Personality Exam 2

Personality Development

Change in the mean level of a personality trait over time

Rank-order Consistency

People tend to maintain the ways in which they are different from other people of the same age

Temperament

Is personality in infants, and mostly determined by genetics

Heterotypic Continuity

The effects of fundamental temperament tendencies change with age, but temperament and personality stay the same

Early Experience

Early adverse experiences can have consequences that persist for many years. Many parents are successful at creating environments for their children that promote good outcomes

Person-Environment Transactions

people tend to respond to, seek out, and create environments that are compatible with, and may magnify, their personality traits

Active Person-Environment Transactions

people seek out compatible environments and avoid incompatible ones

Reactive Person-Environment Transactions

People respond differently to the same situation

Evocative Person-Environment Transactions

people change the situation. Aspect of an individuals personality lead to behavior that changes the situations the individual experiences.

Cumulative Continuity Principle

Personality traits are relatively stable across the life span, and become more stable as a person matures

Cross-Sectional Studies

Surveys people at different ages. One study found that people at different ages show different mean levels of the Big Five personality traits

Cohort Effects

people at different ages may differ because they grew up in different environments

Longitudinal Studies

The same people are repeatedly measured over the years from childhood through adulthood

Maturity Principle

personality becomes more stable as people get older. Most people become more emotionally stable, agreeable, conscientious, and socially dominant as they grow older.

Social Clock

Places pressure on people to accomplish certain things by certain ages.There are masculine and feminine social clocks.

Narrative Identity

the story that you tell about your life. We develop how we see ourselves and our sense of who we are over time. Actor, Agent, and Author.

Desire for Change in Personality

Almost everyone would like to change their traits. Desire for Change is typical and usually in the socially desirable direction.

Reason for wanting change: Make life better

Interventions for Personality Change

Psychotherapy, General Interventions, and Targeted Interventions

Overcoming Obstacles to Change

•Most people like their personalities

•Resistance to change can be especially strong in people such as narcissists

•People tend to blame negative experiences on external forces

•People generally like their lives to be consistent and predictable

•People have long-standing and stable views about the world

Steps in Self-Regulated Personality Change

1. Want to change and believe that change is possible.

2. Self regulated behavioral changes

3. Self-regulated changes become habitual

4. Trait change

Free Association (talking cure) and benefits

instructing the patient to say whatever came to mind.

Benefits:

Talking about it helps.

Making thoughts and fears explicit by saying them out loud brings them into the open, where the conscious, rational mind can deal with them.

The psychotherapist can provide emotional support during the patients difficult task of trying to figure out what is going on

Psychic Determinism

Everything that happens in a persons mind, including everything a person thinks and does, has a specific cause

Contradictions of thoughts and behaviors can be resolved, usually by looking at the unconscious part of the mind

Internal Structure of the Mind

Id: irrational and emotional

Ego: Rational

Superego: Moral

Modern research says the mind is not neatly divided into three parts

Libido

The psychological part of the mind needs energy.

The life or sexual drive

mental energy is fixed and finite

creation, protection, and enjoyment of life

creativity, productivity, and growth

Thanatos

The Death drive

•Introduced later to account for destructive activity such as war and the fact that everyone dies

•Similar to entropy, the basic universal force moving toward randomness and disorder

Doctrine of Opposites

Everything implies, and even requires, its opposite.

•life and death

•Happiness and sadness

•Extremes on any scale may be more similar to each other than either extreme is to the middle

Oral Stage

The mouth is the first place where psychic energy is focused

•Timing: Birth to 18 months

•Id only: The baby wants their needs met instantly

•Physical focus: Mouth, lips, and tongue

•Psychological theme: Dependency, passivity

•Two ways things can go wrong: Needs are not fulfilled, or needs are fulfilled instantly and automatically

•Adult character type: Overly independent versus passive

Anal Stage

The child is expected to do some things independently

•Timing: About 18 months to 3 years

•Physical focus: Anus and organs of elimination

•Psychological theme: Self-control and obedience

•Self-control of emotions, behavior (following orders, inappropriate urges), and toilet training

•Development of the ego: To find compromises between what is wanted and what is possible

•Two ways things can go wrong: Parents are too demanding, or too lenient

•Overcontrolled: Obsessive, compulsive, stingy, orderly, rigid, subservient to authority, unable to tolerate disorganization or ambiguity

•Undercontrolled: Unable to do anything on time, chaotic, disorganized, compulsive need to defy authority

Phallic Stage

The child realizes that boys and girls are different

•Timing: About 3 ½ to 7 years

•Physical focus: Sexual organs

•Basic task: Coming to terms with physical sex differences and their implications

•Oedipal crisis: Fall in love with opposite-sex parent, fear of same-sex parent (castration anxiety for boys), leading to identification with same-sex parent

•Not supported by research

•Psychological theme: Gender identity and sexuality, love, fear, and jealousy

•Figure out what it means to be a boy or girl; develop a self-image as masculine or feminine

•Identification: Taking on many of the same-sex parent’s attitudes, values, and ways of relating to the opposite sex

•Development of morality, conscience, and the superego: By product of identification; superego passes moral judgments on the id and ego

Latency Stage

Concentrate on learning the tasks of childhood

•Timing: About 7 years to puberty

•A break from development

Genital Stage

Adulthood is an achievement

•Timing: Puberty and beyond

•This stage is not passed through, but attained

•Physical focus: Includes the physical organs and the process of reproduction or giving life

•Focus on creation and enhancement of life: Not limited to having children; also includes intellectual, artistic, or scientific work

•Psychological theme: Maturity

•Achievement: Psychologically well-adjusted and balanced 

•Mental health: The ability “to love and to work”

Fixation

Leaving lots of energy behind if a stage is not completely resolved; a person continues to struggle with issues from that stage

Regression

retreat to an earlier stage when under stress

Secondary Process Thinking

What we ordinarily mean by the word think

Rational, practical, and prudent

More ego

Primary Process Thinking

The way the unconscious mind operates: the infant’s as well as the adult’s

May be thinking in terms of immediate wants

More id

Conscious Mind

The part of mental functioning you can observe when you turn your attention inward

Preconscious Mind

Ideas you are not currently aware of but that can be brought into awareness

Unconscious Mind

Areas and processes of the mind that do not come into awareness

Defense Mechanisms

techniques the ego uses to keep certain thoughts and impulses hidden to avoid or lessen anxiety

Denial

Refusal to believe bad news or anything that might make you anxious

Repression

Failure to acknowledge anything that might remind you of unwanted thoughts

Reaction Formation

Creating the opposite idea to what may cause anxiety

Projection

Something about the self that may cause anxiety is instead true of others

Rationalization

Creating a rational, logical explanation that doesn’t acknowledge the real motivation

Intellectualization

Translating anxiety-producing thoughts into unemotional theories or jargon

Displacement

Moving the object of emotions from a dangerous target to a safe target

Sublimination

Providing a safe outlet for problematic desires

Transference

The tendency to bring ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that developed in response to one important relationship into relationship with therapist

Critiques of Psychoanalytic Theory

1. Excessive complexity: All things being equal, the simplest explanation is the beat (Occam’s razor)

2. Case study method: Theories are based on introspection and insight from specific cases

•High likelihood of bias: The therapist may influence what the client says, or bias may affect the interpretation of what is said

3. Vague definitions: Concepts not defined in terms of operational definitions (i.e., operations or procedures used to identify or measure concepts of interest)

4. Untestability: Hypotheses based on the theory can only sometimes be proven false

5. Sexism: Freud thought woman as  having less self-esteem, less creativity, and less moral fiber

•Much of a woman’s life, according to Freud, is based on her struggle to come to terms with the tragedy that she is not a man

4 Key Ideas of Psychoanalysis

Psychic Determinism

Internal Structure

Psychic Conflict

Mental Energy

Common Themes of Neo-Freudian Psychology

•Less emphasis on and reinterpretation of the libido

•Less emphasis on unconscious mental processes and more on conscious thought

•Less emphasis on instinctual drives and mental life as the source of psychological difficulties, and more on interpersonal relationships

Ego Psychology

Focus on perception, memory, learning, and rational, conscious thinking

Organ Inferiority

Individuals are motivated to attain equality or superiority over people

Masculine Protest

Compensation for weakness in childhood results in an adult trying to become powerful

Collective Unconscious

Memories and ideas that all humans share, most of which reside in the unconscious, in the form of basic images

Archetypes

Core ideas of how people think about the world, both consciously and unconsciously

Ex: snake in a sinister role

Persona

The social mask one wears in public

Anima

The idea, or prototype, of the female, as held in the mind of a male

Animus

The idea, or prototype, of the male as held in the mind of a female

Jung Theory of People Turned Inward and Outward

Introverts versus extraverts: Psychologically turned inward versus outward

•Ways of thinking:

•Rational – recognize meaning

•Feeling – determine the value of things

•Sensing – establishing what is present in the world

•Intuiting – figuring out where something comes from and where it is going

•Jung believed that, ideally, one would achieve a balance among all four types of thinking

Horney’s Theory of Penis Envy

Disagreed that women have “penis envy” and that they desire to be male: Women envy freedom to pursue interests and ambitions, which is due to the structure of society, not women’s bodies

Differences Between Freud’s Theory and Erikson’s

Psychosexual vs. Psychosocial

Erikson’s theory has eight stages, while Freud’s has five.

Erikson’s theory of says that development continues throughout the entire lifespan, while Freud’s stops at adolescence.

Erikson’s theory says that basic conflicts are conscious and arise at various stages of life.

Transitional Object or Niffle

Objects used to bridge the gap between private fantasy and reality; a niffle is a physical object to which a person develops a sentimental attachment

Object Relations Theory and its Four Principle Themes

The analysis of interpersonal relationships.

1.  Every relationship has elements of satisfaction and   frustration, or pleasure and pain

•The breast is the is the first important object

2. The mix of love and hate

•Important people are sources of pleasure and frustration

3. Distinction between parts of the love object and the whole person

•Breast versus mother; wealth versus whole person

4. The psyche is aware of and disturbed by these contradictory feelings

•Baby feels anger over the breast (there is never enough)

•Baby feels envy (the baby desires the breast’s power for herself)

•Baby feels fear (the baby dreads losing the breast)

•Baby feels guilt (if the baby harms the breast, it could be lost)

Paranoid Position

Children wish to destroy the bad part of something because they fear being destroyed by it

Depressive Position

Children wish to worship and protect the good part of it because they fear losing it

False Self

The self people put on to please others; similar to Jungs persona

Parallel Distributed Processing

When the ego tries to prevent stimuli that the superego finds overly threatening from entering awareness

Catharsis

Freely expressing issues that trouble you; research supports that this can be helpful for psychological and physical health

Contemporary Psychology Testing Psychoanalytic Theory and Results

Perceptual Defense- people reacted emotionally to certain words, even when the words were presented so quickly people claimed they couldn’t read them.

Many cognitive psychologist have concluded that most of what the mind does is unconscious

Are people wrecked by success? - No, in fact, those with successful careers had better physical health, psychological adjustment, and personal relationships

Support for Catharsis

•Close analysis of speech patterns can reveal how people use psychoanalytic defense mechanisms

•The traits of the anal personality—stinginess, orderliness, rigidity, and so on—correlate with each other just as Freud theorized

•The traits of the oral character also seem to intercorrelate as Freud predicted

Humanistic Psychology

The human mind is self-aware and knows it is being studied; focus on awareness, free will, happiness, and other related aspects of the mind that are uniquely human and that give life meaning

Eight Elements of Humanistic Psychology

Element	Definition
Humanistic	Study of humans, not animals
Holistic	Human system is greater than sum of its parts
Historic	Whole person from birth to death
Phenomenological	Focus on interior, experiential, and existential aspects of personality
Real life	Person in nature, society, and culture—not just the experimental lab
Positivity	Joy, fruitful activities, virtuous actions and attributes
Will	Choices, decisions, voluntary actions
Value	A philosophy of life that describes what is desirable

Phenomenology

One’s conscious experience of the world; everything a person hears, feels, and thinks

Construal

A person’s particular experience of the world

Introspection

Observation of one’s own perceptions and thought processes

Existentialism

Regain contact with the basic experiences of being alive and aware

A reaction against rationalism, science, and the Industrial Revolution

Key Questions:

What is the nature of existence?

How does it feel?

And what does it mean?

Umwelt (or Biological Experience)

The sensations you feel by virtue of being a biological organism

Mitwelt (or Social Experience)

What you think and feel as a social being

Eigenwelt (or Psychological Experience)

The experience of experience itself and introspection (understanding your own thoughts, feelings, emotions)

Throw-ness

The time, place, and circumstances into which you happened to be born

Angst

The unpleasant feeling caused by contemplating the meaning of life

Three sensations of angst:

•Anguish: Everyone feels this because choices are never perfect

•Forlorn: Being alone in your own choices

•Despair: Inability to change crucial aspects of the world

Optimistic Toughness

Face your own mortality and the apparent meaninglessness of life, and to seek your purpose for your existence

Living in Bad Faith

Ignoring the existential questions and our moral imperative

•Three problems:

  1. You must experience as much of the world as possible

  2. Unhappiness: Focusing on material comforts does not make people happy

  3. It is impossible: Deciding to ignore existential   issues and surrendering your choice to external authorities is still a choice

Authentic Existence

Coming to terms with existence; being honest, insightful, and morally correct

The alternative to bad faith

Will not relieve loneliness and unhappiness

•Because every person is alone and doomed

•Life has no meaning beyond what you give it

•The essence of the human experience: understanding that you must die – memento mori

Anatta

The idea that the independent, singular self you sense inside your mind is merely an illusion

Anicca

All things must pass; it is best to accept this fact instead of repressing or fighting it; all moments (past, present, and future) have equal status

Nirvana

A serene, selfless state; the result of enlightenment

Optimistic Humanism

•Began with existential assumptions

•Phenomenology is central

•People have free will

•People are basically good: They seek to relate closely with one another, and have an innate need to improve themselves and the world

Rogers and Self-Actualization

People have one basic tendency and striving: to actualize, maintain, and enhance their own experience

•Phenomenal field: The entire panorama of conscious experience; unconscious conflicts, environmental influences, memories, hopes, and so on.

•Actualize: To maintain and enhance life

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Human motivation is characterized in a hierarchy, and lower needs must be met before moving to the next stage

1. Food, water

2. Safety and security

3. Sex, meaningful relationships

4. Prestige, money

5. Quest for self-actualization

Fully Functioning Person

Sees the world accurately and without neurotic distortion, takes responsibility, and is happy

Unconditional Positive Regard

The important people in your life always supported you, especially during childhood

Rogers thought this was necessary to be fully functional, Maslow though anyone could become fully functioning

Kelly and Personal Constructs

Experience of the world based on how construals are assembled

Chronically Accessible Constructs

Particular constructs are more readily brought to mind in certain individuals

Constructive Alternativism

Any pattern of experience can lead to numerous construals

•People choose which construals they use

•Scientific paradigms are frameworks for construing the meaning of data

•Researchers choose which paradigm to use, what to focus on and what to ignore

Sociality Corollary

Understanding another person means understanding their personal construct system

Opportunity Cost

The difference in cost of what something brings you and what you could have gained by spending your resources on something else

Satisficing Goal

Doing what you want as long as you can pay for it

Optimizing Goal

You must maximize your gain, and that unless you make as much money as possible, you have failed