personality final

STRESS, ADJUSTMENT, AND HEALTH DIFFERENCES

DISEASE-PRONE PERSONALITIES

Franz Alexander

◦ Unconscious inner conflict and struggle

PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE

◦ The psyche affects the soma

However, there is skepticism when explaining this phenomena

First Major link between personality and health involves health behaviors

◦ Behaviors that lead to more or less healthy habits and environments

Why are these particular personality characteristics associated with these unhealthy behaviors?

◦ People with problems in emotional regulation may seek stimulating or tranquilizing effects of the behavior

◦ Certain social factors tend to encourage unhealthy behaviors

The personality trait of conscientiousness is a strong and reliable predictor of health and longevity

Stress and risk taking, thrill seeking, and sensation seeking behaviors all have affects on health

◦ DIATHESIS-STRESS MODEL of disease

◦ DIATHESIS – predisposition of the body to a disease or disorder

THE SICK ROLE

◦ A set of societal expectations about how a person should behave when ill

◦ How we think about our bodies and interpret symptoms affects the behavior that results

◦ In our society more socially acceptable to seek medical doctor and adopt SICK ROLE than it is to seek psychological help for an emotional problem

Disease can affect personality

◦ SOMATOPSYCHIC EFFECT

◦ Disease can affect personality

PERSONALITY DISORDERS

PERSONALITY DISORDER: deep-rooted, ongoing pattern of behavior that impairs the person’s functioning and well-being.

PERSONALITY DISORDER // Characteristics

BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER // Instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affect. Marked by impulsivity.

PARANOID PERSONALITY DISORDER // Distrust and suspiciousness in which others’ motives are interpreted as malevolent.

SCHIZOID PERSONALITY DISORDER // Detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of emotional expression.

SCHIZOTYPICAL PERSONALITY DISORDER // Acute discomfort in close relationships, cognitive or perceptual distortions, and eccentricities in behavior.

ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER // Disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others.

HISTORONIC PERSONALITY DISORDER // Excessive emotionality and attention seeking.

NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER // Grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy.

AVOIDANT PERSONALITY DISORDER // Social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation.

DEPENDENT PERSONALITY DISORDER // Submissive and clinging behavior, related to an excessive need to be taken care of.

OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE PERSONALITY DISORDER // Preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and control

PERSONALITY CORONARY PRONENESS & OTHER DISEASE

Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman proposed the idea of the Type A Behavior Pattern

◦ Type A: hasty, impatient, impulsive, hyper-alert, potentially hostile, and tense

◦ Workaholic

◦ Good evidence that people who lead confrontational, competitive, and driven lives are more likely to suffer heart disease

David Glass

◦ People prone to cardiovascular problems are especially driven to excessive achievement and to total mastery of their worlds

Other disease

◦ Arthritis, asthma, headaches, ulcers

◦ Evidence for a genetic disease prone personality

SELF-HEALING PERSONALITY

Salvatore Maddi and Suzanne Kobasa

Feelings of control was a significant factor in terms of health

◦ Healthier – did not feel powerless

Commitment to something that is important and meaningful less likely to become ill

Responded to life with excitement and energy – tend to remain healthy

Rotter – people who trust others are less likely to be unhappy, conflicted, or maladjusted

SELF-HEALING PERSONALITY: CLUSTER of health-promoting traits and emotional styles that prompts a good person-environment fit

◦ Enhance flexibility in coping with stressors and promote homeostasis in the face of challenge allowing individuals to maintain good mental and physical health

HEALTH AND THE 8 ASPECTS OF PERSONALITY

Psychoanalytic: Repressed conflicts in the unconscious can show themselves in medical symptoms. (PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE = somatization)

Neo-Analytic: Child-rearing practices and resulting degree of attachment and security direct children toward healthy patterns or unhealthy patterns.

Biological: A person with stress or with unhealthy habits is seen as having a disease. Treatment involved pharmaceuticals that affect hormones and neurotransmitters.

Cognitive: An introduction of how people process information and ideas of the SICK ROLE, they come to understand how their behavior affects their health. A sense of control allows people to respond to the challenges in their lives

CULTURE, RELIOGION, AND ETHNICITY

HISTORY & RESEARCH

• Evaluating others from one’s own cultural point of view is termed ETHNOCENTRICISM

• Things that seem natural and normal to us can often only be identified as culture-specific through comparison with other cultures

• Cross-cultural personality psychologists often distinguish between EMIC and ETIC approaches

• Problems arise when concepts and methods developed in one culture are carelessly transferred to another culture in an attempt to make cross-cultural generalizations about personality

COLLECTIVIST & INDIVIDUALISTIC

• A key dimension of cultural effects on personality involves the centrality of the autonomous individual versus the centrality of the collective

• INDIVIDUALISTIC themes = Western cultures

• CELLECTIVIST themes = Eastern cultures

ERRORS OF SCIENTIFIC INFERENCE

• Ethnic groups

• Groupings based on cultural habits, customs, and religious beliefs

• Some large groupings are based o physical characteristics tied to geographical origin, such as skin color or eye shape, or height - race

• Because physical characteristics are so obvious, we often overgeneralize and over-attribute personality characteristics based on them

• AMERICAN DILEMMA

• U.S. founded on the idea of “All men are created equal”

• Racial divide – Black-White differences

• In considering the relevance of race, it certainly makes sense to take into account that personality is influenced by the reactions of others and that others often react to us based on perceived physical characteristics

CULTURE & TESTING

• Psychological testing rests on a number of assumptions

• A problem arises when the assumptions underlying the test are culturally biased

• One way to deal with this is through the development of the culture- free tests

• CULTURE FAIR tests attempt to control for or rule out effects that result from culture rather than from individual differences

• Other tests take culture into account with comparison group for scoring purposes

• One of the other problems is that the tests are not culturally biased, but rather that they are used inappropriately

• Stereotype threat: the threat that others’ judgment or their own actions will negatively stereotype them

PAIR & DISCUSS

• Recall that Rorschach tests were supposed to be CULTURE FREE and that theorists like Jung believed in universal archetypes? If you were to structure a culture-free test, name at least one item it might include.

LANGUAGE AS A CULTURAL INFLUENCE

• Language is one of the most central and influential features of any culture

• Speaking and listening are a pervasive mode of interpersonal interaction in all human societies, and a central part of who we are

• Each person speaks a unique version of his or her native language – IDIOLECT

• Variations between groups of people who share regional characteristics or cultural characteristics create distinct DIALECTS

• The idea of an accent focuses on pronunciation, but DIALECT is more comprehensive in that it encompasses variations in vocabulary and unique syntactic forms.

• Language allows people to maintain a strong identification with their group

• An example is within the deaf community

CONCLUSIONS

• Understanding cultural influences is important to understanding all eight of the basic aspects of personality

• Cultural differences involve the shared behaviors and customs we learn from family, peers, and societal institutions

• More INDIVIDUALISTIC themes tend to be found in Western cultures, whereas more COLLECTIVIST themes are found in Eastern cultures

• In America, Black – White differences are the most significant cultural grouping

• AMERICAN DILEMMA

• Better to study the effects of ethnic identification, history, minority status, family, subculture, religion, and social class rather than race.

• Effects of social class on personality can be dramatic, but are typically studied in other countries than the United States

• Language is one of the defining features of an individual’s identity

• A problem with psychological testing is not that the tests are culturally biased, but rather that the test results are used inappropriately

• A valid understanding of personality must take into account culture

• Don’t eliminate culture, but bring it into key consideration as a basic element of personality

LOVE AND HATE

HUMANISTIC-EXISTENTIAL APPROACH

Carl Rogers believed that negative emotion stems from a lack of positive regard in the individual’s life

MASLOW pointed out that our fears and doubts about ourselves are at the root of immaturity and HATE

Emphasize that people who realize their potential are the people who can have the truest LOVE

A person must accept himself or herself before he or she can give real LOVE to others

MASLOW placed the need for LOVE on the third tier of his hierarchy of needs pyramid

MASLOW described 2 types of LOVE

BEING LOVE – unselfish and cares for the needs of the other

DEFICIENCY LOVE – is selfish and needy

FROMM sees LOVE as a special characteristic that actually humanizes men and women

in order to alleviate feelings of loneliness, people seek contact with other individuals – LOVE is the positive result of individuals striving to join with other

FROMM further discusses TYPES OF LOVE

MOTHERLY LOVE – one sided and unequal; child acquires a sense of stability and security

BROTHERLY LOVE – involves LOVING all others

EROTIC LOVE – directed toward a single individual; momentary, short-lived intimacy

Mature LOVE, according to FROMM, incorporates elements of BROTHERLY LOVE and self LOVE; each partner is caring for the other; have a sense of responsibility toward each other; and encompasses respect for the development of their partner

MAY described various types of LOVE

SEX, EROS, PHILIA, AGAPE, AUTHENIC LOVE

MAY emphasized the importance of will

LOVE and will are intertwined

BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Several personality perspectives see HATE as biologically based

Ethological explanations

Ethology is the study of animal behavior patterns in natural environments

Lorenz and Eibl-Eibesfeldt characterized aggression as the product of adaptive evolutionary processes

Natural aggressive tendencies may be distorted and sometimes expressed inappropriately

However, there is a problem with these explanations

This theory may explain why people a capacity for aggression, but why do we find so many individual and cross-cultural differences in aggressiveness?

Another biological explanation for individuals with particularly HATEFUL personalities involves structural and drug-induced brain disorders

It’s known that stimulation of certain brain centers can produce intense rage

Imaging and studies have pointed to disorders of serotonin and dopamine in excess impulsivity and aggression

Twin studies, adoption studies, and sibling studies reveal both genetic and environmental factors contribute to aggressive, antisocial behavior

Charles Whitman

1960s – mass murderer on the campus of University of Texas

Found to have a tumor near the amygdala

“A man falls in LOVE through his eyes, a woman through her ears.” –Wyatt

Evolutionary psychology explains that LOVE developed because of its adaptive consequences

Characteristics that ensure that a healthy offspring is born

Characteristics that ensure that the helpless child will survive

PSYCHOANALYTIC AAPROACH

Freud developed his ideas of the aggressive, destructive side of the id as a counterforce to lustful urges

Freud proposed an existence of an aggressive drive

THANATOS

The drive toward death and self-destructive behavior

Use of defense mechanisms

A study that examined the defense mechanisms of violent individuals found that they were more likely to use projection as a defense mechanism and that they use of displacement differentiated violent from non-violent individuals

Freud viewed LOVE as arising from sexual instincts

Mother becomes first LOVE object

Later in development, strong feelings accompanying the sexual attraction to partner is considered LOVE

Lust and LOVE reciprocally motivate each other according to Freud

Melanie Klein and the object relations theorists stated that for almost all children the mother is the nurturer and therefore the first and most salient LOVE object

Out adult LOVE is based on out mother LOVE

NEO-ANALYTIC APPRAOCH

One particular archetype – the shadow – is where the primitive instincts reside

Inappropriate or uncontrolled expression of one’s shadow could result in the type of primal hatred and aggression

Trait typology

The thinking-extroverted type

Adler

Focused on early social experiences

Ruling type (dominant) – type of person who proceeds for his or her own gain without consideration of others

Erikson

Three unsuccessfully resolved psychosocial stages may result in an individual who is angry, hostile, and HATEFUL

Erikson stages of psychosocial development

LOVE is the result of healthy, normal development

SHAVER looked at attachment learned during childhood to account for differences in quality of adult relationships

The nature of one’s childhood attachment relationship is reflected to some extent in later romantic relationships

There are 3 romantic attachment styles

SECURE LOVERS

AVOIDANT LOVERS

ANXIOUS-AMBIVALENT LOVERS

HATRED AS A TRAIT

Cattell, using factor analysis isolated source traits that, if manifest to an extreme degree, seem to characterize a killer

Low on factor A are aloof and critical

Low on factor C are emotionally unstable

High on factor E are dominant and aggressive

Low on factor I are tough-minded

High on factor L are suspicious

Eysenck - personality dimension most relevant to HATE is psychoticism

High: impulsive, cruel, tough-minded, and antisocial

Big 5

Agreeableness: Low

Conscientiousness: Low

Neuroticism: High

Is there a relationship between personality and loneliness?

Lonely people, in trait terms, may be very low on extroversion and somewhat low on agreeableness and emotional stability

People high on both masculine and feminine traits seem to be the least lonely

Loneliness is associated with both psychosocial problems and instrumental problems

Loneliness occurs when there is a mismatch between a person’s actual relationships and needed relationships

COGNITIVE APPROACH

Emphasize the manner in which a person interprets his or her relationships and experiences that determines his or her actions

Hostility may result when an individual’s idea of others is not supported by experience (Kelly)

Violent criminals are more likely to perceive events as threatening and to see other people as having hostile intentions

Extreme hostility and hatred result from the individual’s misinterpretation of situations, frequently attributing malevolent intentions to events and people that are actually benign

Cognitive approach to LOVE tries to classify the different types of LOVING and distinguish our passions from out thoughts

LOVE does not fit a simple classification scheme, but we do know that our thoughts are very much involved with our feelings.

There are many types of LOVE because there are so many ways we reflect and interpret our drives, motivations, and interpersonal relationships

LEARNING THEORY

Skinner held that we gain little by arguing that someone has hatred. Instead, we should simply note if and when someone actually exhibits hatred.

Aggression is acquired through the same mechanisms as all behavior

Classic theory states that HATEFUL emotions are conditioned responses

Operant learning theory emphasizes the role of reinforcements and punishments in shaping learned aggressiveness

Social learning theory incorporates that the HATEFUL behavior of others is modeled, observed, imitated, and reinforced

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Within the boundaries of the US, cultural differences have been found to predict differential levels of hostility

North vs South

High rates of homicide in the south seems to be due to a culture of honor that advocates violent responses to perceived insults

Have right rates of masculine risk-taking

Just as cultural context influences aggressive tendencies, there are cultural differences in the experience and expectations for LOVE

Many cultures marriages are arranged with economic, religious, and social factors playing the key role

A study looked at 80 married Mexican American and European American volunteers

Found that practical attitudes about LOVE and less idealism about sex were related to level of acculturation in the Mexican American group

Passionate LOVE was correlated with marital satisfaction for both groups

Other studies have found that members of individualistic cultures tend place more emphasis on romance and personal fulfillment than members of collectivist cultures