Personality Psych - Midterm One
CASE STUDIES
Lady Gaga - extraversion and dominance, social actor
Steve Jobs - motivated agent
Oprah Winfrey - autobiographical author
Ernie Banks - openness, lack of addressing conflict
Rigoberta Menchu - openness, addressing conflict
Toni Morrison - openness as a child
Martha Graham - crystallizing experience with dance
Richard Nixon - neuroticism
George W. Bush - extraversion and consequences (drinking)
Marilyn Monroe - insecure attachment
Charles Darwin - dominance and prestige
Part 1: Personality, Human Nature, and Culture
Chapter 1: Persons
Personality psychology - the psychological study of the whole person
Looks at the big picture: a full-bodied person with a unique mind in a specific moment of time and culture
Three sets of differences that distinguish individuals from one another:
Social actors - personality traits that are shown
One’s way of relating to others and the word, displayed in personality traits
Motivated agents - goals, values, plans, and beliefs
What one wants and aims to accomplish in life
Autobiographical authors - stories we construct to make sense of our lives
One’s life story, expressed as an inner narrative about who one believes they are, and how they became that person over time
Personality Traits in the Life of Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga ≠ Stefani Germanotta on the surface
Lady Gage is a complex person with many layers to her personality
Two main personality traits:
Extraversion - a tendency to be outgoing, sociable, gregarious, energetic, dominant, and aimed toward seeking reward in everyday life
Lady Gaga is VERY extraverted, connecting with other people constantly, but can come off as bossy and overbearing
Openness to experience - a tendency to express curiosity about the world, be creative and original, and to be seen as reflective, imaginative, and open-minded
Getting to Know a Person: The Actor’s Traits
“All the world’s a stage…” - Every person performs a part in the presence of other people
Everyone is always performing - even when alone
Everyone always performs their roles differently
Personality trait - a broad and characteristic manner in which a person acts, feels, or thinks
Account for consistencies in thought, feeling, and behavior in situations
Self-Report Test to Measure Extraversion
The higher your score is, the more extraverted you are
Extraversion is the most well known trait compared to any other
Extraversion is governed by brain processes that involve the release of dopamine - the reward neurotransmitter
Understanding Persons as Motivated Agents
Age 5-7 shift - a shift that marks a set of major changes in young children’s lives
Developing advanced cognitive skills to organize the physical and social world
Becoming more rational in thinking
Thinking ahead towards the future
Seeing oneself as an agent who strives to achieve long term goals
Age 5-7 shift is when one becomes a motivated agent
Social Actor vs. Motivated Agents
0-5: just social actor; 5-7: adding on motivated agent
Motivated actor allows one to gain insight into what one values
Social actor’s traits shape how one interacts with others; motivated agent’s goals express what one wants and how they plan to get it
Questions about human motivation:
What do human beings want? What are the motives that drive behavior?
How do people differ from each other in terms of strength of basic wants?
What are the beliefs, attitudes, and other cognitive processes that influence how people pursue what they want?
Theories of Personality
Psychoanalytic theory - human wants and desires conflict with each other and remain unconscious
Freud.
Perceives humans as irrational
Humanistic theory - motivated agents seek to fulfill goals such as self-actualization
Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow
Perceives humans as rational beings that want to grow
Self-determination theory - people attain growth and fulfillment by obtaining autonomy, competence, and relatedness
Craving Power and Empowering Others: Steve Jobs
He’s not nice!
Jobs scores low on agreeableness - features such as kindness, compassion, empathy, and humility
As a social actor, Jobs is mean. As a motivated agent, Jobs wanted to change the world and inspired people
Power motivation - a recurring desire to feel strongly about things and have an impact
Can be both beneficial and harmful
Jobs also had narcissism - an extreme motivational focus on promoting the self, typically excluding others
Narcissists feel a sense of entitlement and grandiosity
Endlessly strive to glorify themselves
Life Narrative
Emerging adulthood - the years between the mid-teens and the twenties; a major time of transition
People are trying to figure out long-term goals
This is where the story one develops begins to appear
Narrative identity - a person’s internalized and evolving story that explains how one becomes the person they are becoming
Integrates a person’s remembered past with their imagined future
We forget specifics of the past, but we remember general periods and certain previous events that help shape who we are
Narrative identity links memories to who one might be in the future
The story is integral to human personality
Stories are the primary way that humans understand life
Every culture uses stories to tell people about experiences
Stories provide a coherent account of how one changes and how one stays the same over time
Stories provide life with a sense of unity and purpose
Research on Life Stories
Turning point - episodes that mark an important change in one’s life story
Four common themes:
Agency - the protagonist aims to have an impact
Communion - the protagonist aims to establish warm relationships with others
Redemption - the protagonist endures suffering early on but then emerges as enhanced in some way
Contamination - the protagonist enjoys a positive experience that is eventually ruined, turning negative
Imagining a Science of Persons
First step in developing a science: unsystematic observation - casually observing behavior with no predetermined goal
Notice patterns - common forms of human difference
Develop a theory - a set of interrelated statements proposed to explain certain phenomena of reality
Organizes ideas into clear frameworks
To test a theory, create a hypothesis - a specific prediction about what should happen if the theory is true
Context of discovery - aiming to discover patterns of reality and develop theories to describe and explain them
Having a curious state of mind and opening oneself up to discovering new things in the environment
Context of justification - designing studies to test hypotheses in order to determine if theories are justified
What Makes a Good Scientific Theory?
Comprehensiveness - the wider the scope, the better
Parsimony - explaining as much as possible with the fewest and simplest concepts
Coherence - logically consistent
Testability - hypotheses that can be tested
Empirical validity - results of hypotheses testing should support the theory
Usefulness - aiming to solve important problems
Fecundity - creating new and unexpected ideas
Gordon Allport and the Birth of Personality Psychology
Gordon W. Allport is responsible for establishing personality as a vigorous field of scientific inquiry
Attended and taught at Harvard, where he established Department of Social Relations
Published Personality: A Psychological Interpretation in the spirit of social reform and hope for a better world
One dominant theme - a person is a unique and integrated whole that is expressed through personality traits
Argued that people are consistent in their behavior from one situation to the next
Made a distinction between ways of doing research in psychology of personality
Nomothetic - aiming to find and test general principles that apply to persons across the board
Almost all hypotheses testing is this
Large samples to generate generalizations
Idiographic - aiming to understand one particular instance: a singular human life (case study?)
Letters from Jenny - Allport analyzed a series of personal letters written by one woman to her son over a period of time to understand her
Collecting Data on Persons
Most common method of collecting data - self-report questionnaire
People provide information on their own personalities by responding to a series of short and simple questions
Quickly produces a score to estimate a person’s standing on a certain psychological quality
Easy to administer and score; very efficient
Main limitation - people know certain things about themselves, but not everything: ie insight into one’s own behavior and experience
People will often lie about themselves
Countered by using informants - someone who knows well the person being assessed
Peer Ratings - a peer rates someone else
Offers a more objective perspective on the person, as the person assessed may not catch everything
Main limitation - informants also have biases!
Informants also do not typically know a subject of study as well as said subject knows themself
Therefore, it is best to combine both a self-report and peer ratings
Open-ended verbal measures - responding to questions/prompts in a free-ranging and discursive manner
Example: an interview
Avoids the limitation of having a highly constrained response format
Captures features of personality that cannot be easily assessed through direct ratings and questionnaires
Main limitation: requires a lot of time and energy to administer; much less efficient
Open-ended answers lead to problems of how to analyze
Naturalistic Observation - observing behavior under natural, real-world conditions
Clear-cut and objective
May be difficult to capture people behaving naturally if they know you are observing them
Also time-consuming and expensive
Experience sampling - aiming to document a person’s daily experiences as they occur in real time
Trying to reproduce what it would be like if a researcher followed someone around all day, like an invisible person
1970s-80s: beepers would be used to have a patient report what they were doing at the time of the beep and what they were thinking and feeling
Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR): a small audio recorder that intermittently picks up snippets of ambient sounds while research participants go about their day
Gives a highly objective sampling of what a normal person’s day sounds like
Social Media Tracking - exploring patterns of behavior that occur online
Raises issues regarding personal privacy
Physiological Measures - assesses features of personality that are expressed through functions like heart rate, blood pressure, muscle contraction, sympathetic nervous system activation, and brain functioning
Difficult to fake data; very difficult to fake bodily functions
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) - a machine that uses magnets to measure the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain
Detects what areas of the brain are strongly activated during certain tasks or as response to a certain stimuli
Cumbersome and expensive
Not always clear; psychological constructs do not exist as real entities in the brain
Correlational Studies
Correlational Design - examining how Variable A and Variable B related to each other under natural conditions
No variables are manipulated - cannot determine causation.
Positive correlation - as Variable A increases, so does Variable B
Negative Correlation - as Variable A increases, Variable B decreases
No Correlation - Variable A and Variable B are completely unrelated
Correlation does not imply causation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Third Variable Problem: An unobserved Variable C accounts for correlation between two variables
Statistical way of expressing degree of correlation: Correlation Coefficient
+1 = perfect positive correlation
-1 = perfect negative correlation
Provides a direct metric of the magnitude of the relation between two variables (effect size)
In personality psychology, the correlation coefficient rarely exceeds 0.40 magnitude
0.1-0.3 magnitude - “medium” effect size
> 0.4 magnitude - “large” effect size
Statistical significance - an estimate of the extent to which a given result can be attributed to random chance
Something is statistically significant if the probability of obtaining said relationship by chance is >5% (p<0.05)
Determined by the absolute value of the correlation coefficient and the number of participants from which the correlation is obtained
Personality psychology is probabilistic - not perfectly predictable
Goal is to replicate a finding across many different studies to place some confidence that a conclusion is true
Experiments
Experimental Design - a researcher manipulates or alters one variable to observe its impact on another variable
Because a variable is being manipulated, one can infer causation from an experiment
T-test - a test that provides a single value that indicates the strength of the difference between the memes of two groups
Debriefing - an explanation at the end of an experiment that details the purposes of a study and any deception used
Experiments can provide causal explanations, but the meanings are often ambiguous
Many questions of interest to personality psychologists are not easily evaluated through experiments
Very difficult to manipulate dispositional traits
Chapter 2: The Evolution of Human Nature
How We Became Human
We came from australopithecines - groups of ape-like animals
Bipedalism - the ability to walk on two legs
Freed up the ability for individuals’ hands to carry things
Darwin’s The Origin of Species
There is no organizing force in evolution over time
Evolution occurs due to random variation and adaptation
Natural selection - variations in structure and function of a species that promote survival will win over variations that are less able to accomplish this feat
This is because the feats that allow a species to survive and reproduce are passed down at a greater magnitude than the worse traits
Genes - segments of DNA that are largely responsible for biological inheritance, passed down from parents to offspring
Genome - the totality of an individual’s genes
Inclusive fitness - an organism’s ability to maximize replication of the genes that designed it
Better inclusive fitness will always win out in the gene pool
A large percentage of brain mass is taken up by the neocortex - the part of the mammalian brain that involves higher-order functioning such as sensory perception, spatial reasoning, and cognition
The neocortex expanded over the course of human evolution to cope with social demands
Positive correlation between size of neocortex and size of group that an individual of a species lives in
Bipedalism allowed for the development of tools
Tools increased availability of food sources, leading to more need for specialized roles in groups to harvest food
The discovery of fire allowed for cooking foods
Allowed digestive system to shrink over evolutionary ime while providing energy required for brain growth
Cooking led to campsites
Allowed for greater division of labor and more complex social organization
Created the idea of a home
Language developed over time
Allowed more sophisticated forms of communication
Members of a group can express feelings, thoughts, and intentions precisely
Led to explosion of human creativity
Burying the dead
Clothing
More effective hunting and fishing
Creation of jewelry
More complex interactions within and with other social groups
Positive: groups can trade and share information
Negative: war
Culture - social practices, learning, institutions, and the technologies and artifacts that are associated with a particular human group
Humans evolved to create culture
Culture holds power to influence evolution
Individuals or display or develop expertise in cultural practices obtain advantages over peers, improving inclusive fitness
This allows for greater access to resources needed for survival and reproduction
Gene-culture Coevolution - cultural innovations drive genetic change from one generation to the next
Six Big Steps in Human Evolution
Bipedalism - freed up hands for other uses, such as carrying food and manipulating objects
Tools - made it easier to obtain food (meat)
Meat - harvesting required social cooperation and more specialized social functions
Fire - led to cooking, which enriched diets
Campsites - allowed for greater division and coordination of labor, as well as a sense of safety
Culture - homo sapiens made advances in arts and technology, with a major catalyst being human language
The Nature of Human Groups
Many similarities emerge between cultures
Education
Government and legal systems
Dancing, gift-giving, and storytelling
If a behavioral pattern is common enough to be found in all human societies, it became common due to the original individuals possessing said features being able to adapt and reproduce
Some features that are passed down today are byproducts of other adaptations
Example: jokes are a byproduct of language
Humans have a strong need to belong
Belonging to a group historical is a prerequisite for survival and reproduction
A shared belief system and religious rituals help build alliances and common cause among group members, strengthening the group
Humans feel strong anxiety when we feel our sense of belongingness in a group is threatened
When we are loved and accepted by others, self-esteem tends to be higher and vice versa
Literally just see my social psychology notes why do I do this to myself
Group identification - people naturally identify with social groups and experience the group’s success and failures as if they were the individual’s own
Example: nationalism
In-group - the particular group that one feels allegiance to
Out-group - all of the other groups that are considered rivals
People display strong biases toward in-group and against out-group
Example: sports teams
Attachment and Human Nature
Human nature is designed to maximize the likelihood of a newborn being able to bond with key members of its group
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth developed the theory of human attachment - an intense emotional bond that forms between infant and caregiver
Ensures that caregivers will stay in close proximity to infants
Infants feel love toward their caregivers in the first year of life
Example: rhesus monkeys stay in contact with mother for the first few weeks of life
Uses its mother as a secure base - the comfort/safety that a child feels in the presence of caregivers
Safe haven - a place of refuge when fearful
Attachment to parents provide this safe haven
Children use the relationship as a secure base to explore the new environment
Love for infants is typically there from day 1
Attachment bond develops through phases over the years of life
Attachment behaviors - behaviors that help ensure the overall outcome of caregiver-infant closeness
Sucking
Clinging
Following vocalizing
Smiling
Eye contact
Stranger anxiety - experienced at the end of the first year of life, infants begin to express caution and fear when faced with new events, objects, and strangers
Presence of parental figures relieves this stress
Separation anxiety - distress when being separated from a caregiver
Mile marker in normal psychological development
Infants adjust to brief separations
Children build up a set of expectations about human relationships, based on the quality of their attachments, creating the working model - mental template for love
Variation in the Quality of Attachments
Strange Situation Method - a method for assessing variation in attachment quality
B-babies demonstrate secure attachment
A-babies demonstrate avoidant insecure attachment
When the caregiver returns, the baby may ignore them as a form of retribution
C-babies demonstrate resistant insecure attachment
When the caregiver returns, the baby may be angry
D-babies demonstrate disorganized attachment
Confused and disoriented in the presence of a caregiver
Caregiver cannot calm the baby down in times of distress
Associated with family trauma
Many factors influence attachment
Parent sensitivity - the extent to which a caregiver is attentive to behaviors expressed by an infant
Mothers who are more attentive to their infants will have more secure attachment
Secure attachment in infancy leads to greater social competence
Secure attachment leads to better relationships with peers
This leads to more friends, which leads to increased quality of romantic relationships
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn’s mother, Gladys, could not care for Marilyn (Norma), so she spent her first 7 years in a foster home
Despite being raised by foster parents, Norma longed for her real mother
Marilyn always felt insecure, feeling very lonely due to lack of love from her mother
Relationships with real people were very anxious
Marilyn eventually became very hard to work with, falling into the field of psychopathology
The Mating Game
Humans want to reproduce
People are drawn to sex because it feels good
Sexuality is designed to have humans reproduce
Mating - the process of obtaining and maintaining a sexual partner
Strongly influenced by culture
Two strategies:
Fast (unrestricted): more popular with males; have more intercourse with more people and less bonding in the each relationship
Males should want to reproduce with as many mates as possible, since men don't get pregnant
Slow (restricted): more popular with females; have intercourse with only one person but put effort into the relationship
Once a woman is pregnant, having sex is useless evolutionary-wise, and she will need to now care for the offspring, so she needs a good partner
Needs a partner with commitment who can establish a lasting pair bond
Women prioritize status, while men prioritize looks/beauty
This is why sugar daddies are a thing
This is seen in how women will wear makeup and jewelry to attract a mate, while men boast about their accomplishments
Both men and women are attracted to creativity/romance
While men are more creative to both long and short-term relationships, women are only more creative with long-term
Getting Along
If animals compete to survive, why would there be any good in helping others out?
Kin selection - members of a species want to help benefit their relatives, propagating their own genes
Reciprocal altruism - individuals are predisposed to risk their own well-being under the implicit deal that they will be helped, in turn, in the future
Helping just feels good and morally right
We have evolved to feel desire to help, even if we don’t understand why
Reputational benefits - helping can help improve one’s reputation
Better reputation = better place in the group = better overall well-being
Humans have evolved to be obsessed with reputation
Gossip - spreading reputational information about other people, either positive or negative or neutral
Gossip promotes cooperation between people, even though it seems inherently bad
Getting Ahead
Status is always a factor in arrangements
Humans strive to get ahead and avoid rejection
Two ways to gain status:
Social Dominance
Social dominance - aggression, threat, and intimidation
Humans required leadership, and dominance is the best way to get that
Typically seen in politicians
Originates in chimpanzees
Strict hierarchy
Short-term contractual relationships
Decisive action under threats
Displays strength
Prestige
Prestige - widespread respect and admiration based on their achievements
These people are admired and emulated, not needing to coerce others
Originates in hunter-gatherer societies
Mixed hierarchy
Based in reputation
Admiration
Long-term collaborative relationships based in trust
Deliberate actions under hope
How Charles Darwin Got Along to Get Ahead
Darwin sat on his discovery of evolution for 21 years
He did this to continue to collect evidence and establish himself has an esteemed member of the scientific community
Darwin used his status to get ahead and establish evolution as a principle
Buttelmann and Bohm - the Ontogeny of the Motivation That Underlies In-Group Bias
Abstract:
Humans demonstrate a clear bias toward members of their own group over members of others
Variety of possible causes
In-group love
Out-group hate
Both favoritism and derogation
In-group favoritism is already present in children of preschool age
Out-group derogation only develops after the 6th birthday
In-group favoritism is more present in children overall
In-group favoritism serves as a motivation for intergroup discrimination between older children
McClanahan et al - Two Ways to Stay At the Top
Abstract
While both dominance and prestige are effective for gaining social rank, longitudinal studies suggest that only prestige is effective for maintaining power over time
However, both strategies work for maintaining power over time
Prestige leads to social rank because of willingly given deference
Prestige is based on freely conferred deference, while dominance is not
Dominance and Prestige
Dual-strategies theory of social rank - humans navigate hierarchies by using either dominance or prestige
Dominant individuals will prioritize their own self-interest over the group
Prestige requires no force, and group members believe the leader embodies characteristics worthy of respect
Suggests that both dominance and prestige are effective for obtaining social rank in short-term groups
The Efficacy of Dominance and Prestige Over Time
Prestige is as, if not more, effective at maintaining power over time
Dominance’s long-term viability is less clear because of the selfish behaviors associated with it
Group members may try to rebel against the leader with leveling mechanisms - behaviors that undermine the social rank of dominant individuals
If one can exit the group, those exploited by the leader may choose to leave
Traits related to dominance (narcissism, extraversion) are associated with initial high rank, but not over time
Efficacy of dominance may wane over time, and become unrelated to social rank eventually
May be due to the fact that the study done concluding this was done on undergraduates, who may be prone to dislike dominance
Undergraduates have a higher need for autonomy and want to reject leadership
Dominance may also be a viable option over time
Hierarchies tend to be established early on in group interactions and will stay that way
Individuals who initially receive positions of high power will retain those positions
Social Rank vs. Deference
Dominance leads to social rank, but not through freely conferred deference
Social rank - a position within a social hierarchy that can influence others
Freely conferred deference - people willingly following the opinions and desires of respected group members
It is possible to have social rank without status (freely conferred deference)
Prestige works because power is granted freely; dominance works because power is claimed
Confounding Variables
Dominance and prestige are not differentiated from other constructs
Social rank can be granted to those who are seen as competent in a field
Hierarchies are determined in part by social affinity
People will be more willing to defer to people they like
Gender does not affect dominance or prestige in gaining rank
While dominant women are seen as unlikeable or are disliked, they are also rated very competent
Discussion
Dominance leads to gains in social rank over time, but not deference
Dominant leaders can gain and maintain high social rank despite not having deference from peers
Prestige leads to gains in both rank and deference
The efficacy of dominance will depend on social context
Dominance is efficacious over time because of the stable nature of hierarchies
Dominant individuals are able to gain power without needing deference
Dominance may be mistakenly perceived as competence
People may incorrectly assume that more dominant people are more competent in their fields
Men are significantly more likely than women to decrease in social rank over time
Men are seen as less competent than women on average
Participants were willing to defer to both over time, but women were more likely to maintain that deference, while men lost it
Part 2: The Person as a Social Actor
Chapter 4: Dispositional Traits
How do you predict behavior?
Observe what others do every day and note recurring patterns
Traits first appeared when ancestors attributed socioemotional characteristics to others
Social reputations - includes characteristics such as
Dominance
Kindness
Arrogance
Conscientiousness
Cruelty
How to succeed in a primal group:
Be aware of your reputation
Create a positive reputation for yourself
Mimesis - expressing traits and reputation through body movements, grunts, howls, and other modes without language
Modern example: pantomime
Judging Traits in Others, and in the Self
We are good at making judgments regarding others’ traits
Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM) - asserts that people can make accurate assessments of traits when they are able to detect behavior in another social actor that is relevant to the trait, and then use that information correctly to make more inferences about that person
Four factors that influence accuracy in trait judgment
The good judge
How good the rater is at predicting
Perceptiveness
Warmth, empathy, and engagement with the target
Maturity and objectivity
The good target
Ease with which the person being rated can be judged
Authenticity and sincerity of the target
Consistency of the target's behavior across different situations
Target’s expressive accuracy - when one’s behavior is true to their traits, expressing authenticity
The good trait
Extent to which a trait is easy to rate
Public visibility of trait-relevant behavior
Frequency of trait-relevant behavior
Good information
The extent to which good data on the trait can be obtained
Quality of the data (objective, representative)
Quantity of the data (more is better)
Historical Context - Over 2000 Years of Trait Psychology
Story of Jacob and Esau
4th century - “the Penurious Man”
Theory of the four humors:
Blood - sanguine personality, bold, confident, robust
Black bile - melancholic, depressed, anxious, pessimistic
Yellow bile - choleric, restless, irritable, likely to explode with anger
Phlegm - aloof, apathetic, cold, sluggish
WWI - Woodworth Personal Data Sheet (WPDS)
The first standardized self-report personality questionnaire
Focused more on problems and pathologies
Preceded the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
Contains over 500 items that assess individual differences in psychopathological conditions such as depression, paranoia, and schizophrenia
Developed in 1930s
California Psychological Inventory - an inventory developed at the University of California that focuses on nonpathological personality traits, such as dominance, sociability, self-control, independence, and tolerance
1950s: Raymond B. Cattell - opposing agenda to Allport
Emphasized statistical analysis and predicting behaviors
Divides dispositions intoL
Temperamental traits (emotional style)
Dynamic traits (motivational tendencies to pursue goals)
Ability traits (skills)
1970s: Walter Mischel upends entire field with his book Personality and Assessment
Situational critique:
People are not consistent in their behavior from one situation to the next
Personality trait scores cannot predict what a person will do in any situation
Traits are nothing more than fictions of the mind of an observer
1990 - compromise is made: traits and situations interact with each other to influence behavior
How to Measure a Trait
Start with a theory
What is the trait?
Use a self-report scale
Response style - people’s tendencies to respond to the form of a question rather than its actual content
Need to avoid yea-sayers and nay-sayers
Social desirability - questions that tend to capture only say positive things about themselves
Want to avoid this as well
Administer the test to many people
How do you determine if a test is good?
Reliability
Test-retest reliability - the extent to which a measure provides consistent results on repeated occasions over time
Internal consistency - the extent to which different items on a scale correlate highly with each other
Construct validity - whether or not the scale actually measures what is being measured
Chapter 5: Emotional Life: Extraversion and Neuroticism
The Actor Takes the Stage: Emotion and Temperament
Humans perform emotion starting as infants and children
Evolution has allowed us to feel emotions because we need emotions to survive
Facial expressions help signal these emotions
Positive emotions - used to tell us that the world is good
Signal of safety
Makes people feel confident and more social
People feel more connected in a positive mood
Enhances creativity and successful planning
Negative emotions - used to tell us something is wrong
Self-preservation
Helps us be sensitive to both physical and social threats
Temperament - differences in emotional expression and regulation in the first year of life
Driven by biological differences, but shaped by environment
Positive emotionality - relatively consistent positive moods
Consistently more cheer and experience greater positive response when being rewarded
Signals extraversion
Negative emotionality - generally fearful, irritable, and prone to frustration
Especially vulnerable to stress, tense and moody
Signals neuroticism
Extraversion
Extraversion (E) - the trait of being outgoing, sociable, and socially dominant
E is a continuum - runs from high extraversion to high introversion, with most people falling in the middle
E is not mainly about where you get your energy from, but other factors
Consistent positive emotional proclivities
Interpersonal styles
Pursuit of rewards
People high in E have many social advantages
More broad and fulfilling relationships
Good at gaining and holding attention from others; buildings rapports
This is done by unconsciously mimicking others’ behaviors
Social actors high in E appraise the environment for social reward
Extraverts are typically happier than introverts
Extraverts tend to have more friends and engage in more social interactions
Greater occurrence of positive social interactions
Extraverts are more likely to seek rewards
People high in E try to enhance the ratio of good to bad feelings in everyday life
Extraversion in the Brain
Extraversion is tied to reward seeking and dopamine
Dopaminergic cells are often activated
Dopamine plays a major role in the Behavior Approach System (BAS) - a system in the brain responsible for motivating goal-seeking behavior and obtaining positive reward
Widely dispersed throughout the brain
Striatum - a group of small structures in the basal ganglia that are associated with voluntary movement
Mesolimbic pathway - a route that connects the striatum to dopamine-rich areas of the brain
Nucleus accumbens - the specific region that is most strongly associated with pleasure and reward
Found within the striatum
Whenever we have a rewarding experience, the dopaminergic cells here go crazy
Medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) - area of the brain that is involved in evaluating potential reward
Neurons activate when determination the reward value of stimuli
Chapter 6: Self-Regulation - Agreeableness and Conscientiousness
Humans Domesticated Themselves over Millions of Years, Promoting Self-Regulation
Human self-domestication hypothesis (HSD) - natural selection gradually pushed human nature in the direction of lower aggression, greater communication abilities, greater self-control, and better tolerance, patience, and empathy
Instead of attacking impulsively, humans must be able to step back and consider rationally what the other is trying to achieve
Human infants must be trained how to socialized
Oxytocin - plays a major role in human domestication, promotes emotionally positive social ties
Related to attachment and social bonds
Naturally released in female brain during sexual activity and birth
Serotonin - also plays a key role in human self-domestication
SSRIs help treat depression by keeping serotonin in the synaptic gap
Serotonergic Function - the overall efficiency with which serotonin regulates behavior
Has effects on thinking, feeling, and behaving
Strong function - a person can ignore distracting impulses and immediate feelings to engage in strategic action
Weak function - a person reacts impulsively without thinking
Increasing serotonergic function reduces negative responses to stimuli, violence, and increases cooperativeness
Lowering serotegenic function does the opposite
Naturally low function is correlated with aggression, ADHD, BPD, criminality, and suicide
Over the course of evolution, the cerebral cortex grew and exerted more control over subcortical regions
Executive function - the brain’s ability to resist temptations, think before acting, focus on long-term goals, and make good decisions
Prefrontal cortex (PFC) - brain region most implicated in planning complex social behavior
Case Study - Phineas Gage
Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) - helps with regulation of blood pressure and heart rate, mediation reward-seeking behavior, controlling empathy and other social emotions, and governing decisions
Has an abundance of spindle cells - designed to address difficult cognitive problems
Involved when we imagine what might happen if we performed a particular action
Historical Context: How Do You Civilize a Human?
1750 BCE - Hammurabi Code
Ancient Israelites - Ten Commandments
Ancient Greeks - Plato’s The Republic
Caste system
Oedipus complex - a theory by Freud of how unruly children become psychologically civilized
Young children have strong sensual urges that they project onto their parents
Young children are driven by desire and impulse
Eventually children experience unconscious fear that they will lose power if they act on their desires, or that they will be punished
George Herbert Mead’s Theory - focuses on observation
Children learn that they are being observed by others and adjust behavior to please the observer
Generalized other - the person’s inner sense of the observing outer world
People always feel like they are being observed, even when they are not
Effortful Control
Emotional regulation - infants use primitive strategies to control their own emotions
Example: reducing feeling negative by turning away from negative stimuli
Effortful Control (EC) - a child’s active and voluntary capacity to withhold a dominant response in order to enact a subordinate response given to situational demands
Metaphorical Example: Odysseus using earwax to block out the sirens
Penelope whyyyyy you know im too shy
Does not typically require that much effort
Girls show better EC than boys
Self-Conscious Emotions - shame, embarrassment, pride, and guilt
Feelings that social actors experience when they compare themselves against others or against a standard of good behavior
Highly correlated with guilt and empathy in preschool years
Anticipation of guilt serves as a check against immoral behavior
Guilt is typically good for you and the group
Agreeableness and Conscientiousness
Agreeableness (A) - incorporates the qualities of love, empathy, friendliness, cooperation, and care
Altruism, affection, humility, and honesty
Five underlying facets
Compassion
Morality
Trust
Affability
Modesty
Conscientiousness (C) - encompasses characteristics that center on how hard-working, self-disciplined, responsible, reliable, dutiful, well-organized, and preserving one is
Systematic and orderly when addressing tasks
Logical
Most strongly associated with health and longevity
More conscientiousness is associated with less risk-taking
Less likely to drive under the influence
Negatively correlated with conduct problems in youth
Love
Long-term relationships rely on high levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness
Correlated with lower divorce rates
Agreeable people are easier to love than disagreeable
High partner forgiveness
Work
Conscientiousness is most at play when predicting success
Higher grades
People work harder to begin with
Put in longer hours and greater effort
Better organization and efficacy
Tend to play more by the rules/norms
Investment-and-accrue Model of Conscientiousness - C is a general tendency to invest time and energy with a long-term focus on payouts
Avoids riskier short-term actions
Unchecked Aggression and The Dark Traits
Opposite of agreeableness is aggression
Antisocial behavior - nearly always involved performance of aggression
Crimes such as murder, armed robbery, assault and battery, rape, extortion
Subcriminal behavior such as bullying, stalking, harassment, malicious gossip, and predatory business practice
Development of aggression is different for each person but includes common risk factors
Early temperament tendencies toward high anger and low EC
Ineffective and inconsistent parenting, including physical abuse
Poorly regulated behavior, leading to aggressive outbursts
Poor school performance
Peer rejection in school
Formation of deviant peer groups
Glorification and reinforcement of aggressive and antisocial behavior
More likely to occur in lower-income neighborhoods
Dark traits - variations in how maliciously aggressive, greedy, spiteful, sadistic, manipulative, and contemptuous people can be
Makes up low agreeableness but encompass many other Big Five traits too
Machiavellianism - a manipulative and duplicitous approach to interpersonal relationships
People will manipulate others for their own gain
Strongly negatively correlated with agreeableness
Predicts aggressive and antisocial behavior
Dispositional contempt - a tendency to look down on, distance, and denigrate others who violate standards
Taps into the sense of superiority people may feel toward those whom they deem unworthy of time and consideration
Strongest contempt is for nice people who make mistakes\
Chapter 7: Openness to Experience
Openness to experience (O) - refers to how intellectually curious, imaginative, broad-minded, aesthetically inclined, and prone to fantasy one is
Harder to see directly than other Big Five traits because it is only experienced in the consciousness and not performed
Not as commonly recognized across different cultures as the other four traits
Case Study of Openness - David Bowie
Wrote Space Oddity and was heavily using drugs
Lines between fantasy and reality blurred - would take on personas that did not reflect reality
Several changes in religion
Lots of sexual experimentation
The Anatomy of Openness
Researchers divide up openness to experience in a variety of ways
McCrae and Costa argue six different facets:
Fantasy
Aesthetics
Feelings
Actions
Ideas
Values
International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) includes:
Intellect
Imagination
Artistic interests
Complex emotionality
Adventurousness
Liberalism
People high in O embrace confusion and sometimes enjoy it
Tend to express more interest as they display more confusion
Confusion arouses curiosity
Openness and Politics
The higher in O one is, the more liberal a politician is
Ronald Reagan and Bush: Low in O
Clinton and Obama: high in O
Same goes for voters - those lower in O are more conservative and vice versa
Those low in O are afraid of more dramatic change - conservatism can be seen as simplistic and driven from fear of social change
Openness as a Developmental Ideal
Jane Loevinger’s theory of Ego Development - a theory which tracked a series of stages running from simple and conventional perspectives on the self and the world to more nuanced and integrated perspectives
Stages
I-2
Impulsive
Egocentric and dependent
Conscious of bodily feelings
Delta
Self-protective
Opportunistic
Manipulative and wary
Wants control
I-3
Conformist
Respect for rules
Cooperative and loyal
Concerned with appearances and behavior
I-3/4
Conscientious/Conformist
Exceptions allowable
Helpful and self-aware
Concerned with feelings, problems, and adjustment
I-4
Conscientious
Self-evaluated standards and self-critical
Intense and responsible
Focused on motives, traits, and achievements
I-4/5
Individualistic
Tolerant
Mutual interpersonal mode
Focused on individuality and development
I-5
Autonomous
Copes with conflict
Interdependent
Focuses on self-fulfillment
I-6
Integrated
Cherishes individuality
Focused on identity and wholeness
Used the Washington University Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development (WUSCTED) - analyzes written responses to a sentence-completion test
Ego development assessed her correlates positively with self-report measures of O
Openness and Creativity
Creativity is adaptive and subjective
Associated with high O in many areas
Aesthetic and sensory information:
Appreciating beauty and are turned into sights, sounds, and feelings of the human experience
Abstract and intellectual information:
Cognitive facility with ideas and analysis
Freud’s processes of thinking
Primary process - thinking that is irrational associative, and instinctive regarding sexuality and aggression
Freud believed that people draw from this when being creative
Sublimation - raw instinctual energy is made more sublime and diverted into culturally useful products and outcomes
Also known as regression in service of the ego
Secondary process - thinking that is highly rational, logical, and based in reality
Cognitive processes with O
Latent inhibition - automatically blocking out stimuli that appear on first sight to be irrelevant to the task at hand
Low latent inhibition - difficult to concentrate and can lead to psychosis and disordered thinking
Implicit learning - building connections within the mind and learning skills outside of conscious awareness
Automatic process
Intuitive and instinctual
Example of System I thinking - thinking that is prone to errors and biases
System II thinking - careful and rational thinking
Divergent thinking - thinking that generates multiple solutions to a problem
Creative Lives Tap into Childhood Themes
People who are known for creative contributions in adulthood were very open with their childhood experiences
Case Study - Toni Morrison
Grew up in a working-class black family
Landlord set fire to her family apartment when she was little
Parents told her tradition African American folktales and songs
Channelled these into her writing
Crystallizing experience - an event/situation where an individual forms a strong attachment to something that stimulates creative passion
Case Study - Martha Graham with dance