Final Exam Flashcards
(191 cards)
Personality
An individuals unique and relatively consistent pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving
Personality theory
Describes and explains how people are similar, how they are different, and why every individual is unique
Major theoretical perspectives on personality
Psychoanalytic perspective
Trait perspective
Freud’s psychoanalysis stresses the importance of _____
Unconscious forces, sexual and aggressive instincts and early childhood experiences
Psychoanalysis is both an approach to ____ and a ______
Therapy
Theory of personality
-emphasizes unconscious motivation, the main causes of behaviour lie buried in the unconscious mind
-saw personality and behaviour as the result of a constant interplay among conflicting psychological forces
Psychological forces operate at 3 different levels of awareness:
Conscious: information in your immediate awareness (EGO)
Preconscious: information that can easily be made conscious (superego)
Unconscious: thoughts, feelings, urges and wishes that are difficult to bring to conscious awareness (Id)
Ego
Superego
Id
Rational, planful, mediating dimension of personality
- understands logic and reality
- most in touch with demands of world
- reality principle where you are able to postpone gratifications in accordance with demands of the world
Moralistic, judgemental, perfectionist dimension of personality
- formed through internalization of parental and societal rules
- at age 5-6 child develops an internal, parental voice that is partly conscious.
Irrational, illogical, impulsive dimension of personality.
- instinctive drives present at birth
- operates on pleasure principle where you obtain pleasure and avoid tension
Freuds psychosexual stages
Age-related development periods in which the child’s sexual urges are focussed on different areas of the body and are expressed by activities associated with those areas.
-oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital
Ages, stages and explanation of Freuds psychosexual model
Birth to 1-Oral: feeding and putting objects in mouth
1-3-anal: developing control over elimination via toilet training
3-6-phallic: genitals are focus of pleasurable sensations through sexual curiosity, masturbation and sexual attraction to opposite sexual parent
7-11-latency: sexual impulses repressed with same-sex friendships with peers and focus is school and activities
Adolescence-genital: primary focus of pleasurable sensations which a person seeks to satisfy in heterosexual relationships
According to Freud what happens if someone gets fixated on 1 psychosexual stage
Profoundly affects personality
- if fixated on oral, develop smoking habits
- if anal, anal-retentive personalities (OCD)
Strengths and weaknesses of Freuds Psychosexual model
- unconscious nature of mental life
- critical influence of early experiences
- differences in ability to regulate impulses, emotions and thoughts
- inadequacy of evidence
- problems with testability
- sexist
Trait perspective of personality
Focuses on identifying, describing and measuring individual differences
Trait
Relatively stable, enduring predisposition to behave in a certain way
Surface traits
Source traits
Characteristics or attributes that can be inferred from observable behaviour. Over 4000 English words to describe personality
Most fundamental dimensions of personality. Basic traits that are hypothesized to be universal and relatively few in number.
Raymond cattell trait theory
- proposed 16 personality factor
- used statistical technique to identify them
- developed the 16 personality factor questionnaire
- sixteen is generally considered by others as too many traits
Ex: reserved, unsocialable or outgoing and social
Affected by feelings or emotionally stable
Practical or imaginative
Hans Eysenck trait theory
- proposed similar model of universal source traits with 3 different source traits: introversion or extra version, neuroticism or emotional stability, psychoticism
- believed that individual differences in personality are due to biological differences making people
Eysencks Personality chart
Poles are N=Emotionally unstable (neurotic) S=Emotionally Stable E=Extraverted W=Introverted
NE=Extraverted-Neurotic: touchy, excitable, aggressive, optimistic
SE=Extraverted-stable: leadership, sociable, responsive, easygoing
SW=Introverted-stable: passive, Peacful, reliable
NW=Introverted-Neurotic: Moody, reserved, anxious, unsociable
McCrae and Costa: Five factor model
- essential building blocks of personality can be described in terms of 5 basic personality dimensions
- tested in 50 cultures
- traits seem stable over lifespan
- seem consistent over different situations and related to specific brain activity and structures
5 blocks are:
- openness and experience: routine or variety
- conscientiousness: lazy or hardworking
- extra version: quiet or talkative
- agreeableness: trusting or suspicious
- neuroticism: calm or worrying
Brain imaging and extroversion/ neuroticism
People who are high in extroversion shower higher levels of brain activation in response to positive images
People who score high in neuroticism show more activation in response to negative images
Strengths and limitations of five-factor personality model
-psychologists generally agree that people can be described and compared in terms of basic personality
- human personality not really explained
- no explanation of how or why we have individual differences
- failure to address other important personality issues
2 types of personality tests
Projective tests: involves a persons interpretation of an ambiguous image. Used to assess unconscious motives, conflicts, psychological defended and personality traits. Ex: Rorschach Inkblot Test
Self-report inventories
Thematic apperception test (TAT)
A projective personality test, developed by Henry Murray and colleagues, that involves creating stories about ambiguous scenes.
-person thought to project their own motives, conflicts and personality characteristics into the story they create.
Strengths and weaknesses of projective tests
- provision of qualitative information about individuals psychological functioning
- information can facilitate psychotherapy
- influence of testing situation or examiners behaviour
- highly subjective
- failure to produce consistent results
- poor at predicting future behaviour
Self-report inventory examples
Minnesota Multiphasic Personalitiy Inventory (MMPI): used to assess both normal and disturbed populations to assess personality and psychological disorders
California Psychological Inventory (CPI): assess personality in normal populations
Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire