psychology - UNIT 10-11

Personality

Personality

An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting

Perspectives

Psychodynamic (psychoanalytic), humanistic, trait, and socio-cultural

Psychoanalysis

The clinical application of Freud’s theory of personality (attributes our thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts)

Unconscious

according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories

(subconscious) Contemporary viewpoint

information processing of which we are unaware

Id

Pleasure principle (Seeks to do what feels good in the moment - inner child) - procrastination… totally unconscious

Ego

Reality principle (your conscious experience of your own reality) mediator between the two

Superego

Conscience (internalized ideals - how you would like to be and how you want others to see you) the good voice - little bit of both

Fixation

- a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved

- Examples: Oral (biting nails) ; Anal (addiction, OCD) ; Phallic (affair.)

Oral

- Birth to 12-18 months

- Oral Cavity

- Sucking, biting, and mouthing

- Weaning

Anal

- 18 months to 3 years

- Anal region

- Retention and release of bodily

- Toilet Training

Oedipus complex

The son is in love with his mother, and has hatred for his rival father…

Defense mechanisms

The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

Repression

(unhealthy)

The basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness (student that gets all D’s and F’s? Forget about it. Don’t think about it)

Regression

(unhealthy)

An individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated. (starts biting nails due to a oral fixation)

Displacement

(unhealthy)

Shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person (ex.) as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet (taking anger out on a younger sibling because you can’t yell back at your parents)

Denial

(unhealthy)

Refusal to recognize a threatening impulse or desire (This is a mistake, There’s no way I got all D’s)

Reaction formation

(unhealthy)

The ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites (ex.) people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings (inviting someone you dislike to continue hanging out without much thought)

Rationalization

(unhealthy)

Offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions. (It’s because I didn’t sleep last night)

Projection

(unhealthy)

People disguise their own threatening impulses attributing them to others (I’m not a bully? She’s the bully)

Sublimation

(healthy)

A mature type of defense mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are unconsciously transformed into socially acceptable actions. (Failed? Let’s just go study harder next time to improve the grade)

Neo-Freudians

Agree that Freud was right about the importance of childhood in the development of the self (social not sexual)

Alfred Adler

- inferiority complex (feelings of being inadequate)

- overcompensation (taking excessive measures to make amends)

- birth order (the order shapes their development and personality)

Carl Jung

- Personal and collective unconscious (people are pulling from the same heritage of energies and ideas)

- Individual differences

- Archetypes (Why is it that all cultures have the idea of a wise old man, nurturing mother, deities live in the sky, etc..)

Karen Horney

- Emphasized the impact of a male-dominated society on women - “infantile creatures”

- Counter to ‘penis envy’ - Male envy of pregnancy and motherhood

Projective Test

a personality test that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics (unconscious fill in the blank)

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

Personality results from motivation (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs)

Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

Focused on growth and fulfillment of individuals (genuineness, acceptance, empathy)

Trait

- a characteristic pattern of behavior

- A disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports

Personality Inventory

- a questionnaire (true-false/ agree-disagree) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors

- Used to assess selected personality traits

Myers-Briggs

- Mother daughter duo

- Jung’s work on four basic human functions - sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking

- Using these four traits, Myers and Briggs create four scales that individuals tend to rely on to influence behavior

Benefits and criticisms

- Paves way for other, inventory/ scale based measurements (Big Five)

- Test is non-predictive in nature (invalid) and results can vary wildly (unreliable)

Allport and Cattel

(early trait theories)

- overcomplicated

- put people on a scale (16 individual categories)

Eysenck

(opposite of Allport and Cattell)

- oversimplify

- extroverted/ unstable: aggressive

- extraverted/ stable: outgoing

- introverted/ stable: controlled

- introverted/ unstable: rigid

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

- The most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests

- Originally developed to identify emotional disorders

The Big Five Factors

Paul Costa and Robert McCrae

Conscientiousness (The Big Five)

organized----------------disorganized

careful-----------------------careless

disciplined----------------impulsive

Agreeableness (The Big Five)

soft-hearted-----------------ruthless

trusting-----------------suspicious

helpful----------------------uncooperative

Neuroticism (emotional stability vs. instability) (The Big Five)

calm-----------------------anxious

secure-----------------------insecure

self-satisfied--------------self-pitying

Openness (The Big Five)

imaginative---------------practical

preference for variety--------preference for routine

independent--------------conforming

Extraversion (The Big Five)

sociable--------------------retiring

fun-loving----------------sober

affectionate-------------------reserved

Person-situation controversy

people behave differently based on social settings

Social-cognitive perspective

views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons and their social context

Reciprocal determinism

the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors

Personal Control

our sense of controlling our environments rather than feeling helpless

External Locus of Control

the perception that chance or outside forces beyond one’s personal control determine one’s fate

Internal Locus of Control

the perception that one controls one’s own fate

Learned Helplessness

(extreme external locus of control)

- the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive event

- Application to clinical and I/O psychology

- Martin Seligman

Spotlight effect

overestimating others noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders

Self Esteem

one’s feelings of high or low self-worth

Self-Serving Bias

readiness to perceive oneself favorably

Individualism

giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications

Collectivism

giving priority to the goals of one’s group (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly

Spearman’s general intelligence (g)

A basic intelligence predicts our abilities in varied academic areas

Thurstone’s primary mental abilities

Our intelligence may be broken down into seven factors: word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial ability, perceptual speed, numerical ability, inductive reasoning, and memory (academic/ book smart)

Gardner’s multiple intelligences

Our abilities are best classified into eight independent intelligences, which include a broad range of skills beyond traditional school smarts (Bodily kinesthetic - coordinating your mind with your body)

Sternberg’s triarchic

Our intelligence is best classified into three areas that predict real-world success: analytical, creative, and practical

Emotional intelligence

perceive emotions, understand emotions, manage emotions, use emotions for adaptive or creative thinking

Brain complexity studies

neural plasticity [brain’s ability to adapt/ change to fit to new things], gray matter [neuron dense] versus white matter[not neuron dense]

Flynn effect

given that college entrance aptitude scores have sometimes dropped, intelligence test performance had improved

Francis Galton’s intelligence testing

Reaction time, sensory acuity (how well you can see/hear), muscular power, body proportions

Alfred Binet (Father of special education?)

- Identifying French school children in need of assistance

- Mental age compared to chronological age (what should the average mental age do?)

- Mental age linked to school

Lewis Terman: The Innate IQ (father of gifted education)

- Stanford-Binet Test (first to use IQ) - first standardized test (MCQ)

- Intelligence quotient

- IQ = mental age/chronological age x 100

- IQ of 100 is considered average

- World War 1 testing

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

most widely used intelligence tests; they contain verbal and performance subtests

Achievement test

what you already have learned

Aptitude test

pre-test how well you could do in something

Standardization

More or less the same test (normal curve - bell curve)

Reliability

consistency

Validity

accuracy

Content validity

is the content aligned with testing material?

Predictive validity

test predicts the behavior it was designed to predict

psychodynamic theories

theories that view personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences

free association

a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind

savant syndrome

a condition which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill

cohort

a group of people sharing a common characteristic

crystallized intelligence

our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills (increases with age)

fluid intelligence

our ability to reason speedily and abstractly (decreases with age)

stereotype threat

a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype