LECTURE 12

Question 1

Personality

Answer 1

An individual’s consistent patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving

Question 2

Traits

Answer 2

Relatively enduring characteristics that influence our behavior across many situations.

Question 3

Authoritarianism

Answer 3

A cluster of traits including conventionalism, superstition, toughness, and exaggerated concerns with sexuality.

Authoritarians are more likely to be prejudiced, to conform to leaders, and to display rigid behaviors.

Question 4

Individualism-collectivism

Answer 4

Individualism is the tendency to focus on oneself and one’s personal goals; collectivism is the tendency to focus on one’s relations with others.

Individualists prefer to engage in behaviors that make them stand out from others, whereas collectivists prefer to engage in behaviors that emphasize their similarity to others

Question 5

Internal versus external locus of control

Answer 5

In comparison to those with an external locus of control, people with an internal locus of control are more likely to believe that life events are due largely to their own efforts and personal characteristics.

People with higher internal locus of control are happier, less depressed, and healthier in comparison to those with an external locus of control.

Question 6

Need for achievement

Answer 6

The desire to make significant accomplishments by mastering skills or meeting high standards.

Those high in need for achievement select tasks that are not too difficult to be sure they will succeed in them.

Question 7

Need for cognition

Answer 7

The extent to which people engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities People high in the need for cognition pay more attention to arguments in ads.

Question 8

Regulatory focus

Answer 8

Refers to differences in the motivations that energize behavior, varying from a promotion orientation (seeking out new opportunities) to a prevention orientation
(avoiding negative outcomes).

People with a promotion orientation are more motivated by goals of gaining money, whereas those with prevention orientation are more concerned about losing money

Question 9

Self-consciousness

Answer 9

The tendency to introspect and examine one’s inner self and feelings.

People high in self-consciousness spend more time preparing their hair and makeup before they leave the house.

Question 10

Self-esteem

Answer 10

High self-esteem means having a positive attitude toward oneself and one’s capabilities.

High self-esteem is associated with a variety of positive psychological and health outcomes.

Question 11

Sensation seeking

Answer 11

The motivation to engage in extreme and risky behaviors.

Sensation seekers are more likely to engage in risky behaviors such as extreme and risky sports, substance abuse, unsafe sex, and crime

Question 12

Utility of self-report measures of personality depends on

Answer 12

Reliability and Construct validity.

Question 13

Hans Eysenck was particularly interested in the biological and genetic origins of personality and made
an important contribution to understanding the nature of a fundamental personality trait:

Answer 13

extraversion versus introversion. Eysenck proposed that people who are extroverted (i.e., who enjoy socializing with others) have lower levels of naturally occurring arousal than do introverts (who are less likely to enjoy being with others). Eysenck argued that extroverts have a greater desire to socialize with others to increase their arousal level, which is naturally too low, whereas introverts, who have naturally high arousal, do not desire to engage in social activities because they are overly stimulating.

Question 14

Five-Factor (Big Five) Model of Personality

Answer 14

five fundamental underlying trait dimensions that are stable across time, cross-culturally shared, and explain a substantial proportion of behavior.

-Openness to experience: “I have a vivid imagination”; “I
have a rich vocabulary”; “I have excellent ideas.” A general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure,
unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of
experience Individuals who are highly open to experience tend to have distinctive and unconventional decorations in their home. They are also likely to have
books on a wide variety of topics, a diverse music collection, and works of art on display.

-Conscientiousness: “I am always prepared”; “I am
exacting in my work”; “I follow a schedule.” A tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and
aim for achievement Individuals who are conscientious have a preference for planned rather than spontaneous behavior.

-Extraversion: “I am the life of the party”; “I feel comfortable around people”; “I talk to a lot of different people at parties.” The tendency to experience positive emotions and to seek out stimulation and the company of others. Extroverts enjoy being with people. In groups they like to talk, assert themselves, and draw attention to themselves.

-Agreeableness: “I am interested in people”; “I feel others’ emotions”; “I make people feel at ease.” A tendency to be compassionate and cooperative
rather than suspicious and antagonistic toward
others; reflects individual differences in general
concern for social harmony. Agreeable individuals value getting along with others. They are generally considerate, friendly, generous, helpful, and willing to compromise their interests with those of others.

-Neuroticism: “I am not usually relaxed”; “I
get upset easily”; “I am easily disturbed”. The tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or depression; sometimes called
“emotional instability”. Those who score high in neuroticism are more likely to interpret ordinary
situations as threatening and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They may have trouble thinking clearly, making decisions, and coping effectively with stress.

Question 15

An advantage of the five-factor approach is that it is parsimonious.

Answer 15

Rather than studying hundreds of traits, researchers can focus on only five underlying dimensions. The Big Five may also capture other dimensions that have been of interest to psychologists. For instance, the trait dimension of need for achievement relates to the Big Five variable of conscientiousness, and self-esteem relates to low neuroticism. On the other hand, the Big Five factors do not seem to capture all the important dimensions of personality. For instance, the Big Five does not capture moral behavior, although this variable is important in many theories

Question 16

The psychologist Walter Mischel (1968) reviewed the existing literature on traits and found that there was only a relatively low correlation (about r = .30) between the traits that a person expressed in one situation and those that they expressed in other situations.

Answer 16

Psychologists have proposed two possibilities for these low correlations. One possibility is that the natural tendency for people to see traits in others leads us to believe that people have stable personalities when they really do not. In short, perhaps traits are more in the heads of the people who are doing the judging than they are in the behaviors of the people being observed. The fact that people tend to use human personality traits, such as the Big Five, to judge animals in the same way that they use these traits to judge humans is consistent with this idea. And this idea also fits with research showing that people use their knowledge representation (schemas) about people to help them interpret the world around them and that these schemas color their judgments of others’ personalities

Question 17

hysteria

Answer 17

Hysteria at the time referred to a set of personality and physical symptoms that included chronic pain, fainting, seizures, and paralysis.

Charcot could find no biological reason for the symptoms. For instance, some women experienced a loss of feeling in their hands and yet not in their arms, and this seemed impossible given that the nerves in the arms are the same that are in the hands. Charcot was experimenting with the use of hypnosis, and he and Freud found that under hypnosis many of the hysterical patients reported having experienced a
traumatic sexual experience, such as sexual abuse, as children. Freud and Charcot also found that during hypnosis the remembering of the trauma was often
accompanied by an outpouring of emotion, known as catharsis, and that following the catharsis the patient’s symptoms were frequently reduced in severity. These observations led Freud and Charcot to conclude that these disorders were caused by psychological rather than physiological factors.

Question 18

Psychodynamic

Answer 18

Freud did not believe that we were able to control our own behaviors. Rather, he believed that all behaviors are predetermined by motivations that lie outside our awareness, in the unconscious. These forces show themselves in our dreams, in neurotic symptoms such as obsessions, while we are under hypnosis, and in Freudian “slips of the tongue” in which people reveal their unconscious desires in language. Freud argued that we rarely understand why we do what we do, although we can make up explanations for our behaviors after the fact.

Question 19

Freud proposes division of the mind into three components

Answer 19

Id, ego and superego.

The interactions and conflict between these three is what creates personality

Question 20

Id

Answer 20

According to Freudian Theory, id is the component of personality that forms the basis of our most primitive impulses. It is entirely unconscious, and it drives our most important motivations, including the sexual drive (libido) and the aggressive or destructive drive (Thanatos). According to Freud, the id is driven by the pleasure principle—the desire for immediate gratification of our sexual and aggressive urges. The id is why we smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, view pornography, tell mean jokes about people, and engage in other fun or harmful at the cost of more productive tasks.

Question 21

Superego

Answer 21

In stark contrast to the id, the superego represents our sense of morality and oughts. The superego tell us all the things that we shouldn’t do, or the duties and obligations of society. The superego strives for
perfection, and when we fail to live up to its demands we feel guilty.

Question 22

Ego

Answer 22

In contrast to the id, which is about the pleasure principle, the function of the ego is based on the reality
principle—the idea that we must delay gratification of our basic motivations until the appropriate time with the appropriate outlet. The ego is the largely conscious controller or decision-maker of personality. The ego serves as the intermediary between the desires of the id and the constraints of society contained in the superego. We may wish to scream, yell, or hit, and yet our ego normally tells us to wait, reflect, and choose a more appropriate response.

Question 23

Defense mechanisms

Answer 23

Unconscious psychological strategies used to cope with anxiety and to maintain a positive self-image.

Freud believed that psychological disorders, and particularly the experience of anxiety, occur when there
is conflict or imbalance among the motivations of the id, ego, and superego. When the ego finds that the id is pressing too hard for immediate pleasure, it attempts to correct for this problem, often through the use of defense mechanisms. Freud believed that the defense mechanisms were essential for effective coping with everyday life, but that any of them could be overused

Question 24

The Major Freudian Defense Mechanisms

Answer 24

Displacement: Diverting threatening impulses away from the source of the anxiety and toward a more acceptable source. A student who is angry at her professor for a low grade lashes out at her roommate, who is a safer target of her anger.

Projection: Disguising threatening impulses by attributing them to others A man with powerful unconscious sexual desires for women claims that women use him as a sex object.

Rationalization: Generating self-justifying explanations for our negative behaviors A drama student convinces herself that getting the part in the play wasn’t that
important after all. Reaction formation Making unacceptable motivations appear as their exact opposite Jane is sexually attracted to friend Jake, but she claims in public that she intensely
dislikes him.

Regression: Retreating to an earlier, more childlike, and safer stage of development A college student who is worried about an important test begins to suck on his
finger.

Repression (or denial): Pushing anxiety-arousing thoughts into the unconscious A person who witnesses his parents having sex is later unable to remember anything about the event.

Sublimation: Channeling unacceptable sexual or aggressive desires into acceptable activities. A person participates in sports to sublimate aggressive drives. A person creates music or art to sublimate sexual drives.

Question 25

.
The most controversial, and least scientifically valid, part of Freudian theory

Answer 25

its explanations of personality development. Freud argued that personality is developed through a series of psychosexual stages, each focusing on pleasure from a different part. Freud believed that sexuality begins in infancy, and that the appropriate resolution of each stage has implications for later personality development.

Question 26

Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development Approximate ages Description

Answer 26

Oral Birth to 18 months: Pleasure comes from the mouth in the form of sucking, biting, and chewing.

Anal 18 months to 3 years: Pleasure comes from bowel and bladder elimination and the constraints of toilet training.

Phallic 3 years to 6 years: Pleasure comes from the genitals, and the conflict is with sexual desires for the opposite-sex parent.

Latency 6 years to puberty: Sexual feelings are less important.

Genital Puberty and older: If prior stages have been properly reached, mature sexual orientation develops.

Question 27

oral stage

Answer 27

In the first of Freud’s proposed stages of psychosexual development, which begins at birth and lasts until about 18 months of age, the focus is on the mouth. During this oral stage, the infant obtains sexual pleasure by sucking and drinking. Infants who receive either too little or too much gratification become fixated or “locked” in the oral stage, and are likely to regress to these points of fixation under stress, even as adults. According to Freud, a child who receives too little oral gratification (e.g., who was underfed or neglected) will become orally dependent as an adult and be likely to manipulate others to fulfill his or her needs rather than becoming independent. On the other hand, the child who was
overfed or overly gratified will resist growing up and try to return to the prior state of dependency by acting helpless, demanding satisfaction from others, and acting in a needy way.

Question 28

anal stage

Answer 28

The anal stage, lasting from about 18 months to 3 years of age is when children first experience psychological conflict. During this stage children desire to experience pleasure through bowel movements, but they are also being toilet trained to delay this gratification. Freud
believed that if this toilet training was either too harsh or too lenient, children would become fixated in the anal stage and become likely to regress to this stage under stress as adults. If the child received too little anal gratification (i.e., if the parents had been very harsh about toilet training), the adult personality will be anal retentive—stingy, with a compulsive seeking of order and tidiness. On the other hand, if the parents had been too lenient, the anal expulsive personality results,
characterized by a lack of self-control and a tendency toward messiness and carelessness

Question 29

phallic stage

Answer 29

The phallic stage, which lasts from age 3 to age 6 is when the penis (for boys) and clitoris (for girls)
become the primary erogenous zone for sexual pleasure. During this stage, Freud believed that children
develop a powerful but unconscious attraction for the opposite-sex parent, as well as a desire to eliminate the same-sex parent as a rival. Freud based his theory of sexual development in boys (the “Oedipus complex”) on the Greek mythological character Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, and then put his own eyes out when he learned what he had done. Freud argued that boys will normally eventually abandon their love of the mother, and instead identify with the father, also taking on the father’s personality characteristics, but that boys who do not successfully resolve the Oedipus complex will experience psychological problems later in life. Although it was not as important in Freud’s theorizing, in girls the phallic stage is often termed the “Electra complex,” after the Greek character who avenged her father’s murder by killing her mother. Freud believed that girls frequently experienced penis envy, the sense of deprivation supposedly experienced by girls because
they do not have a penis.

Question 30

The latency stage

Answer 30

A period of relative calm that lasts from about 6 years to 12 years. During this time, Freud believed that sexual impulses were repressed, leading boys and girls to have little or no interest in members of the opposite sex.

Question 31

genital stage

Answer 31

The fifth and last stage, the genital stage, begins about 12 years of age and lasts into adulthood. According to Freud, sexual impulses return during this time frame, and if development has proceeded normally to this point, the child is able to move into the development of mature romantic relationships. But if earlier problems have not been appropriately resolved, difficulties with establishing intimate love attachments are likely.

Question 32

Neo-Freudian theories

Answer 32

Theories based on Freudian principles that emphasize the role of the unconscious and early experience in shaping personality but place less evidence on sexuality as the primary motivating force in personality and are
more optimistic concerning the prospects for personality growth and change in personality in adults.

Question 33

Alfred Adler

Answer 33

A follower of Freud who developed his own interpretation of Freudian theory. Adler proposed that the primary motivation in human personality was not sex or aggression, but rather the striving for superiority. According to Adler, we desire to be better than
others and we accomplish this goal by creating a unique and valuable life. We may attempt to satisfy our need for superiority through our school or professional accomplishments, or by our enjoyment of music, athletics, or other activities that seem important to us.

Question 34

Inferiority complex

Answer 34

A psychological state in which people feel that they are not living up to expectations, leading them to have low self-esteem, with a tendency to try to overcompensate for the negative feelings.

Adler believed that psychological disorders begin in early childhood. He argued that children who
are either overly nurtured or overly neglected by their parents are later likely to develop an inferiority complex. People with an inferiority complex often attempt to demonstrate their superiority to others at all costs, even if it means humiliating, dominating, or alienating them. According to Adler, most psychological disorders result from misguided attempts to compensate for the inferiority complex in order meet the goal of superiority.

Question 35

Collective Unconscious,

Answer 35

A collection of shared ancestral memories.

Question 36

Carl Jung

Answer 36

Another student of Freud who developed his own theories about personality. Jung agreed with Freud about the power of the unconscious but felt that Freud overemphasized the importance of sexuality. Jung argued that in addition to the personal unconscious, there was also a collective unconscious. Jung believed that the collective unconscious contains a variety of archetypes, or cross-culturally universal symbols, which explain the similarities among people in their emotional reactions to many stimuli. Important archetypes include
the mother, the goddess, the hero, and the mandala or circle, which Jung believed symbolized a desire for wholeness or unity. For Jung, the underlying motivation that guides successful personality is self-realization, or learning about and developing the self to the fullest possible extent.

Question 37

Karen Horney

Answer 37

German physician who applied Freudian theories to create a personality theory that she thought was more
balanced between men and women. Horney believed that parts of Freudian theory, and particularly the ideas of the Oedipus complex and penis envy, were biased against women. Horney argued that women’s sense of inferiority was not due to their lack of a penis but rather to their dependency on men, an approach that the culture made it difficult for them to break from. For Horney, the underlying motivation that guides personality development is the desire for security, the ability to develop appropriate and supportive relationships with others.

Question 38

Erich Fromm

Answer 38

Fromm’s focus was on the negative impact of technology, arguing that the increases in its use have led people to feel increasingly isolated from others. Fromm believed that the independence that technology brings us also creates the need “escape from freedom,” that is, to become closer to others.

Question 39

Strengths and Limitations of Freudian and Neo Freudian Approaches

Answer 39

Freud has probably exerted a greater impact on the public’s understanding of personality than any other
thinker, and he has also in large part defined the field of psychology. Although Freudian psychologists no longer talk about oral, anal, or genital “fixations,” they do continue to believe that our childhood experiences and unconscious motivations shape our personalities and our attachments with others, and they still make use of psychodynamic concepts when they conduct psychological therapy.

Nevertheless, Freud’s theories, as well as those of the Neo-Freudians, have in many cases failed to pass the test of empiricism, and as a result they are less influential now than they have been in the past. The problems are first, that it has proved to be difficult to rigorously test Freudian theory because the predictions that it makes (particularly those regarding defense mechanisms) are often vague and unfalsifiable, and second, that the aspects of the theory that can be tested often have not received much empirical support.
As examples, although Freud claimed that children exposed to overly harsh toilet training would become fixated in the anal stage and thus be prone to excessive neatness, stinginess, and stubbornness in adulthood, research has found few reliable associations between toilet training practices and adult personality. And since the time of Freud, the need to repress sexual desires
would seem to have become much less necessary as societies have tolerated a wider variety of sexual practices. And yet the psychological disorders that Freud thought were caused by this repression
have not decreased.

There is also little scientific support for most of the Freudian defense mechanisms. For example, studies have failed to yield evidence for the existence of repression. People who are exposed to
traumatic experiences in war have been found to remember their traumas only too well. Although we may attempt to push information that is anxiety-arousing into our unconscious, this often has the ironic effect of making us think about the information even more strongly than if we hadn’t tried to repress it. It is true that children remember little of their childhood experiences, but this seems to be true of both negative as well as positive experiences, is true for animals as well, and probably is better explained in terms of
the brain’s inability to form long-term memories than in terms of repression.

On the other hand, Freud’s important idea that expressing or talking through one’s difficulties can be psychologically helpful has been supported in current research and has become a mainstay of psychological therapy. A particular problem for testing Freudian theories is that almost anything that conflicts with a prediction based in Freudian theory can be explained away in terms of the use of a defense mechanism. A man who expresses a lot of anger toward his father may be seen via Freudian theory to be experiencing the Oedipus complex, which includes conflict with the father. But a man who expresses no anger at all toward the father also may be seen as experiencing the Oedipus complex by repressing the anger. Because Freud hypothesized that either was possible, but did not specify when repression would or would not occur, the theory is difficult to falsify. In terms of the important role of the unconscious, Freud seems to have been at least in part correct.

Question 40

Self-concept

Answer 40

the set of beliefs about who we are

Question 41

self-esteem

Answer 41

our positive feelings about the self

Question 42

Abraham Maslow

Answer 42

Conceptualized personality in terms of a pyramid-shaped hierarchy of motives. At the base of the pyramid are the lowest-level motivations, including hunger and thirst, and safety and belongingness. Maslow argued that only when people are able to meet the lower-level needs are they able to move on to achieve the higher-level needs of self-esteem, and eventually self- actualization, which is the motivation to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent.

Question 43

Unconditional positive regard

Answer 43

A set of behaviors including being genuine, open to experience, transparent, able to listen to others, and self-disclosing and empathic.

Carl Rogers was positive about human nature, viewing people as primarily moral and helpful to others, and believed that we can achieve our full potential for emotional fulfillment if the self-concept is characterized by unconditional positive regard

Question 44

Gene

Answer 44

A gene is the basic biological unit that transmits characteristics from one generation to the next. Human cells have about 25,000 genes.

Question 45

Instincts

Answer 45

complex inborn patterns of behaviors that help ensure
survival and reproduction. Personality is not determined by any single gene, but rather by the actions of many genes working together.

Question 46

behavioral genetics

Answer 46

a variety of research techniques that scientists use
to learn about the genetic and environmental influences on human behavior by comparing the traits of biologically and non-biologically related family members.

Behavioral genetics is based on
the results of family studies, twin studies, and adoptive studies.

Question 47

family study

Answer 47

starts with one person who has a trait of interest—for instance, a developmental disorder such as autism—and examines the individual’s family tree to determine the extent to which other members of the family also have the trait. . The presence of the trait in first-degree relatives (parents, siblings, and children) is compared to the prevalence of the trait in second-degree relatives

Question 48

twin study

Answer 48

researchers study the personality characteristics of twins. the data from many pairs of twins are collected and the rates of similarity for identical and fraternal pairs are compared.

Question 49

Twin studies divide the influence of nature and nurture into three parts

Answer 49

Heritability (i.e., genetic influence) is indicated when the correlation coefficient for identical twins exceeds that for fraternal twins, indicating that shared DNA is an important determinant of personality.
* Shared environment determinants are indicated when the correlation coefficients for identical and fraternal twins are greater than zero and also very similar. These correlations indicate that both twins are having experiences in the family that make them alike.
* Nonshared environment is indicated when identical twins do not have similar traits. These influences refer to experiences that are not accounted for either by heritability or by shared environmental factors. Nonshared environmental factors are the experiences that make individuals within the same family less alike. If a parent treats one child more affectionately
than another, and as a consequence this child ends up with higher self-esteem, the parenting in this case is a nonshared environmental factor

Question 50

adoption study

Answer 50

compares biologically related people, including twins, who have been reared either separately or apart.

Question 51

molecular genetics

Answer 51

the study of which genes are associated with which personality traits

Question 52

knockout study

Answer 52

In this approach the researchers use specialized techniques to remove or modify the influence of a gene in a line of “knockout” mice. The researchers harvest embryonic stem cells from mouse embryos and then modify the DNA of the cells. The DNA is created such that the action of certain genes will be eliminated or “knocked out.” The cells are then injected into the embryos of other mice that are implanted into the uteruses of living female mice. When these animals are born, they are studied to see whether their behavior differs from a control group of normal animals. Research has found that removing or changing genes in mice can affect their anxiety, aggression, learning, and socialization patterns.

In humans, a molecular genetics study normally begins with the collection of a DNA sample from the participants in the study, usually by taking some cells from the inner surface of the cheek. In the lab, the DNA is extracted from the sampled cells and is combined with a solution containing a marker for the particular genes of interest as well as a fluorescent dye. If the gene is present in the DNA of the individual, then the solution will bind to that gene and activate the dye. The more the gene is expressed, the stronger the reaction.