psych midterm

Got it! I'll go deeper into each psychology topic, explaining the key theories, concepts, and examples in a clear, structured way.

1. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory (Internal Structure of the Mind)

Freud’s Three-Part Mind Model

Freud believed the human mind is divided into three parts that constantly interact and conflict with each other.

How They Work Together

Imagine you're tempted to skip studying and play video games instead:

• Id: "Just play! You deserve fun!"

• Superego: "No! That’s irresponsible!"

• Ego: "Study for an hour, then take a break."

Freud’s Iceberg Model 🧊

Freud compared the mind to an iceberg:

• Conscious Mind (Above Water) → Thoughts and actions we’re aware of (Ego, some Superego).

• Preconscious (Just Below Water) → Memories and thoughts that can be accessed (some Superego).

• Unconscious (Deep Underwater) → Hidden desires, fears, unresolved conflicts (Id, most of Superego).

🧠 Example: You suddenly feel anxious about an upcoming test but don’t know why—it could be unconscious fear from past failures.

2. Freud’s Two Fundamental Drives

Freud believed human behavior is driven by two opposing forces:

Thanatos & Productivity?

While Thanatos is not about productivity, some people channel aggression into success. For example:

• A boxer using aggression to train harder.

• An entrepreneur who works tirelessly to “destroy” competition.

💡 Balance is Key: Too much Eros can lead to hedonism (excess pleasure), and too much Thanatos can lead to destruction.

3. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development

Freud believed personality forms through five developmental stages, where a child’s energy (libido) focuses on different body parts.

🧠 Example: Someone with oral fixation may chew gum constantly because of unresolved childhood dependency issues.

4. Existentialism: Finding Meaning in Life

Key Existential Concepts

💡 Existentialism’s Core Message: Life has no built-in meaning—you must create your own.

5. Humanistic Psychology (Maslow & Rogers)

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (How We Grow)

Maslow believed we must satisfy basic needs before reaching full potential.

🔻 Hierarchy (From Basic to Advanced Needs) 🔻

1. Physiological Needs (Food, water, shelter).

2. Safety Needs (Security, financial stability).

3. Love & Belonging (Relationships, family, friendships).

4. Esteem Needs (Confidence, respect from others).

5. Self-Actualization (Fulfilling your highest potential).

🧠 Example:
Someone struggling to pay rent (safety need) won’t focus on personal growth (self-actualization) yet.

Carl Rogers: Self-Actualization & The Fully Functioning Person

• Unconditional Positive Regard → Feeling accepted no matter what.

• Congruence → Real self matches ideal self = happiness.

• Incongruence → Real self doesn’t match ideal self = stress.

🧠 Example:
A child raised with conditional love (only praised when successful) may struggle with self-worth as an adult.

6. Hedonic vs. Eudaimonic Happiness

💡 Example:
A person enjoys vacations (hedonic) but also finds deep purpose in teaching (eudaimonic).

7. Individualism vs. Collectivism (Cultural Psychology)

🧠 Example:
An individualist moves cities for a dream job, while a collectivist stays close to family.

Conclusion

• Freud → Mind has Id, Ego, Superego; personality forms through stages.

• Existentialism → Life has no meaning except what you create.

• Humanism (Maslow & Rogers) → Growth and self-actualization lead to happiness.

• Happiness → Can be pleasure-based (hedonic) or purpose-driven (eudaimonic).

• Culture → Affects values (Individualism vs. Collectivism).

Lecture 9 - psychoanalysis 

• Sigmund freud started in research - medical doctor and became a psychiatrist 

  • Saw that talking to people helped 

  • Used free association 

    • Patient said whatever comes to mind facing difficult topics

  • Talking cure

    • Makes fears explicit so rational mind can deal

    • Providing emotional support

  • Freud believed the first step to studying psych is trying to understand your own mind

  • He was influenced by culture his patients and his own mind

• Psychic determinism 

  • Everything that happens in a person's mind has a specific cause that can be identified

  • Random incidents do not exist

  • Thoughts and behaviors can be resolved through looking at unconscious

• Internal structure 

  • The psychological  result of what the brain and body do

  • The minds is made of separate parts that function independently and conflict with each other

  • Id: irrational and emotional

    • The location of the drives and emotions, and the primitive unconscious part of the minds what wants everything NOW

  • Superego: morality

    • Part of mind that is the conscience and system of internalized rules of conduct 

  • Ego: rational 

    • Relatively rational part of mind that balances demands of id, superego and reality

    • Moderates devil and angel on shoulder 

• Internal structure: modern research 

  • The mind doesn't have 3 parts

  • There is 2 systems 

    • More conscious: explicit processing 

    • More unconscious: implicit processing 

  • May not always “communicate” with other parts of mind or have effects on behaviour

• Psychic conflict

  • The theory that one part of the mind crosses over with other parts 

    • The mind can conflict with itself and so can our actions

  • Compromise

    • Finding a middle ground among different structures and desires of the individual 

    • The ego’s main job: result is conscious thought and behavior 

  • Mental energy

    • Psychic energy used by mind (AKA libido)

    • The psychological part of the mind needs energy

      • The amount of energy is fixed and finite

      • Energy spent on one thing can make it hard to do other things

      • Pushing down negative thoughts might make it hard to constrain aggressive behaviour

    •  Empirical example

      • Participants wrote paper about being pro-choice/ pro-life

      • Got negative feedback from someone pretending to be a participant 

      • Then given a condition either catharsis: getting the emotions from the feedback out, distraction: not thinking about essay think about something else or control: sitting and waiting, more relaxed 

      • Conclusion: catharsis created the most anger, the distracted and relaxed were the least angry

    • Modern perspective

      • information-processing capacity is limited: conscious part of mind is limited

        • Unexpressed impulses may not build up over time

        • Capacity used up for one purpose is not available for something else

      • One goal of psychoanalysis

        • Free up psychic energy spent on neurotic conflicts to enable one to function better in daily life 

      • Controversy

        • Emphasis on sex and sexual energy

        • Is unscientific 

        • People do not want to be told why they really did something 

• Two fundamental motives 

  • Libidio: life drive 

    • Sexual drive 

    • Includes creation, protection and enjoyment of life promotes productivity and growth 

  • Thanatos: the death drive

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

    • Similar to entropy: universal force moving toward disorder 

  • Doctrine of opposites

    • Everything implies and requires an 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 

• Psychosexual development

  • Stages of how the infant mind progresses to an adult mind 

  • in each stage there's 3 aspects 

    • Physical focus: where energy is concentrated and gratification is obtained

    • Psychological theme: physical focus and demands form outside world

    • Adult character type: associated with being fixated in a stage

      • Not resolving psychological issues which remains troublesome 

• Oral stage

  • Birth - 18 months 

  • Physical focus: mouth lips tongue

  • Psych. Theme: dependence, passivity 

  • Mental structure: Id 

  • Adult character types: 

1. When needs are not met you can develop mistrust and difficulty in relying on others. 

2. Needs are fulfilled instantly: overly dependent and passive with others 

• Anal stage

  • 18 months - 3 years

  • Physical focus: anus and organs of elimination

  • Psych. Theme: self-control and obedience 

    • Needs to figure out how much to control oneself and how much to be controlled 

    • Environment needs to be a balance of lenience and harsh 

  • Adult character types:

1. Overcontrolled: obsessive, compulsive, orderly, unable to tolerate. Unreasonable expectation for self control

2. Undercontrolled: unable to do anything on time, disorganized, never demanding self-control 

• Phallic stage

  • 3 ½ - 7 years 

  • Physical focus: sexual organs

    • Task: coming to terms with physical sex differences and their implications 

    • Oedipal crisis: falling in love with opposite sex parent feel unsafe with same sex parent (not supported by research)

  • Psychological themes: gender identity and sexuality

    • Figure out what it means to be a boy or girl

    • Self-image of masculinity or femininity 

    • Identification: taking on many of the same sex parents attitudes, values and ways of relating to opposite sex 

    • Love, fear and jealousy 

    • Development of mortality, conscience, and superego

    • Byproduct of identification

    • Take on the values and morals of someone's values and morals

      • Usually someone loved and admired

      • Sometimes a person who is feared

    • Superego passes normal judgement on the id and ego

    • Success = reasonable morality and conscience 

  • Adult character types

1. Overdeveloped superego: rigid moral code, less sexual

2. Underdeveloped: lack of moral code, promiscuous 

• Latency 

  • 7 years - puberty

  • Break from development

  • Concentrate on tasks of childhood

• Genital stage 

  • Puberty on 

  • This stage is not passed through it is attained

  • Physical focus: genitals as source of life

    • Sexuality in context of a mature relationship 

    • Focus on creation and enhancement of life

      • Having children but also intellectual, artistic or scientific contributions

    • Psychological theme: maturity 

    • Achievement: well balanced

    • Mental health: the ability to love and work

• Through the stages

  • Analogy: army conquering hostile territory

    • Army = libido/ mental energy

  • Battles occur when there is opposition

  • Troops are left at battle sights: fixation

  • Retreat to previous stronghold: regression

  • Victory is reaching genital stage most of (army) intact 

Psychoanalysis Lecture 2

• Primary process thinking 

  • The way the unconscious mind operates

  • Does not contain idea of “no”

  • Goal is immediate gratification

  • Displacement: replace one idea or image with another

  • Condensation: several ideas are compressed into one

  • Symbolization: one things stands for another

• Secondary process thinking 

  • Rational, practical, prudent

  • Able to delay or redirect gratification

  • How conscious part of ego thinks

  • Its Secondary because 

    • It develops second

    • It's less important

• Level of consciousness

  • Conscious mind superego

    • Part of mental functioning you can observe when you turn your attention inward

      • Least important

      • Some of the ego

    • Preconscious 

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

    • Unconscious 

      • Those areas and processes of the mind of which you are not aware

      • All of the id, nearly all of the superego and most of ego

      • Most important

      • Difficult to bring to the surface 

        • Hypnosis, free association, slips 

• Parapraxes aka freudian slips

  • Leakages from unconscious mind that manifest as mistakes, accidents or memory lapses

  • Forgetting 

    • Suppressing something in unconscious mind affects real life

    • Avoid thinking about something painful or anxiety-producing by failing to remember it 

    • Usually result of repression

  • Slips

    • Unintended actions caused by leakage of suppressed thoughts or impulses

    • Often in speech but also in action

    • More likely when a person is tired, not paying attention, in a hurry or excited 

• Anxiety 

  • Defense mechanisms 

    • Prevent anxiety by shielding the self from reality

    • May help in short run but not healthy long term

  • Denial

    • Refusing to believe bad news or anything that makes you anxious

  • Repression

    • Failure to acknowledge anything that might remind you of unwanted thoughts 

  • Reaction formation

    • Create the opposite idea to what may cause anxiety

  • Projection

    • Think something about the self that would cause anxiety is instead true for others

  • Rationalization

    • Creates a rational, logical explanation that doesn't acknowledge the real motivation

  • Intellectualization 

    • Translate anxiety-producing thoughts into unemotional theories 

  • Displacement

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

  • Sublimation

    • Providing a safe outlet for problematic desires

  • Psychoanalysis

    • Resolve problems by bringing unconscious conflicts to the surface so the ego can deal with them

    • Patients must be comforted and guided through process 

    • Therapeutic alliance: emotional bond between patient and therapist

    • Transference 

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

    • Countertransference

      • Therapists reactions to the patient

    • Criticisms

      • low cure rate and length of treatment 

      • Effectiveness depends on the person and their difficulties

  • psychoanalytic theory critiques 

1. Excessive complexity: not used a lot

2. Case study method: theories are based on insight from specific cases, bias 

3. Vague definitions: concepts not defined in terms of operational definitions  

4. Untestability: cannot be proven false 

5. Sexism: males are the norm, females are considered to be deviations from male model

• Why study freud

  • Ideas are underemphasized or ignored elsewhere

  • Influence on modern conceptions of their mind

  • Influence practice of psychotherapy 

  • Many ideas in pop culture

  • Only complete theory of personality 

Humanistic approach lecture 11

• The study of the aspects of the mind that are uniquely human and give life meaning

  • Free will, happiness, awareness

• The goal of the study: to overcome the paradox of studying humans

  • Studying minds of aware people and know they are being studied

  • Studying ourselves

• Phenomenology 

  • One's conscious experience of the world

  • Everything a person hears, thinks or feels

  • Center of humanity 

    • Central insight: phenomenology is psychologically more important than the world itself

    • Basis of free will

• Construal: a person's particular experience of the world

  • Everyone's experience is different

  • Forms the basis of how you live your life

  • Free will is achieved by choosing your construal

  • Introspection: observation of one's own perceptions and thought processes

    • Used in first psych. Laboratory

• Existentialism 

  • Broad philosophical movement that began in the mid 1800’s to regain contact with experience 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

    • What does it mean

• 3 parts of experience 

  • Biological experience (umwelt)

  • Social experience (mitwelt)

  • Psychological experience (eigenwelt)

• Thrown-ness: the time, place and circumstances into which you happened to be born

  • An important basis of your experience 

  • Being thrown into modern society is difficult 

  • Does Not answer to questions 

    • Why are we here 

    • What should we be doing

• Angst: unpleasant feeling caused by contemplating the meaning of life and how one should spend one's time

  • Aka existential anxiety

• 3 sensations of angst

  • Anguish: everyone feels this because choices are never perfect and lead to both good and bad outcomes

  • forlornness/loneliness: because each person must make their own choices

  • Despair: because of the awareness that many outcomes are beyond control

• Existentialists moral imperative

  • Face throw-ness and angst directly and seek purpose for existence in spite of these

  • Requies existential courage or optimistic toughness

  • Can be avoided by living in bad faith but

    • Living a cowardly lie

    • Unhappiness 

    • It is impossible

• Authentic existence 

  • Coming to terms with existence 

    • Being honest, insightful and morally correct

  • Will not change loneliness and unhappiness 

    • Everyone is alone and doomed

    • Life has no meaning beyond what you give it

    • Essence of the human experience: understanding that you must die

  • Allows us to be aware of our freedom

  • Gives us dignity

• The existential challenge 

  • Do all you can to better the human condition even in the face of life's uncertainties 

    • Rather than: what do I want from life?

    • Ask: what does life want from me?

• Eastern alternative 

  • Anatta: nonself

    • The independent singular self you send in your mind is an illusion

    • The illusion of a separate and independent self is harmful

      • True nature of reality 

        • All people are interconnected 

        • Immortality

    • Anicca: all things must pass

      • It is best to accept the fact instead of repressing or fighting it 

      • All moments past, present and future have equal status

    • Enlightenment: caring for others the same as for yourself

      • Achieved by understanding annica and that the well-being of others matters as much as your own

      • Leads to universal compassion

    • Nirvana: a serene, selfless state

      • The result of enlightenment

  • Optimistic humanism: rogers and maslow 

    • Phenomenology is central + people have free will + people are basically good

• Self Actualization: Rogers  

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

  • Goal of existence is to satisfy this need

• The hierarchy of needs: maslow 

• Inspired by the Blackfoot (siksika) Reserve 

  • Basic assumption: the ultimate need or motive is to self-actualize 

    • First need to meet more basic needs

  • This hierarchy is how human motivation is characterized 

• Money bringing happiness is only beneficial at lowest levels of income

• Evolutionary-based hierarchy of human motives

  • Update to maslow's hierarchy 

    • Based on evolutionary theory 

    • Makes sense but misses humanistic element: what makes humans different from animals

• The fully functioning person

  • Someone who perceives the world accurately and without neurotic distortion

  • Takes responsibility for their choices and is happy

    • Clearly aware of reality and self

    • Face world without fear, self-doubt or neurotic defenses 

  • Importance of unconditional positive regard

    • Feeling loved by important people in your life no matter what

  • Conditions of worth

    • Belief that people value you only if you are good enough

    • Limit your freedom to act and think

  • Free from existential anxiety

  • Life is rich in emotion, self discovery, reflectiveness, creativity, spontaneity, self- reliance and open mindedness

  • More understanding and accepting of others

• Rogerian psychotherapy 

  • Primary goal: help the client become a fully functioning person

  • Therapist develops genuine and caring relationship and provides unconditional positive regard

  • Lasting impact on psychotherapy 

    • Be accepting and non-judgemental of patients 

    • Helps client perceive own thoughts and feelings

      • Allows insight 

    • Makes the client feel appreciated 

      • Removes conditions of worth

    • Very time consuming

  • Efficacy research

    • Compare two groups of people

      • 1 group about to receive therapy 

      • 1 group whos not interested

      • Compare actual and ideal self-perceptions before and after therapy

    • Real and ideal self perceptions tend to become more aligned after therapy 

      • Due to changes in real and ideal self

      • Changes oneself

      • Also change exceptions for oneself

    • Criticism 

      • Having closely aligned real and ideal selves is not always a good measure of adjustment

positive psychology lecture 12

• Health means more than the absence of disease

• Traditional psychology overemphasize psychopathology and malfunction

• Positive psych. Focuses on positive phenomena 

• Focus is to improve quality of life

• Rebirth of humanistic psychology 

• Focuses on uniquely human capacities and the meaning of life

• Examines traits, processes and social institutions that promote a happy and meaningful life

• Most people find life meaningful and are relatively happy

• Virtues

  • Aka character strengths

  • How do you decide how people should behave

    • Could be idiosyncratic or culture-specific

    • Solution: look for attributes viewed as virtues in all cultures

  • Core virtues

    • Courage

    • Justice

    • Humanity

    • Temperance 

    • Wisdom

    • Transcendence 

  • May be evolutionary based

  • Allows us to solve crucial survival problem that could threaten individuals or cultures

• Mindfulness

  • Being alert and aware of every through sensation and experience 

  • Meditation

  • Mindfulness can

    • Reduce stress

    • Enhance creativity

    • Improve memory

    • Free people from disturbing recurring thoughts 

    • Reduces overreacting to bad events 

  • Feltman, robinson and ode 2009

    • Neuroticism - mindfulness - trait anger  

  • You can't always be mindful 

  • Sometimes it's good to be less aware of momentary experience

• Flow 

  • Subjective experience (enjoyment) of autotelic activities 

    • Activities that are enjoyable for own sake

  • Involves tremendous concentration, total lack of distractibility, thoughts concerning only activity at hand

    • Mood is slightly elevated

    • Time passes quickly

    • Achieved challenge matches skill

  • Consequences

    • The secret for enhancing you quality of life

      • Spend as much time in flow as possible

      • Become good at something you find worthwhile and enjoyable 

    • Limits

      • Flow does not work well for everyone

      • Need to be high in locus of control

        • Believing you can control your own life outcomes

      • Generally solitary

    • Empirical example: keller and blomann 2008 

      • Overload

      • Boredom

      • Adaptive

    • When challenge matches skill, flow is more likely 

    • Especially if high in locus of control

  • Awe

    • When individuals encounter an entity that is vast and challenges their worldview

    • Linked to greater humility

    • Promotes humility 

      • Linked to better relationships, greater altruism, well-being and resilience

    • Related to better physical health

      • Lower levels of proinflammatory cytokines 

- Empirical example: stellar et al. 2018 

• Control condition

• Awe condition: report feeling more humble 

• Happiness components

  • Satisfaction with life

  • Satisfaction in how things in life are going

  • High levels of positive emotion and low levels of negative

• Hedonic well-being

  • Seek to maximize pleasure and minimize pain

• Eudaimonic well-being

  • Seeking a meaningful life

• Self determination theory

  • Crucial difference between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being

    • Seeking pleasure only will result in a meaningless life

  • How to achieve eudaimonia

    • Pursue goals that are internally motivated rather than externally

• Hedonic and eudaimonic well being

  • Empirically, might tap into same thing

    • Hedonic and eudaimonic happiness are highly correlated with each other and other correlates

  • Empirical example nave et al 2008

    • Participants completed measures of 

      • Eudaimonic well being: pwb

      • Hedonic well-being: SH 

    • Acquaintances rated their personalities 

      • Similar pattern for clinician ratings

    • Behaviours during social interactions

    • Hedonic and eudaimonic well-being predicted highly similar reputations and behaviors

• Source of happiness 

  • Set point 

  • A large part of our happiness is stable 

    • Part of our personality: extraversion and neuroticism 

  • Genetically, biologically based

• Life circumstances

  • Surprisingly small impact 

    • Age 

    • Being Married 

    • Better educated 

    • Wealth

  • Marriage - happiness is linked to extraversion 

• Activities 

  • Half of our happiness can be predicted by what we do

    • Perspective on life

    • How you spend your time

    • How you spend money

    • Physical health

    • Fostering social connection

• Happiness interventions: most effective 

  • Review of pre-registered and highly powered experiments

  • Happiness: positive consequences 

    • Good health

    • Occupational success 

    • Positive relationships 

    • Physical health benefits

    • Occupations success 

    • Marital satisfaction

    • Closeness with roommates

    • Individual outcomes 

      • More confident, optimistic, likeable, sociable, energetic

  • Negative consequences

    • Failure to recognize risky situations or unproductive pursuits

    • Failure to make things better

    • Pursuit of happiness can be disappointing 

    • Can harm others

• Conclusion to happiness

  • Happiness is generally a good thing

  • Greater effectiveness is many domains

  • Happiness can be self-perpetuating virtuous cycle

  • positive relationships, occupation, health success = happiness

Lecture 13 culture and personality

• Culture is psychological attributes of groups that shape emotions, behaviours and life patterns

• As well as Ethnicity, nationality, language 

• Enculturation

  • Learning the culture you were born into

• Acculturation

  • Learning a new culture

• Importance in cross culture differences 

1. Cross-cultural understanding 

2. Generalizability of theory and research 

• Possible limits on generalizability

• Research based countries are western, educated, industrialized ect. (WEIRD)

• Culture can affect how personality and emotions are expressed 

3. Appreciating the varieties of human experience 

• Cultural lenses shape how we view world

• Experience-near constructs

Characteristics of cultures

• Concepts have aspects that are the same across cultures and aspects particular to a specific culture

• Head vs heart

  • Head: artistic excellence, creativity, critical thinking, learning

  • Heart: fairness, mercy, gratitude, hope, love, religiously

• 3 explanations 

  • Selective migration

  • Social influence 

  • Ecological factors

• Collectivism and individualism 

  • Importance of needs and rights of the groups vs individual

  • The self and others 

    • Difference in boundaries between sled and others in ones group

  • Collectivism: lower need for positive self-regard

    • Individual well-being is tied to larger group instead of self

• Individualism 

  • Empirical example: Heine et al. 2001

  • Participants from canada and japan did a creativity test

  • Generate a word that relates to 3 words 

  • Participants got feedback positive or negative

  • Then given opportunity to work on another task like that

    • People who got negative feedback didn't work as hard

    • People who got positive wanted to keep doing it

• Sociability: social interactions more sociable with fewer people

• Emotion

  • Other-focused vs. self forced emotions

    • Frequency 

    • Links to happiness 

  • Importance in love and marriage

  • Fundamental motivation differ 

    • Importance of face (avoiding loss of respect from others) 

    • Importance of individual achievement

• Collectivism and individualism 

  • General motivation styles differ

  • Approach vs avoidance 

  • Hamamura et al. 2009

    • American participants had better recall of approach events -positive events, loss of pleasant events 

    • Japanese participants had better recall of avoidance events - risk or loss

  • May lead to difference in self-enhancement

• Collectivism 

  • Behavioural consistency 

    • Less tied to well being

    • Less consistency across situations but as much relative consistency 

• Compared collectivist black south africans to individualistic white south african 

  • Black south africans reported more self lower behaviour consistency

  • Actual behaviour was similar consistency 

• Cautions about collectivism-individualism 

  • Japan often used as example of collectivist society but 

    • Studies find participants are just as individualistic as US participants

    • No more likely to conform than US participants 

  • Might be based on cultural myth and inaccurate data

• Change in individualism 

  • World becoming more 

  • Increase in individualistic practices and values

  • Countries that are more collectivistic are changing 

• Characteristics of cultures

  • Cultures differ 

  • People within cultures also differ

We use personality trait-concepts to understand cross-cultural differences 

1. Asses how average levels of traits vary between cultures

2. Assess degree to which traits in one culture can meaningfully characterize people in another culture

3. Thinking 

Big five traits 

• Translate and have people complete world round

• Most extraverted countries were mexico, hungary, bulgaria and least were singapore, japan and hong kong 

Empirical example McCrae 1998

• Canadian born participants of european vs chinese ancestry differ in extraversion and agreeableness 

• Canadians born with chinese ancestry were more similar to north american norms

Personality variation consequences

• Countries with greater conscientiousness more religious and have less alcoholisms, smoking and corruption

• They also have less democracy lower life expectancy and less robust economies 

Religion 

• Associations between personality and religiosity differ depending on how religious the country is

Gender

• Gender differences in us emerge in many other cultures 

  • Women tend to be higher in neuroticism some aspects of openness and agreeableness 

• Differences are stronger in more developed western individualistic countries

Personality assessment across cultures

• Use personality-trait concepts to understand cross-cultural differences 

1. Assess how average levels of traits vary between cultures

2. Assess degree to which traits in one culture can meaningfully characterize people in another culture

Different traits for different cultures

• Do the same big 5 emerge when looking across cultures

• Some say only conscientiousness extraversion and agreeableness should be universal 

• Create endogenous scales

• China and spain have similarities 

Holistic thinking 

• Peoplefrom east asian cultures are likely to explain events in context rather than isolation

• Describes the self in more contradictory terms

• Includes others in self perceptions

Independent thinking

• Seen in european american students than asian

  • Value of self-expression

  • Thinking and talking

  • Learning before asking

Genetics and culture 

• Cultural groups are not just ethnic

• Culture can be history, geography, religion, or political

• Social influence: what we are taught

• Ecology: the environment we live in

Ecological approach 

• Ecology

• Culture

• Socialization

• Personality 

• Behaviour

The ecological approach oishi and graham

• Culture and mind and behaviour go hand in hand and both connect to ecology

Ethnocentrism

• Implies similarities within cultures

• Average personality differs across cultures its a smaller differences than 2 random people within the same culture

Outgroup homogeneity bias

• Empirical example quattrone and jones 1980

  • Princeton and rutgers learn about student preferences 

  • Then aside how many students share that opinion

• Students assumed more variability in opinions in the ingroup

• Students assumed less variability among other students from other uni outgroup

Multiculatrism 

• Personality may differ depending on which culture is the in culture

Empirical example 2010

• 76 female hong kong chinese english bilinguals 

• Self reported personality in each language at different times