Psychology of Personality - Unit 1

Unit 1

Personality

underlying characteristics of a person that account for consistent patterns of behavior and experience, revealed differently in different situations

Personality Profile

graphic representation of a person’s personality

• Demonstrates uniqueness of personality

• ex: MMPI

MMPI LFK scales

• validity scales (can you take person seriously, are they biased)

  • L scale (lack of attention) = person is not paying attention, developed after war, see if answers are inconsistent with one another

  • F scale = faking bad, people tried to evade being in the war in the past, person might change to make others take them more seriously

  • K scale = defensiveness, faking good, trying to make themselves seem better than what they are (underreporting)

• Higher you go, greater pathalogically

3 Goals of Personality Theory

• Description: Describing personality using

  • Types

  • Traits

  • Factors

• Dynamics: How is personality expressed and modified (ex: environmental influences)

• Developmental: How does personality develop?

  • Is it inherited or learned?

Personality Descriptors: Types

Categories of people with similar characteristics 

• Ex: Type A and Type B personalities (proposed as cardiovascular risk groups originally, some groups were more likely to have the risk)

Type A:

• aggressive, antagonistic, negative, time-urgent, annoyed when people get in their way

  • More prone to coronary heart disease, true!

Type B

•  more easygoing, mellow, positive

  • Less prone to coronary heart disease

Cook-Medley Hostility Scale (CMHO)

Measure of Type A vs Type B behavior

50 T/F questions derived from MMPI

Problem with Personality Descriptors: Types

• Categorize groups in an all or none way

• Limited in the number of variables that can be assessed

Examples of Types using Freud

• Oral-erotic: If someone becomes fixated at this stage and their oral-erotic, their needs are satisfied quickly thru nourishment = they are optimistic and gluttonous

• Oral-sadistic: Child needs nourishment, their needs are not fulfilled quickly = they are aggressive (bite)

Personality Descriptors: Traits

• Widely used, common sense descriptors like outgoing, athletic, etc

• Distinguishes one person from another and thought to cause consistent behavior (predictive of behavior)

• May be housed within a type -> optimistic may be housed under oral-erotic

Strengths of Traits

Quantitative/Dimensional

Problem with Personality Descriptors: Traits

• Too much redundancy; over 18,000 trait words in dictionary

• Perhaps poorly quantified and lead to lack of consensus (how are extraversion and talkativeness related if they are similar) and mish-mash of results if we have traits that are not related

Personality Descriptors: Factors

• Statistically derived, quantitative dimension that is broader than a trait

Factor Analysis

A few measures measure one thing that’s the same, so these similar traits are pooled together and are reduced to a single factor

Used to analyzed data from questionnaires

Big Five

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

• Stemmed from Raymond Cattell’s 16PF (uses questionarries)

Environmental Factors
Contributing to Theory
Development

Zeitgeist

Ortgeist

Zeitgeist

 spirit of the times, time was right

• When does the theory develop? When is the time right to develop it?

• Simultaneous discoveries tell that when the raw materials are there and the time is right, someone will propose the idea

• Ex: Alfred Wallace proposed the theory of evolution in 1859 that we are genetically prescribed to have certain physical and personality traits

  • Created theory of evolution simultaneously with Darwin

    
    

Ortgeist

 spirit of the place

• Scientific ideas reflect the place when idea was proposed 

• German: Mind

  • Emphasis on language allowed for better description of mental states

• English: classification and testing of individual differences

  • Bears the influence of evolutionary theories

• French: emotion 

  • Focused attention on abnormal psychology

• American: pragmatic

  • Focused attention on applied psychology to other fields

Wilhelm Wundt

Set up structuralism

• Goal was to study structure of the mind using introspection (reporting what’s going on inside)

• breaking down mental processes into most basic parts

• Asked people questions about their emotions and other compartments of mind

  • People most apt to talk to him were those who had time on their minds and they tended to be wealthy women

• Set up first psychology lab in 1879

• Little direct influence, but paved the way for other movements like Gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology

• Led by Kurt Lewin and Max Wertheimer

• Criticized structuralists by stating that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts

• Must focus on individuals in concrete situations

• Psychology should focus on human problems like addictions

Functionalism

• Led by William James

• Developed as a response to structuralism

• Reacted against static elements within environment = how do people change in one environment to the next (based on introspection)

• Looking at individual differences across different settings, between types for instances (behavior if someone cut you off in line or on the street)

• purpose of mind/behaviour

Behaviorism

• Led by Watson (former functionalist)

• Rejected introspection and idea of consciousness (We don’t know how valid introspection is, are they lying?)

• Problem: behaviorism fails to explain personality sometimes

  • We might be in class for different reasons 

• Best predictor is environment

• Specific to environment

• Change is easy, it’s wanted in diff environments

  • personality is harder to change

 Germ Model

• For each disease there is a germ

• Identification of the germ depends on careful description and classification of the clinical syndrome or disease

• The germ is necessary and sufficient for the disease

• Any treatment that removes the germ will cure the disease

• Immunization of the disease results from prior infection of a low-intensity germ

Hysterics

Now called conversion disorder. In medicine, functional neurological disorder

Charcot: expectations cause hysteria

Psychodynamic Germ vs Cognitive Germ vs Behavioral Germ

• Psychodynamic Germ: mental conflicts

  • Personality disturbances

• Cognitive Germ: low self-esteem/ self-efficacy

• Behavioral Germ: faulty learning history

  • Punished for good things 

  • behave through learning

Measurement Techniques

• Self-report

• Ex: MMPI-2

• Behavioral Assessment

• Projectives

MMPI-2

• Original purpose: to differentiate those with psychological difficulties from those without such difficulties or a different disorder

• Example of test standardization

• Created in WW2 to differentiate those psychological health/unhealthy to serve in way

• 567 T/F questions

• Interpretation depends on the pattern of responses

• Pattern of responses indicates personality

• 10 scales about personality

Construct Validity

 test actually measures what it intends to measure

ex: Beck Depression Inventory (BID)

Predictive Validity

• predicts future behavior or illness

• Ex: cook-medley hostility scale predicts coronary heart disease

BID

• measure of depression and anxiety, kind of valid

  • 21 Questions (0-3)

  • Suicidality 

  • Anhedonia (persistent lack of happiness, inability to experience pleasures from things that did before)

  • Depression and anxiety are comorbid (80-90%, meaning likely to have the other if you have one)

Test-retest Reliability

• Tests should yield similar scores over time (test-retest reliability)

More on reliability

• Alternate forms reliability

  • If BID has mixed-up questions, does the recipient have the same score?

• Something can be reliable but not valid

  • Phrenology: science that bumps on skull indicates personality (bumps in brain), those bumps stay for a year

Test Standardization

• Technique used to validate questions in personality tests by studying the responses of people with known diagnoses

• Only as good as diagnosis (correct diagnosis) and test-retest reliability (highly variable doesn’t mean anything)

Behavior Assessment

• Direct Observation: Direct measure of behavior used to describe characteristics indicative of personality

• Actions speak louder than words

• Especially good for behaviorists (behavior is personality)

  • Ex: number of social contacts made in an hour indicates how sociable you are

• Problem: Different ways to interpret someone’s behavior

Projectives

• Ambiguous stimuli are presented and interpreted in an amazingly quantitative manner (quantitatively analyzed)

  • Color

  • Form

  • Movement

• Again, validity is determined by norming data using diagnosed individuals (what are their responses relative to healthy population)

Rorschach Ink Blot Test

• 10 different inkblots

• What do you see, what makes you say that

• Content is analyzed

  • What part of block is seen

  • Whether color is used

  • Whether it is a typical response

  • Movement = typical is overall gestalt

Thematic Apperception Test

• Describe what is happening in 30 different pictures

• Qualitative in nature

• Uncover recurrent themes across many pictures that indicate central personality structures and issues

Freud Notable History Facts

• Thought all people have thanatos: an unconscious wish to die, Death instinct, a destructive force which leads to death

• Counteracting force is Eros: life instinct, motivates life-maintaining behavior and love

• Thought suicide is displacement of anger to less threatening person (self)

• More idiographic than nomothetic

Topographical Theory:

Freud

• Division of mind into preconscious, conscious, and unconscious

  • Conscious: everything currently on your mind

  • Preconscious: anything you can draw once attention is directed

  • Unconscious: stuff within brain that may be affecting you that can’t  be brought up

Repression

Something emotionally unsettling that we don’t want to confront or think about, so we repress it into unconscious, which takes mental energy, that energy expenditure can lead to neurosis, a cognitive energy deficit

Neurosis

A cognitive energy drain/crisis, can cause psychological difficulties.

Motivated Unconscious

Keeping unacceptable ideas from the conscious mind (threatening or aggressive)

In regards to dreams

Dreams: illogical so you don’t have to confront what happened mind makes it difficult to reveal what’s in your unconscious

Freud’s Dreamwork

• Dreamwork: understanding 3 different processes where unconscious is manipulated to not confront directly

  • Condensation: 2 or more threatening images are combined to form an image that merges into meanings and drives that are not threatening or funny

  • Displacement: Distorts the object of the drive

    • Ex: sex drive -> food drive

  • Symbolism: masks content of impulse

Humor according to freud

Can be related to unconscious

Manifest content:

what you recall about the dream/events

Latent confident:

meaning of the dream, what’s really going on

Id

• Earliest to form

• Represents need for “wish fulfillment”

• Conforms to pleasure principle:

  • All needs should be fulfilled immediately

  • Ex: baby crying for food

• Storehouse for survival instincts and libido

Ego

• Next to develop

• Secondary process that is more rational

• Follows the reality principle:

  • Takes into account external forces and internal needs

  • Ex: wait for appropriate time 

• Helps reduce tensions but if overly taxed results in anxiety (complications with not be able to satisfy ID and ego)

  • Ex: want to eat food but can’t because I am teaching

• Prepotent impulse: unconscious reaction for food, sex, etc

• Mediator between id and superego

Superego

• Last to form: by 5 or 6

• Initially consists of rules from others (parents)

  • Introjection: absorbing parents’ values

  • About being a good person

• Eventually, able to create out own morals/values

• Anxiety between ego and superego

  • Should I be donating money?

Introjection:

• absorbing parents’ values

Objective Anxiety

•  fear of real things (phobias)

Neurotic Anxiety

• based on childhood conflicts between instinctual gratification and reality 

  • Being punished for id

  • Conflict between id and ego

  • Ex: really want to eat cupcake but can’t right now bc i am in class

Moral Anxiety

•  anxiety between ego and superego, 

  • Shame and guilt originating from punishment for violating moral codes, going against conscience

Psychosexual Development:

Sexuality is meant to be regarded as a drive or instinct that must be satisfied

Develops through stages corresponding to most sensitive body part at that time

Oral:

• birth to 2 years

• Erotic personality (fixation): too much gratification instantaneously (sucking, eating) … excessive, optimistic, gullible, dependent 

  • affects personality throughout life

• Sadistic personality: biting comments, pessimistic, aggressive, have to wait to receive something

Anal

• 2-4 years

• Too harsh of toilet training experience and parents yell

• Expulsive: defines regulation, hostile aggressive, cruel, destructive, messy (don’t want to conform)

• Retentive: stubborn, stingy, materialistic, neat (want to be perfect)

Expulsive

• defines regulation, hostile aggressive, cruel, destructive, messy (don’t want to conform)

Retentive

• stubborn, stingy, materialistic, neat (want to be perfect)

Phallic

• 4-5 years

• Genital exploration and questions about things like marriage/relationships 

• Oedipus (boys attracted to mother, competition with father) / electra complexes (attracted to father, competition with mother) arise here: 

  • Castration anxiety: father will punish via castration

  • Defense identification: identify with father to resolve issue, boy will act like dad to get someone like mom

Defense identification:

• identify with father to resolve issue, boy will act like dad to get someone like mom

Women’s version of oedipus complex:

• Sexual inhibition: not reveal their sexual drive to hide inferior genitalia

Latency

• work on same-sex relationships

• no focus on a part of the body

• If successful, one would have functional long term relationships with same sex, with further refinement of identification/ interests

Genital

• Puberty

• work on sexual desire, sexual relationships

• if successful: socialization, genuine friendships, mature long term relationships

• personality development ends at puberty occurring to freud

Goal of instincts

Remain homeostasis

Forms of mental work

Primary: pleasure principle

Secondary: reality principle

Pleasure principle

• Present in infancy

• shows through in unguarded moments of adulthood

• also in dreams and times of fear (ex world ending, telling people you love them)

• People follow primary principle if life were about to end

Fixation

• if developmental stage isn't satisfied, can lead to fixation

• Fixation: when one fails to effectively move through stages

  • fixation can lead to stagnation (can’t move through stages, that’s the personality they have forever)

Freudian Slips

• “My grandmother died [lied] last night.”

• Freudian Explanations

  • Fabricated excuse

  • Feared others think it’s a lie

  • Repressed guilt for lying to grandmother

  • Linguistic confusion

• Dismissed

  • No known mechanisms by which it might occur

  • Doesn’t seem to apply to all slips

  • Untestable

Subliminal Advertising

• Image/words presented quickly and no conscious understanding of seeing it

• Idea hit peak 1950s with the work of Vicary (images when seeing a movie)Less Devious tactics still used

  • Embedding

  • See through illusion

Vicary

• (images when seeing a movie)

  • Popcorn: Up 50%

  • Coke: Up 18%

  • In some movies message was to eat popcorn and others to eat coke

  • Those who saw popcorn ate more, vice versa for coke

  • Outlawed subconscious advertisement 

Anna O Case Study

• Psychoanalysis!

  • Treated by Dr. Bruer

• Freud believed her symptoms were the result of repressed memories/traumas into her unconscious

Keys to Psychotherapy

• A relaxed therapeutic experience:

• Free association

• Recognition of resistance: this is what the patient finds threatening

• Transference:

  • Patient will talk to therapist as if he is the significant other person in patient

  • Countertransference: Therapist talks to patient as a significant person

  • Softer form of transference: Patient might begin to have loving feelings for therapist but not outside context of therapy

• Catharsis: outpouring of emotion when trauma is recalled

• Insight: becoming aware of trauma, or the source of recurrent difficulties

  • Help client to get there but do not say it yourself’

Projective Drawing

• Figures/drawings were widely believed to represent self-perception and body image

• Very commonly used

• How a person views themselves

• Drawing figures (families) has been found to be useful when talking with a kids

Jung’s Libido:

• A neutral form of general psychic energy that must be shaped, channeled, suppressed, repressed, blocked, or expressed

• Thought it was a creative life force

  • If we blocked it at conscious level, it is replaced with unconscious substitute or symbol that isn’t always negative

    • Not neuroses, like Freud believed

    • Expressed in poetry or art

    • People weave it into myths and make symbols

Jung’s Self

• the integrated or total personality

• product of individuation

• Includes all current and potential/future aspects of personality contained within

  • Thought personality includes future not before puberty like freud did

  • unification of consciousness and unconsciousness

Individuation:

• The process of restoring wholeness to the psyche in adult development

• As children, are psyches are a unified whole, although largely unconscious

  • We acknowledge strengths (our social identity) and ignore shortcomings 

• In adulthood, we try to “reunify the psyche” and work on all aspects of our psyche, strengths AND weaknesses

• self realization

Ego Inflation:

• During childhood, we tend to over-acknowledge our consciousness, which is mostly our social identity/strengths

• Mid-life crisis: occurs when we become more aware of our limitations

Conscious Ego:

• what is conscious, things that you can pull up

Personal Unconscious:

•  stuff that might have happened that no longer have conscious appreciation of’

• Lost its strength, don’t continue to recall

• Isn’t necessarily a bad thing (leads to neurosis like Freud believed). Can lead to positive things

Compensatory function:

•  if the attitude is too one-sided, unconsciousness may balance our perspective in dreams to emphasize the opposite. Dreaming opposite

Prospection

• dreams solve problems which are unconsciously aware, processing things from day you didn’t notice

Collective Unconscious

• Inherited by forefathers, related and otherwise (ghosts)

• Images and ideas common to all people everywhere (sun rising)

• Are templates for us to follow -> archetypes 

Archetypes

• Readiness to produce over and over again the same or similar mythical ideas

• It is not the memory of an actual physical experience itself

• It is a tendency

• Can bring positive or negative outcomes

Shadow

• Represents our unacceptable motives and desires

• Does not fit with one’s self-concept, often sexual and aggresive

• Symbolized by demons and devils

• Positive: If dealt with on a conscious level, can bring zest, creativity, and pleasure to an integrated, full life

• Negative: if you don’t like someone you’re simply projecting your shadow. Cause of racism, religious persecution

Anima/us

• Anima: A man’s undeveloped feminine qualities

  • Unconscious preoccupation with anima causes men to be overly moody and emotional

• Animus: woman’s undeveloped masculine qualities

  • Unconscious preoccupation causes women to be too opinionated and seeking of power

Persona

• We often do not reveal to others our true selves

• Pros and Cons:

  • Front we present (+/-)

  • Can mislead perception of ourselves (-)

Hero

• Conquers great enemies and wins battles (+)

• Takes many risks and is typically physically weak (-), but have additional, spiritual source of strength (+)

The Trickster (simple-minded prankster):

• Outwitted (-)

• Often produces positive results, laughter (+)

Mandala

• The archetype of order

• Seen symbolically

  • Represented by a circle, square, or square within a circle

  • Often found in dreams during times of conflict, indicating that a new order is being established

Psychosis

• Theorized that delusions are a result of the collective unconscious, if not successfully balanced by the conscious ego

• If collective unconscious gains dominance, results in delusions

• Direct experience with the collective unconscious is dangerous and may be promoted by the use of drugs reducing the conscious ego but it may be cautiously approached through symbols and myths

Word Association Test:

• Purported to demonstrate unconscious mental processes

• Answer as quickly as possible with the first word that occurs to you

• Identified complexes: group of words people have trouble responding to, personally disturbing constellation of ideas connected together by a common feeling-tone

• Thought that words trigger a hesitation or inability to respond were linked symbolically to emotionally painful ideas or experiences

• Family members were found to have similar patterns of response / complexes, indicative of similar emotional issues

Rocky Relationship of Freud and Jung:

• Initially both agreed that the findings of the word association tests and free association revealed repressed, unacceptable, sexual and aggressive strivings

• But then Jung began to question the relationship between sexual motives and neurosis (not always negative)

Personality Typology:

• Attitudes (where does libido/attention turn)

  • Extravert (75%) - libido is turned outward

  • Introvert (25%) - libido is turned inward

• Basic 4 Functions:

  • Sensing (75%)

  • Intuiting (25%)

  • Thinking (rational)

  • Feeling (rational)

  • Judging (50%)

  • Perceiving (50%)

Dominant function:

• The psychological function one prefers to use when an extrovert has libido pointed outward or when an introvert has libido turned inward

  • What you prefer

Auxiliary function

• The psychological function that an extrovert prefers when libido is pointed inward

  • Often different

  • What you prefer when you are forced to do the opposite.

Breakdown of Dreams

1. Recalling dream

2. Amplification

3. Active imagination (Dreamer continues the dream in waking imagination, adding new scenes and continuing the symbolic work to aid in personal growth)

Effects of Trauma

• Physiological: hyperarousal 

  • physiological sensitivity to stress

• Cognitive: thoughts of evil in the world

  • dissociation, splitting

• Emotional: anger, depression, fear

• Behavioral: withdrawal, avoidance, aggression

• Spirit/Self: loss of dignity/self-respect, feelings of powerlessness,

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD):

• Disorder of stability

• Difficulties managing emotions

• Ongoing Splitting defense to all people including themselves

• Instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image (identify as all bad/good), mood

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID):

• At least 2 personalities may be able to control person’s behavior