Chapter 12 - Personality

a person’s general way of interacting with the world

stability of the behaviour over time and across situations

different people react to the same situation in different ways

durable disposition to behave in a particular way

• openness to experience

• conscientiousness

• extraversion

• agreeableness

• neuroticism

(OCEAN)

mccrae and costa

openness to experience

conscientiousness

conscientiousness

when we attach negative correlation (judgement) to people who we think have a “controllable fault”

aka, judging people for smoking because it’s a behaviour that they can control

• early childhood experiences

• unconcious motives and conflicts

• inhibited sexual and aggresive urges

• conscious

• unconcious

• presconcious

• id

• ego

• superego

raw biological urges, innate drives we are born with

(eating, sleeping, bathroom, sex)

pleasure principle

idealistic principle

moral guide / conscience influenced by internalizing parents’ values and the voice of society

superego

assesses what is realistically possible in satisfying the id and/or superego

reality principle

acute awareness, things you are thinking about right now

just under awareness, easily known

ex. accessing the answer to the question “what are you having for dinner tonight?”

well below awareness, difficult to know but very influential

id, ego, and superego

ego keeps threatening impulses out of awareness

ego refuses to acknowledge anxiety-producing realities

ego attributes personal shortcomings, problems, and faults to others

ego transforms an unacceptable motive into its opposite

(we form a reaction that’s more socially acceptable)

ego seeks the security of an earlier developmental period in the face of stress

ego shifts feelings toward an unnacceptable object to another more acceptable object

(taking out anger on someone/something else)

ego replaces an unacceptable impulse with a socially acceptable one

(ex. wanting to punch someone but instead you lift weights)

ego replaces a less acceptable unconcious thought or impulse with a more acceptable concious one

(ex. making excuses for failure, “i did bad on that test because the test was unfair”)

desire to replace the same-sex parent and enjoy the affections of the opposite parent

the oedipus complex but for girls idk why its different lmaoo

• sexist against women

• unverifiable concepts

• inadequate empirical base (description rather than prediction)

• too many hypotheses for reactions to anxiety

deepest layer of the unconcious mind, shared by all human beings because of their common ancestral past

that the unconscious consists of two layers: the personal unconscious and collective unconscious

it houses material that is not within one’s concious awareness because it has been repressed or forgotten

ancestral memories, emotionally charged images and thoughts that have universal meaning

striving for superiority

efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one’s abilities

excessive feelings of inferiority, exaggerated feelings of weakness and inadequacy

working to aquire status and power, especially from material things like fancy cars and expensive clothesl to conceal feelings of inferiority

adler

she broadened the perspective of psychoanalysis to consider childhood, environment, and interpersonal relationships

she criticized his emphasis on the central role played by infantile sexuality on personality development.

she believed that an infants need for a sense of security was more important

• behavioural perspective

focused on how the external environment could change behaviour, thought that people have consistant behaviour because they aquired them through situations (skinner viewed an individual’s personality as a collection of response tendencies tied to various situations)

theorized that environmental consequences (reinforcement, punishment) determine people’s patterns of responding

rats and pigeons

anything that makes a behaviour more likely to occur again in the future

something has been added to make the behaviour more likely

something has been taken away to make the behaviour more likely

ex. taking advil REMOVES the headache, making you more likely to take advil in the future

• social-cognitive perspective

theorized that our environment determines behaviour, but we can learn through observational learning

the back and forth relationship between our behaviour and our environment, and our internal cognitive factors (beliefs, expectations, etc.)

our belief of whether or not we can do something right now

• our belief makes it more likely we will do that thing

• social-cognitive perspective

he theorized that behaviour depends on the situation (interactionist - to understand someone’s behaviour you must understand the situation they were in)

(ex. quiet in class, loud at hockey game)

• person x situation interaction

• based on rigorous research

• insights into effects of learning and environmental factors

• over-dependence on animal research

• fragmented view of personality

• dehumanizing views

stress the person’s capacity for personal growth, freedom to choose destiny, and positive qualities

contrasts behavioural perspective

• humanistic perspective

  believed that people are free to choose their own actions, and are not governed by their environments

the degree of disparity between one’s self-concept and actual experience

a collection of beliefs about our own nature, unique qualities, and typical behaviour

• humanistic perspective

  created the hierarchy of needs, with self-actualization being the highest need

• importance of a person’s subjective view of reality

• attention to the issue of what constitiutes a healthy personality

• too optimistic

• lacking a strong research base

• may encourage excessive self-love

• hard to test empirically

• biological perspective

  theorized that behaviour is determined by evolutionary adaptations, the wiring of the brain, and heredity

  (nature is more influencial than nurture)

• extraversion

• neuroticism

• psychoticism

we have a biological drive to stay alive but we have a psychological awareness of our vunerability and mortality

our self-esteem and cultural belief systems reduce existential anxiety

project to continue on after our life ends (big families, writing books, fame, etc.)

the awareness by individuals that their death is inevitable, which leads to defending our own cultural world views and self-esteem (ex. increased nationalism after 9/11)

-Westernized

-Educated

-Industrialized

-Rich

-Democratic

• industrialized western cultures

• individualism

• tendency to view self in terms of personality traits, ability, and values

• cultures native to asia, africa, and central + south america

• collectivism

• tendency to define self in terms of group identity and relation to others

tests that provide ambiguous stimulus (ex. ink blot tests, showing images)

assumption: the abiguity of the stimulus allows projection of personality

problem: lacks reliability and validity

directly ask people whether items describe them

assumption: individuals are able to report how they feel, think, and have insight into their own inner state

problem: social desirability, response set (tendency to answer questions in ways that are the most complimentary or flattering)

directly observe a person’s behaviour

problem: hard to develop objectivity