Psychology Chapter 11 - Personality

The consistent, enduring, and unique characteristics of a person

Suggests that personality develops until people hit maturity at about age 30. Personality then firms up and sets, similar to plaster, throughout middle age, and begins to crack and crumble as cognitive declines with old age.

Unconscious forces act as determinants of personality. Is a theory by Freud.

Part of the personality that contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, drives, and instincts of which the individual is not aware.

Preconscious and Drives

Non-threatening material that is easily brought to mind

Instinctual wishes, desires, demands, and needs hidden from awareness because of the conflict and pain they would cause.

Instinctual, unorganised, inborn part of personality. Sole purpose is to reduce tension created by primitive drives related to hunger, sex, aggression, and irrational impulses. Pleasure Principle. The Villain in a Story.

Part of personality that provides a buffer between the is and the realities of the objective, outside world. Reality principle. Executive of personality. Balance between the angel and devil.

Personality structure that harshly judges the morality of our behaviour. Includes the conscience, which prevents us from behaving in a morally improper way. Makes us feel guilty if we do wrong. The superhero.

Unconscious strategies that people use to reduce anxiety by distorting reality and concealing the source of the anxiety from themselves.

Primary defence mechanism. (Ego pushed unacceptable or unpleasant impulses out of awareness and back into the unconscious.

Unacceptable or unpleasant impulses are pushed out of awareness and back into the unconscious

People behave as if they were at an earlier stage of development

The expression of unwanted feeling or thought is redirected from a more threatening powerful person to a weaker one.

People provide self-justifying explanations in place of the actual, but threatening, reason for their behaviour.

People refuse to accept or acknowledge an anxiety-producing piece of information.

People attribute unwanted impulses or feeling to someone else.

People divert unwanted impulses into socially approved thoughts, feelings, or behaviours

Unconscious impulses are expressed as their opposite in consciousness.

Inherited set of ideas, feelings, images, and symbols that are shared with all humans because of our common ancestral past. Contains Archetypes.

Universal symbolic representations of particular types of people, objects, ideas, or experiences

Suggested that personality develops in the context of social relationships. Depends on the relationship between parents and child. Rejected Freud’s notions of penis envy in women. Stressed the importance of cultural factors in the determination of personality.

Proposed that the primary human motivation is striving for superiority in a quest for self-improvement and perfection

Describes adults who have not been able to overcome the feelings in adequacy they developed as children

The social and cultural factors behind personality

Model of personality that seeks to identify the basic traits necessary to describe personality

Consistent, habitual personality characteristics and behaviours displayed across different situations

Openness to Experience

Conscientiousness

Extraversion

Agreeableness

Neuroticism

State of self-fulfilment in which people realise their highest potential, each in a unique way

Set of beliefs and perceptions people hold about their own abilities, behaviour, and personality

Physiological, Safety, Belongingness, Esteem, Cognitive, Aesthetic, Self-actualisation, Transcendence

Attitude of acceptance and respect on the part of an observer, no matter what a person says or does.

Test’s measurement consistency, yields the same result each time

When a test measures what it is designed to measure

Standards of test performance

Method of gathering data about people by asking them questions about their own behaviour and traits.

Technique used to validate questions in personality tests by studying the responses of people with known diagnoses

Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory

Identifies people with psychological difficulties and employed to predict some everyday behaviours.

A test in which a person is shown an ambiguous, vague stimulus and asked to describe it or tell a story about it

Involves showing a series of symmetrical visual stimulus to people who then are asked what the figures represent to them

Consists of a series of pictures about which a person is asked to write a story

TAT, Thematic Apperception Test

\n A class of mental disorders characterised by rigid, \n long-term patterns of inflexible and maladaptive \n Behaviour that keep a person from functioning \n appropriately in society.

A disregard for social rules, norms, and cultural codes, characterised by impulsive behaviour, indifference to the rights and feelings of others, beginning in childhood and continuing past age 18

Excessive, dramatic, emotional reactions and attention seeking. Often sexually provocative, highly impressionable and suggestible, & out of touch with negative feelings.

Grandiose fantasies or behaviour, lack of empathy, and \n oversensitivity to evaluation; constant need for admiration from others; proud self-display.

A pattern of severe instability of self-image, interpersonal \n relationships, and emotions. Often expressing alternating extremes of love and hatred toward the same person. High frequency of manipulative suicidal behaviour.

Extreme social discomfort and timidity. Have feelings of inadequacy and fearfulness of being negatively evaluated

Extreme submissive and dependent behaviour. Fears of separation from those who satisfy dependency needs

Extreme perfectionism, orderliness, and inflexibility. Preoccupied with mental and interpersonal control

Indifference to social relationships and experience; displays a restricted range of expressed emotions.

Odd thoughts, appearance, and behaviour; extreme discomfort in social situations

An unwarranted tendency to interpret the behaviour of other people as threatening, exploiting, or harmful.

True

Carl Jung

Defence mechanisms

Iceberg

Projective

Collective Unconscious

validity and reliability

self-report personality inventory; projective test

open-ended(1), closed questions(2)

Freud would use(1), Freud would not use(2)

Unconscious mind(1), conscious mind(2)

Both are personality tests