WEEK 11 - Theoretical perspectives of personality

Question 1

What is personality?

Answer 1

A cluster of traits that are relatively stable and long-lasting tendencies that influence behaviour across environments

Question 2

What is the nomothetic area of personality?

Answer 2

Understanding individual differences in particular personality characteristics

Question 3

What is the ideographic area of personality?

Answer 3

Understanding how various parts of a person come. together as a whole.

Question 4

What is Freud’s psychodynamic approach and the three core assumptions?

Answer 4

Personality model

• Psychic determinism
• Symbolic meaning
• Unconscious motivation

Question 5

What did Freud mean by psychic determinism?

Answer 5

We are controlled by our underlying drives and conflicts, which shape our behaviour. Although hidden, can be discovered through Freudian slips and dreams.

Question 6

In the psychodynamic approach to personality, what is symbolic meaning?

Answer 6

All actions (even minor) reveal our underlying drives

Question 7

What is unconscious motivation?

Answer 7

We are mostly unaware of our motivations

Question 8

How may the psychodynamic theory explain Freudian slips?

Answer 8

• Parapraxis
  Error in speech, memory or physical action which freud believed to be caused by the unconscious mind
• Psychological conflict bubbling to the surface
  Thoughts are subconsciously repressed and unconsciously released

Question 9

What is Freud’s topographic model 3 types of mental processes?

Answer 9

Conscious: Rational, goal directed, centre of awareness
Preconscious: Could become conscious at any time (eg knowledge base)
Unconscious: Irrational, not logic based, repressed and inaccessible
- Still plays a role in behaviour

Question 10

In Freud’s topographic model, What does opposing motives suggest?

Answer 10

Opposing motives = ambivalence

- Different aspects of consciousness have conflicting feelings or motives

Question 11

In Freud’s topographic model, how is resolution described?

Answer 11

Resolution = compromise formations

Developed to maximise fulfilment of conflicting motives

Question 12

What is Freud’s drive (Instinct) model?

Answer 12

• Based on Darwin’s work, Freud suggested human behaviour is motivated by two drives:
  Aggressive drive
  Sexual drive

Question 13

Describe Freud’s developmental model.

Answer 13

Libido follows a developmental course during childhood.

• Stages of psychosexual development
• Fixed progression of change from stage to stage
• Notion of fixation at a particular libidinal stage

Question 14

In Freud’s psychosexual stage of development, what is included in the oral stage?

Answer 14

• 0-18 months

- Dependency

Question 15

In Freud’s psychosexual stage of development, what is included in the anal stage?

Answer 15

• 2-3 years

- Orderliness, cleanliness, control, compliance

Question 16

In Freud’s psychosexual stage of development, what is included in the phalic stage?

Answer 16

• 4-6 years
• Identification with parents (Especially same sex) and others
• Oecilpus complex, establishment of conscience.

Question 17

In Freud’s psychosexual stage of development, what is included in the latency stage?

Answer 17

• 7-11 years

- Sublimination of sexual and aggressive impulses

Question 18

In Freud’s psychosexual stage of development, what is included in the genital stage?

Answer 18

12+ years

Mature sexuality and relationships

Question 19

What is included in Freud’s structural model of personality?

Answer 19

Id: Basic desires and drives
Ego: Interacts with the world and makes decisions
Superego: Sense of right and wrong, directing us to behave morally

Question 20

What is the purpose of defence mechanisms?

Answer 20

• People regulate and deal with conflicts by employing defence mechanisms
• Unconscious, aim is to strengthen or reinforce positive emotion and protect from negative and unpleasant emotion
• It is normal
• Can be healthy and useful temporarily

Question 21

What are. the 6 types of defence mechanisms?

Answer 21

• Repression: memories or thoughts kept out of conscious awareness
• Denial: Refusal to acknowledge external reality
• Displacement: Emotions directed towards a substitute target
• Regression: Return to an earlier stage in psychosexual development (eg. tantrum)
• Reaction formation: Unacceptable feelings or impulses turned into opposites
  Rationalisation: Actions explained away to avoid uncomfortable feelings

Question 22

How may unconscious patterns be assessed?

Answer 22

• Life history methods: Aim to understand the whole person in the context of life experiences
• Projective tests: Assume that persons presented with a vague stimulus with project their own impulses and desires into a description of the stimulus

Question 23

Who are some Neo-Freudians and what did they believe?

Answer 23

• Shifted focus from sexual drives to social drives
• Suggested that personality was malleable and could change over time

Alfred Adler:

• Primary motive is not sex or aggression but to strive for superiority
• Origin of the phrase - inferiority complex

Carl Jung
- Collective unconscious - ancestral memory that explains similarities in beliefs across cultures

Karen Horney
Erich Fromm

Question 24

What did neo-freudians, Karen Horney and Erich Fromm believe?

Answer 24

Karen Horney:

• Feminist perspective
• Penis envy and oedipal complex are the symptom of womens enforced dependency on men

Erich Fromm:
Escape from freedom - increasing technology means humans are able to live independently of others but what we crave is closer connection. This leaves us vulnerable to making bad choices in relationships and leaders.

Question 25

What are object relation theorists?

Answer 25

Neo-freudians who believe we form mental representations of (objectify) people who are the target of our impulse-driven desires - partners, lovers etc - Object relations theories: focus on interpersonal disturbances and capacity for relatedness to others - Relational theories: argue that adaption is primarily adaption to others

Question 26

What are some contributions and limitations of neo-freudian perspectives?

Answer 26

- Acknowledgement of unconscious forces and their potential influence on behaviour - Importance of childhood experiences in determining adult personality - Human thought and action - meaning - Inadequate scientific base and poor testability - Sexism

Question 27

What do behavioural approaches believe?

Answer 27

- Difference in our personalities stem largely from learning histories - Personalities are bundles of habits acquires by classical and operant conditioning - Personality is controlled by genes and contingencies * Determinism but different from psychoanalytic because there are external forces as well as internal which are learned behaviour patterns, not instinctual drives

Question 28

What are the cognitive-social theories?

Answer 28

- The way people encode, process and think about information determines their personality - Several necessary conditions for a behaviour * Situation encoded as relevant and meaningful * . Belief in own ability and actual ability * Self regulation of ongoing activity

Question 29

What did Albert Bandura believe about the social learning theory?

Answer 29

- We learn to be the person we are by watching others and by seeing who/what gets rewarded and who/what does not. - A child who sees others involved in helping and being rewarded will emulate this behaviour

Question 30

What did Albert Bandura believe was reciprocal determinism in the social learning theory?

Answer 30

Personality is constant interplay between environment, behaviour and our beliefs.

Question 31

What is the social-cognitive locus of control (Rotter)?

Answer 31

- Internal locus of control * Life outcomes are under personal control * positively correlated to self-esteem * Internals use more problem-focused coping - External locus of control * Luck, chance and powerful others control behaviour

Question 32

What did Kelly (1955) study surrounding encoding and personal constructs and what did she believe?

Answer 32

- Mental representations that are individually significant | - Looked for roots in behaviour in cognition

Question 33

What did Captor and Kihlstrom say about personal constructs and the information processing theory?

Answer 33

- Conception of self, others and the way social information is encoded, interpreted and remembered is central to who people are.

Question 34

What are expectancies, competencies and self-regulation?

Answer 34

Behaviour Outcome expectancies: Belief that a certain behaviour will led to a certain outcome Self efficacy expectancy: Individual conviction that necessary actions can be performed to produce the desired outcome Competencies: possession of skills and abilities for solving particular problems Self-regulation: Setting goals, evaluating performance and adjusting behaviour

Question 35

Name the conditions that need to be met for a behaviour to occur according to cognitive-social theories.

Answer 35

``` Stim Encoding > Personal value > Behaviour-outcome expectancy, behavioural plan, self-efficacy expectancy > Competencies, Behaviour > Self regulation ```

Question 36

What are the contributions and limitations of the cognitive social theories?

Answer 36

Contributions: - Focus on the role of thought and memory in personality - Readily testable Limitations: - Emphasised rationality at the expense of emotion - Assumes people consciously know what they think, feel and want

Question 37

What are humanistic approaches to personality?

Answer 37

- Emerged as an alternative to psycho analysis and behaviourism - Focus on those aspects that are distinctly human * Meaning in life * Being true to self - Roger's person-centred approach - Existential theories of personality

Question 38

What does Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggest?

Answer 38

- All people are looking for life meaning - To find your own meaning is to become self-actualised - The motivation for positive growth is innate, sometimes circumstances block growth

Question 39

What is self-actualisation?

Answer 39

- Maslow said that self-actualised people tend to be more creative, spontaneous and accepting of themselves and others - Can come off as difficult to work with or aloof - Prone to peak experiences

Question 40

What did Carl Rogers believe?

Answer 40

- Rejected notion of determinism and embraced free will | - Proposed self-actualisation as core motive in personality

Question 41

What was Roger's personality model?

Answer 41

Three major components of personality: 1. The organism (innate, generic blueprint 2. The self (set of beliefs about who we are) 3. Conditions of worth (expectations we place on ourselves - can result in incongruence)

Question 42

____________/________ between ideal and self-concept can lead to ________ in behaviour or the way one _______ themselves.

Answer 42

1. Divergence/Incongruence 2. Distortions 3. Sees

Question 43

What is Rogers person-centred approach?

Answer 43

- Attempt understanding of individual's phenomenological experience - the way they conceive of reality and think about the world - Fundamental took of the psychologist is empathy * The capacity to understand another person's experience