L1 - Nature, culture, subject Flashcards
(18 cards)
Levels of understanding concepts
- intuitive, associative understanding
- what is this about? - Explicit understanding
- what exactly is meant? - Critical, personal, creative understanding
- does it make sense?
- can I creatively use it?
basic question of personality theories / in any clinical setting?
who is this person and how did (s)he become that way?
The answer to this basic question of personality theories comes from what?
Partly comes from a persons personality traits or temperament but also in identity.
Another concept that is often presented is the psychological self
- it is part of personality
- part of the way people experience and see themselves
–> personality is a big concept
explain how a person becomes who they are (3)
- In the present people experience all kinds of things and act in certain ways (influenced by contex) (present)
-There are regularities in this and personality theories are always about these regularities - These ways of acting have a certain development
- And they have a direction towards goals and motivations (future)
personality theories (4)
- scientific theories and research
- personal narratives
- cultural perspectives
- your own development as a person
main focus at the exam is on
3) core concepts (what does it mean?)
but we never leave the triad,
1) experiences (what is it about?)
2) observations (how does it appear?)
- main focus doesn’t mean other aspects can be neglected. Should be adequately fine if you read and learn all materials, with a specific focus on the core concepts. NOT if you just learn a list of definitions
historical origins of personalities (4)
- Human groups get cultural histories due to the continued transmission of conventions
- E.g., sitting in a lecture you instantly understand that the person at the front talking is a teacher, who had the right to make an exam in the end of the course
–> this understanding only possible due to transmission of conventions
- E.g., sitting in a lecture you instantly understand that the person at the front talking is a teacher, who had the right to make an exam in the end of the course
- Cultures develop oral and then written traditions and stories about who ‘we’ are and how ‘we’ came to be
- By telling these stories and reflecting on them we change our understanding of who we are
- The histories of individuals can be located within these larger histories of the multiple ‘we’s’ to which we belong
Origins of personalities
- natural origins
- cultural origins
- individual origins
the three perspective on personality
- universal human nature
a new organism in nature - particular human cultures
a new person in a culture - a singular human life
a new subject of an individual life
Common confusions and mistakes about personality theories (4)
- naturalizing cultural categories
e.g., treating race as a natural kind, reification - Reducing every aspect to cultural narratives
e.g., not taking seriously the evolved physical body and brain as important limits on what is culturally possible - Forgetting about the cultural and subjective position from where the author speaks
- treating all accounts as equally subjective opinions
an organism in nature
Step 1: obligate collaborative foraging (4)
Tommasello’s 2-step model
- Humans have developed very strong skills for collaborating with each other
- Crucial in this is the strong tendency of already very young children towards joint intentionality. Humans have a great capacity for shared goals and shared mental states (intersubjectivity).
- joint intentionality: the act of coordinating attention, emotion and actions with others toward a shared goal or activity
—> Within this context shared meanings and shared stories can come into existence.
—> Humans are from birth particularly attuned to sharing mental states with other humans.
an organism in nature
Step 2: group-mindedness (3)
- Given the strong possibility of shared intentionality, humans also develop a capability for conventions.
= Agreed-upon ways of doing things in a group — not because they are the only way, but because everyone agrees to do them that way. - Thus children from then on (in such groups) are born in a world full of pre-existing conventional structures that they grow into and only later and partially become aware of.
–> the meaning of all these rituals to the group of Christians has a meaning now which the child has to find out about themselves later + how to relate to that - In this they are introduced into a pre-existing ‘symbolic order’: the universe of signs and meanings typical for human societies.
Tommasello’s 2-step model
first nature vs second nature
1st nature: collaboration and group-mindedness
2nd nature: particular cultural histories
1st nature influences particular cultural histories and the individual life stories
2nd nature influences individual life story
emergence of schemata + what it is
= memory-structure developed in the repeated interactions with others that contains crucial pre-conceptions about self, others and the world
comes from nurture and learning history which results from joint effect of first and second nature
slide for visual
a person in a culture
what is the psychological self?
the psychological self may be construed as a reflexive (back and fourth) arragnement of the subjective “I” and the constructed “me”
- through reactions of others you learn who you are
slide for visual
from lecture McAdams
1) The self as an actor (in the present)
the self as social actor, encompassing semantic representations of traits, social roles, and other features of self that result in and from repeated performances on the social stage of life
from lecture McAdams
2) the self as an agent (towards the future)
to be an agent is to make choices and therefore move forward in life in a goal-directed and self-determined fashion
- suggests intention, volition, will, purpose and personal control in life
from lecture McAdams
3) The self as author (integrating and reflecting on past, present and future)
development of narrative identity: the I becomes an autobiographical author while the me becomes the story it tells
