easy, slow to warm, difficult.

Limbic system

All survival functions combined.

Cingulate cortex

Long term memory storage especially strong ones, risk assessment.

Amygdala

Fear and rage system.

Damage to amygdala

Can cause lower fear response -> less aware of danger.

Hippocampus

Sends short term memory to long term, retrieves memory, creates short term memory.

Insula cortex

Conscious experience of emotions, helps you understand your emotions and personality.

Hypothalamus

Creates homeostasis, balances the body systems.

Damage to hypothalamus

Can cause disrupted body signals like hunger/thirst/sleep, causing someone to over/under do them.

Caudate nucleus

Ability to relate body sensations to emotions (ex: racing heart = nervousness).

Mammillary bodies

Keeps emotions attached to memories.

Cerebral cortex

Overlies on the limbic system.

Personality disorder

Outliers for personality, the very ends of normal distribution (3rd standard deviation).

Characteristics of personality disorders

Consistent across most situations, most parts of personality is affected.

Development of personality disorders

Develops over time, needs to account for religious, cultural and societal differences.

Pervasive and inflexible deviations

From a person's culture.

Cluster A personality disorders

Characterized by odd/eccentric behavior.

Paranoid personality disorder

Suspicious of others, unforgiving, easily irritated, hostile, emotionally withholding, guarded about intimacy.

Schizoid personality disorder

Socially detached, emotionally constricted, indifferent to others, prefer to be alone.

Schizotypal personality disorder

Socially uncomfortable, strange/odd thoughts, eccentric style of speaking, unusual/distorted perceptions.

Cluster B personality disorders

Characterized by dramatic/emotional/erratic behavior.

Antisocial personality disorder

Impulsive, reckless, manipulative, deceptive, rules don't apply to them, remorseless, irresponsible, aggressive.