Personality

Quizlet: http://quizlet.com/58344887/flashcards

personality= the characteristic and enduring pattern of thinking, feeling, acting

• distinguishes us from other individuals and is relatively unchanging

psychodynamic perspective: Sigmund Freud

• treated patients who suffered from nervous disorders, symptoms could not be explained with physical/medical terms

comprehensive theory of personality: unconscious mind, psychosexual stages, defense mechanisms

• unconscious mind: vast reservoir of unacceptable thoughts, feelings, urges
• psychoanalytic theory: attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts
• psychoanalysis= process to expose and relieve these inner tensions
• free association: talk about whatever, in order to tap unconscious
• the mind is like an iceberg: conscious mind is just a tiny part, majority of consciousness lies beneath the surface
• unconscious represses hidden thoughts and wishes
• Freudian slip= accidental slips of tongue motivated by unconscious desires
• dream analysis: "dreams are the royal road to the unconscious"
• manifest content: storyline that you can remember (censored version)
• latent content: subtle satisfaction of desires in dreams, suppressed from memory
• personality structure: personality develops through conflict between biological impulses (id) and social restraints (superego)
• id: unconscious strives to satisfy sex and aggressive drives
• operates on pleasure principle--demanding immediate gratification
• ego: executive--mediates demand of id and superego
• operates on reality principle--what makes sense
• superego: standards for judgement and internalized societal values, strives for perfection, resulting in pride or guilt

Freud was mostly wrong, but he was right in his theory of decision-making-- we often experience conflicts between pleasure and morality/what is socially acceptable.

Personality Development

Freud believed that personality was formed during childhood stages called psychosexual stages

• during these stages, the id focuses on pleasure-sensitive areas of the body called erogenous zones
• believed children were seeking sexual pleasure through these stages

1. Oral (0-18 months) pleasure centers on mouth- sucking, biting, chewing
2. Anal (18-36 months) pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination
3. Phallic (3-6 years) pleasure zone is in genitals; coping with incestous feelings
4. Latency (6-puberty) dormant sexual feelings
5. Genital (puberty+) maturation of sexual interests

• Oedipus complex: during the phallic stage, boy desires mother sexually and sees father as a rival
• castration anxiety= fear of punishment from the father
• Electra complex: girl sexually desires her father, becomes envious and wishes she had male sex organs= penis envy
• children cope with the sexual desire for their parents in a variety of ways:
• identification= identify with rival parent to form gender identity, incorporate parent’s values into their superegos
• fixation= unresolved conflicts in psychosexual stages resurface as bad behavior in adulthood
• oral fixation= overeating, smoking
• anal fixation= perfectionism, disorganization
• phallic fixation= arrogant, competitive, proud, afraid of intimacy

Defense Mechanisms= ego’s protective method of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

1. repression: gets rid of anxiety by pressing it deep down and trying to forget
2. regression: leads anxious individual to return to a more basic psychosexual stage
3. reaction formation: unconsciously switch unacceptable impulses to their opposites
4. projection: people attribute their own impulses to others
5. rationalization: self-justifying explanations hide the deeper problem
6. displacement: shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a safer outlet
7. sublimation: modifies urges into something socially acceptable

Neo-Freudians

• Alder: children struggle with insecurity, have inferiority complex and desire power
• Horney: sense of helplessness triggers desire for love, women don't actually experience penis envy

• Jung: believed in collective unconscious
• not how genetics works, but how culture works
• evaluating personality from unconscious mind is difficult: requires projective tests
• thematic apperception tests (TAT)- subject given ambiguous image, asked to make up a story; their answer reveals aspects of unconscious
• Rorschach inkblot test: identifies inner feelings
• tests lack reliability (consistency) and validity (truthfulness)

1. when evaluating same patient, different trained raters often produce completely different results
2. often diagnose incorrectly

Modern psychodynamic psychology

• some of Freud’s theories were right: much of mental life is unconscious, where we struggle with interior, childhood shapes our personalities and relationships
• yet, many of Freud’s other ideas dismissed/discredited: id, ego, superego, oral anal and phallic stages
• theories don't rely on science
• theories explain everything but predict nothing
• hinges on repression of traumatic events
• in reality, traumatic experiences are in the front of our mind, we can not repress/forget them
• things that Freud was wrong about:

1. personality develops throughout life and is not fixed in childhood
2. underemphasized peer influences- may be as powerful as parents
3. gender identity actually develops before 5-6 years of age
4. there may be other reasons for dreams besides fulfillment of unconscious desires
5. verbal slips can be explained on basis of cognitive processing
6. “supressed sexuality=psychological disorders” yet sexual freedom has increased and psychological disorder rates are the same
7. Freud misinterpreted stories of sexual abuse as the patient’s own repressed childhood wishes (sexual abuse was an unheard of, foreign concept in his time)
8. not everyone is so psychologically disturbed-- all his theories were based off of case studies of the most psychologically disturbed people in Europe

His contributions:

• drew attention to unconscious mind- modern research shows existence of non-conscious processing
• defense mechanisms- our tendency to protect our self-esteem is real
• tension between biological impulses and social approval is common

(note: Freud did a LOT of cocaine--he thought it increased his brain power)

Humanistic Perspective

1960’s--Freud’s popularity is waning, new wave of psychology and the birth of behaviorism

Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers: didn’t focus on sick, disordered people

• examined happy, healthy people and tried to figure out what they were doing right

Self-Actualizing Person

• Maslow designed a hierarchy of needs: we must satisfy the lower, basic levels before we can satisfy the upper ones
• to create the hierarchy, he studied successful, creative people from history and modern times, compiled list of their qualities
• biased theory: he chose who looked happy

• self-actualization: fulfilling your potential as a human being, changing the world
• Traits of a Self-Actualized Person:

1. self-aware, self-accepting
2. open, spontaneous, loving and caring
3. not paralyzed by other’s opinions
4. focused energy on mission in life
5. a few deep relationships
6. moved by some spiritual or personal “peak moment” that surpassed ordinary conciousness

• Requirements for growth into a self-actualized person:

1. genuineness- open with feelings, transparent
2. acceptance- unconditional positive regard: acceptance of others, despite their failings or flaws
3. empathy- sharing and mirroring feelings of others

• assessing self: asked people to write about real self and ideal self
• if two are close, person has a positive self-concept

Effects of the Humanistic Perspective

1. pervasive impact on counseling, education, child-rearing
2. having a positive self-concept as a key to happiness--now a widely accepted idea
3. promotes western individualistic thought (self-indulgence)
4. vague, subjective, lacks scientific basis
5. turns blind eye to human capacity for evil

Exploring the Self

1. research focuses on different possible selves: what we dream/dread
2. spotlight effect: we overestimate how much people evaluate us
3. self-reference effect in recall and memory: we believe everything applies/relates to us

• benefits of self-esteem (self-worth)= better sleep, persistence, happiness
• of course, correlation does not signify causation
• members of stigmatized or low-status groups maintain self-esteem:

1. value things at which they excel
2. attribute problems to prejudice
3. compare themselves to others in their group

Self-Serving Bias= natural readiness to perceive ourselves favorably

• accept responsibility for good deeds/success, blame outside forces for failure
• most people see themselves as better than average
• self-serving bias is one of the most consistent findings in psychology  
• less common in asia, where modesty is more highly valued
• normal, healthy part of human psychology--lack of self-serving bias can actually be a sign of depression

Types of Self-Esteem

1. defensive self esteem: fragile, egotistic, focuses on sustaining self
1. failure and criticism are threatening; aggressive, antisocial behavior
2. secure self esteem: less fragile, less dependent on external factors
1. focus on things beyond themselves- relationships+changing the world

Personality

trait perspective:

Gordon Allport- thought Freud was too deep in psyche and hidden motives

• emphasized describing personality instead of trying to explain it
• classify personality into “types”
• traits= individual’s unique pattern of behavior or disposition to behave
• Myers-Briggs type indicator= personality test
• factor analysis= statistical approach used to identify clusters of related items
• Cattel used this approach to develop a 16-personality factor inventory (16FP)
• ex: basic trait-excitement= superfieical traits- impatience, irritability
• Hans and Sybil Eysenck reduced personality to 2 dimensions: introversion v. extroversion and stability v. instability

Biology of Personality

• extraverts seek arousal because normal brain arousal is low
• PET scan shows less frontal lobe activity/signs of inhibition
• genes play a role in temperament/reactivity

Personality Inventory- questions designed to gauge feelings/behaviors

• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)- originally used to identify disorders
• Empirically derived: test pool of items, select those that discriminated/distinguished between different groups

Big Five Factors: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, extraversion (CANOE)

• 50% of each trait is inherited
• common across cultures
• these traits can predict other attributes- conscientious= morning person, extraverted=night person

Evaluating the Trait Perspective

• person/situation controversy
• Walter Mischel- traits are enduring but behavior changes depending on the situation
• trait theorists argue that average behavior remains the same
• traits are socially significant
• ex: jazz, classical and blues= open and verbally intelligent
• pop, country, religious= cheerful, outgoing conscientious
• consistency of expressive style
• expressive styles of speaking and gestures demonstrate trait consistency
• inhibited people pretending to be expressive--not as expressive

Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Bandura: believes personality is the result of interaction between individual and social context
• reciprocal determinism= behavior, cognition, environment are interlocking determinants
• different people choose different environments
• our personalities shape our reactions
• our personalities create situations to which we react
• personal control: whether we control the environment or the environment controls us
• external locus of control: outside forces control our fate
• internal locus of control: we can control our own fate
• internals achieve more in school, act independently, better health, less depressed, delayed gratification, cope with stress, fewer marital problems
• learned helplessness: develops if exposed to uncontrollable bad events
• observe people interacting in simulations
• used to recruit police officers, teachers etc.
• critics argue that there is too much focus on the situation and not enough on the person

Optimism v. Pessimism

• realistic positive expectation fuels motivation and success
• overconfidence= complacency/blindness to real risks
• Positive psychology: Martin Seligman