Personality and Disorders Flashcards

Personality (Chapter 13)

• Personality Defined: An individual's distinct and relatively enduring pattern of thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors.
• Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
  • Involves mapping the id, the ego, and the superego.
  • Core Assumption: Repression - The unconscious process of blocking out distressing thoughts or memories.
• Id, Ego, and Superego:
  • The id is the inherited, primitive part of the personality (the “demon”).
  • The ego is who you are, or self (you).
  • The superego is governed by morals and societal compasses (the “angel”).
• Freudian Defense Mechanisms: Defense mechanisms are used to protect the ego from anxiety or discomfort.
  • Repression: Keeps unacceptable impulses out of conscious awareness.
  • Regression: Reverts to earlier developmental stages.
  • Displacement: Redirects emotions onto a safer target.
  • Sublimation: Channels unacceptable impulses into socially acceptable behaviors.
  • Reaction Formation: Acts in the opposite way of an unacceptable impulse.
  • Projection: Attributes unacceptable traits to others.
  • Rationalization: Provides logical excuses for unacceptable actions.
• Criticisms of Psychoanalytic Theory:
  • Unscientific.
  • Research fails to support many of its propositions.
  • Portrait of human nature is too bleak.
  • Psychoanalysis does not appear to be effective as a therapy.
• Humanistic Approach to Personality:
  • Emphasizes an individual's innate goodness, potential for growth, and self-actualization.
  • Self-actualization and its role in humanistic models:

Self-Concept

• A person's explicit knowledge of his or her own behaviors, traits, and other personal characteristics. It is an organized body of knowledge that develops from social experiences and has a profound effect on a person's behavior throughout life.
• Carl Rogers Model & Conditions of Worth:
  • Unconditional Positive Regard: The acceptance and love one receives from significant others is unqualified.
  • Conditional Positive Regard: The acceptance and love one receives from significant others is contingent upon one's behavior.
• Criticisms of Humanistic Approaches:
  • For taking people's self-report statements at face value.
  • For being too optimistic about human nature and ignoring human capacity for evil.

Behavioral and Social Learning Theories

• Core Assumptions: Behaviors are learned through interaction with the environment.
  • Behavioral theory emphasizes direct reinforcement and punishment.
  • Social learning theory adds observation and imitation as key mechanisms.
• Julian Rotter's Concept of Locus of Control: A person's perception of the extent to which he/she controls what happens to him/her.
  • External Locus of Control: The perception that chance or external forces beyond your control determine your fate.
  • Internal Locus of Control: The perception that you control your own fate.
• Criticisms of Behavioral and Social Learning Approaches:
  • Overemphasizing environmental factors and neglecting individual differences.
  • Focusing too much on observable behaviors and ignoring internal processes.
  • Potentially leading to extrinsic motivation and a lack of autonomy.

Trait Models

• Suggest that personality can be understood by identifying and measuring individuals' stable characteristics or traits.
• Big Five:
  • Openness to experience
  • Conscientiousness
  • Agreeableness
  • Extraversion
  • Neuroticism
• Criticisms of Trait Models:
  • Limited explanatory power regarding personality development.
  • The potential for behavior to vary significantly across situations.

Personality Assessment

• Structured Personality Tests:
  • MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory): A large scale test designed to measure a multitude of psychological disorders and personality traits
• Projective Tests:
  • Rorschach inkblot test: A test in which individual interpretations of the meaning of a set of unstructured inkblots are analyzed to identify a respondents inner feelings and interpret his or her personality structure
  • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
• Common Pitfalls in Personality Assessment:
  • Some tests have weak scientific support, reliability, and validity.
  • Illusory correlations can lead clinicians to perceive connections between projective test responses and other characteristics.

Psychological Disorders (Chapter 14)

• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5): A classification system that describes the features used to diagnose each recognized mental disorder and indicates how that disorder can be distinguished.
• Mental Disorder Defined: A persistent disturbance or dysfunction in behavior, thoughts, or emotions that causes significant distress or impairment.
• Anxiety Disorders:
  • Most anxieties are transient and can be adaptive.
  • Yet they can spin out of control and become excessive and inappropriate.
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) vs. Phobic Disorders vs. Panic Disorder:
  • GAD involves persistent, excessive worry about various issues.
  • Phobias are characterized by an intense and irrational fear of specific objects or situations.
  • Panic disorder involves recurring panic attacks, sudden episodes of intense fear and physical symptoms.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD):
  • Marked by obsessions—persistent ideas, thoughts, or impulses that are unwanted and inappropriate and cause marked distress.
  • This distress is relieved by compulsions—repetitive behaviors or mental acts.
• Specific Phobias vs. Social Phobia:
  • Specific phobias are characterized by intense, irrational fear of specific objects or situations (like heights, animals, or blood).
  • Social phobia, on the other hand, involves a fear of social situations and the potential for being scrutinized or negatively judged by others.
• Agoraphobia: Specific phobia involving fear of public places.
• Characteristics of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD):
  • Disorder in which repetitive, intrusive thoughts and ritualistic behaviors designed to fend off those thoughts interfere with an individual’s functioning.
• Characteristics of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD):
  • Marked emotional disturbance after experiencing or witnessing a severely stressful event
  • Symptoms Include:
    • Flashbacks and recurrent dreams
    • Avoiding reminders of the trauma
    • Increased physiological arousal
• Major Depressive Disorder:
  • Characterized by a severely depressed mood and/or inability to experience pleasure that lasts 2 or more weeks and is accompanied by feelings of worthlessness, lethargy, and sleep and appetite disturbance.
• Bipolar Disorder:
  • Characterized by both depressive and manic episodes and it is different from depression because it (primarily involves persistent low mood and loss of interest without the extreme highs of mania
• Schizophrenia and Its Symptoms:
  • Is a severe disorder of thought and emotion associated with a loss of contact with reality
  • Symptoms:
    • Delusions: Strongly held, fixed beliefs with no basis in reality (a psychotic symptom)
    • Hallucinations: Sensory perceptions in the absence of external stimuli
    • Disorganized speech (word salad) and behavior (echolalia, catatonia)
    • Grossly disorganized behavior and catatonia
• Delusion vs. Hallucination:
  • Delusion: A false belief
  • Hallucination: Sensory perceptions
• Central Features of Personality Disorders:
  • Borderline: Instability in one's self-image, mood, and social relationships and lack of clear identity
  • Psychopathic: Condition marked by superficial charm, dishonesty, manipulativeness, self-centeredness, and risk-taking
• Dissociative Disorders:
  • Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder: Condition marked by episodes of depersonalization, derealization, or both
  • Dissociative Amnesia: Inability to recall important personal information- most often related to a stressful experience - that can't be explained by ordinary forgetfulness
  • Dissociative Fugue: Sudden, unexpected travel away from home or workplace, accompanied by amnesia for significant life events
  • Dissociative Identity Disorder: Condition characterized by the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states that take control of the person's behavior
• Disorders of Childhood and Adolescence:
  • Autism Spectrum Disorder: A condition beginning in early childhood in which a person shows persistent communication deficits as well as restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviors, interest, or activities
  • Asperger's Disorder: Less severe form of autism
  • Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A persistent pattern of severe problems with inattention and/or hyperactivity or impulsiveness that cause significant impairments in functioning
  • Conduct Disorder: A mental health condition characterized by a repetitive and persistent pattern of antisocial and aggressive behaviors in children and adolescents
• Facts about Suicide:
  • Major depression and bipolar disorder associated with higher risk of suicide than most disorders
  • More than 40,000 people commit suicide in the United States each
    year (10th leading cause of death)