Psych Mod. 45, 46, 47

Projective test

Triggers the projection of one’s inner dynamics, reveals unconscious motives

Rorschach Inkblot test

Most widely used projective test, its use is controversial

Thematic Apperception Test

Inner feelings and interests appear in stories made up about ambiguous scenes, can measure affiliation and achievement motivation

Trait

characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act in certain ways

lexical hypothesis

all words that are needed to distinguish one person from another have been encoded into language

factor analysis

statistical procedure that identifies similarities in data, clusters of test items that tap basic components of a trait

CANOE- Big 5 traits

Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, Extraversion

Levels of Big 5 traits

McAdams- Level 1: General traits, Level 2: Personal Concerns, Level 3: Identity

Level 3

Identity: each of us has a narrative of the self, current self evolved from prior self, and will contribute to future self, “internalized and evolving life story, or personal myth”

Freud’s View of Mankind’s Inhumanity to Mankind

At the most basic level, humankind if barbaric and cruel, we need cultural rules to control these impulses

Roger’s View (humanistic perspective)

Humankind is good and evil is a cultural construction, people are basically good and are endowed with self-actualizing tendencies, when the ideal and actual self are nearly alike, the self-concept is positive

Maslow

People are motivated by a hierarchy of needs, strive for self-actualization and self-transcendence, if psychological needs are met, we become concerned with personal safety

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Self-Actualization: desire to become the most that one can be, Characteristics of Self-Actualization Scale- few of us become fully self-actualized, think of it as inspiration, Esteem, Love and Belonging, Safety Needs, Physiological needs

Myers Briggs Type Indicator

“Popularity of this instrument in the absence of proven scientific worth is troublesome”, not a well respected measure, Isabel Myers Briggs- sort people based on personality types

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

Measures both personality and psychopathology (clinically significant traits), identify emotional disorders, assesses people’s personality traits, 10 clinical scales, scored objectively

The Self

Who you think you are, Organizes our thoughts, feelings and actions, occupies the center of our personality

Self-Discrepancy Theory

the relations between and among different types of self-beliefs or self-state representations that produce emotional vulnerabilities rather than the particular content or nature of the actual self or of any other individual self-belief. Tory Higgins

Implications for Therapy

Not very easy to change yourself, if depressed, change elements of ideal self, if anxious change elements of ought self, we are the product and architect of our environment

Person Environment Transactions

Interpret, Create, Choose, ways a person can act on their environment, contribute to personality stability, everyone extracts a subjective psychological experience from env. shapes personality development, some children habitually misperceive aggressive intentions in their peers, proactive choices can lead to stability or change

Interpret

Focuses on how we react to environment, individuals evoke distinctive reactions from others based on their personality, person reacts back in “mutually interlocking evocative transaction, agressive children cause others to act agressively towards them- spanking

Choose

making deliberate choices, we make choices regarding friends, social media, careers, these choices shape us, influence of peers

Personality- Is there differential stability

yes, focuses on relative placement of individuals within a sample, identified studies, measured personality, test-retest greater than one year, consistency increased until age 50-59 when it peaked

Absolute Stability

Does personality change as we age, social vitality corresponds more closesly to traits like sociability, positive affect and gregariousness, social dominance reflects such traits as dominance, independence, self-confidence, especially in social contexts, people become more socially dominant E, pro-social A, conscientious C, emotionally stable with age N

Self-transcendence

meaning, purpose, identity, beyond the self

Humanistic theories

sought to turn psychology’s attention away from drives + conflict and towards our growth potential

Allport

describe personality in terms of fundamental traits-people’s characteristic behaviors and conscious motives

Hans Eysenck + Sybil Eysenck

Believed we cam reduce many of our normal individual variations to 2 dimensions, extraversion-introversion, emotional stability-instability

Personal inventories

longer questionnaires covering a wide range of feelings and behaviors

Maturity Principle

From adolescence onward, they become more conscientious and agreeable, less neurotic

How to predict behavior?

Complete a self-report survey or bring them into the lab and ask them to lead a group project, Assessment Center Approach- show me, the best predictor of future behavior is the person’s past behavior pattern in similar situations

Spotlight effect

We stand out less then we imagine, perceived spotlight is not real

Self-esteem

our feelings of high or low self-worth

Self-efficacy

our sense of competence

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Blindness to one’s own incompetence, justin Kruger, David Dunning, people are most overconfident when most incompetent, takes compotence to recognize competence

Social Cognitive Perspective

Emphasizes the interaction of our traits with our situations, proposed by Albert Bandura, theorists believe we may learn many of our behaviors either through conditioning or by observing and imitating others, focuses on how we and our environment interact

Bandura

Views the person-environment interaction as reciprocal determinism: behavior, internal personal factors and environmental influences all operate as interlocking determinants of each other

Gene-Environment interaction

Our genetically influenced traits evoke certain responses from others, which may nudge us in one direction or another

Biological Influences

genetically determined temperament, autonomic nervous system reactivity, brain activity

Psychological Influences

Learned responses, unconscious thought processes, expectations and interpretations

Social Cultural Influences

Childhood experiences, situational factors, cultural expectations, social support

Assessment center approach

exploits the principle that the best means of predicting behavior is neither a personality test nor an interviewer’s intuition

Psychoanalytic

Freud, Assumptions: Emotional disorders, unresolved sexual and other childhood conflicts, fixation at various developmental stages, defense mechanisms fend off anxiety. Personality: Pleasure seeking impulses(ID), a reality-oriented executive(ego), internalized set of ideals(superego). Assessment methods: Free association, projective tests, dream analysis

Psychodynamic

Adler, Horney, Jung Assumptions: The unconscious and conscious minds interact. Childhood experiences and defense mechanisms are important. Personality: Dynamic interplay of conscious and unconscious motives and conflicts shape our personality

Assessment methods: Projective tests, therapy sessions

Humanistic

Maslow, Rogers, Assumptions: Rather than focus on disorders born of dark conflicts, it’s better to emphasize how healthy people may strive for self-realization

Personality: Our basic needs are met-will strive towards self-actualization

Methods: Questionnaires, therapy, life story approach

Trait

Allport, Costa, H. Eysenck, S.Eysenck, McCrae

Assumptions: We have certain stable and enduring characteristics, influenced by genetic predispositions

Personality: Scientific study of traits has isolated important dimensions of personality, such as Big 5 traits

Methods: Personality Inventories

Social-Cognitive

Bandura, Assumptions: Our traits interact with the social context to produce our behaviors

Personality: Conditional and observational learning interact with cognition to create behavior patterns. Our behavior in one situation is best predicted by considering our past behavior in similar situations

Methods: Observing behavior in realistic situations

Self Serving Bias

a readiness to perceive ourselves favorably, people accept more responsibility for good deeds than for bad, for sucesses than for failures, most people see themselves better than average

Narcissism

Excessive self love and self focus

Defensive Self-Esteem

Fragile, focusing on sustaining itself, makes failure and criticism feel threatening

Secure Self-Esteem

Less fragile, less contingent on external evaluations

Psychological disorders

Clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognitive, emotion, regulation, behavior- are dysfunctional/maladaptive-interfere with normal day to day life

Yesterday’s “Therapy”

Trephination: Drilling skull holes to release evil spirits, 7,000 to 10,000 years ago

Biopsychosocial Approach

Biological, Psychological, Social-Cultural influences Psychological disorders, emphasizes that mind and body are inseparable

Mental Health Movement

A mental illness needs to be diagnosed on the basis of its symptoms, treated through therapy

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Official list of disorders with list of symptoms, published by American Psychiatric Association, to get health insurance reimbursement in the US, you must be diagnosed with something in the DSM, reflects culture and is informed by science

Historical change

Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder in the DSM, 1973- declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder

Depression and Loss of Loved One

In prior DSM, there was an exclusion criterion, you could not be diagnosed with MD if a loved one had died within 2 months of interview, Now: you can be diagnosed with MD

Vulnerability Stress Model

Assumes that an individual dispositions combine with environmental stressors to influence psychological disorder

One environment- gene will be expressed but in another it may lie dormant- could be a difference between developing a disorder or not

Schizophrenia

Person talks incoherently, bizarre beliefs, shows either little emotion or inappropriate emotion, socially withdrawn

Diagnostic Classification

Aims to predict disorder’s future course, suggest appropriate treatment, prompt research into its causes

National Institute of Mental Health’s Reasearch Domain Criteria Project

Organizes disorders according to behaviors and brain activity

Suicide Rates

National, racial, gender, trait, age, day of the week + seasonal differences, year-by-year: rising

Urges typically arise when people feel like they don’t belong or are burden to others, feel trapped by a seemingly inescapable situation

Help-listen-connect-protect

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI)

Sef-reinforcing: relief from intense negative thoughts, distraction of pain, attracts attention, relieve guilt by punishing themselves

Increased vulnerability to mental disorders

Poverty, child abuse, academic failure, chronic pain, personal loss, parental mental illness/substance abuse

Protective factors

Exercise, effective parenting, literacy, high self esteem, problem solving skills