Personality Final

What are motives?

Internal states that arouse and direct behavior toward specific objects or goals.
Often caused by a deficit.

What are needs?

States of tension within a person. As a need is satisfied, the state of tension is reduced. Most needs are also based on deficits

What are the similarities between motive psychologists and dispositional psychologists?

Motive psychologists believe that fantasies, free associations, and responses to projective techniques reveal the unconscious motivation behind many thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Motive psychologists also share some core ideas with dispositional psychologists. Like dispositional psychologists, motive psychologists stress that (1) people differ from one another in the type and strength of their motives (2) these differences are measurable (3) these differences cause or are associated with important life outcomes, such as business success or marital satisfaction (4) differences among people in the relative amounts of various motives are stable over time (5) motives may provide one answer to the question, “Why do people do what they do?”

What is the multifaceted theory of emotion?

All kinds of things motivate us, it’s not just one thing. People are quite different in what motivates them.

Who was Henry Murry and what did he contribute to our understanding of motivation?

multifaceted theory.

People live in remembered past and anticipated future connecting events.

According to Murray, what is press?

Press \= environment.

What are the different types of press?

Alpha Press - objective reality.
Beta Press - perceived environment.
Needs create beta press.

What is the TAT test?

Thematic Apperception Test

How is the TAT test administered?

Give an ambiguous stimulus and ask what it might be.
Projective technique.

What does the TAT test measure?

Someones inner thoughts

What is the difference between state and trait levels of need?

State Levels - levels of a need to a person's momentary amount of a specific need which can fluctuate with specific circumstances.
Trait Levels - measuring a person's average tendency or their set point or characteristic level, on the specific trait.

What contributions did David McClelland make to the field of motivation?

Adapted TAT into Picture Story Exercise (PSE)
More reliable.
Achievement motivation and economic development.
Need for achievement research.

According to McClelland, what are the big three motivations?

Achievement - doing better than others

Power - having an impact on others.

Intimacy - feeling close to others

Describe someone that has a high need for achievement (nAch)

They have a preference for moderately challenging tasks.
They like tasks in which they are personally responsible for the outcome.
They prefer tasks for which feedback on their performance is available.
Women's need for achievement usually comes from adverse childhood experiences which is the opposite for men.

Descibe someone high on the Need for Power

You have a need to impress, influence, or control other people and to be recognized by others for their power-oriented actions.
No sex differences in average levels.
Men perform a wide variety of impulsive and aggressive behaviors.
Power Stress - when high needs for power don't get their way or when their power is challenged or blocked, they are likely to show strong stress responses.
The desire to have an impact on others.

Describe someone high on the Need for Intimacy

Spend more time during the day thinking about relationships, report more pleasant emotions when they're around other people, smile, laugh and make eye contact more, and start conversations more frequently and write more letters.
More likely to be someone with a few very good friends, who prefers sincere and meaningful conversations over wild parties.

What is the humanistic tradition approach and how is it different from the multifaceted approach to motivation?

The goal is to become a fully functioning person.
The focus is not pathological, it’s how to become a self-actualized/functioning person.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Optimistic.

What is Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

How has Maslow’s hierarchy of needs changed over time?

He studied the healthiest people.
Now we know that happiness is not based on where someone is at in the pyramid.

What are peak experiences?

a momentary feeling of extreme wonder, awe, and vision, sometimes called the “oceanic feeling.” very meaningful to the person who has one.

Who can have peak experiences?

Self-actualizers.

Who is Carl Rogers and what were his contributions to humanistic theory?

Optimistic
Higher motivation
Self actualization
Client centered therapy
Become a fully functioning person
Organismic valuing process
Conditional worth bad
Focused on ways to foster self-actualization and developed a form of therapy that helped people to move toward self-actualization.
Rogers believed that people were basically good and that human nature was fundamentally benevolent and positive. He felt that the natural human state was to be fully functioning, but under certain conditions people become stalled in their movement toward self-actualization. His theory explains how people lose their direction. Moreover, he proposed techniques for helping people get back on track toward achieving their potential. His general approach to self-actualization—the person-centered approach—has been expanded and applied to groups, to education, to corporate organizations, and even to government.
Fully Functioning Person - the person who is on their way toward self-actualization. They trust themselves to do the right thing.

What is positive regard?

the inborn need and desire to be loved and accepted.

What are the different conditions of worth? How are they different?

Conditional Positive Regard - when positive regard must be earned by meeting certain conditions.
Unconditional Positive Regard - when parents and significant others accept the person without conditions, communicating that they love and value them because they just are.

What is client centered therapy?

the client is never given an interpretation of their problem or direction about what course of action to take to solve the problem. The therapist does not change the individual directly, instead they try to create the right conditions in which the client can change themselves.

What are the essential elements of Client Centered therapy?

Empathy - understanding the other person from their point of view.
Genuine acceptance - genuinely accept the client.
Unconditional positive regard - don't pass judgment.

According to Rogers, what is anxiety?

the result of having an experience that does not fit with one's self-conception.

According to Rogers, what are distortions?

Distortion - modify your experience rather than your self-image to reduce the threat.

What is self-determination theory?

Eudaimonic Motivation
Emphasizes meaning, growth, and relationships with others as key motivations.
Assumes that difficult life situations can contribute to increased meaning in life.
In hedonic perspective, difficult life situations are avoided.
In eudaimonic perspective, pleasure motivation is not considered bad, rather pleasure is a result of living a meaningful life.
Self-determined motivation. Competence, autonomy, relatedness.
Externally-determined motivation. Money, fame, appearance.

According to self-determination theory, what is associated with better health outcomes?

People who score higher in life meaning and satisfying relationships

What is intrinsic motivation?

Competence
Autonomy
Relatedness

What is extrinsic motivation?

Money
Fame
Appearance
If we spend a lot of time on extrinsic, we aren’t spending enough time on what truly matters.

What three parts make up sensation?

Stimulation of sensory receptor
Receptor produces neural impulses.
Brain interprets neural images (as sound, image, etc.)

What can senses do?

Senses are geared to help us adapt to our environments (avoid harm, find food, survive). We subjectively interpret our world.

What are the limitations of senses?

Senses are not geared to give complete info about the world.
We are subjectively interpreting the world, we do not objectively receive it.
We only see part of the visual spectrum, Hear only part, and smell only some.
Our working memory (what we focus on at a given time) is less powerful as long-term and sensory memory.

What is transduction?

Sense receptors convert physical stimuli into neural messages (electrochemical signals)
Transduction means the brain senses the world indirectly

What is cognition?

Awareness and thinking, interpreting, judging, deciding, remembering, anticipating.

What is personalizing cognition?

recalling a similar event from your own life. comparing two personal experinces

What is objectifying cognition?

recalling objective facts.

What is information processing?

All of the above (cognition) contribute to how we process info, the transformation of sensory input into mental representations and the manipulation of such representations.

What are the different levels of cognition?

Perception - the process of imposing order on the information our sense organs take in.
Interpretation - the making sense of, or explaining, various events in the world.
Conscious Goals - the standards that people develop for evaluating themselves and others.

What did Herman Witkins study?

Studied differences in perceptual style.
Field dependence and independence.

What is field dependence?

rely on environmental information.
Choose social science and education majors.
Rely on social information, ask others’ opinions, get along well with others.
Process info in chunks, good at seeing connections.

What is field independence?

rely on your own sensations to make judgments. More likely to choose natural sciences, math, and engineering majors. More autonomous, display more impersonal, detached orientation, not interested in other people’s opinions, keep distance from social situations. Do better with web-based learning content online instructional media-based info with heavy content. Good at selective attention in stimulus-rich environments.

What is the Rod and Frame test?

Using this apparatus, the participant sits in a darkened room and is instructed to watch a glowing rod surrounded by a square frame, which is also glowing. The experimenter can adjust the tilt of the rod, the frame, and the tilt of the participant’s chair. The participant’s task is to adjust the rod by turning a dial, so that the rod is perfectly upright. To do this accurately, the participant has to ignore cues in the visual field in which the rod appears (i.e., the square frame surrounding the rod, which the experimenter tilts). If the participant adjusts the rod so that it is leaning in the direction of the tilted frame, then that person is said to be dependent on the visual field, or field dependent. Other people disregard the external cues (the frame) and, instead, use information from their bodies in adjusting the rod to upright. Such participants are said to be independent of the field, or field independent

What is the Embedded Figure test?

Some people, when given the EFT, have trouble locating the simple figures embedded within the more complex surrounding figure, apparently being bound up in the “forest” and unable to see the “trees.” These people are said to be field dependent. Other people quickly spot many or all of the embedded figures and, so, are able to see objects independently from the background. Such people are said to be field independent.

What is the reducer/augmenter theory?

Dimension along which people differ in reaction to sensory stimulation.
Low pain tolerance - have augmented sensory cues.
High pain tolerance - have reduced sensory cues.
Reduces show smaller brain responses to flashes of light and bursts of noise.
Augmenters show a steeper rate of change with increasing stimulus intensity.
Reducers drink more coffee, smoke more, use drugs more, and listen to louder music, and have more difficulty with boredom.

What influences pain levels?

Current anxiety and stress levels also impact pain tolerance and perception (gate control theory - when we’re in a dangerous situation, we’re less likely to perceive pain).

What are the differences between reducers and augmenters?

Reducer/Augmenter Theory - the way people differ in their reaction to sensory stimulation

What is the REP test?

Role Construct Repertory Test
Identify personal constructs.
Flexible, easy to administer, idiographic.
First: identify important people in your life.
Second: compare and contrast them to identify constructs.

What is locus of control?

a person's interpretation of responsibility for the events in their life. Internally or externally.

What is external locus of control?

generalized expectancy that events are outside of one's control.

What is internal locus of control?

generalized expectancy that reinforcing events are under one's control and that one is responsible for the major outcomes in life.

What is learned helplessness?

accepting painful fates without attempting to remove themselves from the situation.: Seligman

What is attributional style?

refer to tendencies some people have to frequently use certain explanations for the causes of events.

What are the two different explanatory styles?

Pessimistic Explanatory Style - the attributional style that most puts a person at risk for feelings of helplessness and poor adjustment is one that emphasizes internal, stable, and global causes for bad events.
Optimistic Explanatory Style - emphasizes external, temporary, and specific causes of events.

What are the three dimensions of attributional style?

* internal/ external
* stable/ unstable
* global/ specific

Who was Brian Little and what did he study?

Psychologist Brian Little believes that personal projects make natural units for understanding the workings of personality because they reflect how people face up to the serious business of navigating through daily life.

What is the purpose of personal project analysis?

participants list their personal projects, rate how important, how difficult, how much they enjoy, how much progress, negative and positive impact. Personal project- set of relevant actions intended to achieve a goal that a person has selected

How does neuroticism affect personal projects?

They are more likely to rate personal projects as stressful, difficult, and likely to end in failure.
More likely to feel success outside of their control, feel that they made little progress.
Happiness is related to feeling in control of one’s personal projects.
Personal projects that are low stress, high control, high optimism predict long term wellbeing

Who was Albert Bandura and what were his contributions to psychology?

Bandura - people have intentions/forethought, reflect/anticipate events, monitor/evaluate progress, learn by observing others.

Bobo doll

Cognitive/Social Processes through which people learn to strive to value and strive for certain goals over others. Emphasized the active nature of human behavior. He argued that people have intentions and forethought

What is self-system?

self-regulation of behavior in pursuit of goals.

What is self-efficacy?

belief that you can execute a specific course of action to achieve a goal. Modeling - self-efficacy improved by seeing others engage in performance with positive results.

What did Dweck study?

growth/ fixed mindset or entity/ incrimental theroy

What were the results of Dweck’s studies?

If a teacher praises a student for intelligence it can be counter-productive (or saying it's ok not everybody is good at math).
If teacher praises student for effort you have better outcomes – students learn to associate success with effort and more likely to push through frustrations and difficulties in learning

Who was Walter Mischel and what were his contributions to our understanding of personality?

Cognitive Affective Personality System (CAPS) - personality is an organization of cognitive and affective activities that influence how people respond to certain kinds of situations.
Emphasis more on personality processes rather than static traits, consists of
Interpretations, goals, expectations, beliefs, feelings
Self-regulatory standards, abilities, plans, and strategies
Individuals obtain their specific set of mental abilities through their learning history, culture, genetics, and biological history.
If, then, propositions.
Behavior: interaction of situation and meaning of situation from individual’s perspective.
Marshmallow experiment.

What is general intelligence?

cognitive Intelligence.

What is Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences?

includes seven forms
interpersonal intelligence (social skills), intrapersonal intelligence (insight into oneself), kinesthetic intelligence, and musical intelligence.

What is the Flynn effect?

This rise in population IQ scores is known as the Flynn effect, named after the person who first documented this observation

What are the three components of emotion?

Affect (feelings)
Physiological response
Action tendencies - increases in the probabilities of certain behaviors.

What are the three functions of emotion?

Emotions provide information about the external environment and serve as adaptive response patterns.
Emotions provide information about our internal states.
Emotions are used to communicate.

What is emotional state?

Emotional State - transitory. They depend more on the situation a person is in than on the specific person. Emotions have specific causes that typically originate outside of the person.

What is emotional trait?

Emotional trait - a pattern of emotional reactions that a person consistently experiences across a variety of life situations.

What are the different approaches to studying emotions?

Categorial - hundreds of terms describe different categories of emotions.
Dimensional - researchers gather data by having subjects rate themselves on a wide variety of emotions, then apply statistical techniques to identify the basic dimensions underlying the ratings.

What were Ekman’s contributions to the study of emotions?

Basic emotions - anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise.
Requires universal facial expression.

categorical

What is content in terms of emotional life?

specific kind of emotion that a person experiences.
An angry person over time will be characterized and contain a good deal of anger, irritability, and hostility.

What is style in terms of emotional life

the way in which an emotion is experienced. Intensity.
We might say that content is the what of a person’s emotional life, whereas style is the how of that emotional life.

What is interoception?

Perception of our
Current state of well being
Energy levels
Stress
Mood and disposition
Increased self-awareness related to better health.
Increase self-awareness related to better relationships with others.
Awareness of self.

What is Alexithymia?

Lack of words for emotion (emotionally clueless).
Opposite of interoception.
Related to worse health outcomes.

What can disrupt identification of emotions?

Botox.

How do we measure happiness?

self-report so not as reliable

Does success lead to happiness or does happiness lead to success?

Happiness leads to positive outcomes.
It can flow in both directions.

According to research, what makes people happier?

money but only to a certain point

relationships

How is neuroticism related to emotions?

Highly neurotic people are vulnerable to negative emotions.
An easily activated limbic system/fight or flight increases the likelihood of feelings of anxiety.
Neuroticism can be heritable.

How does the prefrontal cortex relate to emotions?

judgment and descion making

How does being low or high neuroticism impact the perception and outcomes of illness?

Neuroticism makes it easier to recall unpleasant information. You can therefore recall more instances of illness and bodily complaints.
Roughly 15-25% of variation in health symptoms could be attributed to neuroticism. They report more symptoms and recall more symptoms.
They may be more susceptible to immune-mediated diseases.
Neurotics may pay more attention to threats and unpleasant information in their environment. They are more prone to responding to threat words in the Stroop test.

What is the diathesis-stress model?

The model suggests that there is a pre existing vulnerability, or diathesis, that is present among people who later become depressed.

it isn’t just being stressed out that leads to depression it is the short allele and the 5HTTP

What is Beck’s cognitive theory?

Self

future

and the world

\

What is a self-fulling prophecy?

The person who thinks he is a total failure will often act like a total failure and may even give up trying to do better.

What is the neurotransmitter theory of depression?

Seeing depression caused by neurotransmitter imbalance in the synapses of the nervous system. Norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine.
Antidepressants inhibit the reuptake of serotonin in the synapse, resulting in increased levels of this neurotransmitter in the nervous system, facilitating nerve transmission.

What is hostility and what are the consequences of being hostile?

the tendency to respond to everyday frustrations with anger and aggression, become irritable easily, feel frequent resentment, and act in a rude, critical, antagonistic, and uncooperative manner in everyday interactions.
Highly hostile people are more likely to get coronary heart disease.

What is affect intensity?

intensity of whatever affect you are currently

What is mood variability?

More frequent fluctuations in emotional lives over time.

What is EQ?

Ability to:
Recognize
Understand
Facilitate thinking
Reflective regulation

What are examples of different distortions?

Mostly seen in depressed people they see their reality as hopless

What is health psychology?

Study the relationship between the mind and the body,

What is the interactional model?

Suggests that objective events happen to people, but personality factors determine the impact of those events by influencing people's ability to cope.
Personality is an influence of the relationship between stress and illness.

What is the transactional model?

Personality has three potential effects:
It can influence coping.
It can influence how the person appraises or interprets the events.
It can influence the events themselves.

What is the health behavior model?

Adds another factor to the transactional model.
Personality does not directly influence the relationship between stress and illness

What is a moderator variable?

When a variable influences the direction or degree of relationship between two or other variables.