PSYC1101 Ch 12

Personality: unique & relatively stable ways in which people think, feel, & behave

  • no single explanation of personality that all agree on

Freud’s Key components: our mind has 3 components often in conflict that can cause anxiety when in conflict

  • Id: part of personality that is present at birth, unconscious, primitive, & instinctive

    • functions w/ pleasure principle, irrational, emotional, impulsive part of the mind that pushes people to act on impulse

  • Ego: develops out of need to deal with reality, most conscious, rational

  • Superego: moral part of mind that follows rules, morals, social norms, and values

    • pushes people to act in accordance with values and ideals

Psycdynamic theory fouses on role of unconscious mind & importance of childhood experienced

  • conscious: consists of everything a person is aware of at a particular time

  • preconscious: contain material right below surface of conscious mind that could easily be retrieved

  • unconscious: deemed most troublinf/unacceptable and believed to be important determinant in behavior and personality

Psycosexual stages of development: each stage has particular sexual focus. conflicts arise as child seeks pleasure from different erogenous zones

  • fixation: occurs when person doesn’t fully resolve conflict in particular stage, resulting in personality traits and behaviors associated with that earlier stage

  • 5 stages:

  1. Oral stage (birth -1yr)

    • erogenous zone: mouth

  2. Anal stage (1-3yr)

    • erogenous zone: anus & functions of elimination

  3. Phallic stage (3-6yr)

    • erogenous zone: genitals

  4. Latency stage (6-12yr)

    • no erogenous zone

  5. Genital stage (puberty+)

    • erogenous zone: genitals

projective tests: personality assessments that present ambiguous visual stimuli to client & ask client to respond w/ wtv comes to mind

  • asks epope to respinf to vague ides

  • ink blot test, thematic apperception test,

strenthgsths of psychodynamic theory: impact on field & culture, made pay more attention to thing beneath surface

weaknesses: difficult to test, first 5 yrs may not be as important, was developed without studying children, placed too much emphasis on biological urges

Humanistic theories: conscious choice and freedom are important and not controlled by unconscious

  • Maslow’s self-actualizing person

  • Roger’s person-centertred perspective: people are good, have need for self-actualization, and reach for their potential if gien a growth promoting environment

  • strengths: triggered broad social movement in 60s and 70s, renewed debate on free will, focused on subjective experiences

  • weaknesses: difficult to measure subjective experience in scientific way, emphasis on self can develop narcissism

Trait theories: describe characteristics that make up human personality

  • Gordon Allport: one of earliest; scanned entire dictionary for words that could be traits

  • Raymond: factory analysis for 16 peralsity

  • Hans: factor analysis to determine factors

  • Openess to experience (creativity), Conscientesness (following rules), Extroversion (sociability), Agreeableness (cooperative), Neuroticism (experience variety of distressing emotions)

  • strengths: intuitive appeal, provide convenient categories, relatively stable

  • weaknesses: doesn’t explain behavior, based only on broad traits, may not be as stable as originally thought

Social-Cognitive theories: reciprocal determinism & self-efficacy

  • behaviorist focuses on effect of environment behavior & rewards/punishments

  • cognitive processes siush as anticipating, judging, memory and imitation of models