Test 3: Personality Flashcards
(10 cards)
Definition
Personality is an individual’s characteristic patterns of behaving, thinking and feeling
Freud’s Levels of Awareness
Conscious mind
What a person is aware of at any given moment in time
Pre-conscious
Contains memories, feelings, experiences and perceptions that you’re not thinking about but you can access.
Un-conscious
Freud saw it as the primary motivating force behind personality and human behavior
Holds memories that were once conscious but have been repressed due to their anxiety provoking nature.
He also believed it holds our sexual and aggressive impulses.
Freud’s Structure of Personality
Id Based on the pleasure principle. Exists at birth Motivates us toward seeking pleasure Ex. people who are addicts, narcissists Ego Operates out of the reality principle Compromising between Id and Superego to balance it with reality Superego Operates as the great judge in personality Freud called it the "harsh critic”
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Oedipus (Ages 5-6)
Males attached to their mothers
Best way to get to mother through father
Elektra Complex (5-6)
Girl seeks out the father, attached to the father
Has “Penis Envy”
Turns to the mother because it’s the best way to get to the father
Defense Mechanisms
1) Repression
We block out thoughts, feelings, perceptions we do not want in our conscious mind
Freud thought it was the most commonly used defense
What we repress manifests itself in our personality without us knowing it
Ex. Trauma
2) Projection
When you project your own unpleasant thoughts about yourself and you place it on somebody else
When we say “it’s not me it’s you”
Don’t have to own up
3) Denial
When you refuse to acknowledge that any threat exists to yourself
4) Rationalization
When you supply a logical or rational reason rather the real reason
5) Regression
When we revert to behavior of an earlier age
6) Reaction Formation
When we express ideas that are the opposite of disturbing thoughts
Ex. Agressive feelings towards boss, but you are overly kind to him/her in person.
7) Displacement
When we substitute a less threatening object for the original object or impulse
Ex. You want to yell at your boss and you take it out on someone else that is safer like a spouse
8) Sublimation
When we re-channel our impulses to acceptable areas
Ex. Aggressive impulses channeled into contact sports
What is the Collective Unconscious?
The deepest and most inexcusable layer of the mind
Gathering of all the thoughts and perceptions of our ancestors that still exist within us
The Five Factor Theory of Personality
Openness
Favor towards new experiences, new ideas
Conscientiousness
How much you pay attention to others, how concerned you are about what’s around you.
Extroversion
How much do you want to engage in social contact,
Agreeableness
How agreeable are you? Do you argue or are you passive.
Neuroticism
Emotional reactivity
O.C.E.A.N.
Humanistic Psychology’s View of Humanity and Personality
Humanistic psychologists believe that human nature is innately good and given the right circumstances we would all be optimists.
We have naturally creative means that strive for freewill.
Believe that our experiences shape who we are but also block who we can become
For example, poverty, abuse.
Abraham Maslow
Hierarchy of Needs
Self Actualization (ex. Ghandi, Buddah), esteem, belongingness, safety, biology <———bottom
Inter Family Systems
Richard Schwartz
Believed that we are all striving the self.
Believed that we have internal parts to our personality. Ex. Racial Identity, Childhood relationship with father.
These parts come together to form the self
Believed that your internal parts could become disconnected through life experiences.
When the parts are together in harmony there is self
Family therapy with your own internal parts
Carl Rogers
Belief is that the foundation of our personality starts with unconditional love from your caregivers
If we don’t get unconditional love we form conditions of worth
Everything about our worth has a condition (Ex. I will love you if you change this about yourself)
Can force us to live and act acceding to someone else’s values instead of our own
As a result we experience anxiety and we deny our true self. We also spend time trying to please others, we inhibit our behavior, we close ourself off to new experiences, and we distort our own perceptions.
Carl Rogers (Conditions of Worth)
Belief is that the foundation of our personality starts with unconditional love from your caregivers
If we don’t get unconditional love we form conditions of worth
Everything about our worth has a condition (Ex. I will love you if you change this about yourself)
Can force us to live and act acceding to someone else’s values instead of our own
As a result we experience anxiety and we deny our true self. We also spend time trying to please others, we inhibit our behavior, we close ourself off to new experiences, and we distort our own perceptions.
Personality Assessments
Two Types of Tests
Projective Test (Personality gets projected on subjective subject)
Sentence Completion
House Tree-Person
Draw a house draw a tree draw a person
TAT
Series of scenes the examiner asks the subject a series of questions (before, during, after)
Rorschach Ink Blot Test
Objective Test
Mesurable because they are quantifiable
You can express it with numbers and statistics
M.M.P.I.
Measures personality characteristics and psychopathology
C.P.I.
Assesses the personality of normal populations age 13 and older
Myers-Briggs
Produces 1 of 16 personality profiles
