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Psych 102 > Personality > Flashcards

Personality Flashcards

1
Q

What did Freud believe about DREAMS?

A

That DREAMS have to do with current issues/ problems in real life.

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2
Q

Who had the first THEORY on PERSONALITY?

A

Freud
- Every theory after has been a reaction TO his theory, OR a development of his theory.

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3
Q

How is the mind structured according to Freuds theory of CONSCIOUSNESS?

A

3 Levels
CONSCIOUS
- accessible part of mind – self-aware.
PRE-CONSCIOUS
- currently out of conscious but can easily be brought to mind.
UNCONSCIOUS
- Part of mind that is not available to conscious awareness

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4
Q

Describe the UNCONSCIOUS level of the mind

A
  • Part of mind that is not available to conscious awareness
  • Contains urges, feelings, ideas associated w/ pain/ trauma
  • Has been Repressed into Unconscious, which is like a Locked Psychological drawer.
  • We forget about it, but it is still there and effects thoughts and behaviour.
  • Psychoanalysis try’s to unlock Psychological drawer
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5
Q

What is REPRESSION?

A
  • The hiding away of urges, feelings and ideas that are associated w/ trauma.
  • They cannot be recalled.
    -We forget about it, but it is still there and affects thoughts and behaviour.
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6
Q

Describe Freud’s ICEBERG model

A
  • Above the water line is conscious awareness.
  • Pre-conscious is right below the water line and consists of the super ego and the ego
  • Unconscious is the lowest and consists of the Id.
  • The Ego is free floating in all 3 levels of consciousness
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7
Q

What are the 3 parts of Freud’s ICEBERG model of mind structure theory.

A
  • The Id (German for baby)
  • The EGO
  • The SUPER EGO
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8
Q

Describe the Id

A
  • Completely unconscious
  • It is a SEETHING CAULDRON of impulses/ needs.
  • Works on the PLEASURE PRINCIPLE - loose, irrational, seeks immediate gratification of needs
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9
Q

Describe the EGO

A

– More grown up – partly conscious, partly unconscious
- Keep the Id in check/ control it.
- Our civilized self
- Tries to satisfy Id within SOCIAL CONSTRAINTS by channeling impulses into more SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE outlets.
- Works on the REALITY PRINCIPLE - It tests reality to decide when and under what conditions impulses can be safely discharged and needs satisfied.
- Has to deal with anxiety – done unconsciously via Defence Mechanisms.

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10
Q

Describe the SUPER EGO

A
  • Partially conscious, mainly unconscious.
    TWO parts
    1) The Conscience (rules and norms w/ respect to what’s bad and punishable)
    2) The Ego Ideal – idealized images about good behaviour – moral perfection – thinking about doing bad causes moral anxiety.
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11
Q

Understanding Psychosexual development

A
  • Sensual bodily needs that require satisfaction – deeply rooted/ inborn/ natural, require expression
  • Mature Expressions develops in a series of stages determined by where Libido (lust) is focused.
  • Diff bodily areas are differentially sensitive – they become libidily charged at different times.
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12
Q

What is the erogenous zone?

A

Preferred site for libidinal (lustful) expression. Stimulation there feels good at different times depending on stage of psychosexual development.

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13
Q

What are Freuds 5 stages to PSYCHOSEXUAL development?

A

Old Aunt Pamela Loves Gorillas
- Oral stage
- Anal stage
- Phallic stage
- Latent stage
- Genital stage

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14
Q

What is the ORAL stage of Psychosexual development?

A
  • The mouth is the 1st Erogenous Zone – only mode of interaction w/ world. Tension reduced/ needs met via eating/ sucking
  • Mother 1st love object b/c she is source of gratification.
  • This emphasis on importance of early/ 1st relationships as it effects later relationships is common to most theories of P (e.g., Freud, Erikson) & developmental (e.g., Bowlby).
  • Baby is totally dependent on others for everything during this stage, thus how it is provided or withheld can affect personality.
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15
Q

What is Fixation at the oral stage?

A
  • Even though people move through all stages, psychological ‘sticking’ at one, due to over/under stimulation = oral fixation, which leads to traits that persist even when reach subsequent stages.
  • Oral fixations can lead to an Oral P, either passive due to early fixation (extreme dependence, extreme cheerfulness/ optimism, high nurturance expectations) or sadistic due to late fixation (cynical, pessimistic, verbally aggressive).
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16
Q

What is the ANAL stage of Psychosexual development?

A
  • Anus libidinal focus – libidily charged – 18 months – 3 years
  • Regular cycles of tissue tension build-up & release can be pleasurable.
  • With physical maturity comes physical control and 1st imposition of external rules, here, about when you should hold on vs. when it’s OK to let go.
  • How parents impose rules is of major importance.
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17
Q

What is Fixation at the anal stage?

A
  • Anal fixations can arise if parents are too slack or too uptight/ rigid. Kids perceive that parental approval/ affection depends upon ability to follow rules.
  • Anal retentive personality – Rules are to be followed w/o exception/ flexibility.
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18
Q

What is the ANAL TRIAD OF TRAITS? (POO)

A

Parsimony (Stinginess)
Obstinacy (stubbornness)
Orderliness

Order disruption is highly uncomfortable.

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19
Q

What is the Phallic stage of Psychosexual development?

A

3-5/6 y/o
- Genitals libidinal focus (fascination, autoeroticism (self-stimulation), manipulation.

  • Libidinal shift from self to opposite-sex parent – hostility to same-sex parent – perceived as competition – may wish to eliminate them.
  • Boy wants mom, dad is obstacle, get rid of competition. Girl wants dad, mom is obstacle.
  • Resolution = introspection of dad’s values, principles etc… (gets super ego and access to mom). Girls – want dad, competes w/ mom. Resolved by becoming like mom (introspection) – vicarious access to dad, mom’s ego.
  • Girls don’t envy penis… they have symbolic desire for power and prestige – have greater access to political power.
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20
Q

What is the LATENT stage of Psychosexual development?

A

Not a lot goes on – Some fantasizing

21
Q

What is the GENITAL stage of Psychosexual development?

A
  • Genitals again libidinal focus (but now it’s OK to actually/ they’re allowed to do something about it)
  • Mature adult sexual expression – develop control of all impulses – channel impulses in socially appropriate way (what’s good for self and society).
  • Being in love with someone, having children, Meaningful Productive Work
  • Impact of early experiences has major impact on later ones.
  • Very consistent with moderate stability of attachment style (0.39)
22
Q

Why do we need DEFENCE MECHANISMS?

A

There is a conflict within us over what we want to do vs what we should do

  • Leads to anxiety.
  • EGO is central in dealing w/ anxiety - has several DM’s
  • Most Defense Mechanisms are unconscious
23
Q

What are DEFENCE MECHANISMS?

A
  • Psych crutches to help deal w/ the stress/ strain of daily life. - Distort reality to make it a little easier to handle.
24
Q

How did Vaillant classify Defence Mechanisms? (2 dimensions).

A

1) Degree of reality distortion.

2) Whether lead to adaptive/effective behaviour.

25
Q

What are Vaillant’s 3 levels of DEFENCE MECHANISMS?

A
  • IMMATURE—most distortion, not associated with any effective/ adaptive behaviour (e.g., regression – return to earlier mode of dealing w/ anxiety).
  • INTERMEDIATE — less distortion, a little more effective for adaptive behaviour (e.g., projection – attributing your thoughts to others).
  • MATURE—what we use—involve the least distortion, associated w/ most effective behaviour adaptation. (e.g., humour, suppression. SUBLIMATION - Redirection of bad impulses into OK ones. SUPPRESSION = the only conscious Defence Mechanism – try not to think about certain things.
26
Q

Are Defence Mechanisms helpful?

A
  • Mature Defence mechanisms score higher in psychosocial adjustment (happier/ more successful)
27
Q

What are some issues with Freud’s theories?

A
  • Retrospective reporting – how reliable is it? Not very.
  • Infantile amnesia for early events – repression.
  • Neurocognitive reviews – earliest mems around 3.5 years old.
28
Q

Strong empirical findings in Personality research?

A
  • Lots of info is processed outside conscious awareness (unconsciousness) – therefore, they don’t remember it, but it still affects behaviour.
  • Psychosexual stages have little supportive data
  • During sleep/ dream – prefrontal cortex (impulse control/ inhibition, grown up) is mostly nonfunctional - Symbolism in dreams – meaning is specific to dreamer.
  • Attachment/ early relationships experience upon later – 0.39 temporal stability
29
Q

Other Theories on Personality?

A
  • Behavioural Perspective (Skinner, Mischel, Bandura)
  • Humanistic Perspective
    (Rogers, Maslow)
  • Biological Perspective
    (Eysenck)
30
Q

Behavioural Perspective?

A
  • Scientific psych should only study observable behaviour. Forget about hypothetical stuff like motives, traits.
  • Focus only on what can be reliably observed.
  • Personality is a function of one’s learning & reinforcement history; How environment/ external variable affects response tendencies – People learn how to act based on others responses to our actions.
  • Their claim is that external variables are what strengthens/ weakens response tendencies. However, 40% of personality is w/ us from birth - before it can be affected by learning/ environment.
31
Q

Humanistic Perspective?

A
  • Complete opposite from behaviourists.
  • Focus on a person’s subjective view of themselves and the world they live in and other people in it.
  • Person centred theory.
  • Believe most people are basically good and have huge potential for growth, potential, self-actualization, development.
  • We are all capable of realizing potential/ growing unless other people prevent us.
  • Focus ignores humanity’s darker sides.
32
Q

Biological Perspective?

A
  • Objective view on how our physiological make-up influences our personalities.
  • Eysenck believed personality consists of 3 Super Traits – main focus is EXTRA/ INTROVERSION.
  • Extraverts – tendency to be sociable/ outgoing.
33
Q

How does the biological perspective view extra/ introversion?

A
  • Determined by certain brain activity – arousal/ reactivity to stimulation.
  • For Introverts – more highly reactive/ responsive to external stim. They respond more strongly and with a larger response. Thus, they don’t need as much stim.
  • Everyone has an Optimal Level of Arousal.
  • Introverts – more reactive/ responsive to stim already so they need less to reach that OLA.
34
Q

Evidence for the Biological Perspective?

A
  • Introverts have been found to be more sensitive to stim like sound (lower threshold).
  • Depressant drugs – introverts are highly reactive to them, so they need less.

-

35
Q

Behaviour Genetics of twin studies??

A
  • About 40% of personality is genetically determined.
  • Shared environment only (same home, parents…) ~5%.
  • Individuals ‘create’ non-shared (~35%)
  • Error (patient or scientist) = about 20%).
  • The interaction b/w one’s genes and environmental factors.
  • Across dimensions of personality – thousands of studies of twin pairs find personality to be significant and substantial.
  • The interaction b/w one’s genes and environmental factors.
  • Adoption studies of twins raised separately – environment is controlled – adoptive family has impact on personality
  • Across dimensions of personality – thousands of studies of twin pairs find personality to be significant and substantial.
36
Q

Personality Assessments?

A
  • Individual differences in personality do exist and they can be measured.
  • UNSTRUCTURED assessment/ tests. (TAT, Rorschach) - tests have totally ambiguous Stimuli. Inkblot- Projects what’s going on in his/ her head to interpret stim.
  • STRUCTURED– more common - (MMPI-2-RF, NEO-PI-R; POND) - Very clear format – sentence, adjective (clear stim).
  • Responds in predetermined fashion – Yes or no, T/F, are you like this very much or not at all…

X= T+E
( X = observed score, T = true score - their real level of trait, E = error – mood, poor test).
- Less E = closer you are to T.
- So, X = T + E.; X = a person’s actual score on the test.
- Main deal: decreasing error (E) gets you closer to “T”; the person’s true level of the trait.

37
Q

Threats to Reliability/ validity?

A
  • Reliability—1) test-retest (want scores to be pretty much the same) - bigger is better.

2) internal consistency – tells you the degree to which the answers to the questions are intercorrelated.

38
Q

What is validity?

A
  • To what degree does test provide accurate measure of construct (trait).
  • How well does it measure what it’s supposed to measure.
  • Face Validity – does item look like it measures what it’s supposed to measure – least important in personality cause when studying P, we have to assess some traits that aren’t socially desirable
39
Q

What is CONSTRUCT validity?

A

Construct = personality trait.

3 kinds of evidence.

40
Q

What are the 3 kinds of CONSTRUCT VALIDITY?

A

CONVERGENT V. - 2 types
- Gather data that is similar to what you’re measuring but not quite the same. (to show your construct related to ones it should be. Different assessment modes yield the same, or similar answers).
- different data sources yield same/ similar answers. (You want self-reports to correlate w/ other reports (other people), which should correlate w/ some behavioural index of the construct

DISCRIMINANT V.
- Your test isn’t correlated w/ info it is not supposed to measure. (This point relates to ensuring another unmeasured variable isn’t influencing scores on your test).
- (Self-esteem and GPA are correlated – maybe b/c of their relation, demonstrates your self-esteem is not related to IQ = discriminative validity).

PREDICTIVE/ CRITERION RELATED V.
- Your test predicts some external criterion of related interest.
- your test of social anxiety predicts public speaking skill, i.e., low anxiety, pretty good talker.

41
Q

Main Threats to VALIDITY?

A

1) Deliberate deception – faking good or bad (typically, NBD in standard personality assessment).

2) Response Styles: more important - an organized tendency to respond in a certain/ specific way, irrespective of actual content.
- Naysayers and yea-sayers (those who disagree and agree w/ everything – could decrease or increase scores).
- Control w/ ITEM KEYING – Sometimes yes is key to trait or sometimes no.
- Balancing or INFREQUENCY SCALES – ideas are so infrequent/ odd/ out of the box that almost nobody would agree w/ them. So, if subject does endorse item, chances are he isn’t paying attention = invalid report.

3) Social Desirability (a very BIG DEAL)
- Organized tendency to respond in a certain way wholly dependent upon the social desirability of content.
- Some portray self in good/ +/ socially desirable way. Some traits it’s not a big deal.
High scores (of social desirability) suggest you present self in socially desirable fashion – good, nice, follows rules.
- If you frequently pick the more socially desirable option, chances are, you are trying to present yourself in a favourable light, that might not actually reflect reality.
Low scores are hard to interpret – may be very honest, or totally unconcerned w/ other’s opinions.

42
Q

How many central factors have been found to make up the structure of ADULT PERSONALITY?

A

5
THE BIG 5!!
OCEAN

From the analysis of hundreds of personality tests/ analyses + Behavioral… across cultures, languages, species.

43
Q

What are the BIG 5 PERSONALITIES?

A

(O)penness to Experience.
(C)onscientiousness.
(E)xtroversion.
(A)greeableness.
(N)euroticism.

44
Q

Describe OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE

A
  • Original, imaginative, thoughtful, creative, open to new ideas/ experiences
  • Has highest genetic correlation.
  • Open to new points of view. Report more paranormal/ out of body experience.
45
Q

Describe CONSCIENTIOUSNESS

A
  • Well-organized, hard working.
  • Diligent in school, work etc.
  • Correlated w/ health and longevity (follow doctors orders).
46
Q

Describe EXTRAVERSION

A
  • Dominance/Assertiveness and Sociability/Outgoingness,(or the reverse - Introversion).
  • Talk faster and sooner in social interactions/ introverts, more touch.
  • More attracted to and excel in people profession – teaching, sales, nursing.
  • Like Parties and socializing unlike introverts.
  • Strongly correlated w/ + Affect (tend to be happier, more satisfied people). Introverts don’t necessarily have more – affects.
47
Q

Describe AGREEABLENESS

A
  • Friendliness (vs. Antagonistism): e.g., likeability, loyalty.
  • Kind, warm, empathetic, very nice.
  • Disagreeable – not very interested in others, focus on self.
48
Q

Describe NEUROTICISM

A
  • Emotional reactivity, e.g., anxious, depressed, hostile, moody, low self-esteem.
  • High in N can be oversensitive, stressed by small issues, easily upset/ distressed.
  • Socially anxious. Insecure, low self-esteem. High in N tend to have high negative affect.
  • Mid-life crisis more common for those high in N.
49
Q

When does PERSONALITY become relatively STABLE?

A

Past age 30

Psych 102 (5 decks)

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