PSYCH1030

Personality

Patten of enduring, consistent and distinctive thoughts, emotions and behaviours that characterise an individual.

Trait

Building blocks of personality - exist on a spectrum

Psychodynamic Perspective on Personality

Personality is primarily unconscious and sculpted by early childhood experiences. Id (unconscious), ego (rationality) and superego (morals) influence on behaviour.

Critiques (Psychodynamic)

Views on women and sexuality flawed, ignores role of conscious thought and later experiences.

Humanistic Perspective on Personality

Personality is shaped by how we see ourselves, whether our hierarchy of needs is met and our drive towards personal growth. Growth is promoted by accepatnce and empathy. If conditions are fulfilled one can meet their potential and purpose.

Critiques (Humanistic)

Too optimistic about human nature, does not hold people accountable for their negative actions.

Life Story Perspective on Personality

Our personal narratives shape our identity, how we understand ourselves, and how we act.

Critiques (Life Story)

Isn’t an easily generalised perspective, difficult and time consuming to work with.

Social Cognitive Perspective on Personality

Social learning and cognitive reflection from our traits interacting with situations shape our personality. Reciprocal determinism concept - a persons behaviour both influences and is influenced by personal factors and the social environment.

Five-Factor Model/Big Five

Model for personality which categorises our individual traits by five primary dimensions. Neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness. Shown across cultures.

Influence of Genetics + Environment on Personality

Evidence that personality is influenced by both genes and one’s environment.

Nomothetic Approach to Studying Personality

Searches for general laws to govern all human behaviour, emphasising universality. Uses personality models and genetic studies.

Idiographic Approach to Studying Personality

Focuses on the unique aspects of an individual. Tracks personality development in individuals to understand how traits change with age and experience. Reflects life story perspective, therapy plans.

Importance of Personality Studies

Clinical - influence on mental health (e.g. personality disorders)
Social - influence on social interactions and relationships
Developmental - traits emerge and evolve throughout life

Lightner Witner

Father of clinical psychology + developed systematic theory of therapy (identify issue through examination, diagnose, recommend treatment and measure outcomes)

Clinical Psychology

Diagnosing and treating mental, emotional and behavioural disorders, to understand and alleviate psychological distress.

Psychodynamic Model of Therapy

Emphasises that the sources of our distress are in the past and thus insight (into unconscious mind), catharsis and corrective emotional experiences are the route to healing. Techniques include free association (free verbalisation), interpretation, dream analysis and working through transference (emotions client projects onto therapist).

Psychodynamic vs Psychoanalytic Therapy

Brief, face-to-face, weekly sessions vs intensive, long-term, multi-weekly treatment.

Biological Model of Therapy

Emphasises that mental disorders have biological causes or influences and can thus be treated by medication. Used for disorders related to brain structure and function, genetic factors and biochemical imbalances.

Biopsychosocial Model

Demonstrates that health and illness are a complex interplay of biological, psychological and social factors, thus can and should be treated in a variety of ways e.g. medication and therapy.

Behavioural Model of Therapy

Analyses behaviour and effects change via classical and operant conditioning. Focus on observable behaviours rather than their causes, thoughts and feelings. Techniques includes systematic desensitisation (e.g. for phobias) and operant conditioning techniques to modify child behaviour.

SORCK

Method for analysing and designing and intervention to behaviour.
Stimuli, organism (creates behaviour from stimulus), response, consequences, contingencies (how these elements encourage behaviour).

Classical Conditioning

Unconditioned Stimulus (e.g. food) triggers an Unconditioned Response (e.g. salivating). Previously neutral stimulus is paired with US as Conditioned Stimulus (e.g. bell) triggering a Conditioned Response (e.g. salivating). If CS is no longer paired with US, CR reduces.

Operant Conditioning

Shaping behaviour by responding to actions by adding (positive) or taking away (negative) a reward (reinforcement) or punishment (punishing).

Cognitive Behavioural Model of Therapy

Emphasise that our thoughts shape our physical reactions, emotions and behaviours. ABC model = activating event, beliefs about event, consequences. Techniques include cognitive restructuring (challenge negative thoughts and replace), behavioural activation and exposure.

Major Depressive Disorder

Criteria - Symptoms for at least two weeks, persistent. Must include sad mood and loss of interest/pleasure. Others include changes to appetite, sleep, agitation, fatigue, suicidal thoughts.

Depression Frequencies

PDD tends to have early and chronic onset, which increases at puberty. Some people rarely experience remission and others recover without intervention. Risk of MDD episodes increase with severity/amount of previous.

Anxiety Diagnoses

Includes phobias (specific and social), generalised anxiety disorder (excessive, uncontrollable worry and rumination) and panic disorders (characterised by panic attacks). Comorbidity with depressive disorders.

Biological Influences for Depression/Anxiety

Disruptions in neurotransmitter functions, epigenetic influences, family history, temperament.

Environmental Influences for Depression/Anxiety

Childhood trauma/abuse/neglect, negative experiences, parenting behaviours.

Cognitive Behavioural Model of Depression

Cognitive - negative thoughts about self, world and future
Behavioural - low rate of positive reinforcement, learned helplessness
Leads to pessimistic explanatory style - bad events attributed to unchangeable factors.

Measuring Therapeutic Success

Two independent randomised control trials. Treatment must be better than placebo or alternative treatment.

How to assess test standardisation?

Normal distributions should be produced when samples are large enough, test population should match population of interest

Binet & Simon

First intelligence test. Assigned children mental ages based of tasks associated with physical age.

Standford-Binet Scale

Introduced IQ = (mental age/chronological age) x 100. Standardised on American children.

Modern Intelligence Tests

IQ off deviation rather than ratio (performance assessed relative to age-normed standardised data - normally distributed)

Weschler Scales

Organises intelligence into four primary indices, with IQ derived from performance across all areas. Verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, processing speed.

Cultural Bias Mitigation

Intelligence tests which focus on reasoning and problem solving using abstracts help overcome cultural bias, although test-taking itself is a culturally specific behaviour. Many countries have also developed tests with culture specific questions.

General Intelligence

View that a single overarching factor of general intelligence influences all our cognitive abilities

Multiple Intelligences

View that intelligence is a collection of multiple independent abilities

Psychometric Approach to Defining Intelligence

Examines which intellectual abilities correlate statistically and using factor analysis to identify commonalities underlying task performance.

Spearman Model of Intelligence

Used factor analysis to propose everyone possessed a general intelligence factor (g factor) but also specific intellectual abilities that vary between individuals and across tasks (s factor). Evidence for g proven by common human abilities to react to reality and notice consistencies and discrepancies.

Horn and Cattel

Defined two higher order factors of intelligence through factor analysis.
Fluid intelligence - ability to problem solve, use logic and identify patterns.
Crystallised intelligence - accumulated knowledge and skills.

Information Processing Approach to Defining Intelligence

Intelligence as a process, not a measurable quantity. Aims to understand its processes. Views minds as computers and explains differences due to cognitive operation differences. Three variables: processing speed, knowledge base, ability to apply mental strategies.

Critiques to Information Processing

Too narrow and oversimplified. Doesn’t account for emotions, motivations and social factors.

Gardener’s Theory

We have several mutually exclusive intelligences including linguistic, musical, mathematical, spatial and interpersonal skills.

Horn-Cattel-Carol Model

Most comprehensive and empirically supported psychometric theory of cognitive ability. Assesses three stratums - general ability, broad abilities (e.g. fluid and crystallised ability) and narrow abilities (specific skills).

Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory

Promotes intelligence as dynamic, continually influenced by internal processes, experiences and our environment. Three components shape our cognitive functioning - analytical, creative and practical intelligence.

Cultural Differences in Defining Intelligence

Western cultures view intelligence as individual cognitive capacity (individualistic) whilst many non-Western cultures see intelligence as social and contextual (collectivistic) e.g. intelligence relates to your social skills.

CBT for Children

CBT focuses on connections between thoughts, feelings and behaviours but children struggle with verbalisation of emotions and abstract concepts. CBT is adapted using stories, metaphors and drawings. Tools include emotion cards/scales and worksheets.

Role of Parents/Caregivers in Child Therapy

Central to effective child therapy as their reinforce learnt skills and strategies at home.

Positive Parenting Program

Aims to prevent severe emotional, behavioural and developmental problems in children by enhancing knowledge, skills and confidence of parents. Tailored to different family needs and harnesses community influences. Aims to make positive parenting socially normative, adverse childhood experiences minimal and population-based approaches to parenting support a policy priority.

Cohort Effects

Differences between groups of people that grew up at different times with unique contexts. We get more unique as we grow older due to accumulation of different life experiences.

Effect of Ageist Stereotypes

Aging is not just biological, but a social and psychological process. Our beliefs about age define how we age. Ageist stereotypes are often internalised from childhood, operate unconsciously as they are unquestioned in youth, and increase in power as they become more self-relevant. Influence health physically, mentally and behaviourally. Evidence in reducing lifespan.

Solutions to Ageist Stereotypes

Education on aging myths, continued positive relationships and social support

Selection, Optimisation and Compensation Theory

Theory for healthy aging. Selecting key goals to focus resources on, optimising developmental potential and compensating for losses in ability.

Socio-emotional Selectivity Theory

Describes the emotional forces that shape social network size and composition, and how these change throughout life. Older people have a limited future time perspective (perception of ‘time left’ - motivates social goals), thus prioritising meaningful relationships is key - focusing on positive social experiences and avoiding negatives. Young people, with more expansive FTP can focus on gaining new information and expanding socially, even with costs.

Primary Aging

Changes that occur due to the passage of time (e.g. in vision, information processing ability, memory)

Primary Aging Effects

Older adults struggle with episodic memory and emotional recognition (for certain emotions). Both neurological (deterioration of emotion processing brain regions) and motivational explanations (elders prioritise meaningful emotional goals, recognition does not decline but motivation for engagement).

Validity of Emotional Recognition Tasks

Many assessments lack ecological validity for elders which affects the conclusions we draw about their abilities (e.g. computer tests for a generation which is not familiar with them).

Secondary Aging

Changes that occur due to a disease process, trauma and/or lifestyle choices.

Psychiatric Disorders in Older People

Very high in nursing home populations, majority are not assessed or treated. Generational and social factors influence reporting of symptoms and clinical presentations differ later in life. Depression risk is heightened by poor general health, disability and bereavement. Anxiety by poor health, and childhood experiences (abuse, low SES).

Dementia

Neurological disorder associated with cognitive, personality and behavioural changes later in life e.g. memory loss, speech issues, mood swings, difficulty with familiar tasks.

Social Psychology

Aims to understand how people think and behave in social settings

Impression Formation

Process wherein people combine information about others to form overall judgements

Algebraic Model of Impression Formation

Impression formed by the mechanical combination of information we know about someone and can be combined in summative, average or weighted averaging (best matches).

Configurative Model

The information we receive about someone is combined into an overall dynamic impression, focused on traits. Central traits are more influential and peripheral traits take on different meaning depending on central traits.

Schemas

Cognitive structures representing our knowledge about concepts/stimuli, formed on the basis of past experience, and allowing us to encode, store and retrieve information.

Event Schemas

Tells us what to expect with an event or situation

Role Schemas

Go within event schemas, defining the roles people should play within a situation

People Schemas

Our individualised knowledge of specific types/groups of people and individuals. Fill the gaps in meeting new people. Self-schemas and schemas about loved ones are more complex.

Stereotypes

A personal schema associated with a social category

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts for decision making

Availability Heuristics

For judging frequency and probability. How likely an event is to occur based on how easily examples come to mind. Can impact our ability to make accurate judgements and assess risk as it places more weight on situations we can easily recall and relies on personal experiences, stories and headlines. More likely to generalise when overwhelmed.

Representativeness Heuristic

Judging likelihood of group membership by comparing features of a particular case to a prototype. When a situation is congruent with our judgement we treat it as evidence, improving confidence in prototype. Issue - typicality is not the same as probability.

Attribution Theory

We are motivated by a need to predict and control our social environment. Attribution is how we infer the cause of others (and our own) behaviour, typically either internal or external.

Covariation Model

Suggests we attribute a behaviour to the cause it covaries with over time. Three types of attribution - to the person, to the target of the behaviour or to the situation based of three types of information. Consensus - behaviour by different people? No = person. Distinctiveness - behaviour only towards one person? Yes = target. Consistency - behaviour always performed in this context? Yes = situation.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to attribute another person's behaviour to their own dispositional qualities, rather than to the situation that the behaviour is performed in. More prominent in individualistic cultures.

Actor-Observer Bias

More likely to attribute your own actions to external causes and others actions to internal causes. The better you know someone, the less likely this bias is. Why? We know more about ourselves and attributions are shaped by visuals (can see other person in situation but not ourselves). Effect reversed for positive events.

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency to attribute successes to stable, internal factors and failures to temporary, external factors. Has self-presentation and internal function.

Attitude

An association between an act of object and an evaluation. Created by feelings, beliefs and behavioural tendencies.

Factors of Changing Attitudes

Communicators, message, audience, channel

Credibility and Attractiveness Theories

Suggests that more credible sources have larger effects on attitudes and attractive people are more persuasive if the message is strong.

Sleeper Effect

Immediate effects of persuasion are higher for more credible-sources but levels reverse to low credibility source over time due to initial discounting but later dissociation (between what was said and who said it). Proves that easy messages can be persuaded without a credible source.

Fear Messaging

Fear appeals depend on a clear response approach being provided to promote self-efficacy. Otherwise can have opposite effect, triggering defensive avoidance.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Mental discomfort or stress experienced by inconsistency which people want to reduce to maintain belief consistency and maintain view of self rationality. Can motivate behaviour change or ignorance of cognitions.

Compliance

Agreeing to a request from someone who does not have the authority to make you obey.

Principles of Compliance

Obligations for reciprocation, desire for consistency in behaviour, encouragement through social proof, liking, scarcity, perceived authority

Door In The Face Technique

Playing on reciprocation obligation (culturally universal). Making a large request, which is denied, but following it up with a smaller, more reasonable request. Encourages agreement due to a perceived concession which must be reciprocated.

Contrast Effects

Humans are better at making relative judgements than absolute. After a large request, subsequent requests seem more reasonable.

Foot In The Door Technique

Playing on consistency motivator. People are more likely to agree to a large request if it is a continuation of an agreed to small request, rather than a cold request. Demonstrated in low balling.

Obedience

An authority specially commands us to change our behaviour and we do

Factors of Obedience

High status, absence of a reason for refusal, belief in impunity, barriers to empathy for victim.

Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

Frustration always leads to aggression. Goal-gradient principle - the closer you are to achieving a goal when blocked, the more intense frustration.

Social Learning Theory

We learn to be violent from our social environment, aggression is learned through observation and reinforcement

General Aggression Model

Combines biological, cognitive and social inputs. Inputs are person and situational variables, which affect your internal states through your mood, cognition and arousal, resulting in thoughtful or impulsive actions i.e. aggression. Examples - alcohol myopia, cyber aggression.

SIDE Model

Social identity model of de-indivudation effects, which motivates crowd violence and cyber aggression. Crowd behaviour is rule following not rule breaking, as personal identity is superseded by social identity and crowd behaviour reflects the norms of the most salient group identity.

Managing Aggression

Developing empathy, improving communication skills and modelling environments that reduce aggression triggers.

Prosocial Behaviour

Voluntary action intended to benefit or help another person or group.

Motivators For Prosocial Behaviour

Kin selection theory, reciprocal altruism (helping is an investment), modelling behaviours, personal rewards (feeling good, social approval), negative-state relief model (decreasing our own discomfort by helping someone generating it), empathy, altruism (real?).