PSY CH10: Personality

PERSONALITY

Pattern of enduring, distinctive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize the way a person adapts to the world

FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

The superego determines what is right and wrong, the ego determines what is the reality, and the id determines what would be pleasurable

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Tactics the ego uses to reduce anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

DISPLACEMENT

Directing unacceptable impulses at a less threatening target

DISPLACEMENT

Directing unacceptable impulses at a less threatening target

REPRESSION (pervasive)

Pushes unacceptable impulses into the unconscious mind

PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT

• Oral stage(birth-18 months) - Mouth, chewing, sucking, and biting

• Anal stage (18 to 36 months) - Toilet training, anus, urethra, “going”, and “holding it.”

• Phallic stage (3 to 6 years) - Genitals, self-stimulation, and triggers the Oedipus complex

• Latency period (6 years to puberty) - no sexual interests

• Genital stage (adolescence and adulthood) - sexual reawakening

PSYCHODYNAMIC CORE PRINCIPLES

Personality is determined by current and early experiences

We mentally transform our experiences, which allows them to shape our personalities

HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE

Theoretical views stressing a person’s capacity for personal growth and positive human qualities

UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD (Roger’s)

Individual’s need to be accepted, valued, and treated positively regardless of their behavior

CONDITIONS OF WORTH

Standards we must live up to in order to receive positive regard from others

SELF-CONCEPT

Our conscious representation of who we are and who we wish to become, during childhood.

• Genuine, innate desires, and can be influences by conditions of worth

How do traits manifest?

Stable characteristics that tend to manifest repeatedly over time and in many different situations

FIVE-FACTOR MODEL OF PERSONALITY

Describe the main dimensions of personality:

1. Openness to experience

2. Conscientiousness

3. Extraversion

4. Agreeableness

5. Neuroticism (emotional instability)

TRAIT THOERIES

Views personality as a collection of broad, enduring dispositions that lead to characteristics behavior

SOCIAL COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

Most interested in a person’s ability to reason

RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM

Bandura’s idea that behavior, environment, and person/cognitive factors interact to create personality

INTERNAL LOCUS OF CONTROL

Individual’s with take-charge attitude

• Sense of behavioral control coming from inside the person

EXTERNAL LOCUS OF CONTROL

People that credit outside influences, such as fate, luck, or other people, with their success or failure

SELF-EFFICACY

Belief that one has the competence to accomplish a given goal or task

People’s positive developments related to Self-efficacy

Solving problems

More sociable

Adopting healthy habits

Undertaking difficult coursework

Successfully reaching for a job

MINNESOTA MULTIPHASIC PERSONALITY INVENTORY (MMPI)

Most widely used and researched empirically keyed self-report personality test

MMPI Uses

“Abnormal” personality

Personality characteristics

Lying or making a good impression

Assess mental health

Tool for employment decisions

Assessing criminal risk

PROJECTIVE TEST

Presents people with an ambiguous stimulus and ass them to describe it or to tell a story about it—to project their own meaning onto the stimulus

• Individuals to interpret it bases on their feelings, desires, needs, and attitudes

RORCHACH INKBLOT TEST

10 cards, half in black/white and half in color that involves interpretation of ambiguous images or inkblots