Exam 1: Personality Theories

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.

1) organization and coherence of individuality

2) Consistency

3) 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.