Personality Flashcards
(124 cards)
1
Q
What are personality traits?
A
Customary ways of responding to the world
2
Q
Define personality
A
The distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling and acting that characterise a person’s responses to life situations
3
Q
What does personlaity do?
A
Help us distinguish one person from another and it also guides people’s behaviour
4
Q
What are the three things in a theory that should be supplied?
A
- comprehensive framework - known factors can be incorporated and existing behaviours can be explained
- predictions of future events with some degree of precision
- stimulate the discovery of new knowledge - create new ideas and research questions
5
Q
What did Charcot believe was the cause of physical symptoms of hysteria?
A
Physical symptoms have psychological causes
6
Q
how did freud try and unbury contents of the unconscious?
A
Free association and dream analysis
7
Q
Explain the analogy of the personality as an energy system
A
(like a steam engine) we are driven by energies that circulate our bodies - humans have to release steam to allow our engines to run smoothly
8
Q
What is psychic energy or a libido?
A
Freud’s term for the motivational force or psychic energy which he suggests drives our mental lives and behaviour e.g. sexual drives may be released directly through sexual activity or indirectly through sexual fantasies, farming or painting etc
9
Q
What does Freud believe about acting on our libido?
A
He says that we are meant to act on them but he also recognises that social rules mean you cant always do the things you want - this leads to problems
10
Q
What events are in the conscious mind?
A
Mental events that a in current awareness
11
Q
What events are in the preconscious mind?
A
Events we are unaware of at the moment but can be recalled, for example a friends number
12
Q
What events are in the unconscious mind?
A
The dynamic realm of wishes, feelings and impulses that lie beyond our awareness
13
Q
What are verbal slips?
A
Holes in our armour of the conscious mind
14
Q
What is the id?
A
The innermost core of the personality, the only structure present at birth and the source of all psychic energy. It is completely unconscious and functions in a totally irrational manner. Driven by the pleasure principle.
15
Q
What is the pleasure principle?
A
It seeks immediate gratification or release, regardless of rational considerations and environmental realities
16
Q
what is the ego?
A
It has direct contact with reality and functions primarily at a conscious level. It develops during the first three years and recognises you cant always get what you want. It works on the reality principle.
17
Q
What is the reality principle?
A
Testing reality to decide when and under what circumstances the id can safely discharge its impulses and satisfy its needs
18
Q
What is the superego?
A
The moral arm of personality. It is the last to develop at around the age of 5 and it is socialised into us through reinforcement, punishment and identification. It strives to control the impulses of the id that are condemned by society. works on the morality principle. It might cause a person to experience intense guilt over sexual activity because we have internalised that the idea of sex is dirty
19
Q
Why is the ego called the executive of personality?
A
There is a constant battle between the id and the superego which the ego has to try and compensate to keep both happy
20
Q
When does anxiety occur according to Freud?
A
When the ego faces impulses that threaten to get out of control or when it is faced with danger from the environment
21
Q
When do we resort to defence mechanisms?
A
When realistic strategies arent rational meaning they would be ineffective in reducing anxiety - most people have used them throughout their lifetime, yet maladjusted people resort to defence mechanisms excessively
22
Q
What are defence mechanisms?
A
Unconscious mental operations that deny or distort reality
23
Q
Define repression.
A
Ego use some of the energy to prevent anxiety arousing memories, feelings and impulses from entering our consciousness - these repressed memories may be released indirectly through dreams or slip of the tongues
24
Q
Define sublimation
A
Taboo impulses may even be channelled into socially desirable and admirable behaviours, completely masking the sinister impulses. For example, violent impulse = soldier
25
What are psychosexual stages?
Stages during which the id's pleasure seeking tendencies are focused on specific pleasure sensitive areas of the body, called erogenous zones
26
When can fixations occur and what are they?
Fixations can occur when deprivations or overindulgences in these stages arise. A fixation is a state of arrested psychosexual development in which instincts are focused on a particular themes
27
what is regression in accordance to the psycholsexual stages?
Psychological retreat to an earlier psychosexual stage
28
What is the oral stage
During infancy. Satisfaction from mouth related actions - sucking breast, thumb or other objects. Fixation here leads to self-indulgence or dependence as an adult - smoking and eating too much
29
What is the anal stage?
2-3 years. Pleasure from elimination. Toilet training. If lax toilet training then fixation produces anally expulsive individuals - messy, negative and dominant personality. If harsh toilet training then fixation produces an anally retentive individual - compulsions, over-emphasis on cleanliness etc
30
What happens at toilet training?
This is the first attempt to control a biological urge
31
What is the phallic stage?
4-5 years. Pleasure from sex organs. Male develops incestuous feeling for mother and views father as a rival - fears castration. Females discover their lack of penis and have penis envy, believing their mother has castrated them - replaces this later with a want for a baby.
32
What is the oedipus complex?
Conflictual situation involving love for the mother and hostility towards the father.
33
What is the electra complex?
The female counterpart of the oedipus complex in which women have penis envy
34
Why is the phallic stage a major milestone in gender identity development?
When we resolve our conflicts during this stage we repress these sexual impulses and then begin to identify with our same-sex parent, adopting their gender roles
35
What is the latency stage?
6-12 years. Sexualism is dormant. Focus on spending time completing same-sex peer activities
36
what is the genital stage?
12 years onwards. Erotic impulse find direct expression in sexual relations
37
What are neoanalytical theorists?
Psychoanalysts who disagreed with certain aspects of Freud;s thinking and developed their own theories
38
Name the three main criticisms neoanalysts had of Freud's work
- didnt give enough credit to social and cultural factors role in personality development
- too much emphasis on sexuality - in particular infantile sexuality
- too much emphasis on childhood in determining adult personality - development actually occurs throughout a lifetime
39
what did Jung believe was the motivational force behind behaviour
Not driven by sex but instead by personal growth - the want to better ourselves
40
What is personal consciousness?
Based on individual life experiences
41
What is collective consciousness?
Consists of memory accumulated throughout the entire human history
42
What are archetypes?
Inherited tendencies to interpret experience in certain ways. These are concepts and patterns that are common to all human beings which help us cope with situations e.g. good vs evil
43
What are object relations theories?
They focus on the image or mental representations that people form of themselves and other people as a result of early experiences with caregivers. Become lenses through our later social interactions are viewed and hence have an effect on individuals' relationships throughout life.
44
According to the object relations theory why do people have difficulty forming intimate realtionships?
They have a negative view of themselves when it comes to mentally imagining themselves in relationships. This effects the way they behave and then they cause self-fulfilling prophecies
45
What are the criticisms of the psychodynamic approaches?
- clinical observations aren't sufficient evidence
- untestable concepts - e.g. unconscious can be tested in lab conditions - may suggest that these concepts would be distorted by testing them
- not falsifiable - cant disprove e.g. repression means we are designed to keep these things out of our consciousness, so if asked if we fancy our opposite sex parent either answer confirms Freud's theory (no = it is repressed)
- focus on childhood sexuality is unpopular
46
What is term phenomenology that the humanistic approach is driven by?
The study of immediate experiences
47
What does the personal construct theory believe?
Our primary goal is to find personal meaning in the world - psychologists here are interested in how people construct reality
48
What are personal constructs?
Cognitive categories that people sort the persons events in their lives. These can be unhelpful if individuals use unhelpful belief systems
49
what is self-actualisation?
The highest realisation of human potential
50
Define the self
An organised consistent set of perceptions of and beliefs about oneself
51
Define self-consistency
An absence of conflict among self-perceptions
52
Define congruence
Consistency between self-perceptions and experience - inconsistency evokes threat
53
How do healthy and unhealthy people deal with incongruence?
- healthy: modify their self-concept to reach congruence
- unhealthy: deny or distort experiences - this can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies e.g. if they believe they are unlovable, then someone loves them which causes incongruence, so pushes them away which confirms their belief
54
Explain the need for positive regard
The need for acceptance, sympathy and love from others - this is essential for healthy development
55
What is unconditional positive regard?
The person is inherently worthy of love, regardless of accomplishments or behaviours
56
What are conditions of worth?
Conditions that dictate the circumstances under which we approve or disapprove of ourselves
57
Define a fully functioning person
Individuals who were close to achieving self-actualisation
58
What is self-esteem?
How positively or negatively we view ourselves - this is actually quite stable over our lifespan
59
What are the criticisms of the humanistic/ phenomological approach
- relies heavily on the individual's reports of their personal experiences - too subjective (even though this is the aim of humanists)
- can't be measured and tested, a lot of the data relies on self-report questionnaire
60
What are the advantages of humanistic/ phenomological approach
- it has moved with the times by using new methods that measure brain activity and also includes positive psychology (this focuses on positive aspects of humans - spirituality, mindfulness, self-esteem)
61
What does a type approach do?
Classify people into groups who share the same common personality. Freud has one and Galen too
62
Talk about Galen's theory of personality
different excesses of different humours cause different personalities:
- melancholic - black bile - pessimistic and mournful
- choleric - yellow bile - bad tempered and aggressive
- phlegmatic - phlegm - slow and easy going
- sanguine - blood - happy-go-luck and passionate
63
What does a trait approach do?
define a person's personality in terms of the degree to which they possess a particular characteristic. Where a person sits on a dimension
64
Define personality traits
Relatively stable cognitive, emotional and behavioural characteristics of people that help establish their individual identities and distinguish them from others
65
what is the lexical approach?
Proposing traits on the basis of words or concepts from everyday language
66
What is factor analysis?
A statistical tool used to identify clusters of behaviours highly correlated (positively or negatively) with one another, but not with behaviours in other clusters. E.g.people who are socially reserved might not like parties
67
How are lexical and factor analytic approaches brought together?
In self-report questionnaires by rating on a scale to what extent they see themselves as fitting a set of adjectives
68
What did Cattell develop?
The 16 personality factor questionnaire - it is meant to provide a comprehensive personality description. Measured individuals as well as groups of people (olympians vs artists)
69
What is Eysenck's Extraversion-Stability mode?
- decided that personality could be measured on few super traits - two basic dimensions
- introversion-extraversion
- Stability-instability (neuroticism)
- the two basic dimensions intersect at right angles -so they are uncorrelated
- where a person is on these two scales interacts to form different personality types
70
What links does Eysenck's super trait theory have with previous and new trait theories
- Galen's - the various combinations can describe the four types identified by Galen
- both stability-instabilty and introversion-extraversion are key factors on the Big Five Personality test (OCEAN)
71
What is the Five Factor Model?
```
- five higher-order factors capture the basic structure of personality
O - openness to experience
C - conscientiousness
E - extraversion
A - agreeableness
N - neuroticism
- found to be universal to human species
- the blending of these five different dimensions accounts for a huge variation in personality patterns
```
72
How id the Five Factor Model measured?
by the Neuroticisim, Extraversion and Openess Personality Inventory (NEO-PI)
73
Explain the extraverision vs introversion
sociable, foreceful, energetic, adventurous, enthusiastic, outgoing
74
Explain agreeableness vs antagonism
forgiving, straightforwardness, warm, compliance, modesty, sympathetic
75
explain conscientiousness vs lack of direction
Competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, deliberation
76
explain neuroticism vs emotional stability
Anxiety, irritable, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, vulnerability
77
explain openess vs closedness to experience
curious, imaginative, artistic, wide interests, excitable, unconventional
78
what is the newly added facet to the big five model? this expands on the extraversion dimension
Positive emotions/cheerfulness
79
What did Harthstone and May (1928) find about the stability and change of behaviour across situations?
Children were given the chance to lie steal and cheat in a number of settings (home, school, party, athletic contest) - found most children will deceive in certain situations but not others
80
What is self-monitoring?
attending to situational cues and adapting behaviour to what would be most appropriate
81
explain what extreme self-monitors are like
behavioural chameleons - act according to the situation
82
explain what low self-monitors are like
act in terms of the internal beliefs and attitudes rather than the demands of the situation - what you see is what you get
83
What criticisms of the trait approach are there?
- need to focus on how traits interact with each other which affects behaviours - not complex enough to reflect personality
- focuses on on description, not explanation - doesn't explain how or why being somewhere on a dimension means someone will express certain behaviours - lack explanatory power
84
Explain the findings of many twin studies in accordance to personality traits
Many studies show that monozygotic twins are more similar to eachother than dizygotic twins - this suggests genetics play a role - but MZ may have more similar environments - others treat them more similarly than DZ
85
Explain the findings of twin studies where they compare sets that were raised together and raised apart
Tellegen at al found that genetic factors accounted for 40-50% of variance in trait scores. The degree of resemblance did not differ much between those reared together and apart - so family environment has little responsibility between people's personality. Also, individual's unique environmental experiences (school and interactions) account for variance as well
86
Twin studies that study twins that have been raised apart and together allow us to do what?
Divide the amount of variation among individuals along three components
1. variation due to shared family environment
2. variation due to genetic factors
3. variation due to other factors - like unique experiences
87
What was Eysenck one of the first people to do?
suggest a biological basis for major personality traits - linking the the super traits to normal patterns of arousal within the brain - believed there is a genetic basis and twin studies support this
88
What is special about the nervous systems of introverted people
They are overly-aroused - brains too electrically activated - therefore they try to reduce arousal by reducing stimulation this is why they are less social
89
what is special about the nervous system of the extraverted people
They are under-aroused so they need powerful or frequent stimulation - so seeks social contact
90
What are the differences between arousal levels of stable and unstable people?
Unstable (neurotic) people show large and sudden shifts in arousal whereas stable show smaller and more gradual shifts - unstable on dimension = unstable nervous system
91
Talk about Eysenck's take on the nature nurture interaction
He believed that personality is strongly influenced by life experiences, but the way people respond to these experiences are at least partly programmed by biological factors
92
Define temperament
Individual differences in emotional and behavioural styles that appear so early in life that they are assumed to have a biological basis - includes factors such as emotionality , acitivity level, sociability and impulsivity
93
Are temperamental factors personality traits in their own right?
They are not assumed to be but they are seen as the biological building blocks that influence subsequent development of personality
94
What is an advantage of the biological approach?
It makes use of the most cutting-edge research designs and techniques and is furthered by the new technological advances and is most strongly supported by scientific research evidence
95
What does behaviourism emphasise
Environmental causes - it views humans as reactors to external events - behaviour s explained from the outside in
96
what are social-cognitive theories?
They combine behavioural and cognitive perspectives into an approach that personality stresses the interaction of a thinking human being with a social environment that provides learning experiences. they reject the idea that behaviour is influenced by personal factors OR environmental factors
97
What is the reciprocal determinism?
The person, the person's behaviour and the environment all influence one another in a pattern of two-way casual links
98
What does Rotter believe are the factors that increase the likelihood that we will engage in a particular behaviour
1. expectancy - our perceptions of how likely it is that certain consequences will occur
2. reinforcement value - how much we desire or dread the outcome that we expect the behaviour to produce
e. g. someone who highly values academic success and also expects that studying will result in high grades is likely to study
99
What is the locus of control?
An expectancy concerning the degree of personal control we have in our lives
100
What is internal locus of control?
The belief that life outcome are under personal control e.g. poor or good performance on exam is due to them
101
What is external locus of control?
The belief that life outcomes have less to do with one's own efforts than with the influence of external factors e.g. poor performance on a test due to the difficulty of a test, good performance based on good luck
102
How is a person's LOC measured
The Internal-External Scale - it consists of 29 pairs of statements - lower scores are indicative of greater internal LOC
103
How do people with a internal LOC behave?
- behave in a more self-determined fashion
- achieve better grades
- are more resistant to social influence
- experiences less depression and anxiety
- cope with stress in a more active and problem-focused manner
104
what is self-efficacy?
beliefs concerning an ability to perform the behaviour needed to achieve the desired outcomes - high self-efficacy = confidence in ability to overcome obstacles and achieve goals
105
What are the four determinants of self-efficacy?
1. previous performance in similar situations - these shape our beliefs about our capabilities e.g attended self defence so believe our self-efficacy is high for disabling a potential predator
2. observational learning -a similar person achieving your goal increases your self-efficacy to achieve the same goal - breaking running mile in under 4 minute barrier saw massive increase in running performance
3. verbal persuasion - whether people believe in us or not
4. emotional arousal that is interpreted as anxiety or fatigue decreases self-efficacy
106
What is self-efficacy a strong predictor of?
Future performance and accomplishment
107
What is the cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS)?
An organized system of five variables that interact continuously with one another and with the environment, generating the distinctive patterns of behaviour that characterise that person
108
What are the five variables in CAPS?
1. encoding strategies - how people encode situations - determine how we respond
2. expectations and beliefs - what we believe the outcome of our behaviours will be
3. goals and values - motivation
4. emotions (affects) - things that trigger emotional responses
5. competencies and self-regulatory processes - ability for control
- MORE RESEARCH IS NEEDED
109
what are behaviour signatures?
Consistent ways of responding in particular classes of situations
110
Strengths of the social cognitive theories
- has a strong scientific base
| - it brings together the cognitive and behavioural approaches
111
In what ways does culture differ along dimensions that effect personality development?
1. complexity
2. interdependence - western cultures are independent and emphasis individual choice this contrasts non-western cultures - interdependent and emphasis on group decisions
112
What do personality tests need to reach to be useful scientifically or pratically
reliability and validity
113
What is reliability? What are the two different types important here?
measure of consistency
- test-retest - a stable trait measurement should get the same results when testing the same person on separate occasions
- inter-judge reliability - different professionals should reach the same conclusions from the same test
114
What is validity?
Is the test actually measuring the personality variable it intends to measure?
115
What are structured interviews? and how are they used in personality testing?
They contain a set of specific questions that are administered to every participant - they can also be used to analyse general appearance, voice and speeach patterns and posture
116
What are the limitations of interviews?
- characteristics of the interviewer may influence the behaviour of the interviewee - this affects the validity
- success depends on the interviewee's desire to cooperate, respond honestly and report accurately what the researcher is trying to access
117
What is behavioural assessment?
Observing behaviour and then analysing it via behavioural assessment. An explicit coding system that describes behavioural categories of interest. they will then train observers to show high inter-judge reliability.
118
What is experience sampling? this is also called remote behaviour sampling
researchers and clinicians can collect self-reported samples of behaviour from respondents as they live their daily lives - when beeper sounds at randomly determined times pts record their current thoughts feeling and emotions or rate selected behaviour
119
What are personality scales?
A widely used method which assesses personality. they are objective measures as they include standard sets of questions that are scored using an agreed on scoring key
120
What are the advantages of personality scales?
1. can collect from many people at the same time
2. all people respond using same items
3. ease of scoring
121
What is a disadvatage of personality scales?
some individuals will not respond honestly - to combat threat to validity some tests use validity scales which detect socially desirable tendencies
122
What are projective tests?
they present ambiguous stimuli and ask the person for their interpretations and because the meaning of the stimulus is unclear then the person's interpreatation must come from withing - this projects their view of the world and inner needs onto a stimulus
123
Give an example of a projective test that begins with R
The Rorschach Test - a series of ten inkblots where interpretations are based in what the responses seem to symbolise
- however there are amny different ways to interpret these results - ambiguous
- heavily used by psychodynamics
124
Give an example of a projective test that begins with T
The Thematic Apperception Test - a person is instructed to write a story about what is happening in the picture - there are 10-20 pictures. These stories are analysed for recurrent themes - this is invalid and unreliable as tests go - interpretations will be ambiguous
