Introduction 20/3

Kalyani Vishwanatha

Literature: Friedman, H. S., & Schustack, M. W. (2016). Personality: Classic theories and modern research. Pearson.

What is personality?

• The scientific study of the psychological forces that make people unique themselves (Friedman & Schustack)

• Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. The study of personality focuses on two broad areas: understanding individual differences, in particular personality characteristics (such as sociability or irritability) and understanding how the various parts of a person come together as a whole. (APA; American Psychological Association)

Course contents

• Basic knowledge of personality psychology

• Central theories within personality psychology and how these theories can be used to understand human behavior

  • Key concepts, scientific theory, methods and measures

  • How genes and environment influence personality

  • Strengths and weaknesses of different personality theories, we don’t have one best theory

• Critical perspectives, e.g., gender and cultural perspectives (will be a seminar on this)

Course goals/Expected learning outcomes

• Knowledge and understanding

  • Explain central personality theories and their key concepts

  • Explain relevant critique of personality theories

• Skills and ability

  • Analyze cases using central personality theories

  • Show ability to communicate in English within the scientific field of the course.

• Evaluation ability and approach

  • Be able to compare personality theories and discuss different personality theories with regards to strengths and weaknesses

  • Critically analyze theories using the gender and culture approaches

Eight key aspects of personality

1. People have unconscious aspects to their personality

   • often think we know everything about ourselves, but we probably do not. We operate beyond our conscious awareness (eg Freud´s psychoanalysis, to more modern psychoanalysis)

2. We are influenced by “ego forces”, an identity or self

   • what you think you are, how you would describe yourself to someone

   • how you think about your self becomes the framework in which you operate

3. Humans are biological beings

   • a biological basis in personality, biological factors determine the outcomes of personality

4. We are shaped by our experiences and environment

   • personality is not only determined by ourselves, but also the consequences of how we act, in other words how the environment responds to our actions

5. We are influenced by our thinking

   • personality is a consequence of various cognitive elements, cognition is the building blocks of personality

6. An individual is a collection of traits, skills and predispositions

   • we all start at different starting points, with different traits, skills and predispositions and therefore we develop different personalities

7. Spiritual dimensions are important to us

   • we try to make sense out of things, we try to find meaning in things. Humanistic perspective thinks that this can explain different personalities developing

8. We are “interacting creatures”

   • we are social beings, we need to be with people. Relationships are not a consequence, rather a cause of relationships. The way to understand personality is to understand interpersonal relationships that we have with people around us

Origins of personality theories

How do personalities work, how do we formulate a theory?

• Deductive approach to personality:

  • you make hypotheses, collect data, and see if the results match the hypothesis

  • testing theories

  • conclusions are drawn from assumptions

  • top down-process

• Inductive approach to personality:

  • don’t have any priority assumptions, you just collect data without knowing where it will lead. You study the data which tells you about reality.

  • empirical data is collected

  • concepts (theories) are developed from data

  • bottom up-process

  • slow

• Structure and function of the brain

  • fMRI, CT, PET

Not one theory - but many!

Why do we have so many theories? Why not stick to one? If you stick to just one you’ll get an oversimplification which is so huge that it’s almost pointless. E.g., “I’m obnoxious because of my genes” what can we do with that?

• As a clinician we must be familiar with all these theories

• How do we evaluate which work? There are parameters to use

• Many approaches - many theories

• Strengths and weaknesses

• No one covers all aspects

• A good theory should be

  • comprehensive

  • parsimonious

  • falsifiable

  • productive (Campbell 1998)

History of personality psychology

Some major influences:

• Charles Darwin 1859 - evolutionary theory

• Sigmund Freud - psychoanalytic theory

• Ivan Pavlov (1906) conditioning

• J. B Watson 1919 - behaviorism

• Henry Murray 1930s - motivational psychology

• Margaret Mead 1930s - cross cultural personality theories

History in modern time

More influential theorists/theories:

• Gordon Allport 1937 - trait theory

• Catell and others 1940s - testing and factor analysis

• Rogers and others 1950s humanistic psychology

• Interactionist approaches 1960s

• Gender differences 1970s

• Health, culture 1980s

• Five factor theory 1990s

• dimensions not categorical

• Can identify 5 dimension that people differ in, creating ones personality

• Everyone can be rated on these 5 scales. You can have as many points on the scales as possible, therefore uniqueness can be registered

• Has much empirical support, even sub-culturally

Modern theories

1990s

• Nog focus on the big five, almost the only way

• Personal goals, motivation, life paths

• Revival of genetic and evolutionary theories

2000s

• Personality theory “boom” together with applied areas such as health, culture etc

• Rejoining with neuroscience, evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology

Is personality a useful concept?

• Lately it’s been debated whether or not personality is useful as a scientific concept

• Most current researchers are not trying to construct “the big new personality theory”

  • instead answer more applied questions

• Examples on ongoing research questions:

• Is personality stable or changing?

• What is more relevant for behavior - person or situation?

Measuring personality 25/3

Michael Rönnlund

Outline:

• Reliability and validity

• Sources of bias

• Questionnaire measures

• Projective measures

• Interviews

• Neuroscientific methods

Personality measurement matters!

• Often included in job applications, how you respond to the questionnaire influences if you get the job or not.

Reliability - is the measurement consistent?

1. Over time

Test-retest reliability (r^tt)

Example: if you weigh one thing in the morning, it’s expected to weigh the same the next day.

Good: r^tt > 80; acceptable: r^tt > .70

We want to score a correlation round .80, that’s good in reliability!

1. Among items (parts) of a test)

You may have 10-15 items that are believed to be one thing, you want to see that they respond to the same

• Split-half reliability

• Cronbach’s a

1. Between raters

Cohen’s kappa

Validity - does the test measure what it is supposed to measure?

Content validity - measures all aspects of a construct?

Construct validity

1. factorial validity - do the items reflect the construct?

2. convergent validity vs discriminant validity

Criterion-related validity

• concurrent validity

• predictive validity

Example: construct validity

Reliability & validity

Illustration between reliability and validity

Biases in personality measurement

1. Response sets

• a tendency to answer questions in a systematic manner that is unrelated to their content

• Social desirability response set

  • the tendency we have that we want to appear as good, lining with social expectations. We think how “good people” would answer, especially when applying for a job.

• Acquiescence (samtycka) response set

  • some people are more likely to confirm what you ask them. E.g., “are you calm?” - ”yes”.

  • deal with this by reversing the question

• “Random response set”

  • don’t read the questions, just answer randomly

  • deal with this by including questions unrelated to the questionnaire, e.g., “did you walk on the moon?”

1. differences in background characteristics of test takers

• cultural background, ethnic bias

  • “pirates test”, people respond to Captain Hook differently

• age/historical factors

• gender bias

Self-report measures: questionnaires

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2), 567 items forced choice

Scale, example: MMPI-2

Good validity in detecting psychological and somatic problems

Neo-PI-3 – “Big five model” (Costa & McCrae, 1992)

Neo: individual profile

Pros and cons of questionnaires

+

• Inexpensive

• fast results

• standardized

• straightforward to assess reliability and validity

• comparability is high

• no pressured on participant, compared to personal interviews

• respondent anonymity

-

• susceptible to social desirability/goals of the test taker (response set)

• easy to fake results

• dependent on self-knowledge

Informant reports - personality from the observer’s perspective

Ratings by parent, teacher, partner etc.

• Balanced and more complete description

• Less practical and more costly

• Could act to diminish biases

• No access to another person’s thoughts, feelings and motives

Terman’s study of gifted children - evidence that ratings have predictive validity

Alternative measures Q-sort

Here you get a pile of cards. With descriptions similar to what you find in a personality test. E.g., “I often feel very shy, anxious, tensioned,” etc.

Then the participant should place them in a pile. In order from “least like me” to “most like me”. Then the responses are compared to each other, there you change places between the piles. So you can evaluate the responses that way.

They can be flexible used to rate from the point of yourself, then rate your partner or how you were when you was young VS now.

Projective tests

Driven by the freudian belief portions of the human minds are suppressed/accessible to consciousness

• Can possibly provide insights into motivation and wishes that the respondent has, but cannot consciously express,... but on the other hand, these projective tests are often found to be less reliable compared to other psychological tests

• Projective tests are generally considered less reliable than other standardized psychological tests

• Hence their validity is questionable

• Also for TAT, attempts to distinguish clinical/nonclinical cases showed raters were at chance levels

Example 1: Rorscharch inkblot test

Original test of stimuli consisted of 10 inkblots

These are shown to the participant that are requested to describe what they see

Example 2: Thematic Apperception Test

• The test taker sees a picture and is asked to make up a story

  • What is happening at the moment?

  • What has led up to the event shown?

  • What are the characters feeling and thinking?

  • What was the outcome of the story?

In example given: PICTURE 1

• Descriptive level (the boy is practicing to increase his competence)

• Interpretative level (if one practice, then he or she will improve)

• Diagnostic level (the client has a high need for achievement with a high level of self-efficacy

Interviews

Example of a structured personality interview:

Type-A structured interview

Chesney & Roseman (1985)

Sample question: what do you do when you are stuck on the highway behind a slow driver?

Pros and cons:

+

Probe deeply, flexible

-

May be biased by respondent and interviewer

Expensive, time consuming

Biological/neuroscientific methods and measures*

Pros and cons

+

can reveal individual reactions without relying on subjective reports

-

expensive, difficult to use relation between biological substrates and complex behaviors are not simple

Biological perspective 26/3

Michael Rönnlund

Outline

• Temperament

  • Eysenck’s model of nervous system temperament

  • Gray’s reinforcement model

  • Sensation seeking

• Genetic effects/twin studies

• Examples from fMRI

• Poisoning and drugs

• Cloninger’s psychological model

What is a biological perspective?

• The biological perspective on personality emphasizes the internal psychological and genetic factors that influence personality.

• It focuses on how and why personality traits manifests through biology and investigates the links between personality, DNA and processes in the brain

• Not a perfect perspective… the biological perspective is independent from school and theories, which means it can be added to any other perspective

• Not inconsistent with the view that personality is influenced by learning, early life conditions and other “external factors”

Temperament

“consistent individual differences in behavior that are biologically based and are relatively independent of learning, system of values and attitudes” (Rusalov & Trofimova, 2007)

• Small kids tend to differ consistently when it comes to how active and social they are and how much emotion they show

Temperament contains 4 different aspects

• activity levels; how much the activity the person shows

• emotionality; does he or she cry a lot?

• sociability

• impulsivity

Theoretical models that concern temperament

1. Eysenck’s model of temperament

2. Gray’s reinforcement sensitivity theory

Eysenck’s theory of temperament

• three dimensions

Extraversion

• sociable

• lively

• active

• assertive

• sensation-seeking

Neuroticism

• anxious

• depressed

• guilt feelings

• low self-esteem

• tense

Psychoticism

• Aggressive

• Cold

• Egocentric

• Impersonal

• Impulsive

Extraversion vs. introversion

Proposed neurobiological roots

• basing the idea that people differ in cognitive arousal

Cognitive Arousal

• Neurological arousal is regulated by the brain’s reticular activating system (RAS)

• The RAS is a little finger-sized bundle of brain cells situated at the top of the spinal cord

• The RAS can be thought of as the brain’s filter system determining what incoming stimuli the higher brain centers will pay attention to

Difference in baseline level of arousal

1. Extroverts

Low baseline level of arousal

To reach optimum level they seek out stimulating (social) activities

1. Introverts

High baseline level of arousal

To reach optimum level they seek out calming activities

Gray’s reinforcement sensitivity theory

Responses to punishment or rewards

• Postulates two distinct brain based systems controlling an individual’s interaction with the environment

Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS; avoidance motivation)

• activated in times of punishment, negative events

• associated with sensitivity to punishment, novelty, and uncertainty

• regulates responses to potential threats and inhibits behavior in situations perceived as risky or uncertain

• individuals high in BIS are more cautious, anxious, and sensitive to potential negative outcomes

• BIS brain structures:

  • BIS is thought to be mediated by the frontal cortex and limbic system, especially amygdala

  • punishment avoiding

Behavioral activation system (BAS; approach motivation)

• triggered by cues corresponding to getting/finding reward (approach motivation) (reward/activation system)

• associated with sensitivity and the pursuit of goals

• individuals with highly active BAS are motivated by potential rewards and are more likely to engage in approach behaviors, such as seeking out novel or rewarding stimuli

• BAS brain structures:

  • BASis thought to be mediated by the basal ganglia, which can disinhibit other structures. The basal ganglia (subcortical structure) has the ability to disinhibit other systems, and this has to do with reward seeking

BIS/BAS & Brain structures

Behavioral inhibition system (BIS);

• Is thought to be mediated by the frontal cortex and limbic system.

• Punishment-avoiding

Behavioral approach system (BAS);

• Is thought to be mediated by the basal ganglia, which can disinhibit other structures

• Reward-seeking

Questionnaire: BIS/BAS

Carver & White (1994)

• Measures whether you’re high in BIS or BAS

• This is ea example where you get statements to read and rate, the way you response can show…

Predictive validity

• Anxiety disorder/Depression

• Drug abuse

Changes predict

• Onset of Depression vs. mania/hypomania in bipolar disorder

Sensation seeking

• Biologically primed to seek out highly stimulating activities and novelty

• Lack of external stimulation

  • boredom with surroundings

  • may lead to substance abuse

  • tend to try out new things, including things that could be dangerous

• Sensation seeking and alcohol usage

  • high scores on Disinhibition & Experience Seeking related to alcohol abuse

  • relationship between behavioral disinhibition, preference for sensation seeking & drinking habits

Direct genetic effects

Angelman syndrome

• Deficit on chromosome 15

• Developmental delay

• Speech impairment, no or minimal use of words

• Movement or balance disorder

but

• Happy outward manner; frequent laughter and smiling

• Easily excitable personality, often with hand flapping movements

Williams syndrome

• Missing two dozen genes on chromosome 7

• Poor spatial skills and global intellectual deficits

• “about the friendliest and most sociable people you can meet”

Twin studies

Monozyotic (identical) twins share 100% of genetic variants

Dizygotic (fraternal) twins share about 50% of genetic variants (i.e., like other siblings).

Presence of a trait is only one of the MZ twins - or a substantial difference in personality traits would provide powerful evidence of environmental effects

Case: Jim and Jim

• Studies as part of a Minnesoty twin studies

• They are twins that were brought up in different environments and never met before

  • BOTH had beloved childhood dogs named Toy

  • BOTH were good at math and woodworking, but poor at spelling

  • BOTH Jims had married twice

  • BOTH were heavy smokers, drove the same type of car… etc

  • Very similar scores on personality tests

Examples of comparisons to separate Genetic effects (G), effects of common environment (C) and unique environment (E)

Heritability estimates

• Identical or monozygotic (MZ) twins are, on average twice as genetically similar as DZ twin.

• A crude estimate of heritability, then, is approximately twice the difference in correlation between MZ and DZ twins, i.e. Falconer’s formula

H^2 = 2(rMZ) - r(DZ))

Big-Five model

Twins reared apart are significantly less alike than twins reared together

Important to note when it comes to heritability measurements

• Heritability estimates do NOT apply to individuals but to groups

• Gene-environment interactions need to be better understood

  • the “same” environmental factors may have different effects depending on the genetic makeup of the individual

• Even though twin studies indicate 50% heritability the genetic variants that account for this variance is still not fully known: “missing-heritability gap”

Brain imaging

• Li et al (2017). Neuroanatomical correlates of Big Five

Personality and cognitive/brain aging

Ronat, Rönnlund et al (2023, manuscript)

Participants

1149 individuals in the Betula study not converting to dementia at follow-up to 25 years later

Major measures

Closeness to Experience (CE; similar to Neuroticism)

Episodic memory, Block Design, Word fluency

Brain area volumes (e.g., Hippocampus, frontal lobe areas)

Results

higher CE (avoidance of new stimuli, high anxiety, pessimistic anticipation) was related to

• greater decline over time in episodic memory

• greater volume reduction in right hippocampal volume

Likely mediated by higher levels of stress, depression… that were additionally associated with higher CE

Influences from poisoning and drugs

Mercury - “mad as hatter disease”

Lead exposure

Lower Conscientiousness, lower Agreeableness

Higher Neuroticism

(film finns på canvas)

Effects of psilocybin therapy on personality structure

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Decreased Neuroticism, increased extraversion in people with treatment resistant depression

The psychobiological model of personality

Cloninger (2014)

Psychoanalytic and neoanalytic perspectives 27/3

Kalyani Vishwanatha

Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory

• Basic structure of personality: Id, ego, and superego in a iceberg metaphor

• Stages of development: 5 psychosexual stages with fixation leading to adult consequences

• Anxiety and its consequences: ego malfunction can lead to the development of anxiety

• Defense mechanisms: Processes that distort reality to protect the ego

Psychosexual stages

1. Oral stage; a stage where children are concerned with being mothered and taken care of, and keeping their mouth full of desired substances. Oral stage fixation can later on emerge as preoccupation of attachment and dependency issues, and "intake" of interesting substances and maybe also interesting ideas.

2. Anal stage; a stage where toilet training take place. The child finds pleasure in pooping, and the parents wants to control where they poop hence the training. Some children overlearn it and hold in their poop for too long, other fight the attempts at control. Fixation at this stage may find great pleasure in large bowel movement as adults. May find a liking to bathroom humor or making messes (including of other people’s life). Or it could emerge as too much focus on cleanliness.

3. Phallic stage; sexual energy is focused on the genitals. Noticing differences between girls and boys.

   • Oedipus complex; a term to describe a boy’s sexual feelings for his mother and rivalries with his father. These feelings of a young boy, and his psychological defenses against threats are very important because they form basic reaction patterns that can form personality.

     • castration fear; unconscious fear that one’s father will take away the penis and make him a girl

   • Electra complex; girls develops sexual feelings to their mothers, however, because they don’t have a penis they transfer their love to their fathers.

     • penis envy; girls get jealous of boys for having penises and develop feelings of inferiority. This is not unreasonable at the time of Freud when men was deemed as higher status. In Freud’s view of development, the girl can decide later on that they can have a baby to make them complete, even in lack of penis.

4. Latency period; not much happen at this stage. Sexual energies are focused on activities such as school and making friends.

   • critics: because this theory has little to say about this period it’s a weakness

5. Genital stage; if a person makes it through all of the previous stages without fixation with enough sexual energy available, then there will supposedly be a well-adjusted life dominated by the genital stage. In this stage attention is supposed to turn away from masturbations and toward heterosexual relations, reaching this stage is a sign of maturity - marriage, career success, and self-control. Any deviations were considered a flaw.

Defense mechanisms

• Repression; process that pushes threatening thoughts back to the unconscious. If it’s pushed back because it’s traumatic for the ego, it will surface in an other way. Can’t push back permanently!

• Reaction formulation; process of pushing away threatening impulses by overemphasizing the opposite in one’s thoughts and actions.

  • If I find out I’m unkind then I convince myself that I’m kind by behaving extraordinarily kindly. Its myself I need to prove.

• Denial; refusal to acknowledge an anxiety provoking stimulus.

  • common in war fields, don’t recognize injuries

• Projection; anxiety arousing impulses are externalized by placing them on others

• Displacement; shifting of the target of one’s unconscious fear.

  • e.g., angry at boss, but can’t yell at him so instead I yell at my spouse

• Regression; return to an earlier stage of life in order to escape present threats.

• Rationalization; posthoc logical explanations for behaviors that were driven by internal unconscious motives.

  • e.g., not getting a job “I didn’t want it anyway”

• Sublimation; transforming of dangerous impulses into positive socially acceptable motives

• Evaluation of Freud’s theory: introduced concepts of the unconscious, anxiety and childhood causes of adylt problems

• negatives: lack of scientific support

Points to ponder…

• Do defence mechanisms overlap with each other?

  • Repression vs denial

  • Projection vs displacement

  • reaction formation vs rationalization

• Freud’s contribution to personality from different perspectives

  • developmental perspective

  • psychodynamic perspective

  • psychopathology perspective

Neoanalytic perspectives

• An approach to personality that considers the individual’s sense of self/ego as the core of personality

Carl Jung’s selfhood

• It also serves to compensate conscious attitudes and ideas

• The collective unconscious: deeper level of unconscious with powerful universal emotional symbols called “archetypes”

  • something we all share as a human species

• It predisposes us to react in predictable ways to common recurring stimuli

• The animus and anima: the male element of a woman and the female element of a men

  • gender & stereotypes were very rigid! Almost like 2 different worlds. Every male knows what it’s like to be female and vice versa.

• Persona ansd shadow: the difference between our outer appearance and inner self.

  • everyone has parts of themselves that they are comfortable showing to the world, and some parts they are not.

• The mother: embodies generativity and fertility

  • most cultures or groups embodies some kind of protective force

• Hero and demon: strong and good force versus cruelty and evil

  • can be found in old fairytales

Structure of personality

• personality is a combination of attitudes with functions

• functions: thinking and feeling are described as rational while sensing and intuition were irrational

  • feeling: their personal reaction on it

  • intuition: trying to make sense of this

  • thinking

  • sensing

• attitudes: introversion and extroversion

  • the introverted person will think about the situation and try to explain it individually

  • the extroverted person would think about in interaction with others

Points to ponder…

• Similarities and differences from freud

• The components of personality: are the personal and collective unconscious independent or overlapping ideas?

• The structure of personality: does rational or irrational outlook to personality indicate nature of the unconscious?

Adler’s individual psychology:

• stresses the unique motivation of individuals and the importance of each person’s perceived niche in society

• Striving for superiority is the central core of personality

• Inferiority complex; exaggerated normal feelings of incompetence and leads to hopelessness

• Superiority complex; an exaggerated arrogance that an individual develops to overcome the inferiority complex

• Organ inferiority; everyone is born with some physical weakness

• Masculine protest: children are markedly feminine and experience a drive to become more competent and independent

• Perfection striving; individual’s attempts to reach fictional goals by eliminating his/her perceived flaws

  • children with physical or intellectual disabilities become overburdened and self centered

• Personality typology; ruling dominant, getting learning, avoiding and socially useful

Karen Horney’s culture and feminism:

• the importance of self realization and growth for each individual is critical and defines the self

• Reinterpretation of women’s inferiority: women feel inferior to men based on the way thet are raised in society and the overemphasizes on securing the love of a man

• Basic anxiety: the child’s fear of being alone, helpless and insecure

• Due to basic anxiety, children repress hostility and anger towards powerful adults

• In reaction to basic anxiety, individuals settle into one primary mode of adapting to the world, passive, aggressive, or withdrawn

• Three different aspects of the self can be identified: the real self (what you actually are), the despised self (things you don’t want to have, and the ideal self (what you think is the perfect version of yourself)

• Neurotic coping strategies: moving towards people (using strategies to make them like me), moving against people (don’t take into account how others feel), moving away from people (the withdrawn or avoidant people, identify with the despised self but want to move towards the ideal self but don’t know how)

• Healthy people use a mixture of all three protective approaches and don’t overemphasize one of them, bus use whatever fits the situation. Only when you use just one becomes a problem.

• Goal of psychoanalysis: to enable the person to accept his/her real self

Object relation theories

• Focuses on the object of psychic drives and the importance of relations with other individuals in defining ourselves

• Margaret Mahler’s symbiosis: we face a struggle between need for autonomy and a longing to become one with a close other.

  • symbiosis; finding balance, developing individual self. If you don’t - you either become overly dependant on the caregiver ot the other extreme, don’t get along at all

• Melanie Klein’s play therapy: we both love and hate those closest to us and this conflict is resolved through deeper comprehension of the ‘object’

  • popular in working with children

  • children struggle with expressing displeasure with the caregiver, Klein believes that needs to be solved and that can be solved through play

  • for adults it can be a simulated situation with similar function

• Heinz Kohut’s therapist strategy: by playing the part of the therapist-parent, it is possible to foster a healthy self concept

  • if you can overcome feeling of hostility towards parents by simulating the relationship and allowing for growths

• Erikson’s lifespan approach

  • The process of developing personality and self is a life long process

  • Eight stages of development, gaining ego skills

    • Trust versus mistrust (oral stage), to gain hope

    • Autonomy VS shame and doubt (anal stage), to gain will

    • Initiative VS guilt (phallic stage), to gain purpose

    • Industry VS inferiority (latency stage), to gain competence

    • Identity versus role confusion (genital stage), to gain loyalty

    • Intimacy VS isolation, to gain love

    • Generativity VS stagnation, to gain caring

    • Ego integrity VS despair, to gain wisdom

  • Balancing a positive and negative trait resulting in the development of a virtue

  • Focus on identity development

  • Adult conflicts: intimacy Vs isolation; generativity Vs stagnation; Integrity Vs despair

Points to ponder…

• Integration of socio-cultural influences on theory development

• Adler’s focus on dynamics (working) of personality rather than structure

• Horney’s reinterpretation of accepted dynamic concepts

• Refocusing the target from the individual ego to ambiguities in relationships by the object relations theorists

Behavioristic perspective 8/4 → 12/4

Guy Madison

Behaviorist and learning perspective on personality

• Combines elements of philosophy, methodology & psychological theory. Pretty old, emerged around 1900 as a strong reaction to psychoanalysis.

• Takes after the approach that animal behavior can be studied and compared with animal behavior. Emphasizes the environment as a cause of behavior.

Guy: Real overlap between many perspectives, e.g., the biological an trait perspectives. The difference is in the different phases of history, scholars, scientific cultures, conceptualization, use of terms, the way of thinking, etc.

Personality = behavioral tendency

John B. Watson, probably the most famous therapist behind behaviorism.

• “the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behavior and thought” (Allport, 1937)

• “potentialities for action” (Sears, 1951)

Behavior perspective context

Evolutionary theory, which applies to all living organisms

… which incorporates natural selection
Created human’s innate susceptibility to reinforcement

• Inherited “drives” that relate to factors in the environment which act as amplifiers/reinforcement. Because when you do something that’s good for you, the organism notices this, if there’s good outcomes it reinforces that behavior or otherwise, attenuates that behavior.

• Positive amplifiers/reinforcers: food, community, health and sex

• Negative amplifiers/reinforcers: hunger, pain, nausea

Exploited by other humans and other agents

E.g., different organisms function very efficiently without any thought processes (that we know of. They’re guided by some system! Behaviourists thought of these as inherited drives that relate to those factors in the environment.

• don’t say alot about genetic influences

John B. Watson (1878-1958)

• Professor at Johns Hopkins University 1908-1919

• Founder of the psychological school of behaviorism

• Wrote a lot of theoretical, conceptual nature. Also conducted experiments

• Tried to establish psychology as a science. Emphasized theories needed to be supported by data which is carried out through conflict measurement of behavior.

• Rejected the study of consciousness and introspection. Couldn’t be studied, was a hindrance in advancing psychological science.

• Certain type of methodology could transform psychology into science.

• Human behavior can be controlled with rewards and punishments

• “Little Albert”-experiment

• Psychology as the behaviorist views it, 1912 – sometimes called “The Behaviorist Manifesto”. His first book. Quite influential.

• Behavior, 1914

• Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, 1919 (with Rosalie Rayner)

• The Little Albert Experiment

Why behaviorism now (~1910)?

Fields Arranged by Purity (or hardness)

There is a hierarchy in science in terms of hardness. Mathematics = hardest. Psychologist = just “applied psychology”. Biologist = just “applied biology”.

In terms of scientific hardness… may include the stringency of theories, the replicability of experiments, and thereby, the ability to test theories definitively. The ability to refute a theory and a hypothesis from a theory. That’s why physicists have come a far way in explaining what they want to explain.

Replication crisis!

• Published 10 years ago, very influential. Very strong statement. “Most published research findings are false”. - Because of certain systematic errors current science does. A real problem!

• Based on ratings from actual academics.

• From negative to positive numbers, how good or strong, hard, a science is.

• The actual empirical ratings concur to a large extent with what you could assume, just thinking about it. Sociology ranks the lowest, physics the highest, psychology in this position

Radical, extreme, and disliked?

“Free will is an illusion and when we think that we are exercising free will, we are actually only responding to present and past patterns of reinforcement”. - J.B. Watson

• We are only responding to patterns of reinforcement. Goes against the personal experience of life.

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. (1930)” - B. F. Skinner

• Skinner wrote some very influential books “beyond freedom and dignity” where he describes society, where people’s behavior are controlled with reinforcement and conditioning, to create a safe, benevolent society

• His book: Walden 2 - a description of how life could be if it was controlled by the principles of reinforcement

• His idea: we do things that have been rewarding before. The illusion part: our choice is only based on different mechanisms, memories, etc. Contain the information of previous conditioning.

Learning

• Important part of connecting behaviorism to personality

Some basic concepts

• Acquiring knowledge or skill by instruction or study

• Modification of a behavioral tendency by experience

• Changing of a person’s way of thinking and feeling as a result of new experiences

• Long term behavior, based on experience

• Learning theory is optimistic, flexible view of humans and the ability to adapt. Emphasizes the human capacity to learn and learn again.

• Learning laws similar to those of physics.

Classical conditioning

• Two stimuli are paired together repeatedly

• First stimuli evokes a natural response by the subject, while the second does not

• After enough pairing together the second becomes conditioned and causes the response to happen

• Learning through association

• Extinction occurs if pairing stops

Operant conditioning

Operant conditioning is a type of learning in which the organism learns through the consequences of their behavior.

The more similar to the target behavior, the larger the reward/reinforcement

Reinforcement = adding something, making behavior MORE frequent.

Punishment = removing something, make a behavior LESS frequent.

Positive reinforcement; adding something to the equation to make a behavior more likely to occur in the future

Negative reinforcement; removing something from the equation to make a behavior more likely to occur in the future

Positive punishment; adding something to the equation to make a behavior less likely to occur in the future

Negative punishment; removing something from the equation to make a behavior less likely to occur in the future

Difference between classic and operant conditioning

Classical conditioning

• The person doesn’t have a “choice” to respons, e.g., Pavlov’s dogs

Operant conditioning

• The person performs behavior voluntarily and also can accept or refuse the reinforcement (she doesn’t have to take the chocolate)Big Bang Theory operant conditioning

Shaping

• The gradual development of more complex and/or less natural behaviors through systematic operant conditioning.

Reinforcing something requires that the behavior is performed.

E.g., is not natural of seals to jump through hoops.

• to achieve this behavior, you need the process of shaping; gradually shaping a behavior from basic behaviors

• Teaching someone badminton: first you observe an animal until it does something that’s basic, e.g., holding a stick, which it’s rewarded. Then it’s rewarded to hit something. Etc.

Generalization

• Exercising a behavior used in one situation in another similar (but different) situation. When a response is conditioned in one situation, it’s likely it will generalize to other similar ones. Depends on the sophistication of the organism learning the effect.

• This can occur both as a result of classical and operant conditioning.

• Quite common to “overgeneralize” (behave similarly in situations with only superficial similarities).

Systematic desensitization

• Could be used to decrease unwanted stimuli response

  • frequently used in treatment of a variety of psychological conditions, like phobias

• Example: if the aim is to reduce anxiety

1. find/create a relaxed situation

2. construct a stimulus hierarchy (least to most stressful)

3. exposure (least to most stressful)

Stimulus discrimination

• The more complex the organism, the more complex discriminations can be done.

• Conditioned response doesn’t occur for all stimuli

• Differentiate among objects and their features

• Can be applied systematically in clinical settings. A therapist can try to emulate or evoke certain situational conditions and ask the client to see if it makes a difference for that person’s experience. Thereby, may can find out what is the actual eliciting stimulus.

• Clinical applications:

  • if a person had a traumatic experience, and that experience has been generalized

  • focus is to concentrate on differences between then and now

  • are the surroundings the same?

  • do I feel the same?

Concerns (Friedman & Schustack, p. 224)

• discussed in the book

Humans are not the same lab rats?

• Dehumanization…

Behavior determined by environmental contigencies – hence, no free will?

• are we just mindlessly carrying out what’s been determined by earlier experiences? Just seems bleak.

Tends to refute any notion of enduring dispositions within individuals?

Too narrow? Doesn’t consider non-behavior (thoughts, emotions, etc)

Too rigid? Doesn’t account for flexibility of behavior?

Too simplistic? Doesn’t account for the development of complex behaviors?

• summary, doesn’t matter if your behavior is determined or a product of free will because you won’t notice it anyway

• even if we were perfect programmably robots, there would still be randomness in the environment

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

• Looks for general laws that apply to all organisms

• Many experiments to support theories

• Identified comparisons/similarities between animals (Pavlov) and humans (Watson & Rayner, “Little Albert”)

• Considers effects of environmental contingencies on behavioral consistencies

• Provides clear predictions that can be scientifically tested

• Emphasizes objective measurement

• Considers individual differences (by applying the principles of conditioning)

• Real life applications

  • e.g., therapy

Limitations

• Ignores mediating processes (e.g., insights from cognitive and social psychology)

• Ignores variation in biological factors (e.g., testosterone, time-of-day, nourishment)

• Too deterministic?

• Experiments

  • low ecological validity

• Animals-to-humans generalization

Trait perspective 9/4

Guy Madison

Central properties of the trait perspective

• Personality is a combination of traits that can be more oe less adaptive

• No consensus on the number of traits

• These traits are normally stable

• An individual’s consistent reaction patterns can to a substantial degree be predicted from his or her core personality traits

• Central weight is put on individual differences according to combinations of personality traits

• The traits are common - organizing structures shared by all people in a population

• The traits are inherent (has a biological base, heritable).

Ancient greece and hippocrates

These ideas aren’t new at all… similar ideas in ancient greece

• In the first systematic attempt to analyze traits, Hippocrates described temperament in terms of the so called bodily humours:

  • Sanguine (blood) – hopeful and cheerful

  • Melancholic (black bile) – sad and depressive

  • Choleric (yellow bile) – angry and short-tempered

  • Phlegmatic (phlegm) – slow and apathetic

• The theory is biologically (and scientifically) groundless but can actually describe basic reaction patterns

Carl Jung

• Extroversion; refers to tendencies to orient towards things outside yourself

• Introversion; refers to tendencies to orient inwards and explore feelings and experiences

• According to Jung, a person can be both extroverted and introverted, but one part will be more dominant

Characteristics of the trait perspective

• The specific traits can be inferred from language

• Uses a limited set if adjectives or adjective dimensions to measure individuals

• Bottom-up approach (inductive)

Gordon Allport and the lexical hypothesis*

• The idea of personality as “the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychological systems that determine his characteristic behavior and thought” (Allport, 1937) is the essential trait perspective

• Allport based his work on the lexical hypothesis:

“Those individual differences that are most salient and socially relevant in people’s lives will eventually become encoded into their language; the more important such a difference, the more likely is it to become expressed as a single word”

• Allport attempted to identify all words describing personality characteristics in the English language

• Allport and his colleague (Henry S. Odbert) found in total 17 953 describing words!

• Allport defined personality as “the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behavior and thought”.

  • Dynamic organization; personality is not something that is, rather it is becoming.

  • Psychophysical systems; personality is not just mental nor just neutral

  • Determine; a person is not passively reacting to the environment, behavior is generated from within

  • Personality both consists of variability and consistency!

• In Allport’s view, every person has unique, key qualities (idiographic approach).

• Allport was very critical of the behaviorist approach, arguing that it didn’t capture the complexity and nobility of every human being

• Allport further suggested that personality traits could be divided into three different levels:

  • Cardinal disposition; traits that dominate a person’s life and shape behavior. An individual’s ruling passions.

  • Central disposition; general characteristics that can be found to a varying degree in every person and that summarize consistency in an individual’s behavior

  • Personal disposition; traits that are peculiar to the individual

Hans Eysenck’s personality theory

• Personality consists of three core dimensions (traits). Two of these three are then found in the big five.

  • Extraversion (outgoing and assertive)

  • Neuroticism (emotionally unstable and apprehensive)

  • Psychoticism (psychopathology, impulsive, cruel)

• The core dimensions are derived from three biological systems

• The three basic traits can be further subdivided

• Eysenck’s personality theory is operationalized in the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ)

Raymond Catell

• Catell systematized and quantified Allport’s work using factor analysis

  • Factor analysis is a statistical technique to reduce information and to cluster data into overarching factors

    • by use of FA, Cattell could identify non-overlapping factors that could be considered as basic traits

  • Ended up with 16 personality factors, resulting in the 16 personality factor questionnaire: 16 PF.

• Cattell gathered what he termed Q-data (self-reports), T-data (testing situations) and L-data (life data, e.g., school records) to validate his theory of personality

16 personality factors

• all of these dimensions are double-ended

1. outgoing – reserved

2. more – less intelligent

3. stable – emotional

4. assertive – humble

5. happy-go-lucky – sober

6. conscientious – expedient

7. venturesome – shy

8. tender-minded – tough-minded

9. suspicious – trusting

10. imaginative – practical

11. shrewd – forthright

12. apprehensive – placid

13. experimenting – conservative

14. self-sufficient – group-tied

15. controlled – casual

16. tense – relaxed

The big five

What aspects of personality does this tell me about?

There has been much research on how people describe others, and five major dimensions of human personality have been found. They are often referred to as the OCEAN model of personality, because of the acronym from the names of the five dimensions.

• Openness to experience/intellect:

  • high scores tend to be original, creative, curious, complex; low scorers tend to be conventional, down to earth, narrow interests, uncreative.

• Conscientiousness:

  • high scorers tend to be reliable, well-organized, self-disciplined, careful; low scorers tend to be disorganized, undependable, negligent.

• Extraversion:

  • high scorers tend to be sociable, friendly, fun loving, talkative; low scorers tend to be introverted, reserved, inhibited, quiet.

• Agreeableness:

  • high scorers tend to be good natured, sympathetic, forgiving, courteous; low scorers tend to be critical, rude, harsh, callous.

• Neuroticism:

  • high scorers tend to be nervous, high-strung, insecure, worrying; low scorers tend to be calm, relaxed, secure, hardy.

• Consistent across cultures

• Supports to some extent a biological base

• Cross-cultural differences/comparisons may be influenced by social desirability

• Big five may be biased by

  • social desirability, in some cultures extrovertedness is not so good. So people might rate themselves lower.

  • implicit personality theory

  • contrast effects, e.g., if all people in your population are shy that might make you think of yourselves as more extroverted which might affect the result on that trait

Openness to experience

• Measures degree of intellectual curiosity, aesthetic appreciation, liberal values, emotional differentiation

  • individuals with high openness might enjoy intense experiences and pursue self-actualization. May lack focus or be unpredictable.

  • individuals with low openness are perceived as more pragmatic but less creative. Favors familiarity instead of the unknown.

Conscientiousness

• Reflects a tendency to be self-disciplined, organized, goal-oriented, dependable, dutiful; aims for achievement

  • individuals with high levels of conscientiousness can be perceived as rigid and stubborn

  • Individuals with low conscientiousness can be perceived as lazy and unreliable, but are also flexible and spontaneous

Extraversion

• Measures sociability, optimism and proneness to positive emotions, seek stimulation in company of others, talkativeness, assertiveness

  • individuals with high levels of extraversion can be perceived as dominating and attention-seeking

  • Individuals with low levels of extraversion can be seen as reserved, reflective and aloof

Agreeableness (warmth, social human warmth)

• Measures cooperativeness, friendliness, empathy towards others.

  • Individuals with high levels of agreeableness can be viewed as naive or submissive.

  • Individuals with low levels of agreeableness can be viewed as impolite, suspicious and cynical.

Neuroticism

• Measures emotional instability, proneness to unpleasant emotion such as anger, anxiety, depression etc

  • individuals with high neuroticism are often perceived as more anxious, insecure and cautious

  • individuals with low neuroticism are often more calm when facing stressful situations; less prone to react emotionally

Free instruments

International Personality Item Pool–NEO–120 (IPIP-NEO-120)

• commercial, there are open access versions, one with 120 items and one with 300 items

International Personality Item Pool–NEO–300 (IPIP-NEO-300)

Big Five and psychopathology

• In the newest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), a “maladaptive” version of the Big Five (PD-TS) was included, measuring:

  • negative affectivity

  • detachment

  • antagonism

  • disinhibition

  • psychoticism

• This operationalization represents a new way of diagnosing personality disorders

To summarize

• Trait theories generally search for a number of basic dimensions that can summarize an individuals consistent response patterns (i.e., personality)

• No consensus yet on the number of core dimensions

• Most trait theorists believe that personality is at least partly genetically based

Interesting research questions:

• To what extent is personality genetically influenced?

• How stable is personality over time?

• How is personality tied to biological processes, such as brain functions, behavior genetics, molecular biology, etc…

Table 1; estimated of Broad Heritability and Shared Environmental Influence and Indications of Nonadditive Genetic Effects and Sex Differences in Heritability for Representative Psychological Traits

Age Differences in Personality Traits From 10-65: Big Five Domains and Facets in a Large Cross-Sectional sample

there’s a dip in conscientiousness in puberty, so children are a bit more conscientious than teenagers

the same with agreeableness

neuroticism correspondingly goes down

Some criticisms against the trait perspective

• What goes into factor analysis is what comes out of it

  • it’s the usefulness that matters, not if they are the final truth or not

  • it matters what you want to apply personality date to

• The power of the situation

• The reliance on self-reports

Existential, humanistic and positive perspectives 10/4

Olympia Karampela

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

• It will make a sound wave but won’t make a sound because that’s created in my perception

• Existential subjectivism: doesn’t make a sound without human perception

• Existential realism: it’s a sound, a physical phenomenon, does make a sound and we don’t need anyone to hear it

Existential perspective

Existentialism; an area of philosophy addressing the meaning of human existence

• “Being in the world”

• The self cannot exist without a world and the world cannot exist without a person to perceive it

Why is existentialism interesting when we study personality?

• People are active and conscious beings

• People strive to make sense of their worlds

• Our choices makes us who we are

A phenomenological viewpoint

Assumptions and underlying humanistic and existential perspectives:

• People’s subjective experiences are interesting and important to investigate. Subjective experiences are important in shaping who we are.

  • e.g., how blue is that one? (picture) Can be different answers…

• Phenomenological discrepancy - people understand and interpret their experiences in different ways

  • e.g., John and Jean handle setbacks at work differently. One internalizes the mistake as he is not worth the job. Jean reflects over the mistake and improves himself.

• How we interpret the world influences our personalities

• Saying that people are controrlled by physical laws (deterministic view) is an oversimplification

• Nondeterministic view - issues like the individual initiative, creativity, self-fulfillment are important

Anxiety

Important aspect in existential psychology, with personality. Normally we view anxiety as a psychological disorder. According to existential psychologists we have to confront the anxiety, not surprise it to forget about it. If you don’t, you’ll live a unauthentic life.

• What does it mean to be human?

• Existential psychology:

  • anxiety, dread, despair, are core elements of being human

  • when you get anxiety it’s when you try to find a meaning in life. Who am i? Do I like what I’ve become?

• Rollo May:

  • anxiety is the threat to one’s core value of existence. A sense of powerlessness is often key.

    • e.g., a young woman’s anxiety could be from being ignored by her parents, or alienated from her religion, or being treated like an object by her peers. To cope she may turn to drugs, or sexual promiscuity, or to violence.

  • the human journey is a noble and dignifying one; the only way to have no anxiety would be to have no freedom. The current world, though full of threats, provides opportunities for the deepest accomplishments.

Personal choice

Another important aspect…

• Victor Frankl - Existential humanistic approach. He is a prominent existential psychologist and a holocaust survivor, talks about personal choice in his book “My search for meaning”. What he observed was that even in the most horrible situations in concentration camps there were many who would reclaim inner freedom, they controlled their attitudes and tried to find a purpose.

• Emphasizes the importance of personal choice and to find a personal meaning of life

• Survived Nazi concentration camp

• Logotherapy - search for meaning, useful help for people with serious illness or facing death

• For example; fill your life with love!

Humanistic perspective

• Humanism; a philosophical movement emphasizing each individuals’ personal worth and the importance of human values

• Builds on existentialism

• *Many humanistic ideas derives from religious or quasi-religious sources

• Stresses the “being” in Human beings

  • active nature, we actively shape our lives and personalities and take actions to fulfill our potential

  • free will, we have the freedom to make choices! It also allows us to take responsibility for our actions. However, it's not always ‘lätt som en plätt’. There can be some restraints, e.g., physical.

  • self-fulfillment, when a person recognizes the importance of being the best self

  • awareness, capacity to perceive, reflect upon and make sense of our experiences.

  • relationships, important with interpersonal relationships in which it shapes personality and fosters growth. Talk mostly about healthy, reciprocal relationships, characterized by empathy, authenticity and mutual respect. These can provide us with supportive environments for self-expression.

HUMANISM IN A NUTSHELL

1. Putting human beings and other living things at the center of your moral outlook

2. Seeing the world as a natural place and looking to science and reason to make sense of it

3. Prompting and supporting human flourishing across all frontiers, and championing human rights for everyone

Relationships that define us

• Our existence is defined by our relationships (Buber)

• I-Thou dialogue; direct, mutual relations

  • in this conversation, each human confirms the other person as unique.

• I-It Monologue; utalitarian, in which the person uses others but doesn’t value them for themselves

• We are alienated from ourselves, from others and from nature

• We must fight this loneliness by helping and loving others

Erich Fromm

• Love is an art

  • not a state you stumble into, not a epiphenomenon without meaning; love requires knowledge, effort, and experience.

  • … is an answer to the problem of human existence

  • love enables us to overcome isolation while keeping our integrity

• We are alienated in modern society

  • to overcome this existential problem; learn to be patient, to concentrate, to live presently, overcoming our narcissism. However, as humans gain more freedom they also feel more anxious and alone. If we don’t fight this by lovingly helping others, then we may choose the opposite extreme; escaping freedom by giving it up to e.g., a dictator.

• He wouldn’t be happy with the growing individualist, consumerist, and totalitarian ideals today, but he would be happy with the growing equality and openness of diversity

• Dialectical humanism; tries to reconcile both the biologically driven and the societally pressured sides of human beings with the belief that people can rise above or transcend, these forces and become spontaneous, creative, and loving.

• Fromm traces human behavior to neither inner drives nor societal pressures but rather to a conscious person with certain needs existing within a network of social demands.

• Evidence supporting Fromm’s approach:

  • studies of anxiety

  • analysis of cultures and subcultures (rather than from a context-free analysis of an individual)

  • society’s trends

Responsibility

• Carl Rogers, a pioneering figure in humanistic psychology, emphasizes the importance of the concept of personal responsibility

  • Each person is responsible for his or her own life and maturity

  • The tendency towards growth and maturity is innate but not inevitable

  • We must strive to take responsibility for ourselves

  • We can support each other to help growth

cont.

• People tend to develop in a positive direction, unless thwarted, they will fulfill their potential

• Maturity principle; most adults become more conscientious and less neurotic as they age and oftenly more agreeable

Some quotes from him:

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying: ‘soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner’. I don't try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.”

“When you are in psychological distress and someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good!”

Rogers’ person-centered therapy

“Rogerian therapy”

• Places a strong emphasizes on personal responsibility. The patients are encouraged to be active in their own healing.

• Not providing solutions, the therapist is a faciliitator who creates a positive and supportive environment. Their role is to be empathetic and to reflect back the client’s own tensions and conflicts.

• Rogers believes everyone has, regardless of mental health, desires and is capable of reaching their full potential.

• Rogers viewed a person as a process – a changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits. In the supportive environment with the therapist, the client learns to drop their masks and becomes more open and self-trusting.

• One well-suited assessment technique to Rogerian perspective: Q-sort

How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?

Just one, but the light bulb has to want to change!

Self-actualization

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) the father of humanistic psychology and creator of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

• our needs can be organized in a hierarchy, the basic and physical needs are at the bottom. Followed by safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. When one need is fulfilled, we go up.

• self-actualization is considered as an exception rather than a rule

• we don’t stop development when we reaches the top, no, it’s an ongoing provess

• critic on this order: if some people can’t fulfill their basic needs then they wouldn’t reach self-actualization? Really?

• one scale that attempts to be more rigorous in its assessment of self-actualization: personal orientation inventory (POI)

Peak experiences

According to Abraham Maslow, powerful, meaningful experiences in which people seem to transcend the self, be at one with the world, and feel completely self-fulfilled; Mihaly Csikszentmilhalyi describes them as the “flow” that comes with total involvement in an activity.

“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.” - Abraham Maslow.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a positive psychologist known for his work on self-actualized people.

• Creative people often have seemingly contradictory traits, which seems to produce a dialectical tension that influences creativity.

  • can be naive and smart, e.g., Albert Einstein needed help from his wife to manage financial affairs

  • they usually have high levels of energy, e.g., sexual

  • they can seem extroverted an be the life of the party, but they can consider themselves introverted and even shy

  • they can be both humble and proud

  • they can have both masculine and feminine traits

Positive psychology

• A branch os Psychology with focus on positive attributes rather than on pathology

• Focus on general populations as well as clinical samples

• Mostly focused on positive emotions, examines and explores the role of these such as joy, love, hope, in promotion well-being.

• Also explores mindfulness and flow

• Believe in optimal human functioning

• Areas of interest:

  • Creativity

  • Hope

  • Wisdom

  • Spirituality

  • Promoting health

  • Healing processes

  • Coping and resilience, examine the contributing factors

Martin Seligmans Work on Well-being

PERMA model of well-being

Criticism towards the humanistic-existential perspective

• Vague subjective concepts that lack scientific basis and testing

• Individualist perspective

• Eclectic perspective (non-original)

• The ideological perspective contradictory utilizes normative concepts such as: normal, self-fulfilling and healthy

• Overly simplistic and optimistic

• Difficult to draw a line between science and pseudoscience

Is there a “meaning of life”?

• YES!

• How could that view influence personality, (emotion, thought and behavior?)

• NO!

• How could that view influence personality, (emotion, thought and behavior?)

Cognitive perspective 11/4

Guy Madison

Behaviorism VS cognitivism

Behaviorist model (only study observable / external behavior)

• Not meaningful to study internal processes in the brain, rejected this idea.

  • today we can, to a limited extent

• We can’t study the stimulus, what occurs in the environment, what comes into the organism

• … but we can study the response, the behavior.

Cognitive model (can scientifically study internal behavior)

• We study the mediating process

• Essential to look at the mental processes

• Can objectively measure measure what goes in the brain by sophisticated experiments that can discriminate between one assumed internal model of the brain, how it works, and another.

Definition of cognitivism

The study in psychology which focuses on mental processes, which involves how people perceive, think, remember, learn, solve problems and direct their attention to one stimulus rather than another.

• In other words, cognitions.

Uses cognitive constructs, such as attention, categorization, classification, and similarity, to explain and theorize about human thinking and behavior.

• The main idea here is that humans are information processing devices which resemble computers, those that we construct ourselves and who are based on transforming information, storing and retrieving it from memory. Those models assume the mental processes follow some clear sequence.

  • eg., when an organism perceives, there are input processes concerned with the analysis, to interpret what you see or hear. There are storage processes, covering storage that’s needed to be able to operate on the information that comes into the system. Then there are output processes that are responsible for preparing an appropriate response to a stimulus.

Categorization, classification, comparison, computation, …

The arrival of the computer

Much of this thinking was most likely inspired by the invention of digital computers beginning in 1940s.

• Made it apparent that “internal processes” can govern output as a function of input

• Provides an analogy to the mind/brain

• Gave the perspective a terminology

• Provides a model for information processing

Jean Piaget

• Known for his views on cognitive development in childhood

• … fewer known is his field of genetic epistemology where he tried to connect the cognitive models, that he himself developed mainly, to the current understanding of the organism as a whole.

• Looked very much at how children develop intellectually throughout childhood. Before, they were deemed mini-adults. However, Piaget suggested that they think very differently and move through four stages of mental development. This theory focuses, not only on how children acquire knowledge, but also the nature of intelligence.

• Children = little scientists. As they interact with the world, they build upon existing knowledge and add to previous existing ideas and information. = Schemas.

“The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.”

• Jean Piaget

Genetic epistemology.

Schemas/schematas (= scripts?)

• Built bottom up, then applied top-down

• Describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes bits of information

• To have a shortcut for dealing with familiar problems.

• Can be described as a mental structure of preconceived ideas, and a framework for things in the world, or a system to organize information.

• Schemas affects the readiness to perceive things in a certain ways

• Affects attention. People notice things that fit into their current schema.

  • if different: can downlplay it, or to incorprorate it in schema.

• Automatically determine what is important, construe it properly, and respond appropriately.

• The role of schemas is to process everyday stimulus situations in order to provide meaning and, depending on the content, engage other systems such as motivational, affective, and physiological systems.

• Examples of schemas: social schemas - stereotypes, social roles, scripts, some views, archetypes, preconceptions, etc.

• The concept of schemas was initially proposed by Piaget & Warden (1962) as the underlying structure for organizing perception of the world.

The “transference” experiments

When the new target person resembled their significant other.

• they falsely recognized information about the new target person that was never presented but was true of the significant other

• evaluated the new target person as being influenced by their feelings toward the significant other

• their motivation to approach the new target was influenced by their relationship with the significant other

• their expectancies about how the new target would respond to them were congruent with the relationship with the real significant other

• they described themselves more similarly to the self-representations given in the context of the significant other

George Kelly

• commonly known as the father of clinical cognitive psychology and played an important role in early development.

• Kelly believes that we start by developing a set of personal constructs (mental representations) that we use to interpret events.

• by this time, in the 1950s, behaviourists and psycho-analutic perspectives were dominant in the field of psychology. Kelly proposed the personal construct theory as an alternate view.

  • rather than humans being passive, at the whims of reinforcements and punishments

  • childhood experiences are more active agents in interpreting knowledge

• Behaviorists were quite pessimistic and dull; we can’t do much about our situation. Kelly proposed that the proposed constructs can change, at one point a person might need to adapt as their situation changes.

• Personal construct theory is very focused on the individual, follows logically on that personality is based solely on personal experience

Personal Construct Theory

“A person’s processes are psychologically channeled by the ways in which he anticipates events.”

• George Kelly

Kelly’s Role Construct Repertory Test

• measures what schema a person has

• these numbers refer back to a tupe of a person

1. consider a person, all important people in your life

2. group these people according to how similar they are

3. and name by which characteristic they are similar. Also which of these three which is different and by what characteristics.

• this experiment allows the researcher to see what characteristics this person uses to understand others.

Different types of schema

• Person schemas; focused on specific individuals which are or could be important in your life. E.g., your boss or spouse. The schema may include information regarding looks, behavior, preferences, etc.

• Social schemas; include general knowledge about certain situations. E.g., how to behave in a nice restaurant.

• Self schemas; knowledge about yourself. What you know about your current self, ideas about your ideal/future self.

• Event schemas; “scripts”. How behavior should be followed for certain situations.

*Difference between social and event schemas; social schemas focus more on what is socially appropriate, in more social situations. Event schemas could be extended to professional work, how to act in certain situations, the tools, machinery, etc.

Can schemas be changed?

• Assimilation

  • new information is added to existing schemas

• Accommodation

  • existing schemas are altered or new schemas are formed as the person learns new information or/and have new experiences

• Schemas are easier to change during childhood, but can become increasingly rigid and difficult to change as people grow old. May only change when overwhelmed with a large amount contradicting information.

How is the learning process affected by schemas?

• Influence what we pay attention to in the perceptual stream

• Impact how quickly people learn, may learn quicker IF they have a schema more adapted to the information they are supposed to learn

• Simplify the world which allow us to think quickly, and helps us interpreting incoming information

• Can be remarkably difficult to change

Potential problems

• Pre-existing schemas can come in the way of “new” learning which could lead to

  • incorrect interpretation of the situation

  • prejudice

  • creation or maintenance of stereotypes

• Too inflexible/rigid schemas can, in the long run, also have a negative impact on the development of an individual’s personality.

• E.g., cause us to exclude pertinent information to focus instead only on things that confirm our pre-existing beliefs and ideas. Schemas can contribute to stereotypes and make it difficult to retain new information that doesn’t conform to our established ideas about the world.

  • can be a clinical problem, explained by schema theory or cognitive on personality in general

Explanatory style: a person’s habitual means of interpreting life events

• Optimism and pessimism

• Learned helplessness and learned optimism

• Locus of control

Field dependence

A person is in the laboratory and looks at the two lines furthest to the left. Is the line vertical? Or how much does it deviate from being vertical? Simple for these two.

However, if a frame is added around the line it’s a bit harder. Creates a field; conditions. In this case the person is inclined to say it’s not vertical, when in fact it is.

Rod and frame test

For each rod, the participants are presented with a differing frame. It’s hard to see that the rods are the same degree, but they are affected by the inclination of the frame.

Each individual is given a number, the mean number from the rod and the frame, which gives a function for the value of the frame. Too see what is and what is not field dependent.

More field-independent individuals are more likely to…

• … favor solitary play over social play (children)

• … have been socialized with an emphasis on autonomy over conformity

• … be in technological rather than humanitarian occupations

• … to sit farther away from a conversational partner

• … make less frequent and less prolonged eye contact with a conversational partner

*Examples of this in the book. Table 1, page 231?

Julian Rotter (locus of control)

Which behavior is actually performed in a specific situation, and why?

• Behavior potential: Likelihood that a particular behavior will occur in a specific situatopm

  • based on outcome expectancy

• Generalized versus specific expectancies

  • specific: outcome will follow a behavior in a specific situation (applied in familiar situations)

  • generalized: outcome will follow a behavior across a group of similar situations (applied in new situations)

• Reinforcers. Behavioral tendencies are influenced by primary reinforcers (essentially the same as a schema, different names)

  • primary reinforcer= individual’s values, based on expectations that will it lead to secondary reinforcers (such as money, prestige, and so on).

  • secondary reinforcers are associated with psychological needs. Secondary reinforcers make Rotter’s theory differ from the pure schema model,

• Rotter describes six psychological news that develop out of biological needs

  • recognition - status (need to achieve, be seen as competent, have positive standing);

  • dominance (need to control others, have power and influence);

  • independence (need to make decisions for oneself);

  • protection - dependency (need to have others give one security and help one achieve goals);

  • love and affection (need to be liked and cared for by others);

  • physical comfort (need to avoid pain, seek pleasure, enjoy physical security and a sense of well-being)

Psychological situation

• instead of the objective situation (as the behaviorists might suggest). In one situation secure might be much more important, e.g., avoiding harm instead of social recognition.

• the individual unique combination of potential behaviors and their value - i.e., behavior potential, outcome expectancies, and reinforcement potential. What, as a thinking person, expects about the outcomes of a particular behavior,

Locus of control

• internal locus of control; the individual’s own actions lead to desired outcomes

• external locus of control; outcomes are determined by things outside the individual, such as chance or powerful others.

Albert Bandura

• Social-Cognitive Learning Theory, can be described as the application and refinement of classic learning theory

• “Self-system”

  • we can self-reinforce by simply thinking out the behavior we are contemplating

• Observational Learning (or vicarious learning or modelling):

  • learning without actually performing the behavior or being rewarded or punished (reinforcement)

  • this combines in some degree, ideas from the behaviorist and the cognitive perspective. People don’t have to test what happens in different situations. They don’t actually have to do the behavior, observe the outcomes and draw conclusions in order to modify their behavior. Instead you can observe others and emulate their behavior.

• Self-efficacy: a personality characteristic - a belief (expectation) about how competently one will enact behavior in a certain situation

• How new behaviors can occur without reinforcements is in contrast to Rotter’s idea.

  • we can conceive the outcomes of actions, and by capacities in our brain we can perform this in our imagination and in that way affect our schemas

Summary of the cognitive perspective on personality

• Seeks to explain personality through study of the uniquely human processes of cognition,

• Captures the active nature of human thought.

• Studies perception, cognition, and thought processes through empirical experimentation.

• Personality = cognitive style.

• Which personality dimensions are there?

  • cognitive complexity (need for closure?)

    • a person’s need to pursue problems, especially complex ones. E.g., some people might just throw up their hands “if the car works it’s fine, if not, I’ll leave it to a mechanic”. Others with a need for closure needs to find out what the problem with the car is.

  • learning styles

  • self-efficacy

    • the ability to do things and motivation to do things

  • locus of control

  • field dependence

    • personality dimensions

  • optimism and pessimism

    • essentially that people’s expectations about what their behavior will lead to, or on a more general note - what different actions in the world will lead to.

    • followed up in the book!

  • learned helplessness and learned optimism

    • learned helplessness is essentially that if a person, or an organism in general, has encountered situations where it didn’t help to perform a certain behavior, they become unwilling to do it again.

    • whereas learned optimism is the opposite

Situational/interpersonal perspectives of personality 12/4

Kalyani Vishwanatha

Interpersonal perspective

• How can we talk about personality if people change their behavior from situation to situation?

• Personality is best conceptualized as the social product of interaction with significant others

• Personality is intrinsically immersed in context

Harry Sullivan’s interpersonal psychology

• Personality is the recurrent set of interpersonal situations that characterize a person’s life

• Chumship: A preadolescent chums/friends serve as a social mirror for forming his/her identity

• Illusion of individuality: we may have as many personalities as interpersonal situations

• By extension, Sullivan blames society for most personality disorders

Henry Murray’s motivation and goals

• Emphasized the integrated dynamic nature of the individual as a complex organism responding to a specific environment

• Needs versus press: motivation of an individual is modified by the directional force on a person that arises from other people and events in the environment

• A typical combination of needs and presses was termed as a ’thema’

• The thematic apperception test (TAT): a projective test of personality widely used in clinical settings

Modern interactionist perspective: Mischel’s debate

• Focused on the best predictor of behavior

• Most correlations involving traits are around 0.30 or slightly higher

• No reason to assume that other aspects are straightforward predictors of personality

• Is r=0.30 a ”small” correlation?

• An individual’s actions are the result of both environmental constraints and internal cognitive characteristics of the individual

• Four cognitive strategies influence outcome: competencies, encoding, expectancies and plans

• Personality that is unique exists but is in a state of constant flux

• People identify situational-behavioral relations that become behavioral signatures of personality

Concepts that are related to the situational/interpersonal perspective

• Biological basis of social response: ’Mirror neurons’, cells that react in the same way, both when the person acts and when the person sees another person act in the same way

• The power of the situation: the situation directs behavior; not everyone is influenced by the situation in similar manner

• Understanding ’personality’ of each situation

The life course approach

• Patterns of behavior change are a function of external factors as well as internal drives, motives and traits

• individuals create their own person-situation interaction over many years

• Selection of situations: we seek out situations that reinforce our self conceptions resulting in consistency

• Cumulative continuity: the tendency of personality to remain stable over time through consistency of environment, interpretation and reaction

Principles of personality development in adulthood

• The maturity principle: most people become more dominant, agreeable, conscientious and emotionally stable over the course of their lives

• The cumulative continuity principle: the stabilization that comes with age is influenced by four factors: genes, niche building, identity development and normative developmental changes

• The corresponsive principle: the most likely effect of life experience on personality development is to deepen the characteristics that led to those experiences

Timothy Leary’s circumplex model

• Interpersonal circumplex: two primary independent dimensions characterize social interactions: dominance and affiliation

• These dimensions can be organized into a circle by crossing the two dimensions

Interpersonal circumplex

Complementarity: our interpersonal actions are designed to invite, pull, elicit, draw, entice or evoke ’restricted classes’ of reaction from people with whom we interact

• Control over others’ responses lead to mutual satisfaction or insecurity and tension

• Behaviors are considered complementary when they are opposite on the vertical axis or similar on the horizontal axis

Lorna Benjamin’s structured analysis of social behavior

• Synthesizes the interpersonal circle with Shafer’s circumplex of parental behavior

• SASB: a natural biological model describing social interaction through three different types of interpersonal focus, attention, affiliation and interdependence

• Copy processes : the result of the self actively doing to oneself what others have done to him/her

• Identification: interpersonal behavior is in the present copies that of an important other person

• Recapitulation: current interpersonal behavior is like past interpersonal behavior with an important person

• Introjection: current ways of relating to oneself that mimic prior treatment from an important attachment figure

Emotions and personality 22/4

Elizabeth Åström

Overview

• Functions and components of emotions

• Relevance of emotions to personality psychology

• Important concepts and distinctions

  • categorical vs. dimensional perspective

  • content vs. style of emotions

• Personality pathology and emotions

• Suggested reading: chapter 12 in Larsen et al., (2017). Personality pathology. Domains of knowledge about human nature. Boston: McGraw Hill. (Chapter available on canvas)

Why do we need emotions?

• Emotions serve an adaptive function for us to adjust our behavior according to the environment, important for survival

• Emotions help us to pay attention to, evaluate (good or bad?), and organize information; they motivate & guide our actions towards adaptive behavior

• Emotions puts a flavour to our life experience

What is an emotion?

• Emotions can be defined by their components:

  • physiological components, like sweaty hands and butterflies in the stomach

  • subjective feeling, what we consciously feel when having an emotion e.g., fear

  • cognitions, labelling of that emotion

  • action tendencies, behavior repertoar associated with the emotion, e.g., fleeing when feeling fear

• But what comes first?

Overarching theories of emotion

• Emotion theories can be divided into three broad categories (Gross & Barrett 2011)

  • Basic emotion models

  • Appraisal models; cognition comes first, before the physiological perspective. E.g., we see a snake, interprets it as dangerous → increased heart rate.

  • Constructionist models; takes everything happening around us. Lisa Feldman Barrett: emotions are meaning makers.

Why are emotions relevant r/t personality?

APA:
“Personality refers to the enduring characteristics and behavior that comprise a person’s unique adjustment to life, including major traits, interests, drives, values, self-concept, abilities, and emotional patterns.”

”It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.”

Why are emotions relevant to personality?

• Emotions are universal to the human experience, but there are individual differences in e.g.,

  • emotional lability

  • emotional range

  • emotional content

  • emotional expressivity

  • emotional intensity

  • etc….

• Individual differences in emotional patterns are thus one way of understanding personality!

Emotional state or emotional trait?

• Emotional states

  • transitory

  • typically evoked because of situational circumstances

• Emotional traits

  • consistency in the emotional response

  • more stable over time and across situations

  • dispositional quality

Categorical vs. dimensional perspective of emotions

• Categorical perspective = Smaller number of primary and distinct emotions

• Dimensional perspective = Experience on a continuum, i.e., pleasant - unpleasant; low arousal - high arousal

Categorical perspective: primary emotions

• General assumptions:

  • all feeling states can be reduced to cominations of primary/basic emotions

  • primary/basic emotions are evolutionary based & universal

  • primary/basic emotions have unique physical expressions

• No consensus on the number of primary emotions

• Different criteria used for delimitation

Categorical perspective of emotions

Silvan Tomkins: Basic emotion theorist

• All primary emotions have a universal facial expression

• The primary/basic emotions are associated with a specific physiological response that prepares the body for a particular action pattern

• The primary/basic affects can’t be only graded based on valence (e.g., positive vs negative) but are qualitatively different

• Shame → a difficult social emotion which can lead to functional disabilities like social anxiety.

Dimensional perspective

• Within this perspective, researchers generally agree that all emotional experiences can be described according to the combination of two dimensions: pleasant-unpleasant and low activation-high activation

• Emotions that are experienced as similar to each other = close on the continuum

Dimensional perspective of emotions

Emotional content & emotional style

• Emotional content and emotional style are relevant concepts to personality psychology - the how and what of our emotional lives

• Content:

  • the type of emotion a person experiences

  • pleasant vs unpleasant emotions

• Style

  • the typical way a person experiences their emotions

  • affect intensity and variability

A mood isn’t an emotional state, a state is quick, the emotion goes up, physical expression, action tendency, the interpretation and the subjective feeling.

Emotions come and go.

• E.g., a person with depression isn’t constantly sad, the emotional state will fluctuate.

Personality traits and emotions

• Personality traits can be associated with specific emotional patterns

• Neuroticism

  • people high on neuroticism are more vulnerable to negative emotions

  • associated with higher degree of negative affectivity

• Extraversion

  • people high on extraversion tend to experience more positive emotions

  • people with high levels of extraversion and low levels of neuroticism have higher subjective well-being

Emotions and personality pathology

• Personality disorders (PD) are at the end spectrum of personality pathology

• PDs are pervasive, enduring patterns of thinking, perceiving, reacting and relating that cause significant distress and/or functional impairment

• The general diagnosis criteria (DSM-5) for PDs describe a persistent inflexible, pervasive pattern in:

1. Cognition (e.g., ways of perceiving & interpreting self, others & the environment)

2. Affectivity (e.g., range, intensity, lability, and appropriateness of the emotional response)

3. Interpersonal functioning

4. Impulse control

Emotions & personality disordersDiagnostic criteria. In the diagnostic statistical manual with these disorders we have 10 personality disorders organized in clusters

Cluster A, paranoid PD, schizoid PD, Schizotypal PD

Cluster B, antisocial personality disorders. Psychopathy (not quite similar but related). Narcissism

Cluster C, avoidant personality disorder, dependandt personality disorder, obsessive compulsive personality disorders.

Stress, adjustment and health 23/4

Michael Rönnlund

Outline

• Model - links between personality and health

• Diathesis-stress model

• Sick role and illness

• Evidence of links personality & health (e.g., Terman studies)

• Personality disorders

• Own research: time personality, stress & burnout

Model involving multiple links between personality & health (Figure 1, p 402)

Biological predispositions: varies between people. Affects personality via different part in the model.

Link 1: Common cause

Expressed as a common influence of biological predispositions on illness and disease. Connected from the beginning of life, e.g., down’s syndrome, FAS etc (more to the right). Down’s syndrome e.g., influences both personality and health.

Link 2: Influence via habits

Some are more prone to seek out more dangerous habits, e.g., smoking, alcohol, exercise. More compulsive and less conscientiousness, more thrill seeking have an increased risk to get organic diseases via their bad habits.

Environment: depending on your personality, you are more or less likely to seek out peers that engage in healthy or unhealthy habits.

Link 3: stress - related to many forms of ill-health

Stressful situations activate e.g., amygdala which connects to other regions that mediate physiological stress response e.g., hypothalamus, adrenal cortex, pituitary gland so that more stress hormones e.g., cortisol is produced = fight or flight.

• good in short amounts: deal with immediate danger

• bad for longer activation: the system gets worn out, decreases the immune system.

Diathesis - stress model “dual risk model”

Two people can have the same genetic disposition to acquire a disease, but only the person who is also exposed to a lot of stress will show symptoms

• x-axis: predisposition for disorder given by genetic factors

• y-axis: amount of stress you are exposed to

Red bar: levels of diathesis predisposition for disease. Line: treshold for acquiring the disease. The amount of stress together with the diathesis makes Ella show symptoms of disorder.

+: takes into account the interaction of genetic predisposition and environmental stress.

Link 3: influence via stress reactions

Bad habits can increase stress reactions e.g., drugs, and more stress can cause a person to have more bad habits. E.g., drugs, sleep bad. This can cause a negative spiral.

Link 4: reversed influence; “Somatopsychic”

• Some organic diseases cause changes in personality. E.g.,

  • dementia

  • stroke

  • traumatic brain injury

The sick role

Cultural expectations when sick, e.g., staying at home from school, se doctor.

Some encounter a stressor and even though they don’t have an organic disease, they enter a sick role and engage in the expected behaviors that are part of a sick role: doctors can’t find a cause of the symptoms since it doesn’t stem from an organic disease. Linked to neuroticism.

Meta-synthesis of Big-5 & Health

(Strickhouser et al, 2017. Health psychology)

Thought that personality should have the larger effect on mental health, moderate on health behaviors and the smallest on physical health.

Figure 1: predicted relations among personality and different types of health outcomes. Personality reflects high extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience and low neuroticism.

Mental health showed the largets associations with personality, smaller effects for health behaviors and a little bit smaller for physical health – the hypothesis was right.

All but openness has an association to health

High agreeableness, extroversion and conscientiousness correlates with good mental health. High neuroticism correlates to bad mental health.

Hampson et al (2014)

Conscientiousness correlates with health directly but also indirectly (education and alcohol abuse)

The Terman life-cycle study 1921-1922: The human termites

Longitudinal study

• Personality and health, 856 boys/672 girls, IQ > 135

• Childhood social dependability and adulthood conscientiousness were good predictor of longevity

• Sociability was not related to health and longevity

  • picked up smoking etc

• Childhood cheerfulness was inversely related to longevity

  • died sooner if cheerful (optimistic, sense of humor)

Terman sample: conscientiousness, stress & mortality

Males who’s parents divorced has a higher risk of dying earlier than males who’s parents did not divorce during childhood. The effects for females was similar.

“Personality as a disease itself” - personality disorders

Four core features

• Distorted thinking patterns

• Problematic emotional responses

• Over- or under regulated impulse control

• Interpersonal difficulties

Two or more present for a diagnosis

Personality disorders

(Don’t have to remember everything for the exam)

Personality deviates considerably from the norm. Everyone can exhibit some of these features from time to time.

Must be:

• Chronic/enduring patterns of behavior that affect social functioning, work, school, and close relationships.

• Onset of patterns of behavior that can be traced back to adolescence or early adulthood.

• Patterns of behaviors that can’t be explained by any other mental disorders, substance use or medical conditions.

Three clusters (A-C)

Cluster A

• Characterized by odd or eccentric behavior.

• People with cluster A personality disorders tend to experience major disruptions in relationships because their behavior may be perceived as peculiar, suspicious, or detached

• Cluster A personality disorders include:

  • Paranoid personality disorder, involves chronic, pervasive distrust of other people; suspicion of being deceived or exploited by others, including friends, family, and partners.

  • Schizoid personality disorder, is characterized by social isolation and indifference toward other people. People with this disorder are described as cold or withdrawn, rarely have close relationships with other people, and may be preoccupied with introspection and fantasy. It affects slightly more men than women.

  • Schizotypal personality disorder, features odd speech, behavior, and appearance, as well as strange beliefs and difficulty forming relationships (still have a desire for social relationships; in comparison to Schizoid)

Cluster B

• The cluster B personality disorders are characterized by dramatic or erratic behavior. People who have a personality disorder from this cluster tend to either experience very intense emotions or engage in extremely impulsive, theatrical, promiscuous, or law-breaking behaviors.

  • Antisocial personality disorder, symptoms include a disregard for rules and social norms and a lack of remorse for other people (early onset)

  • Borderline personality disorder, is characterized by instability in interpersonal relationships, emotions, self-image, and impulsive behaviors.

  • Histrionic personality disorder, features excessive emotionality and attention seeking that often leads to socially inappropriate behavior in order to get attention.

  • Narcissistic personality disorder, which is associated with self-centerdness, exaggerated self-image, and lack of empathy for others.

Cluster C

• Cluster C personality disorders are characterized by anxiety/fearfulness.

  • Avoidant personality disorder, is a pattern of social inhibition and avoidance fueled by fears of inadequacy and criticism by others

  • Dependent personality disorder, involves fear of being alone and often causes those who have the disorder to do things to try to get other people to take care of them

  • Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, which is characterized by a preoccupation with orderliness, perfection and control of relationships.

Health & Aspects of personality

Research on time personal personality

Time perspective

• The way individuals perceive and relate to three temporal frames: past, present, future (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999)

• Described as a habitual and trait-like factor

• “Time personality”

– Measurement

• ZTPI - Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory

  • questions related to past, present, future

• 56 items; five subscales

  • past positive

  • past negative

  • present hedonistic

  • present fatalistic

  • future

Theoretical notions

• There are substantial individual differences in emphasis on frames (past/present/future)

• The way we view time (past, present, future) is critical to a variety of human behaviors/aspects of mental health

• Forms of psychopathology is characterized by an overfocus on specific temporal dimensions

• Zimbardo & Boyd (2008): there is an optimal or “Balanced time perspective (BTP)”

Study: Mindfulness training, time perspective and stress (Rönnlund et al., 2019)

Background

• “Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally” (Kabat-Zinn, 1989)

• Trait mindfulness is negatively correlated with stress

  • more mindful → less stress

• Mindfulness training reduces stress

Research questions

• Is higher trait-mindfulness associated with a healthier “time personality” and, if so, is there a link to stress?

• Can a brief mindfulness-based intervention (TBI) reduce stress and symptoms of burnout?

• Can TBIs change time personality towards a healthier (more balanced) one?

• Is trait mindfulness linked to stress?

• Is the relationship mediated by “deviations from a balanced time perspective?

Results Sample 1 (n=212), NOT trained

Sample 2: Mindfulness instructors before/after course

Sample 2: Practicing psychologists (n=81), before and after MBI

Half of the psychologists were on a waiting list, did not engage in mindfulness training until the study was finished. Results are consistent with the idea that mindfulness lowered perceived stress.

Pre and post (seven weeks apart)

Only the mindfulness training differ in terms of deviation from the time perspective

Conclusions

• Interventions have some kind of positive effect

• Higher trait-mindfulness is associated with lower levels of stress and a more balanced time perspective

• MBIs reduce stress and burnout symptoms

AND

• MBIs appear to modify “time personality” such that participants approach a more balanced perspective; in particular scores on Past Negative and Future Negative were lower

  • Less rumination

  • Less worry

Summary

• Multiple links between personality and health/illness

  • common cause

  • via links to habits and stress

  • reversed causation (somatopsychic)

  • specific link to illness (cases without organic diseaseI

• When it comes to organic disease: strongest evidence for conscientiousness

• Personality may be viewed as a disease (personality disorders)

• Diathesis and stress: The individuals’ experiences interact with predispositions in producing health outcomes

• Aspects of personality may be modified by relatively simple behavioral interventions