Psych Chapter 14

1. Introduction to personality psych

   1. Personality psychology

      1. Focus on the stable mental characteristics underlying our behavior across social contexts

   2. Social psych

      1. The ways in which the presence/influence of others affect my thinking, emotions, or behavior

   3. Personality

      1. Style of interacting with the world and other people

      2. Interested in individual differences for social and clinical purposes

         1. Can we predict behavior based on those characteristics?

         2. Can we tell you something about yourself you don’t already know?

      3. Defined as distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feelings, and acting

   4. What is personality?

      1. How we react to situations, thinking and feeling and speaking

      2. Internal moods/feelings that determine behavior

      3. Non-physical differences between people

      4. Culmination of experiences

      5. Character traits (ex easily angered)

      6. Traits that influence thoughts/behaviors/feelings

   5. What is personality?

      1. People differ from each other in meaningful ways

      2. People seem to show consistency in behavior

   6. Judging personality

      1. We can get a lot of info about a person’s personality quickly

         1. “Thin-slice” judgements

            1. Male sexual orientation judged better than change in less than 1s

            2. Teacher ratings based on 6s soundless clips correlated with actual end of semester ratings

   7. The Big Five

      1. Openness to new experience

         1. High scorers

            1. Original, creative, curious, complex

         2. Low scorers

            1. Conventional, down-to-earth, narrow interests

      2. Conscientiousness

         1. High scorers

            1. Reliable, well-organized, self-disciplined, careful

         2. Low scorers

            1. Disorganized, undependable, negligent

      3. Extraversion

         1. High scorers

            1. Sociable, friendly, fun-loving, talkative

         2. Low scorers

            1. Introverted, reserved, inhibited, quiet

      4. Agreeableness

         1. High scorers

            1. Good-natured, sympathetic, forgiving, courteous

         2. Low scorers

            1. Critical, rude, harsh, callus

      5. Neuroticism

         1. High scorers

            1. Nervous, high-string, insecure, worrying

         2. Low scorers

            1. Calm, relaxed, secure, hardy

      6. OCEAN or CANOE

   8. A potential personality pitfall

      1. In 1948, Bertram Forer gave his students a personality test

      2. The students received feedback on their tests, and were asked to rate on a 0-5 scale how well it describes them

         1. 0 = very poorly; 5 = exactly

      3. On average, they rated their feedback at 4.26

      4. Everyone received the same feedback

   9. PT Barnum Effect

      1. Results

         1. “There’s something for everyone

         2. OR

         3. “There’s a sucker born every minute”

         4. People are inclined to believe feedback, particularly if its general feedback that could be true of anyone

         5. People are slow to realize how vague and general feedback is

      2. Makes Assessing validity of personality tests tricky

      3. Implications of the Barnum effect

         1. Reason why horoscopes and psychics seem believable

         2. “Cold reading” takes advantage of this

            1. Method of faking psychic powers

            2. Pay attention to:

How vague the “psychic’s” statements are

How much people dig to find meaning in those statements

Usually combined with planted audience members, surveillance of audience during downtime

• Studying personality

  1. Two major approaches

     1. Nomothetic

        1. Understand general laws that govern behavior of all individuals

Personality tests

• Idiographic

  1. Understand unique characteristics of an individual, taking personal history into account

Case study or biography

• Many different factors that go into personality, so we have to approach personality according to various dimensions

  1. Behavior-genetic

  2. Psychoanalytic

  3. Trait

1. Behavior-Genetic approach

   1. Study monozygotic (identical, 100% shared genes) and dizygotic twins (fraternal, 50% shared genes)

   2. Research together (shared environment) or apart (non-shared environment)

   3. 3 major influences on personality

      1. Genetics

      2. Shared environmental factors

      3. Non-shared environmental factors

   4. Takeaways

      1. Genetics has a moderate influence on personality

      2. Environment has a small effect on personality

2. Psychoanalytic approach

   1. Personality is the product of conflict between three unconscious forces in mind

      1. Id

         1. Operates purely on the pleasure principle

            1. Do what feels good, avoid what feels bad

         2. devil

      2. Ego

         1. The “mediator” between the id and superego; operates on reality principle

            1. Reality requires delayed gratification sometimes

         2. Reality

      3. Superego

         1. Internalization of societal standards, values (your parents’ voice telling you right and wrong) your moral guide

         2. morality/ angel

   2. Caveats:

      1. Nearly impossible to study scientifically

         1. Claims are unfalsifiable and therefore untestable

      2. Freud’s theories based on small patient sample (of Victorian Era)

   3. Fruedian slips

      1. The id’s thoughts and desires slip through into overt speech

      2. Frued: slips of tongue reveal deep

   4. Psychoanalytic theory

      1. Conflict between id and superego creates anxiety in the ego

      2. Ego uses defense mechanisms to deal with the anxiety

         1. Repression

            1. Make the problem unconscious; block from memory

         2. Denial

            1. Overtly claim (and believe) the problem does not exist

         3. Rationalization

         4. Displacement

            1. Unpleasant feelings spill over onto a sager target

         5. Projection

            1. See your own unwanted thoughts/desires in others

         6. Regression

            1. Return to an earlier state in psychological development

         7. Reaction formation

            1. Transforms unwanted feelings into exact opposite

            2. Homosexual desire → homophobia

Ted Haggard

Larry Craig

• Sublimation

  1. Channel unwanted feelings into a socially acceptable (or even beneficial) behavior

  2. The healthiest of defense mechanisms

  1. Projective Tests

     1. Thematic Apperception Test

        1. Respondent weaves a story around an image; analyst interprets meaning behind the story

     2. Main psychoanalytical methods of evaluating someone's psychological

     3. Problems

        1. Not valid - does not measure what they're supposed to

        2. Not reliable - don't consistently yield the same results

           1. Different people with same personality can come up with different stories

1. Trait approach

   1. Gordon Allport recognized problems with psychoanalytic approach

      1. Trait

         1. Relatively stable predisposition

            1. An “aggressive” person will not always be violent, but

   2. Big 5 OCEAN Breakdown

      1. Openness to experience vs. non-openness

         1. Tendency to enjoy new experiences and idea

      2. Conscientiousness vs. undirectedness

         1. Sense of duty, discipline, orderliness

         2. Positively correlated with important life outcomes

            1. Life span (overall health)

            2. Success in work and school

            3. Marriage stability

      3. Extroversion vs. Introversion

         1. Tendency to seek stimulation and company

      4. Agreeableness vs. Antagonism

         1. Degree to which you are willing to upset others

         2. High scorers are friendly, compassionate, but may seek to avoid conflict

      5. Neuroticism vs. Stability

         1. Tendency to experience and express unpleasant emotions

         2. Positively correlated with psychopathology

         3. Women tend to score higher than men on average across various

   3. Trait approach pros/cons

      1. Pros

         1. Theory of personality constructed empirically

         2. Questions can seem unrelated to an underlying trait, but still measure it, reduces chance of demand characteristics

         3. Traits are predictive of other behaviors/tendencies

      2. Cons

         1. Still relies on self-report, which can be unreliable and difficult to validate

2. Root of Prejudice

   1. Groups: Thought social identities, people associated themselves with other

   2. Evolution: prepare people to identify with a group

      1. Ingroup - “Us” - people with whom we share a common identity

      2. Outgroup - “them” - those perceived as different or apart from our ingroup

      3. Ingroup bias - the tendency to favor our own group

   3. Scapegoat theory

      1. The theory that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame

      2. Research evidence

         1. Prejudice level tend to be right among economically frustrated people

         2. In experiment, a temporary frustration increases prejudice

3. Aggression

   1. Behavior intended to harm others

      1. Either verbal or physical

   2. The biology of aggression

      1. Biology influences aggression at three levels

         1. Genetic influences

         2. Neural influences

            1. Various neurosystems facilitates or inhibit aggression when provokes

         3. Biochemical influences

            1. Testosterone linked with irritability, assertiveness, impulsiveness

   3. When are we most likely to be aggressive?

      1. When were provoked

      2. Ect

4. Bystander non-intervention

   1. Kitty Genovese

      1. Brutally murdered in New York city

      2. Over the course of 35 minutes

      3. There were plenty of bystanders but nobody came to help or reached out for help

      4. Why does this occur?

         1. Pluralistic ignorance

            1. The belief that no one else sees things the way we do

            2. Because no one else is reacting, we believe that its ok to not react

         2. Diffusion of responsibility

            1. Its not my job attitude

      5. Shown experimentally

         1. Women falling off ladder

         2. Smoke coming under a door

         3. A student have an epileptic seizure

         4. Note: when alone people are more likely to reactant than when there is a group

      6. Bystander effect

         1. If you are in an emergency, you should

            1. Attract attention “FIRE”

            2. Make it clear that there is an emergency

            3. Delegate responsibility

5. Interaction between actions and attitudes

6. Group polarization

7. Groupthink

8. Attraction

9. Love

10. Elements of conflict