lecture 5(2) personality

• Personality


  People's typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

  
• Trait


  Relatively enduring predisposition influencing behavior across situations.
• Examples of Traits


  conscientiousness, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, neuroticism,
• Four Major Personality Thoeries

  1. Psychoanalytic theory of personality

  2. Behavioural and social learning theories

  3. Humanistic theories

  4. Trait models
• Nomothetic approaches


  Identify general principles governing behavior of all individuals.
• Idiographic approaches


  Identify unique characteristics and experiences within a person.
• Behavioural Genetics


  Study genetic, shared, and non-shared environmental factors' effects on behavior.
• Neurotransmitters

  Chemicals influencing personality traits, e.g., serotonin and dopamine.
• Psychoanalytic theory


  Personality theory by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) focuses on unconscious motivations.
• Assumptions of Psychoanalytic Theory


  1. Psychic determinism

  2. Symbolic meaning

  3. Unconscious motivation
• Psychic determinism

  Belief that all psychological events have a cause, no free will.
• Symbolic meaning


  Belief that no action is meaningless.
• Unconscious motivation


  Most behaviors are driven by unconscious factors.
• ID


  Part of personality with primitive impulses, operates on pleasure principle.
• SUPEREGO


  Part of personality with moral standards, internalizations of right and wrong.
• EGO


  Part of personality mediating between superego and id, reality-driven.
• Stanford Marshmallow Experiment


  Study on delayed gratification predicting future success (1972)
• Defense Mechanisms


  Unconscious strategies to reduce anxiety, essential for mental health.
• Freud's Defense Machanisms


  1. Repression

  2. Denial

  3. Reactions-Formation

  4. Projection

  5. Displacement

  6. Sublimation
• Repression


  Motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses.

  E.g., childhood abuse, combat, dog bite
• Denial


  Refusal to acknowledge disturbing aspects of reality.

  E.g., insisting a loved one must still be alive.
• Reaction-Formation


  Behaving contrary to true feelings often reduces anxiety.

  E.g., A married person is sexually attracted to their coworker; and feels dislike toward the coworker.
• Projection


  Attributing one's negative qualities to others.

  E.g., Someone with adulterous feelings might accuse a partner of infidelity.
• Displacement


  Redirecting socially unacceptable impulses to acceptable targets.

  E.g., Frustration at work taken out at the gym
• Sublimation


  Transforming unacceptable impulses into socially valued goals.

  E.g., Someone who is fascinated with dead bodies becomes a funeral director.
• Freud's Stages of Psychosexual Development.


  Click next :)
• Oral Stage


  birth to 18 months1 multiple choice option
• Anal Stage


  18 months to 3 yrs1 multiple choice option
• Phallic Stage


  3 - 6 yrs3 multiple choice options
• Latency Stage


  6 to puberty2 multiple choice options
• Genital Stage


  Puberty to adulthood; sexual impulses awaken, reach awareness, romantic attraction to ohters
• Major Criticisms of Freud's Theor

  - Unfalsifiable

  - Failed predictions

  - Reliance on unrepresentative samples

  - Gender-biased/sexist

  - Questionable conception of unconscious
• Neo-Freudians


  Differ from Freud by focusing less on sexuality more on social drive
• Alfred Adler


  Human motivation is striving for superiority.
• Inferiority Complex


  Result of parental pampering or neglect.
• Overcompensation


  Response to inferiority complex, may lead to mental illness.
• Carl Jung


  Introduced personal and collective unconscious concepts.
• Archetypes


  Universal symbols in the collective unconscious.
• Behavioural Perspective


  Focuses on how external environment influences behavior.
• Operant Conditioning


  Learning through reinforcement or punishment.