Personality Psychology Flashcards
Who was Walter Mischel and how did he criticize the trait approach?
- Introduced social-cognitive approach.
- Criticized trait theory, which assumes people act same across all situations, by saying situations help determine how we act. People with same trait may behave differently in different situations and over time. Classic studies like Milgram’s show context is important too. Having a trait consistently shapes how you respond but doesn’t make your response the same every time.
- Mishel said traits are just the way we categorize each other. This isn’t true tho cuz they have some neurobiological basis and some effect on behaviour. Contemporary personality psychology assumes both interact to produce behaviour.
What is social learning theory?
Bandura (1970s):
Consistent patterns of thought, behaviour, and disposition are learned by experience and observation of the social environment.
Key difference w traditional learning theory is that cognition plays mediating role between context and behaviour–social situation and how we think both matter. How people learn from their parents.
Example of aggression: CLOWN DOLL. Kids copied aggressive adult, but not if the adult had been punished.
Reciprocal determinism
Environmental, cognitive, and behavioural factors constantly influence each other.
Example: You prefer being alone so you don’t develop social skills, then you’re awkward in social settings, which reinforces your preference for being alone.
Locus of control
Internal (you control your own fate) or external (our perception that chance our outside forces determine what happens to us).
Benefits of internal locus of control
Having an internal locus of control predicts greater success at school, work, greater physical health, and lower depression
Benefits of bi-local control
Means you can often take responsibility for your own actions but accept that external factors influence your life.
Outcome efficacy vs self-efficacy
Bandura.
Outcome efficacy: Belief that if you perform X behaviour you will achieve Y result
Self efficacy: Belief that you will successfully execute a behaviour
Describe Martin Seligman and Steve Maier (1967)’s study on dogs and how people may develop an external locus of control and learned helplessness.
Gave 1 group of dogs electric shocks, and they could press a lever to stop them. Gave 2nd group of dogs shocks but there was nothing they could do to stop them. Gave 3rd group no shocks.
Group 1 quickly stopped the shocks. Group 2 quickly gave up trying to stop the shocks and displayed similar signs to depression in humans.
Moved them into new cage where one half got shocked and the other didn’t. Groups 1 and 3 immediately moved to the other half of the cage. Group 2 didn’t even try.
Depressive realism
Not being overly optimistic that we have an internal locus of control. People, in general, believe that they have control over way more than they actually do. E.g. if you choose a lottery ticket for yourself you’re more likely to think you’re going to win.
Explain Freud’s psychodynamic approach to personality
Negotiation between ID, ego, and superego. ID goes off pleasure principle.
Superego is what social norms and prior learning tells us to do.
Ego tries to mediate.
These intrapsychic conflicts produce anxiety, tension, and neurosis.
Define the ID, ego, and superego
ID: born with it, all unconscious, only wants pleasure
Ego: mediates the ID, tries to negotiate between conscious ID and subconscious superego
Superego: moral constraints of society
List the 7 defence mechanisms Anna Freud thought up
How the ego negotiates between what the ID wants and what the superego says society needs.
Defense mechanisms to reduce intrapsychic conflict:
Rationalization: justify less than ideal behaviours/thoughts
Repression: squash down thoughts
Regression: simulating a version of ourselves from before the conflict
Projection: tendency to think others are dealing with the conflict we’re dealing with rather than us
Sublimation: turn urges into productive activity, e.g. join football team to have close contact with people to reduce anxiety you’re feeling over sexual urges
Displacement: channel urges into unproductive activity to appease the ID, e.g. have fights
Identification: pretend to be someone who doesn’t have the anxiety, e.g. promise ring kid
Reaction formation: exhibiting the opposite behaviour, e.g. I hate all social contact
Does displacement exist? How can you combat it?
Studies show it does exist–we do get angry at someone when we’re angry at someone else. Distraction is the best technique.
What’s wrong with the idea of repression?
Frued’s idea was ego keeping unwanted feelings or memories from the conscious mind. Little evidence for this.
Therapists can cause false memories in vulnerable patients. PTSD usually involves CONSTANTLY remembering the events.
More usual that you might not have interpreted something as “abuse” when it happened and so classified it as weird/confusing, and later come back and classified it as abuse.
What 4 things did Freud introduce that are pretty cool?
Psychotherapy. Early childhood development is important. The unconscious. Psychosomatic illnesses.
What was wrong with Freud’s science?
Use case studies a lot. Aspects of results were unfalsifiable. Used upper class women mostly.
Humanistic-existential approach to personality
Things that drive your personality: self-actualization, life choices, and real world constraints
Striving for self-actualization is the most important aspect of personality. It means you fulfil your true potential, gain sense of personal autonomy, accept yourself for who you are and accept those around you.
E.g. Carl Rogers, Maslow.
Social-cognitive approach to personality
Best summarized by Milgram on obedience-putting people in situations and observing how they behave. Behaviours in situations are the most important thing to understand.
What is the trait approach to personality and how did it come about?
○ Created by Gordon Allport
○ Individuals’ traits and attributes integrate to make up personality as a whole
○ Assumes to some extent we are conscious of our personality
○ Assumes we can report our personality without biases
Started by gathering all attributions from the dictionary (14,000 words), then pruned out redundancies using using factor analysis, then boiling it down to the 5 biggest traits that explain most personality differences.
What is factor analysis?
Created by Cattell. Used to take a large set of variables (like words) and group them into smaller sets of variables that correlate with each other.
What are informant reports?
Reports others give about those close to them. Often used to validate self-reports.
What are cardinal, central, and secondary traits?
Cardinal traits: dominate someone’s personality. Most of us don’t have one, but the Dalai Lama could be said to be cardinally compassionate bc compassion directs his every behaviour.
Central traits: general dispositions, like neurotic or outgoing
Secondary traits: relevant in certain contexts, e.g. when with certain friends, very talkative
What is OCEAN in the big 5?
• Openness to experience
○ Imaginative, independent, variety
• Conscientiousness
○ Organized, careful, self-disciplined
• Extra version
○ Social, fun loving, affectionate
• Agreeableness
○ Soft hearted, trusting, helpful
• Negative emotionality
Worried, insecure, anxiousIs there a 6th factor that should be included in the “big 5”?
Honesty-humility? But others suggest there’s only 2–social and goals/status.
What is the Myres-Briggs personality test?
Most popular one in general circles but not with psychologists
Jungian theory said introvert vs extravert is most important for everyone, but sensing vs intuition and feeling vs thinking are ranked in each person.
Myres-Briggs added extra dimension in 1942–judging vs perceiving.
MBTI, Love languages profiles, four letters, personality types indicator, 16 personalities-all these use myres-Briggs
What is the “fast friends” study? Aron et al, 1997
Three rounds of increasingly intimate questions that get us to disclose unique things about ourselves, under expectation that your partner will be somewhat similar to you. Found people who did these questions together rated themselves much higher on subjective closeness index vs those who just spoke to them for 50 mins.
Why is the Myres-Briggs test a bit shit?
• It’s the most popular because it’s owned by a big company that pours tonnes of marketing into it to get companies to use it, motivated by profit not science
• Theoretical contradictions: Jung’s ideas don’t stand up to science e.g. collective unconscious. Very binary ie you are either extraverted or introverted.
• Reliability: much less reliable than other tests like big 5.
Concurrent validity: if someone takes multiple different kinds of tests do they get similar results? Myres Briggs correlates a little with other tests on E-I (r=0.35) but not at all on other factors. Big 5 correlates with others r=0.8
• Predictive validity: doesn’t predict much except schizotypal diagnosis and OCD
In what ways has the big 5 test got predictive validity?
§ Neuroticism:
□ Mental health diagnosis
□ Lower GPA
□ Poor job performance
§ Conscientiousness:
□ Fewer mental health diagnoses
□ Higher lifespan
□ Higher GPA
□ Better job performance
§ Agreeableness:
□ Higher GPA
□ Lower income
□ Higher relationship quality
