lecture 5- personality

• Personality

  • People’s typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
  • A trait is a relatively enduring predisposition that influences our behaviour across many situations.
• Significance of age 30, age 50
• Formal measures of personality Typically used for?

  • clinical diagnosis of psychological disorders
  • measuring traits for research
  • personal selection in business (ex. NASA)
• what are some Informal measures of personality

  • BuzzFeed quizzes
  • MTBI quiz
• Goal of studying personality

  To explain both commonalities and differences among people
• Nomothetic approaches

  Identify general principles that govern the behaviour of all individuals
• Idiographic approaches


  Identify the unique characteristics and experiences within a person
• Causes of Personality

  • Genetic factors
  • Shared environmental factors
  • Non-shared environmental factors
• Twin studies and adoption studies

  Central to disentangling the effects of genetic and environmental factors on personality
• Numerous personality traits are influenced by genetics
• All personality trait correlations in twins are below 1.0
• Correlations for identical twins reared apart are similar to identical twins reared together
• Genes


  Code for proteins that influence the functioning of neurotransmitter systems
• Neurotransmitters


  Associated with certain personality traits
• Neurotransmitters are associated with certain personality traits

  • ex. Low serotonin and impulsivity and aggression
  • ex. Dopamine activity and novelty seeking
• Major personality theories


  • Psychoanalytic theory
  • Behavioural and social learning theories
  • Humanistic theories
  • Trait models
• Psychoanalytic theory


  Developed by Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, based on case studies of hysteria
• Assumptions of psychoanalytic theory

  • Psychic determinism
  • Symbolic meaning
  • Unconscious motivation
• Psychic determinism


  All psychological events have a cause (no free will)
• Symbolic meaning


  No action is meaningless
• Unconscious motivation


  Most of what we do is driven by unconscious factors
• Freud's structure of personality

  • ID
  • Superego
  • Ego
• ID


  Primitive impulses, sex drive libido, aggressive drive, operates by means of the pleasure principle
• Superego


  Moral standards, internalizations of right and wrong that we learn, causes guilt
• Ego


  The mediator, resolves competing demands of superego and id, governed by the reality principle
• Conflict between the ID, Superego, and Ego causes psychological distress
• Levels of awareness


  • Conscious
  • Preconscious
  • Unconscious
• Stanford Marshmallow Experiment


  Study on delayed gratification, children who were best able to wait at four years old were more socially and academically successful as high-school students and earned higher Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores
• Freud's defence mechanisms


  • Repression
  • Denial
  • Reaction-Formation
  • Projection
  • Displacement
  • Sublimation
• Repression


  Motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses
• Denial


  Refusal to acknowledge disturbing aspects of external reality
• Reaction-Formation


  Behaving in a way that is the opposite of one's true feelings
• Projection


  Attributing one's own negative qualities to another
• Displacement


  Directing an impulse from a socially unacceptable target onto a more acceptable one
• Sublimation


  Transforming a socially unacceptable impulse into an admired and socially valued goal
• Freud's stages of psychosexual development

  • Oral stage
  • Anal stage
  • Phallic stage
  • Latency stage
  • Genital stage
• Oral stage


  Birth to 18 months, infants primarily receive pleasure by sucking and drinking, adults can be impatient, demanding, dependent on others
• Anal stage


  18 months to 3 years, child wants to alleviate tension and experience pleasure by moving their bowels, learning to control as part of toilet training, adults can have "anal" personality
• Phallic stage


  3 to 6 years, focuses on genitals, Oedipus complex, Electra complex, superego develops, adults can have jealousy, low self-esteem, promiscuity, selfishness
• Latency stage


  6 to puberty, sexual impulses are repressed, sexual energy is redirected toward other activities