lecture 5- personality

Cards (67)

  • 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