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1
Q

Personality

A

-An individual’s unique pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that persist over time and across situations

2
Q

Sigmund Freud

A
  • Father of psychoanalysis
  • Started as a medical doctor
    • Had patients with physical ailments he could not find a physical cause for
    • Maybe physical problems= manifestation of unaware occurrences
    • Leads to study of the unconscious mind
3
Q

Unconscious mind

A
  • Reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories
    • Higher mind= tip of iceberg= conscious
      • Thoughts we are aware of
    • Iceberg under water= unconscious mind
      • Sexual urges, largest driving factor
4
Q

Methods of Psychoanalysis

A
  • Free association
  • Hypnosis
  • Dream Analysis
5
Q

Free association

A
  • Individual freely responds to stimuli

- 1st thing that comes to mind w/ word or picture

6
Q

Hypnosis

A
  • Way to get unconscious mind to forefront

- Doesn’t work

7
Q

Dream analysis

A
  • Best method

- Have someone report dream and interpret them

8
Q

Personality Structures

A
  • Concept about different elements involved in personality

- Id, Ego, Superego

9
Q

Id

A
  • Part of mind, purely unconscious
  • Selfish
  • Driven by whatever happens in the present (Pleasure principle)
  • Motivated by aggressive, carnal tendencies
  • Part of personality that wants what it wants now (present oriented)
  • Impulsive (doesn’t think about consequences)
  • Truest self is what the Id wants
    • Most people= Id driven
10
Q

Ego

A
  • Mediator
    • Contemplates what the Id wants, takes input from the superego, and makes a decision that is best for the real world
  • Operates on the reality principle
    • We live in the real word= consequences
    • Compromises (is there a way I can act this out?)
11
Q

Superego

A
  • Ideal principle
  • All internalized values and ideals (uptight)
    • Sense of pride when we do what is right
  • Doesn’t listen to Id (always in conflict)
12
Q

Id, ego, and superego at work

A
  • At work all the time
  • Ego= under constant stress (taking both sides)
    • All work done unconsciously
    • Decision= conscious
  • Some people= more id driven, superego driven, or balanced (ego)
13
Q

Fixation

A
  • Experiences in each psychosexual stage shape development (determine adulthood)
    • Too much/too little gratification at a certain stage= some sexual energy becomes tied in that stage
  • Def: Partial or complete halt in the individual’s psychosexual development
14
Q

Oral Stage

A
  • Birth–>18 months
  • Pleasure comes from sucking, biting, chewing, swallowing
    • Too much: overly optimistic, gullible, dependent adults
    • Too little: pessimistic, sarcastic, argumentative, hostile adults
15
Q

Anal Stage

A
  • 18 months–> 3.5 years
  • Primary source of sexual pleasure shifts from mouth to anus
  • Toilet training occurs
    • Too strict= anal retentive
    • Obstinate, stingy, excessively orderly
16
Q

Phallic Stage

A
  • After age 3
  • Discovers genitals
  • Develop a preference for parent of opposite sex, jealous of same sex parent (Oedipus/Electra complex)
    • Resolved by identifying w/ same sex parent
      • Living through their parent and adopting their values
  • Fixation: vanity, egotism or low self-esteem, shyness, worthlessness
17
Q

Phallic Stage Problems

A
  • Castration anxiety= fear of father’s actions for desiring mother
  • Penis envy= feeling of inferiority, anger at mother for her apparent cassation due to desiring father
18
Q

Latency Period

A
  • Appears to have no interest in opposite sex
  • Ages 5/6–> 12/13
  • Boys hang with boys, girls with girls
19
Q

Genital Stage

A
  • At puberty
  • Sexual impulses reawaken
  • Gratification–> mature sexuality, sense of responsibility, caring for others
  • How to relate to others, caring, empathy
20
Q

Critics of Freud

A
  • Some say he is too male-centric
    • Developed theory with men in mind, added women as afterthought
  • Questions whether genders developed along same lines
21
Q

Defense Mechanism

A
  • How ego protects against anxiety
  • Anxiety is the product of the inner war between id and superego
  • Allow the ego to reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality
22
Q

Repression

A
  • Banishes troublesome things from consciousness

- Repressed things seep out in dream symbols and slip of the tongue

23
Q

Regression

A

-Retreats to an earlier, more infantile stage of development
Ex: 1st day of college–> want mom

24
Q

Reaction Formation

A
  • Ego unconsciously switches impulses into their opposites
  • People may express feelings that are opposite of their anxiety- arousing unconscious feelings
  • Ex: I hate him–> I love him
25
Q

Stockholm Syndrome

A
  • Phenomenon where kidnapped victim or hostage “falls in love” with the feared and hated person who has complete power over them
  • Ex of Reaction formation
26
Q

Projection

A
  • Disguises threatening impulses by attributing them to others
  • Ex: Projecting “he doesn’t trust me” to “I don’t trust him”
27
Q

Rationalization

A
  • Unconsciously generate self-justifying explanations to hide from ourselves the real reasons for our actions
  • Ex: alcoholics say they drink w/ friends to be sociable
28
Q

Displacement

A
  • Diverts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable/ less threatening object or person, redirecting anger to safer outlet
  • Ex: angry at parent, take it out on sibling
29
Q

Denial

A
  • People refuse to believe or perceive painful realities

- Ex: denying evidence that spouse is cheating on you

30
Q

NeoFreudians (How it agreed with Freud)

A
  • Psychodynamic got it’s start w/ this movement
  • Accepted Freud’s basic ideas
  • Id, ego, superego= at work
  • Unconscious (anxiety, defense mechanisms)
  • Personality shaped by childhood
31
Q

NeoFreudians (How they differed from Freud)

A
  • Emphasis on conscious mind’s role in interpreting experience and in coping with the environment
  • Doubted that sex and aggression were all consuming motivation (too negative/ limiting)
32
Q

Alfred Adler

A
  • Childhood social tensions are crucial for personality formation
  • Inferiority complex: behavior driven by efforts to conquer childhood feelings of inferiority
    • Strive for superiority and power
  • Neofreudian
33
Q

Karen Horney

A
  • Emphasized childhood social tensions
  • Challenged Freud on the idea that women have weak superegos and suffer from penis envy (Freud= too male-centric)
    • Men have “womb envy”
  • Real self vs ideal self
    • Real personality= contact of the two
  • Created textbook: Feminine Psychology
  • Neofreudian
34
Q

Carl Jung

A
  • Turned on Freud (disciple turned decenter)
  • Less emphasis on social influences
    • Unconscious exerts a powerful influence
  • Collective Unconscious: Shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history
    • Explains why some themes (archetypes) are universal (Mother earth)
  • Neofreudian and Trait Theorist
  • Personality types:
    • Extraversion vs Introversion
    • Sensing or intuition
    • Thinking or feeling
    • Judging or Perceiving
35
Q

NeoFreudians/ Psychodynamic: How they assess unconscious processes

A
  • Projective tests: personality test that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics
    • Individual’s response has to be interpreted by analyst
      • individual does not know their own personality, has to be interpreted for them
    • Ex: TAT (Thematic Apperception Test)
      • Story based on what u see
      • Rorschach Inkblot Test (What do you see?)
36
Q

Humanistic Psychology

A
  • Psychological perspective
  • Potential of healthy people
  • How we meet our needs for love and acceptance
37
Q

Freud vs Humanistic Perspective

A
  • Freud focused on sick and problems
    • Humanistic disagreed (called people clients)
      • Believed in self-determination, self-realization
      • Did self-reports of who you are instead of scientific observation
38
Q

Abraham Maslow

A
  • Self-actualization: the motivation to fulfill one’s full potential
  • Studied healthy, creation people (self-actualized individual’s)
39
Q

Self-actualized people

A
  • Shared traits
    • Self-aware, self-accepting
    • Open and spontaneous
    • Loving and caring
  • Ex: Lincoln, Ghandi, Roosevelt, Jefferson
40
Q

Carl Rogers

A
  • People are inherently good
    • Like seeds
      • Need a growth promoting climate to grow well and good
41
Q

Growth Promoting Climate is…

A
  • Genuine
  • Accepting
  • Empathetic
42
Q

Genuine

A
  • Nurtures growth by:
    • Open w/ feelings
    • Transparent
    • Self-disclosing
    • Drops the façade
43
Q

Acceptance

A
  • We nurture growth by:
    • Offering unconditional positive regard
      • An attitude of total acceptance toward another person (acknowledging persons worth and value)
      • Found in marriage, intimate friendships, close families
44
Q

Empathy

A
  • We nurture growth by:

- Share and mirror another’s feelings and reflect our meanings

45
Q

Self-Concept

A
  • All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question “Who am I”
    • Central feature of personality in Humanistic Perspective
    • Positive or negative self concept can lead to positive or negative world view respectively
46
Q

Humanistic Perspective Assessments

A
  • Self-concept questionnaires
    • Ideal vs Real self
  • Interviews and conversations are better indicators
    • Standardized questionnaires are depersonalizing
47
Q

Trait

A

-Characteristic pattern of behavior, or a disposition to feel and act

48
Q

Allport

A
  • Anti-psychoanalysis (Trait theorist)
  • Description over explanation
  • Counter trait-words in dictionary (over 18,000)
    • Wanted to find a way to talk about personality in a meaningful way (Factor Analysis)
49
Q

Factor Analysis

A
  • A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items on a test
  • Condenses clusters into basic, identifiable traits
50
Q

Hans and Sybil Eysenck

A
  • Variation can be reduced to 2-3 dimensions
  • Believed dimensions to be genetically influenced
  • Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
51
Q

MBTI

A
  • Based off Jung’s types
  • Isabel Briggs Myers and Kathleen Briggs
  • 4 Dichotomies
  • Not used as a research instrument
    • Counseling, leadership training, team development
52
Q

MMPI

A
  • Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory
  • Assess abnormal personality tendencies rather than normal personality traits
    • Good way of developing a personal inventory
  • Created by Starke Hathaway
  • Most widely used
  • Empirically derived
    • Large pool of items, selected those which different in diagnostic groups
    • Assessed 10 clinical scales (depressive tendencies, masculine/feminine etc)
  • True or false questions
  • Used in court cases and government jobs
53
Q

MMPI’s Objectivity

A
  • Scoring
  • Lie scales
    • Measures of way rest is instructed to incorporate people who lie
      • Ex: I never lie (true or false) answer= meaningless
    • Questions have difficult wording
54
Q

McCrae and Costa

A

The Big 5

  1. Conscientious (organized?)
  2. Agreeableness
  3. Neuroticism (calm or no)
  4. Open to experience (open or close minded)
  5. Extraversion (introvert or extrovert)
    - Shows where we fall on 5 dimensions
    • Best approximation of basic trait dimensions
55
Q

Stability of the Big Five

A
  • Quite stable through adulthood and universal
  • CA rise a bit during early/ middle adulthood (C- 20s, A 30-60s)
  • NOE lowers
56
Q

Biology and Personality

A
  • Extraverts seek stimulation because their normal brain arousal is relatively low
    • PET scan: frontal lobe (behavior inhibition)= les active in Extraverts than introverts
    • Dopamine and its related neural activity= higher in Extraverts
  • Genes define our personality
    • Shyness and inhibition in children= autonomic NS reactivity
      • Respond to stress w/ greater anxiety and inhibition
57
Q

Personality Inventories

A
  • Longer questionnaires that cover a wide range of feelings and behaviors
  • Assess several traits and once
  • Ex: MMPI
  • Scored objectively (doesn’t guarantee validity)
    • Lie scales
58
Q

How Heritable are the Big 5?

A
  • Extent to which individual differences attributed to genes
  • Varies with the diversity of people studied
    • 50% in each dimension
  • Genetic influences are similar in different nations
  • Many genes combine to influence traits
59
Q

Do the Big 5 Predict our actual behavior?

A
  • Yes
  • Examples:
    • Shy introverts are more likely than extroverts to prefer communicating by email than face to face
    • Conscientious people earn higher high school and university grades
60
Q

Person-Situation Controversy

A
  • Our behavior is influenced by the interaction of our inner disposition with our environment
  • Look for persistent traits across time and situations
  • Traits stabilize as we get older
  • Interests, careers, and relationships may change
  • Traits= socially significant (influence health, thinking, job performance)
  • Behavior: WE DO NOT ACT WITH PREDICABLE CONSISTENCY
    • Mischel: college students conscientiousness= varied on occasion
  • Average happiness, outgoingness, or carelessness over many situations= predictable (Mehl: Extraverts talk more)
61
Q

Genetically influenced personality traits

A
  • Music preferences
  • Bedroom and office cleanliness
  • Personal websites/ online profiles
  • Electronic communication
62
Q

Behavior and Social Cues

A
  • Social cues needed in unfamiliar situations to know how to act
  • Informal situations: behavior is consistent
63
Q

Psychosexual Stages

A
  • The childhood stages of development
    • Oral
    • Anal
    • Phallic
    • Latency
    • Genital
  • During which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
64
Q

Oedipus Complex

A

-According to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father

65
Q

Identification

A

-The process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos

66
Q

Psychodynamic Theories

A
  • Modern-day approaches that view personality as a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences
  • Same as NeoFreudian psych
67
Q

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A

-A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up and ambitious scenes

68
Q

Rorschach Inkblot Test

A
  • The most widely used projective test
  • A set of 10 inkblots designed by Hermann Rorschach
  • Seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots
69
Q

False Consensus Effect

A

-The tendency to over-estimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and our behaviors

70
Q

Terror-Management Theory

A
  • A theory of death-related anxiety

- Explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death

71
Q

Empirically Derived Test

A
  • A test (Such as MMPI)

- Developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups

72
Q

Social Cognitive Perspective

A
  • Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social (situational) context
  • Personality= product of biopsychosocial system
73
Q

Reciprocal Determinism

A
  • The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment
  • Ex: TV viewing habits (past behavior) influences viewing preferences (internal factor), which influences how TV (environmental factors) affect current behavior
74
Q

Reciprocal Determinism examples

A
  1. Different people choose different environments
    - Choose dif activities based on interests, they shape u
  2. Our personalities shape how we interpret and react to events
    - How we deal with things
  3. Our personalities help create situations to which we react
    - Self-fulfilling prophecy–> Expectations make things come true
75
Q

Biopsychosocial Approach in Personality

A
  • Biology:
    • Genetically determined temperament
    • Autonomic NS reactivity
    • Brain activity
  • Psychology:
    • Learned responses
    • Unconscious thought processes
    • Expectations and Interpretations
  • Social-Cultural:
    • Childhood experiences
    • Influence of the situation
    • Cultural expectations
  • Shows that people= complex systems
    • Personality should reflect this
76
Q

Optimism vs Pessimism

A
  • Can be a way to assess how helpless or effective you feel
  • Optimism= linked to higher health
  • ties into our locus of control
77
Q

Excessive Optimism

A
  1. Blinds us to risks
    -Especially adolescents (false sense of invincibility)
    -Ex: texting and driving (accident won’t happen to me)
  2. Blind to incompetence
    -In order to judge properly our performance on a task, we need to be competent in it
    Ex: students who score the worst on tests believed they scored in the top half
    -Lack of competence-> inability to judge properly what we don’t know
    -Why evaluation from others= crucial
78
Q

Self-Control

A
  • The ability to control impulses and delay gratification
  • Marshmallow test
  • As a child predicts:
    • Good social adjustment
    • Better grades
    • Social success
79
Q

Benefits of Personal Control

A

-Under conditions of personal freedom and empowerment, people thrive
Examples:
-Ability to personalize workspace–> higher engagement in work
-Citizens of democracies–> happier
-Prisoners allowed to move furniture–> higher morale
-Reason why tests have “pick 5 out of 10”
-Do better because in control

80
Q

Too Much Control

A
  • Sometimes we have too many options (excess of freedom)
    • Can be overwhelming/ think too much about finding an answer
  • Ex: people= more likely to buy jam when given 6 choices instead of 30
81
Q

Self

A
  • In contemporary psych, assumed to be the center of personality
  • The organizer of thoughts, feelings, and actions
82
Q

Hazel Markus & Possible Selves

A
  • The ideal selves we would like to become, we could become, and are afraid of becoming
  • Give us:
    • Specific goals
    • Motivation and energy
    • Dreams can lead to achievement
83
Q

Spotlight Effect

A

-Thomas Gilovich
-Over-estimating others’ noticing and evaluating of our appearance, performance, and blunders
-Experiment:
-Student wore embarrassing shirt in front of peers, estimated 50% of people would notice
-23% noticed
Makes us overestimate when people notice:
-appearance
-nerves, irritation, attraction
-Variability
-Noticeable blunder

84
Q

Self-Esteem

A
  • One’s feeling of high or low self-worth
  • Types:
    • Defensive
    • Secure
85
Q

Outcomes of High Self-Esteem

A
  • Better sleep
  • Conform less
  • Persevere
  • Less shy, anxious, lonely
  • Happier
  • Predicts achievement
    • Employment, salary, job satisfaction
86
Q

Experimentation with Self-Esteem

A
  • Deflate self-image, people become critical of others

- Heightened racial prejudice

87
Q

Self-Serving Bias

A
  • Readiness to perceive oneself favorably
  • Success is due to internal factors, failure is due to external factors
  • Ex: People accept more responsibility for good deeds than bad
    • Professors see themselves as better than average (90%)
88
Q

Low Self-Esteem with a Self-Serving Bias

A
  • Self-criticism:
  • Elicits reassurance
  • Preps for failure
  • Helps us learn from our mistakes
  • Pertains to old self
89
Q

Defensive Self-Esteem

A
  • Fragile
  • Failures and criticisms feel threatening
  • Linked with aggression and antisocial behavior
90
Q

Secure Self-Esteem

A
  • Studier
  • Doesn’t rely on external evaluations
  • Achieved by looking beyond the self
91
Q

Behavioral Approach

A
  • In personality theory

- Perspective focuses on the effects of learning on our personality development

92
Q

Positive Pyschology

A
  • The scientific study of optimal human functioning

- Aims to discover and promote strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive

93
Q

Self-Efficacy

A

-One’s sense of competence and effectiveness

94
Q

Narcissism

A

-Excessive self-love and self-absorption

95
Q

Individualism

A
  • Giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals

- Defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications

96
Q

Collectivism

A

-Giving priority to the goals of one’s group (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly

97
Q

Unconscious Mind Includes

A
  • Seething passions and repressive censoring
  • Shemas (automatically control our perceptions and interpretations)
  • Priming of stimuli unconsciously
  • Right hemi activity that enables left hand to carry out instruction
  • Implicit memories, even in people with amnesia
  • Emotions that activate instantly
  • Self-concept and stereotypes that influence the way we see ourselves