Unit 12

• Personality


  a characteristic pattern of behavior that remains consistent over long periods of time
• The Barnum effects 


  tendency to believe that vague generalizations of personality are tailored to you
• Idiographic approach


  focuses of detailed descriptions of individuals and their unique personality characteristics
• Nomothetic approach


  examines personality in large groups to try and understand universals of personality
• pychodynamics

  puts emphisis on early childhood development
• Freuds structure of personality

  1. Id - basic biological drive
  2. super ego - moral mind
  3. ego - negotiated between
• Psychosexual stages

  Oral - gratification with putting things in mouth

  Anal - gratification with using the potty

  Phallic - gratification from sexual attraction to parents (Oedipal complex)

  Latency and Genital - no fixation, balance between ID and Super Ego
• Fixation


  focusing on the pleasure associated with a particular stage
• The ego engages in what?

  anxiety difences
• Defense mechanisms

  Repression - keeping distressing information out of our minds

  Regression - falling back into a previous stag of development

  Projection - seeing our own bad traits in others

  Reaction formation - acting in opposite to normal ways about distressing thoughts

  Sublimation - transforming unacceptable impulses into acceptable ones
• Carl Jung created

  analytic psychology - view personality as the result of unconscious archetypes derived from 'collective unconscious'
• Alfred Adler created

  inferiority complex - an abnormal personality that results from struggling with feelings of inferiority in ones social environment
• Karen Horney - feminist psychology


  Pushed back on penis envy with womb envy

  thought the difference between men and women were not inherent in nature and was due to societal upbringing
• Projective tests


  ambiguous images are presented to elicit responses that reflect unconscious desire or conflicts
• Thermotic apperception test


  show pictures to elicit a response
• Humanism


  emphasized the unique and positive qualities of human experience and potential
• Abraham Maslow


  self actualization - reaching our fullest potential
• Carl Roger


  Person centered perspective - people are born good and given the right environment will grow up to be normal and develop full
• Positivist psychology


  use scientific methods to study human potential and how to promote well being

  • money not equaling happiness
• Flow feeling 


  felling of full immersion in an activity
• Personality trait

  labels applied to specific attributes of personality
• Factor analysis


  reveals statistical similarities among a wide variety of items
• Five factor model

  a trait based approach to personality measurement that includes

  • Openness
  • Conscientiousness
  • Extraversion
  • Agreeableness
  • Neuroticism
• State


  temporary physical or psychological engagement that influences our behavior
• Four general aspects of stimulation

  • Location
  • Association
  • Activities
  • Subjective states
• Women score slightly higher in

  • Neuroticism
  • Conscientiousness
  • Agreeableness
  • Extraversion
• Authoritarian personality


  tendency to separate social world into 'them' and 'us'
• HEXACO model

  • Honesty and humility
  • Emotionality
  • Extroversion
  • Agreeableness
  • Conscientiousness
  • Openness
• The dark triad

  Combination of traits linked to bad people

  • Machiavellianism - scheming and knifing
  • Psychopathy - shallow emotional responses
  • Narcissism - believe self to be all important
• Right-wing authoritarianism

  • Obeying orders - difference to authority
  • Supporting aggression against those who dissent and targets identified by authorities
  • Believe strongly in maintaining social order
• Temperaments


  personality like attributes present at birth

  • activity level, mood, attention span

  innate foundation for personality to be built on

  • predicts adult personality
• Personality changes over your life but stabilizes around middle age
• reciprocal determinism


  behavior, internal factors, and external factors interact to determine one another
• Genes code for brain chemicals related to personality not personality itself

  • Genes regulating serotonin transports liked to anxiety
• Habitat dependent selection hypothesis


  certain personality types have fitness advantages in particular types of environments
• Brain regions responsible for cognitive abilities related to each big five factors show activity difference between scores

  • Medial orbitofrontal cortex - Extraversion
  • Middle frontal gyrus - Conscientiousness
• Arousal theory of extraversion

  extraversion determined by peoples threshold for arousal
• ascending activating system regulates arousal response

  • Extraverts - underactive
  • Introverts - overactive