Barnum Statements
Vague, ambiguous, and general statements that people tend to accept as descriptive of their unique personalities.
Personality
The underlying causes within the person of individual behavior and experience.
organization and coherence of individuality
Consistency
Uniqueness, not the same as the other
Description of personality
What are the terms we use to describe other’s personalities and characteristics
Dynamics of personality
How we react, respond, and cope. How does one think of interactions and experiences.
Development of personality
How much does one change in their lifetime. Maturation
Implicit Personality Theories
Everyday unscientific beliefs about personality, accuracy is questionable, false consensus
Confirmation bias
Pay attention to things that are only consistent with their thinking.
Halo Effect
Assumption that people who are more ‘attractive’ are more intelligent/are better than the average person.
Reliability
Consistency, same result overtime
Validity
Accuracy, measuring something that is stable
Standardization
Testing is the same, sample of people you use to create the norms should match people eventually going to be taking the test.
Issues in test taking
purpose or focus of the test, self reporting may not be honest, all tests are correlational.
Psychobiography
The application of a personality theory to the study of an individual’s life. Context of the person’s life and the need to have a complex understanding to create a theory.
Enculturation
The process of learning your own group’s culture
Acculturation
The process of taking on another (usually the dominant) group’s culture.
Status Personality
A personality that fits with society’s expectations for the person in certain settings…code switching.
The psychoanalytic perspective
Personality is strongly influenced by the unconscious, unconscious is dynamic and originates in early experience.
Sigmund Freud
The father of psychoanalysis
Iceberg Metaphor
Top: conscious
Waterline: Unconscious
Underwater: Preconscious
ID (Freud)
Pleasure principle, primitive impulses, I want when I want it.
SuperEgo (Freud)
Society’s rules internalized, moral compass, may be judgemental, hold themselves to a high standard, guilt.
Ego (Freud)
Reality principle, compromise between ID and SuperEgo, rational and logical, defense mechanisms.
Psychic Determinism
Unconscious drives
Instincts
Life (sex) and death (aggression)
Fixation
Haven’t resolved things from childhood.
Oral Stage
Sexual energy manifests itself in the mouth area. Optimism, passivity, dependency, gullible, indecisive. Fixation can include smoking or overeating.
Anal Stage
Toilet training, can create issues of control, anal retentive (organized, controlled) Fixation includes so focused they can’t get anything done, anal expulsive (messy, disorganized) no time management skills, stingy with money/overspending.
Phallic Stage
Genital zone, fantasy of parental partner.
Oedipus Complex
Males are competitive with dad for mom
Electra Conflict
Females are in competition with mom for dad
Castration Anxiety
Fear to have their penis cut off by same sex parent, requires them to identify with same sex parent to rid of anxiety.
Freud description of females
Fixation at phallic stage, weak superego, penis envy, problems with sex.
Latency
Pause in between the psychosexual stages
Genital Stage
Development of the genital character (didn’t get stuck in the previous stages, personality is done developing)
Repression
Unconsciously repressing unacceptable impulses. Forgetting something that is too painful to remember.
Denial
An individual does not acknowledge something painful, not dealing with reality (conscious)
Reaction Formation
An interaction between individuals where anger is involved, but realizing there is love present (opposite is detachment)
Projection
A person’s unacceptable impulse being associated with someone other than themselves (I’m not angry you are)
Displacement
having anger/passion at someone or something but taking it out on a less threatening source/object.
Identification
Borrowing or merging one’s identity with someone else (phallic stage).
Stockholm Syndrome
Identifying with the aggressor (may be unconscious) in an effort to feel less threatened.
Rationalization
Giving a plausible reason for their behavior but it is false.
Intellectualization
Excessive or distorted thinking to avoid emotionality, feeling is threatening. (using academics to distract them)
Sublimation
Expressing unacceptable impulses in a socially acceptable/healthy way (occupational choice)
Self (Jung)
The total, integrated personality, typically midlife where we form ourselves
Compensation (Jung)
Unconscious provides what is missing from conscious
Ego (Jung)
Gatekeeper to consciousness, (fixation is never having an identity crisis)
Ego Inflation
Person is out of balance with themselves
Individualization
The process of becoming a fully developed person, all psychic functions developed
Persona
Adapts to the world (how the world and people see you) mask; social rules, if we identify too much w a persona, it can be problematic.
Shadow
Holds the part of ourselves that we don’t like, gatekeeper of the unconscious. Aspects of the psyche that are inconsistent with self concept.
Anima
Man’s inner feminine, unconscious fulfill inner from finding a woman partner.
Animus
Woman’s inner masculine
Personal Unconscious
Shadow + Anima + Animus, unique experiences
Collective Unconscious
Shared consciousness that is universal, inherited genetic bases, biological predisposed reactions
Great Mother
Wanting to connect to something that is mothering (mary)
Archetypes
Images (concepts) that are similar to all people
Spiritual Father
Priest, doctor, conveys laws and order, rational (not very empathetic.
Hero
Represents the ego, fights the shadows, not very bright but always comes through in the end.
Trickster
Breaks the rules, minor things not crimes, shadow figure in collective unconscious.
Mandala
About the self, internal, development of our whole developed selfs.
Transformation
pathway, bridge, journey.
Trait
Personality characteristic that describes personality, continuous variable.
Type
A category of people with very similar characteristics all or nothing personality types.