Chapter 13 psych-personality

personality

-predispositions to think/behave certain ways

-traits:

• dimensions of personality

• ex. agreeableness, extraversion

nomothetic

-broad study of personality across all people

-ex. uncovering dimensions of personality

-strengths: generalizability

-weaknesses: limited application to any single individual person

idiographic

-studying a specific individual’s personality

-ex. what made bob so introverted

-strengths: in depth analysis of one person

-weakness: generalizability

Causes of Personality

1) Genetic Factors

• definitely some influence

• correlations well below 1.0

2) Shared environmental factors

• affect all members of a family

• ex. parenting, SES, religious activities

3) Nonshared environmental factors

• experiences unique to a person within a family

• ex. “favorite child”, oldest/youngest sibling, interests'/opportunities

Psychoanalytic theory- primary assumptions

-Sigmund Freud

-Three Primary Assumptions

• 1) Psychic determinism

  • Cause and effect: nothing is spontaneous/random

• 2) Symbolic meaning

  • Derive deeper meaning from “surface-level” actions

• 3) Unconscious motivation

  • Inaccessible, unconscious drives and motivations

Freudian Defense Mechanisms

-Ego tries to minimize anxiety via defense mechanisms

-Repression- motivated forgetting of threatening memories

-Denial- refusal to acknowledge some threatening current state

-Projection- attribution of own negative qualities to others

-Rationalization- explaining away unreasonable thoughts or feelings

-Regression- returning to a younger and safer time

-Reaction-formation- reversing an experience (attraction into hate)

-Sublimation- turning something unacceptable into a goal

-Displacement- directing a desire from one target to another

Components of the Psyche

-Three components of the psyche

• Id- basic instincts (unconscious)

• Ego- principal decision maker (conscious)

• Superego- sense of morality (unconscious and conscious)

Freud’s Psychosexual Development

-Personality develops through a series of psychosexual stages, each centered on a different erogenous (sexually arousing) zone

-Sexuality begins in infancy, contrary to the beliefs of his time

-Fixation leads to difficulty progressing to later stages

-Stages

• Oral- birth to 12-18 months- sucking and drinking

• Anal- 18 months-3- alleviating tension by expelling feces

• Phallic- 3-6 - genitals

• Latency- 6-12- Dormant sexual stage

• Genial- 12-beyond- Renewed sexual impulses, emergence of romantic relationships

Oedipus Complex

-conflict during phallic stage in which boys supposedly love their mothers romantically and want to eliminate their fathers as rivals

-opposite of this with daughters is Electra complex

Problems with Freud’s Theory

-Unfalsifiable

-Failed predictions

-Questionable conception of “THE” unconscious

-Unrepresentative samples

Neo-Freudians

-Maintain from Freud:

• Unconscious influences

• Importance of early childhood experience in shaping personality

-Key Differences from Freud

• Less emphasis on sexuality, more on social drives

• More optimistic about personal growth

Alfred Adler

-Emphasized the drive for superiority as the primary motive in personality

-believed inferiority complexes could develop when parents are overly pampering or neglectful

Carl Jung

-Proposed the personal unconscious (similar to Freud’s idea) and the collective unconscious- shared memories passed across generations

Karen Horney

-First major feminist personality theorist

-Criticized Freud’s misogynistic views and emphasized social and cultural factors in personality development

Behavioral Approaches

-personality= bundle of habits acquired by classical and operant conditioning

-habits= behaviors, including thoughts and feelings

-personality does not cause behavior

-Determinism (no free will)

• illusion of choice

• cause and effect relationship

-Scientific evaluation- firmer scientific footing- testable, falsifiable predictions

-However- radical behaviorists’ neglect of cognition is not supported by research

Social Cognitive/Learning theories

-interpretation of environment determines how you react

-emphasize reciprocal determinism (tendency for people to mutually influence each other’s behavior)

-Observational learning and personality

-Locus of control- extent to which people believe that reinforcers and punishers lie inside or outside their control

• influences stress and coping

-Scientific evaluation: brought the mind back to explanations of personality (post-radical behaviorism)

-However- social learning’s claim regarding observational learning is not supported

Humanistic Models

-Carl Rogers

-Rejection notion of determinism: embraced free will

-Human nature is inherently constructive vs destructive

-Proposed self-actualization as core motive

• effort to develop full potential

Roger’s Model of Personality

-Three Components of Personality

• 1) The organism (innate, genetic blueprint)

• 2) The self

• 3) Conditions of worth

  • We accept ourselves only if we act in certain ways

  • Come from others first; then we internalize them

trait model of personality

-trait theorists attempt to identify the structure of personality by pinpointing fundamental traits

-factor analysis identifies similar items to create primary trait terms

• correlations between items may represent underlying factor

• Goal: reduce to a few “key” variables

• ex. the 17,000 terms in the English language can be reduced to 3 to 5 fundamental trait terms

the big five model of personality

-five traits that consistently occur in factor analysis of personality measures

• OCEAN: Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism

• Personality traits are stable over time

• traits are correlated with behaviors and measures of success

• people can express their personality traits in different way

• TIPI Scale- 10 item scale to measure how people fall on the spectrum for the 5 traits

the big five and behavior and culture

1) behavior

• can predict many important real-world behaviors

  • job performance and grades in school

  • physical health and life span

2) culture

• relatively similar traits seen across cultures, but with different prevalence/importance rates

• less predictive of behavior in collectivist cultures

Criticisms of the Big Five

-Does not include morality

-agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness = one larger dimension of impulse control

Alternatives to the Big Five

-The Dark Triad of Personality

• Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism

-Eysenck’s Model of Personality (Three-factor model)

• Extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism

• Argued that introverts are chronically over aroused and overwhelmed, whereas extraverts are chronically under aroused and bored

Can personality traits change? Basic tendencies vs characteristic adaptations

-some variability before age 30, but little after

-There may be some observed variability at all times

• Basic tendencies- underlying personality traits

• Characteristic adaptations- behavioral manifestations

• Sensation seeking- tendency to seek out new, exciting stimuli

-It’s currently unknown if psychotherapy or medications can impact basic personality traits

Trait models evaluated scientifically

-strong evidence for the big five model of personality

-trait models don’t provide insight into causes of personality

-Not reliable in predicting single episodes of behavior

-Can be strongly predictive of aggregated behavior over many situations

personality assessment

1) empirical approach

• Interest is whether the items distinguished between groups, not why or how (just categorizing personality traits)

• Low face validity- items are often not obviously related to the personality traits they measure

• Ex. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

2) Rational/theoretical approach

• Begin with clear-cut conceptualization of a trait, then write items to assess

• Bottom up approach

• ex. Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Criticisms

-The types are only stereotypes, they do not describe individuals

-Puts you in a box that does not allow a person to use a mix of the preferences

-Reliability is poor

-etc

Structured Personality Tests

-paper and pencil test consisting of questions that respondents answer in one of a few fixed ways

-Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

• Created by Hathaway and McKinley

• Designed to detect and assess symptoms of mental disorders

• Uses the empirical approach

  • It is interested in whether the cale items distinguish between patients vs non-patients

-MMPI-3

• New MMPI test

  • Primary goals: enhance the item pool, update the test norms, optimize existing scales, and introduce new scales

  • Contains validity scales

Projective Tests

-Consist of ambiguous stimuli that examinees must interpret

• Controversial due to poor reliability and validity

• Rorschach Inkblot Test

• Thematic apperception Test (TAT)

  • Consists of cards with ambiguous situations

  • Score based on the extent to which respondents’ stories emphasize achievement-oriented themes

• Human Figure Drawings

  • Requires respondents to draw a person in any way they wish

  • Correlations between human figure drawing and personality traits are low

• Graphology

  • The psychological interpretation of handwriting

P.T. Barnum Effect

-a psychological phenomenon where individuals believe general vague personality descriptions are highly accurate and personality tailored to them