self and personality psych

self psychology: how we perceive the world, people, and events

personality psychology: how we describe, establish the actual qualities of the self, how we determine if people can provide accurate accounts of their thought, emotions and behavior

self and identity

self

self-schema: integrated set of beliefs, memories, and generalizations about ourselves

  • processing info about ourselves activates the middle of the frontal lobes

working self-concept: immediate experience of the self in the here and now

  • accessed for particular situation

  • impacts behavior

  • emphasis on being different from others

self-esteem: affective aspect of the self, based on perception of others’ judgement of oneself, beliefs of positive/negative things about oneself

sociometer theory: SE as monitor of perceived social acceptance or rejection

  • positive correlation with low self esteem and social anxiety

  • high self esteem is associated with higher level of perceived happiness BUT doesn’t lead to successful social relationships or life success (bullies and violent individuals often have high self esteem)

narcissism:

  • narcissistic individuals are self-centered, view themselves in grandiose terms, feel entitled to special treatment, manipulative, poor relations with others, angry when challenged

  • greek myth: narcissus, a young man, rejected the love of others and fell in love with own reflection in a pond

  • increasing narcissism among American college students since 1979

self esteem…

  • tends to fall during adolescence and is at its lowest for people, especially young women, aged 18 to 22 years

  • typically increases across adulthood, peaking when people are in their 60s and falling off towards the end of life

  • is affected by social class

need for self-esteem:

  • better-than-average effect: overestimation of one’s quality and abilities relative to others, unrealistic optimism

  • self-serving bias

  • social comparisons

downward comparisons: comparing oneself to another person who is less successful on a given dimensions

temporal comparison: comparing our current self to our prior self

upward comparisons: comparing oneself to another person who is more successful on a given dimension

personality

personality: an individual’s traits, characteristics that are relatively stable over time and across circumstances

personality and behavior:

  • person/situation debate

  • situationism (mischel 1979)

  • interactionist perspective: role of interaction of personality and situation (weak and strong situations)

approaches to personality:

  • psychodynamic theory

  • humanistic approaches

  • trait approaches

  • social cognitive approaches

psychodynamic theory:

sigmund freud → theory according to which unconscious forces determine behavior

unconscious: reservoir of largely unacceptable thoughts, feelings, memories, and other information that lies beneath conscious awareness

pleasure principle: seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, libido as energy promoting this

reality principle: control of the pleasure-seeking activity because of external world’s demands

(freudian premises difficult to assess through scientific methods)

three structures of personality:

  1. ID: submerged in the unconscious, operates according to the pleasure principle

  2. Superego: internalization of societal and parental standards of conduct (ex: morality)

  3. Ego: satisfaction of the wishes of the ID adapted to the current demands of the Superego, operations according to the reality principle (mediator using defense mechanisms to deal w/ anxiety)

common defense mechanisms:

  • denial: refusing to acknowledge source of anxiety

  • repression: excluding source of anxiety from awareness

  • projection: attributing unacceptable qualities of the self to someone else

  • reaction formation: warding off an uncomfortable thought by overemphasizing its opposite

  • rationalization: creating a seemingly logical reason or excuse for behavior that might otherwise be shameful

  • displacement: shifting the attention of emotion from one object to another, easier target

  • sublimation: channeling socially unacceptable impulses into constructive, even admirable, behavior

projective measures: personality tests that examine unconscious processes by having people interpret ambiguous stimuli

  • rorschach inkblot test

  • thematic apperception test (TAT)

humanistic approaches:

  • emphasis on people’s goodness

  • ways of studying personality that emphasize self-actualization, the search for fulfillment of potential through greater self-understanding

carl rogers: introduced a person-centered approach to understanding personality and human relationships

  • conditions of worth

  • unconditional postive regard

maslow: hierarchy of needs, deficiency and growth needs

trait approaches:

description of characteristics: ways of studying personality that are based on people’s characteristics (i.e. tendencies to act in a certain way over time and across circumstances), traits exist on a ccontinuum

the big five: five basic personality traits, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism

  • extroversion

high score → outgoing and seeks excitement

low score → aloof and cautious

  • neuroticism

high score → prone to stress and worry and negative emotions

low score → emotionally stable but can take risks

  • conscientiousness

high score → organized and controlling

low score → carless and can be prone to addiction

  • agreeableness

high score → trusting and slow to anger

low score → uncooperative and hard to emphazise with others

  • openness

high score → creative and open to new experiences

low score → practical and scepitical

self-report measures: personality tests that use questionnaires to let people respond to items that reveal traits and behaviors

  • NEO personality inventory-revised assesses the Big Five Personality factors with 240 items

observational methods to assessing personality:

  • our close acquaintances may predict our behavior more accurately than we do ourselves

  • blind spots about various aspects of our personality because we want to feel good about ourselves

social cognitive approaches:

focus on how thoughts shape personality and environment

  • situations people surround themselves w/ affected by and affect their personality

  • ways of studying personality that recognize influence of how people think not passive spectators)

expectancy theory: behaviors as part of personality since result from how one thinks about

  • expectancies for reinforcement

  • values ascribed to particular reinforcers

personalities are based on locus of control (i.e. people’s perception of whether they control what happens to them, internal locus of control) or not (external locus)

reciprocal determinism: for Bandura, personality explained by the interaction of these three factors

  • person’s environment

  • person factors, which include characterisitics, self-confidence, and expectations

  • behavior itself

assessing personality in everyday life:

  • electronically activated record (EAR): people wear a device that unobtrusively tracks their real world moment-to-moment interactions, picking up snippets of conversation and other auditory information

personality and biology:

certain genes can be linked with some personality traits

ex:

  • identical twins more similar than non-identical twins in personality traits described the five-factor theory, 40-60% of personality variation as product of genetic variation)

  • novelty seeking linked to a gene associated with dopamine levels

  • genes interact w/ environment to produce general dispositions

cross-cultural findings on age-related changes in personality independent of environmental influences

major life events can lead to changes in personality