General Psychology: Chapter 14 (Personality)
What did Adler mean by "individual psychology?"
A psychology of the person as a whole rather than parts such as id, ego, and superego. He emphasized the importance of conscious, goal-directed behavior.
What is catharsis?
A release of pent-up emotional tension.
What did Adler mean by "social interest" and what role did he suggest it plays in a person's mental health?
A sense of solidarity and identification with other people that leads to constructive action; concern for the welfare of others. Adler thought that this was important to live the healthiest style of life because people with excessive anxieties set immature goals, follow a faulty style of life, and show little social interest.
What is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator? How has it been criticized?
A test of normal personality, loosely based on Carl Jung's theories. Analyzes people's personalities based on self-reports; classifies people as types (sensing or intuitive, thinking or feeling, judging or perceiving). It is criticized because its insistence on putting people into distinct categories is hard to defend.
What did Adler mean by "inferiority complex?"
An exaggerated feeling of weakness, inadequacy, and helplessness.
What do heritability studies indicate about the causes of personality differences among individuals? What is the evidence?
Careful studies of the genome have found no identifiable gene with a major effect on personality. Many genes influence personality, each in small ways, combined with environmental influences. The low correlations between adopted children and adoptive parents imply that children learn rather little of their personalities by imitating their parents. Much of the variation among people's personalities relates to the unshared environment, the aspects of environment that differ from one individual to another, even within a family.
What are the main principles of the humanistic approach to personality?
Deals with consciousness, values, and abstract beliefs, including spiritual experiences and the beliefs that people live and die for. Personality depends on people's beliefs and perceptions of the world. If you believe that a particular experience was highly meaningful, then it was highly meaningful.
In what ways did Alfred Adler's views of early childhood psychological development differ from Freud's?
He believed Freud overemphasized the sex drive and neglected other influences. He thought that women were more likely to envy men's status and power than for them to have penis envy.
What were Carl Rogers' views on personality development?
He believed that people seek good and noble goals after they have been freed from unnecessary restraints. He emphasized the more favorable aspects of human nature. He maintained that people naturally strive towards positive goals without special urging and recommended that people relate to one another with unconditional positive regard.
How did Sigmund Freud develop his theory of personality?
He held that people are born with impulses that must be held in check if civilization is to survive. He interpreted dreams, slips of the tongue, and so forth to infer unconscious thoughts and motivations.
What was Carl Jung's contribution to the development of psychodynamic personality theory?
He shared Freud's interest in dreams and unconscious processes, but he rejected the concept that dreams hide their meaning from the conscious mind; he believed that we not only have a person unconscious that contains repressed memories and impulses, but also an "inherited collective unconscious" containing primitive images or archetypes that reflect the history of our species.
Which aspects of Freud's work have been lasting contributions, and which have been abandoned?
His recognition of transference, and the importance he placed on psychotherapy (helping clients think about their developmental history and what it means; understand where their conflicts and emotional reactions come from) have been lasting contributions. Some of his theories on unconscious processes (his elaboration on repressed sexual thoughts) have been abandoned.
In Freud's theory, what are the three parts of the mind? What is the nature of each of these parts, and how does each part function?
Id: sexual and other biological drives that demand immediate gratification / Ego: rational, decision-making aspect of the personality; it resembles the concept of central executive or executive functioning / Superego: contains the memory of rules and prohibitions we learned from our parents and others / If the id produces sexual desires that the superego considers repugnant, the result is guilty feelings.
How does an implicit personality test work?
Measures some aspect of your personality without your awareness. One example is the affective priming paradigm: a participant sees a picture and then a word; the time to say a word can be interpreted to how one feels about the word. But they aren't accurate enough to say anything with confidence about an individual.
What is the MMPI? How is the MMPI designed to detect dishonest responses?
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. True-false questions intended to measure certain personality dimensions, especially for identifying clinical conditions. It was devised empirically - based on evidence, rather than theory. The designers of the test included items designed to identify lying.
What are the main principles of the learning approach to personality?
Much of what we call personality is learned through individual experience, imitation, or vicarious reinforcement and punishment.
What is the NEO PI-R?
NEO Personality Inventory-Revised. Based on the Big Five personality model; includes 240 items to measure neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
What are valid uses of the available personality tests? What are the dangers of using personality tests like the MMPI for diagnosing psychological disorders?
None of these personality tests are accurate enough to make serious, important decisions on. A score that seems characteristic of a psychological disorder may occur also in many people without that disorder.
What are the stages of psychosexual development in Freud's personality theory?
Oral stage (birth to ½ year): sucking, swallowing, biting - lasting concerns with dependence and independence; pleasure from eating, drinking, and other oral activities / Anal stage (½ to 3 years): expelling feces, retaining feces - orderliness or sloppiness, stinginess or wastefulness, stubbornness / Phallic stage (3 to 5 or 6 years): touching penis or clitoris; oedipus complex - difficulty feeling closeness. males: fear of castration, females: penis envy / Latent period (5 or 6 to puberty): sexual interests suppressed / Genital stage (puberty onward): sexual contact with other people
What is a defense mechanism? What are the major defense mechanisms identified in this course and how does each of them work?
People defend themselves against anxiety by such mechanisms as denial, rationalization, displacement, regression, sublimation, repression, projection, and reaction formation. The ego defends itself against anxieties by relegating unpleasant thoughts and impulses to the unconscious mind.
What is libido?
Psychosexual energy. "Libido" meaning "desire."
What was Karen Horney's contribution to the development of psychodynamic personality theory?
She revised some of Freud's theories and paid greater attention to cultural influences. She pioneered the study of feminine psychology. She focused on what happens when someone's unrealistic view of the ideal self contrasts with low evaluation of the real self.
In general, how has Freud's influence on psychology changed over the years?
Some of his ideas have stood the test of time (such as transference), and he made psychotherapy more popular and more interesting, but most of his specific theories fail to impress. He is now used as more of a reference than anything.
What is self-actualization?
The achievement of one's full potential.
What did Carl Rogers mean by "unconditional positive regard?"
The complete, unqualified acceptance of another person as he or she is, much like the love of a parent for a child. If you feel unconditional positive regard, you might disapprove of someone's actions or intentions, but you would still accept and love that person.
How does personality tend to change as people get older?
The older people get, the more slowly their personality changes, possibly because older people usually stay in the same environment, doing the same things year after year.
What are the criticisms of projective personality testing?
The psychologist counts the total number of pathological answers, not the percentage of replies that seem pathological; test doesn't give information that one could not obtain from biographical reports or other sources, and sometimes gives a false impression. Critics doubt that it is worth bothering to administer projection tests, and insist that no one should use them to make important decisions.
What is the Barnum effect?
The tendency to accept vague descriptions of our personality.
What is the theory behind projective personality tests? What are two major types of projective tests?
They are designed to encourage people to project their personality characteristics onto ambiguous stimuli. Rorschach inkblots (people's interpretations of 10 ambiguous inkblots) and the Thematic Apperception Test (people make up a story depending on a picture).
Why did humanistic psychologists reject psychodynamic and behaviorist psychology?
They see people as essentially good and striving to achieve their potential, but psychodynamic and behaviorist psychologists emphasize the less noble aspects of people's thoughts and actions.
What is the "Big-Five" personality theory? What are the five factors identified in the theory?
What psychologists found to be clusters of traits that correlate strongly with one another, but don't correlate with other clusters. Emotional stability, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to new experience.
What is the Oedipus complex?
When a boy develops sexual interest in his mother and competitive aggression towards his father.
Regression
a return to a more immature level of functioning; effort to avoid the anxiety of the current situation; by adopting a childish role, a person turns to an earlier, more secure way of life (after a sibling is born, an older child may cry or pout)
Projection
attributing one's own undesirable characteristics to other people; suggesting that other people have your faults might make the faults seem less threatening (someone who secretly enjoys pornography might accuse other people of enjoying it)
Displacement
by diverting behavior or thought away from its natural target towards a less threatening target; allows people to engage in behavior with less anxiety (if you are angry with your employer, you might yell at someone else instead)
Repression
motivated removal of something to the unconscious - rejecting unacceptable thoughts, desires, and memories (someone who has an unacceptable sexual impulse might become unaware of it); people repress painful, traumatic memories
Denial
the refusal to believe unpleasant information ("this can't be happening"); the assertion that the information is incorrect, generally accompanied by a wish-fulfilling fantasy ("I'm not an alcoholic. I can take it or leave it")
Sublimation
the transformation of sexual or aggressive energies into culturally acceptable, even admirable, behaviors; lets someone express an impulse without admitting its existence (painting and sculpture may represent a sublimation of sexual impulses; someone may sublimate aggressive impulses by becoming a surgeon)
Reaction Formation
to avoid awareness of some weakness, people sometimes use reaction formation to present themselves as the opposite of what they really are; people will go to the opposite extreme (a man troubled by doubts about his religious faith might try to convert others to the faith)
Rationalization
when people attempt to show that their actions are justifiable ("More studying won't do me any good anyway.")
