Midterm 3 Flashcards
1
Q
Personality
A
Personality: Stable traits within people that affect how they react to their surroundings
2
Q
Traits
A
Traits: a fixed habit that affects how we behave in a number of situations
3
Q
Two approaches to studying personality:
A
- Nomothetic method - tries to generalise people by looking for universal principles in nature rather than principles that are specific to an individual
- Idiographic approach: focuses on recognising one’s individuality by identifying the particular combination of traits and experiences that make up one’s life history (individual differences)
4
Q
Causes of Personality
A
Behaviour-genetic methods
5
Q
Behaviour-genetic methods
A
Behaviour-genetic methods attempt to disentangle the effects of:
– Genetic factors
– Shared environmental factors (those that make people within a family
similar)
– Nonshared environmental factors (those that make people within a family including twins - different)
6
Q
Sigmund Freud
A
Viennese neurologist who developed first
comprehensive theory of personality
7
Q
Psychoanalytic Theory Principles
A
3 primary principles:
1. Psychic determinism: the assumption that all psychological events have a cause
2. Symbolic meaning: no action, no matter how seemingly trivial, is meaningless and is symbolic of something else
3. Unconscious motivation: we rarely understand why we do what we do
8
Q
Freud’s Model of Personality Structure
A
Freud thought that the psyche consisted
of three components
– Id – basic instincts, operates on pleasure principle
– Superego – sense of morality
– Ego – principal decision maker
9
Q
Psychoanalytic Theory
A
- Freud thought that our dreams reflected an unconscious struggle among the 3 psychic genies
- Said all dreams reflected wish fulfillments but that some were in disguise (as symbols)
- Contrary to pop psych, did not say that all symbols mean the same to everyone
10
Q
Anxiety and Defense Mechanisms
A
- The ego will try to minimize anxiety via defense mechanisms
– Operate unconsciously - Although essential for psychological health, Freud thought over reliance on one or two could cause problems
11
Q
Defense Mechanism Examples
A
- Repression – motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses
- Denial – motivated forgetting of distressing experiences
- Projection – unconscious attribution of our negative qualities onto others
- Displacement - Directing an impulse from a socially unacceptable target onto a more acceptable one
12
Q
Stages of Psychosexual Development
A
- Freud believed that we pass through stages, each of which is focused on an erogenous zone
- Insisted that sexuality begins in infancy
- Too much, or too little, gratification can be a problem
- Individuals who get fixated on a stage and have difficulty moving on
- Oral stage – birth to 18 months
– Orally fixated persons react to stress by becoming intensely dependent on others for reassurance - Anal stage – 18 months to 3 years
– Anally fixated individuals—anal personalities—are prone to excessive neatness, stinginess, and stubbornness in adulthood - Phallic stage – 3 to 6 years
– Oedipus complex: conflict during the phallic stage in which boys supposedly love their mothers romantically and want to eliminate their fathers as rivals
– Electra complex & penis envy - Latency stage – 6 to 12 years
– Sexual impulses are submerged into the unconscious
– Most children during this stage find members of the opposite sex to be “yucky” and utterly unappealing - Genital stage – 12+ years
– Sexual impulses awaken and typically begin to mature into romantic attraction towards others
– If serious problems weren’t resolved at earlier stages, difficulties with establishing intimate love attachments are likely
13
Q
Evaluated Scientifically (personality)
A
- Very influential in thinking about personality, but there are major criticisms
– Unfalsifiable
– Failed predictions
– Questionable understanding of the unconscious
– Unrepresentative samples
– Too much focus on the shared surroundings
14
Q
Neo-Freudians
A
Most neo-Freudian theories focus how early experiences shape personality and how unconscious influences on behaviour might shape behaviour.
In two key aspects, they differ from Freud’s theories:
1. Lower focus on sexuality, heavier focus on social motivations
2. More positive about personal development
- Afred Adler believed that the principal motive in human personality is not sex or aggression, but striving for superiority
– Our overriding style of life is to better ourselves - Inferiority complex: feelings of low self-esteem that can lead to overcompensation for such feelings
– Develops among those who were pampered or neglected by their parents - Adler’s hypotheses are difficult to falsify
- Carl Jung (Yoong)
– Collective unconscious: our shared storehouse of memories that ancestors have passed down to us across generations
– Archetypes: cross culturally universal emotional symbols (e.g., mother, goddess, hero, mandala) - Difficult to falsify
- Shared experiences may account for commonalities in archetypes across the world rather than a collective unconscious
- Karen Horney: Feminist Psychology
– women’s sense of inferiority as stemming from culturally enforced dependency, not penis envy
– Argued that the Oedipus complex is a symptom of psychological problems, not a cause, because it arises only when the opposite-sex parent is overly protective and the same-sex parent overly critical
15
Q
Neo-Freudians Evaluated Scientifically
A
- Neo Freudians pointed out that anatomy isn’t always destiny when it comes to psychological differences between the sexes
- Argued that social influences must be reckoned with in the development of personality
16
Q
Behavioural Approaches
(Behavioural and Social Learning Theories)
A
- B. F. Skinner - Argued that differences in our personalities stem largely from our learning histories
- Personalities are bundles of habits acquired by classical and operant conditioning (learning)
- Radical behaviorists view personality as under the control of genetic factors and contingencies in the environment
- Like psychoanalysts, radical behaviourists are determinists: They believe that all of our actions are products of preexisting causal influences
– Free will is an illusion
Behavioural views of unconscious processing - According to Skinner, we were initially unconscious of the reasons for our behaviour because we were unaware of the environmental cause of this behaviour
- For radical behaviourists, there’s no such storehouse because the unconscious influences that play a role in causing behaviour are external, not inside our heads
17
Q
Social Learning Theories
A
- Saw learning as important, but argue thinking plays a crucial role as well
- Emphasize reciprocal determinism rather than Skinnerian determinism
– Reciprocal Determinism—a form of causation whereby personality and cognitive factors, behaviour, and environmental variables mutually
influence one another - Proposed that much of learning occurs by watching others (observational learning)
18
Q
Behavioural Approaches Evaluated Scientifically
A
- Placed psychology on firmer scientific footing
- However…
– Radical behaviourists’ ignoring of cognition is not supported by research
– Social learning’s emphasis on shared environment is not supported
19
Q
Humanistic Models
A
- Rejected notion of determinism and embraced free will
- Proposed self-actualization as core motive in personality
– Self-actualization: the drive to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent - View human nature as inherently constructive
20
Q
Carl Rogers’ Model
A
- Believed that we could all achieve our full
potential for emotional fulfillment if only
society allowed it - Three major components of personality:
1. The organism (innate, genetic blueprint)
2. The self (set of beliefs about who we are)
3. Conditions of worth (expectations we place
on ourselves – can result in incongruence)
§ E.g., conditional love
21
Q
Abraham Maslow and Self-Actualization
A
- Maslow focused on individuals who
[he believed] were self-actualized
– E.g., Martin Luther King, Jr., Helen
Keller, Mahatma Gandhi… - Self-actualized people:
– Tend to be creative, spontaneous, accepting of themselves and others, self-confident, and not self-centered
– They tend to focus on real-world and intellectual problems and have a few deep friendships rather than superficial ones
– Can come off as difficult to work with or aloof
– Prone to peak experiences: transcendent moments of intense excitement and tranquility marked by a profound sense of connection to the world.
22
Q
Self-Actualization Evaluated Scientifically
A
- Comparative psychology (compares behaviour across species)
challenges Rogers’ claim that our nature is entirely positive - Rogers’ and Maslow’s research was fraught with methodological difficulties
– Confirmation bias - Many non-falsifiable assumptions
23
Q
Trait Models
A
- Interested primarily in describing and understanding the structure of personality
- For trait models to be useful, they must avoid
circular reasoning
– Must demonstrate that personality traits
predict behaviours in novel situations or
correlate with biological or laboratory
measures - Factor analysis: statistical technique that analyses the correlations
among responses on personality inventories and other measures
– Trait models use this to reduce diversity of personality descriptors to
underlying traits
24
Q
Big Five Model
A
*Openness to Experience (closed or open)
*Conscientiousness (spontaneous or conscientious)
*Extraversion (introvert or extrovert)
*Agreeableness (Hostile or agreeable)
*Neuroticism (stable or neurotic)
25
Q
Big Five and Behaviour
A
- Predict many important real-world behaviours
– Job performance and grades in school (high openness to experience, low neuroticism, and perhaps high agreeableness)
– Physical health and life span (high conscientiousness) - Relatively similar traits seen across cultures (e.g., China, Italy, Turkey)
– Openness doesn’t emerge in all cultures - Some investigators have found dimensions in addition to the Big Five
– Chinese tradition factor encompasses aspects of personality distinctive to
Chinese culture, including an emphasis on group harmony and saving face to avoid embarrassment
– Honesty and Humility factor Cultural differences in prevalence rates (some traits are more common
in some cultures than others) - Individualist vs. collectivist societies
– Focus on personal goals vs. relations to others
– Personality traits may be less predictive of behaviour in collectivist than individualistic cultures
§ Could be that behaviour in collectivist cultures is more likely to be influenced by social norms
§ But we must be careful not to make overgeneralizations and we need to be aware of stereotypes
26
Q
Other Models
A
- HEXACO
– Similar to Big Five, but with honesty-humility as 6th trait
– E = emotionality (neuroticism)
– X = eXtraversion - Big Three
– Impulse control (combo of agreeableness, conscientiousness, (low) openness to experience)
– Extroversion
– Neuroticism
27
Q
Can Personality Change?
A
- Some variability prior to age 30, but little thereafter
- Between late teens and early thirties:
– openness, extroversion, and neuroticism tend to decline a little
– conscientiousness and agreeableness tend to increase a little - Levels of most traits don’t change much after age 30 and change even
less after about age 50 - Personality is quite stable once we reach adulthood
28
Q
Personality Change Evaluated Scientifically
A
- Highly influential through the early and mid-twentieth century
- Criticisms by Walter Mischel concerning behavioural inconsistency
– Found low correlations among different behaviours that supposedly were to reflect the same trait
– Argued measures of personality aren’t especially helpful for what they were designed to do—forecast behaviour - Counterargument by Seymour Epstein: traits are predictors of aggregate, not isolated behaviours
- Trait theories primarily describe individual differences rather than what causes them
– Pro: improved our understanding of personality structure and helped psychologists predict performance in jobs
– Con: don’t provide much insight into the causes of personality
29
Q
Personality Assessment
A
- Plagued by number of dubious methods
– Phrenology (head shape)
– Physiognomy (facial characteristics)
– Sheldon’s body types - All lacked two key criteria – reliability and validity
30
Q
Structured Personality Tests
A
- Paper-and-pencil tests consisting of questions
you respond to in one of a few fixed ways - Prepared using a rational/theoretical method
– Requires test developers to begin with a clearcut conceptualization of a trait and then write
items to assess it - Some have strong reliability and validity (NEO
PI-R; measures big five) but others do not
(Myers-Briggs)
31
Q
Projective Tests
A
- Ask examinees to interpret or make sense of ambiguous stimuli
- Based on projective hypothesis
– When interpreting ambiguous stimuli, people project aspects of their
personality - Controversial, because reliability and validity are in dispute
32
Q
Rorschach Inkblot Test
A
- Consists of ten symmetrical inkblots: five in
black-and-white and five containing colour - Examiners ask respondents to look at each
inkblot and say what it resembles - This supposedly tells you about personality
traits of the respondent
33
Q
Rorschach Evaluated Scientifically
A
- Unknown test-retest and problematic interrater reliability scores
- Little evidence that it detects features of mental disorders or predicts
criminal behaviours
– Studies have replicated associations between Rorschach scores and
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other conditions involving abnormal
thinking
– Not many replicated associations between Rorschach scores and other
mental illnesses
34
Q
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
A
- Requires subject to construct a story based
on pictures - Include in the story descriptions of:
– What has led up to the event shown
– What is happening in the scene
– The thoughts and feelings of characters
– The outcome of the story - Responses are then scored based on the
extent to which respondents’ stories
emphasize achievement-oriented themes - Little evidence for adequate reliability
or validity for most applications
35
Q
Other Projective Tests
A
- Human figure drawings require you to draw a person(s) in any way you wish – drawings interpreted based on features (e.g., large eyes =
suspiciousness) - Graphology – analysis of handwriting – is another projective test
- Neither has scientific support for its use and claims
36
Q
What Is Mental Illness?
A
- Psychopathology (mental illness) is often seen as a failure of
adaptation to the environment - Failure analysis approach tries to understand mental illness by
examining breakdowns in functioning - Mental disorder does not have a clear-cut definition
- Many different conceptions of mental illness, each with pros and cons
1. Statistical rarity
2. Subjective distress
3. Impairment
4. Societal disapproval
5. Biological dysfunction
37
Q
Historical Conceptions of Mental Illness
A
- During the Middle Ages, mental illnesses were often viewed through a
demonic model
– Odd behaviours were the result of evil spirits inhabiting the body
– Exorcisms and witch hunts were common during this time - During the Renaissance, the medical model saw mental illness as a
physical disorder needing treatment
– Began housing people in asylums – but they were often overcrowded and
understaffed
– Treatments were no better than before (e.g., bloodletting) - Reformers like Phillippe Pinel and Dorothea Dix pushed for moral
treatment
– Focused on treating patients with dignity, respect, and kindness - Still no effective treatments, though, so many continued to suffer with
no relief
38
Q
Modern Era (mental illness)
A
- Psychiatric treatment
- In early 1950s, a drug was developed called chlorpromazine (Thorazine)
- Moderately decreased symptoms of schizophrenia and similar problems
- With advent of other medications, policy of deinstitutionalization was
enacted
– Goals: releasing hospitalized psychiatric patients into the community, closing
mental hospitals - Deinstitutionalization had mixed results
- Deinstitutionalization had mixed results
- Some patients returned to almost normal lives
- Tens of thousands had no follow-up care and went off medications
– Continues to be a problem today due to lack of affordability
– A key cause of housing insecurity and homelessness - Community mental health centers and halfway houses (free or lowcost care facilities in which people can obtain treatment) attempt to
help this problem
39
Q
Diagnosis Across Cultures
A
- Certain conditions are culture-bound
– Koro involves believing your genitals are shrinking and receding into your
abdomen
– Windigo involves craving the consumption of human flesh and fear of
becoming a cannibal - Many severe mental disorders (schizophrenia, alcoholism, psychopathy)
appear to be universal across cultures
40
Q
Psychiatric Diagnoses
A
- Common Misconceptions:
1. Psychiatric diagnosis is nothing more than pigeonholing (putting
people into a “box”)
2. Psychiatric diagnoses are unreliable
3. Psychiatric diagnoses are invalid
4. Psychiatric diagnoses stigmatize people - Psychiatric diagnosis serve two critical functions:
– Pinpointing the psychological problem
– Facilitating communication between professionals - Robins and Guze Criteria for Validity
– Distinguishes that diagnosis from other, similar diagnoses
– Predicts performance on laboratory tests, including personality measures,
neurotransmitter levels, and brain-imaging findings
– Predicts family history of psychiatric disorders
– Predicts natural history (change over time)
– Predicts treatment response
41
Q
The DSM-5
A
- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM) is a system that contains the
criteria for mental disorders
– Fifth edition, DSM-5 (DSM-V) released 2013
– Text revision, DSM-5-TR, published in 2022 - Contains diagnostic criteria and decision rules for each condition
– Warns to “think organic” (rule out physical causes of symptoms first) - Contains information on prevalence (percentage of people within a
population who have a specific mental disorder) - Uses a biopsychosocial perspective
– Recognizes that there’s more to people than their disorders
– Acknowledges cultural and social diversity
42
Q
DSM Criticisms
A
- Not all diagnoses meet Robins and Guze criteria for validity (e.g.,
mathematics disorder) - Not all criteria and decisions rules are based on scientific data
- High level of comorbidity (two or more diagnoses in the same person)
- Reliance on categorical model rather than dimensional model of
psychopathology
43
Q
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(MMPI)
A
- Used in the assessment of psychopathology
- Developed using empirical method
– approach to building tests in which researchers begin with two or more criterion
groups and examine which items best distinguish them - Test has low face validity
– extent to which respondents can tell what the items are measuring - Low face validity is thought to be an advantage
– Cannot “fake” responses - Considered to have good validity, can distinguish between disorders
- Can be interpreted manually or via a program
- Problematic in some aspects
– Some overlap between scales
– Cannot be the sole basis of diagnosis
– One scale alone does not predict an illness - 567 true-false questions, 10 basic scales
- Contains three validity scales designed to detect various types of
distorted responses
– L (Lie) detects impression management
– F (Frequency) detects malingering (i.e., faking symptoms)
– K (Correction) measures defensive responding
44
Q
Anxiety Disorders
A
- Most anxieties are transient and can be
adaptive - They can also become excessive and
inappropriate - One of the most prevalent and earliest onset
of all classes of disorders
– 31% will meet the diagnostic criteria for one or
more anxiety disorders at some point in our lives - Inappropriate anxiety exists in other
disorders and problems
45
Q
Somatic symptoms
A
- Somatic symptom disorders are physical symptoms with psychological
origins - Illness anxiety disorder (formerly hypochondriasis) is a preoccupation
that you have a serious disease, despite no evidence
46
Q
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
A
- Continual feelings of worry, anxiety, physical tension, and irritability
about many areas - About 3% of the population
- 1/3 develop it after major stressor or life change
- More prevalent in females and Caucasians
47
Q
Panic Disorder
A
Panic attack: brief, intense episode of extreme fear characterized by
sweating, dizziness, light-headedness, racing heartbeat, and feelings of
impending death or going crazy
– Many patients feel like they are having a heart attack.
* Panic disorder is characterized by repeated, unexpected panic attacks,
along with either
– Persistent concerns about future attacks
– A change in personal behaviour in an attempt to avoid them
* Can be associated with specific situation or come “out of the blue”
