Ch 14. Personality Processes

Question 1

Stimuli that occur close together in time will come to elicit the same response.

Behaviors followed by pleasant outcomes tend to be repeated; behaviors followed by unpleasant outcomes tend to be dropped.

• Explain personality in terms of the learning process
• Implies everyone should behave the same in the same environment or situation

Answer 1

LEARNING-BASED APPROACHES

Question 2

the change of behavior as a result or function of experience

Answer 2

Learning

Question 3

STUDY OF HOW A PERSON’S BEHAVIOR IS A DIRECT
RESULT OF HIS ENVIRONMENT, PARTICULARLY THE REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS THAT THE ENVIRONMENT CONTAINS

Answer 3

BEHAVIORISM

Question 4

• People should be studied from the outside.
• Personality is the sum of everything a person does.
• Belief that the causes of behavior can be directly observed
• Goal: functional analysis
• Everything a person does and is, is learned through experience.

Answer 4

beliefs of behaviourism

Question 5

a decrease in responsiveness with each repeated exposure to something

Answer 5

HABITUATION (behaviourism)

Question 6

a kind of learning in which an unconditioned response that is naturally elicited by one stimulus becomes elicited also by a new, conditioned stimulus

Answer 6

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING (behaviourism)

Question 7

nothing one does really matter. happen when events seem to happen randomly and nothing can be predicted, which causes depression (opposite of positive psychology)

Answer 7

learned helplessness (behaviourism)

Question 8

the process of learning in which an organisms behaviour is shaped by the effect of the behaviour in the environment (cat in the box)

positive/negative reinforcement and
positive/negative punishment

Answer 8

OPERANT CONDITIONING (behaviourism)

Question 9

classical conditioning is more passive and responsive learning whereas

Answer 9

operant conditioning is focused on reinforcement/punishment focused

Question 10

shaping

Answer 10

method used to teach or modify behavior by reinforcing successive approximations of the desired behavior.

Question 11

• Ignores thinking, motivation, and emotion
• Primarily based on animal research
• Ignores the social dimension of learning
• Organisms are treated as essentially passive

Answer 11

Shortcomings of Behaviourism (social-learning theory)

Question 12

the expectation that one can accomplish something successfully

• affects persistence
• influenced by the self-concept
• how to change behaviour
• influences motivation/performance

Answer 12

SELF-EFFICACY (social-learning theory)

Goal of Psychotherapy

Question 13

• Humans learn nearly everything by observation.
• Bobo doll studies: aggressive behavior increases with modeling, especially when model is reinforced
• Positive behaviors can also be learned from observation.

Answer 13

Observational Learning (social learning theory)

Question 14

drive behaviour by influencing what you attend to, think about, and do.

Answer 14

Goals (motivation)

Question 15

short-term goals will help organize and support the long-term goals

Question 16

unique goals to the individual that pursue them

Answer 16

Idiographic Goals

1. Current concerns: ongoing motivation that persist in the mind until the goal is either attained or abandoned
2. Personal Projects: the efforts put into goals. What people actually do to attain their goals
3. Personal Strivings: long-term goals that can organize broad areas of life; people can have strivings that are inconsistent with each other

Question 17

• Conscious at least some of the time
• Describe thoughts and behaviors aimed at fairly specific outcomes
• Can change over time
• Assumed to function independently
• limitation: goals are not coherently organized

Answer 17

Properties of idiographic goals

Question 18

relatively small number of essential motivations that almost everyone pursues (can help organize Idiographic goals)

Answer 18

Nomothetic Goals

Question 19

1. enjoyment
2. self-assertion
3. esteem
4. interpersonal success
5. avoidance of negative affects

Answer 19

Emmon’s Five (nomothetic goals)

Question 20

what two things an nomothetic goals be boiled down to?

Answer 20

work
social interaction

Question 21

Judgment goals: focus on achieving a specific outcome or result.

Answer 21

Development goals: emphasize personal growth, learning, and improvement. These goals focus on acquiring new skills, expanding knowledge, and developing competencies.

Question 22

Entity Theory: individuals believe that intelligence, abilities, and skills are fixed and inherent traits.

Answer 22

Incremental Theory: individuals believe that intelligence, abilities, and skills can be developed and improved over time through effort, learning, and practice.

Question 23

a sequence of activities that progress toward a goal

Answer 23

strategies

Question 24

assumes the worst will happen and uses that lens to develop goals and strategies. finds relief when the worst situation doesn’t happen.

Answer 24

Defensive pessimism (opposite of optimism)

Question 25

A type of procedural knowledge that cannot be learned or fully expressed through words,
but only through action and experience

Answer 25

EMOTION

Question 26

1. appraisal
2. physical responses
3. facial expressions
4. nonverbal behaviour
5. motives

Answer 26

Basic stages of emotional experience (possible sources: immediate stimuli, classical conditioning, memories, or thoughts)

Question 27

happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust

Answer 27

Core emotions

Question 28

• people differ in their desire to feel certain emotions
• some people experience emotion more strongly than others
• higher rates of change of emotion in certain people
• emotional intelligence: cognitive control of own emotions, being able to accurately perceive emotions
• alexithymia: very little emotional awareness, can’t express emotions, and can’t feel emotions

Answer 28

individual differences in emotional life

Question 29

The most important aspect of many systems of personality and cognition is their interaction.

IF - THEN contingencies make up a person’s personality

Behavioral Signature

Answer 29

cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS)

Question 30

Personality emerges from mental representations of BEATS that are relevant to important goals.

People have basic needs that combine to produce emergent needs, from which the final need for self-coherence or meaning in life emerges.

Basic Needs: Trust, Control, Self-esteem

Predictability, competence, and acceptance which leads to - self coherence

Answer 30

BELIEFS, EMOTIONS, AND ACTION TENDENCIES (BEATS)

Question 31

• Personality is something a person does.
• Includes thinking, wanting, and feeling
• Also includes the personality processes of learning, motivation, and emotion

Answer 31

PERSONALITY AS A VERB