chapter 13 and 14 SS PSY

The three neurotic trends or needs are

1. Moving toward others (the compliant personality) 2. Moving against others (the aggressive personality) 3. Moving away from others (the detached personality)

humanistic approach

A second major perspective explaining personality comes from a humanistic approach, which is optimistic about human nature, believing that humans are naturally interested in realizing their full potential. Humanists argue that psychology Page 502needs to study humans at their best as well as at their worst. As Abraham Maslow wrote (1968, p. 5), "Freud supplied us with the sick half of psychology, and we must now fill it with the healthy half." The term humanism is not commonly used today, mostly because many adherents of this approach did not conduct empirical research, yet the movement has been rekindled since the late 1990s under a new label: positive psychology. Positive psychology embraces and generates empirical research, but its fundamental ideas come from two major thinkers in the humanistic tradition: Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers

Another of Freud's major contributions to psychology is the concept of psychological defense mechanisms

Although Freud first described these mechanisms, his daughter, Anna, developed them further (A. Freud, 1946). Just as the physical body has the immune system to protect us from foreign substances, the purpose of defense mechanisms is to protect us from harmful, threatening, and anxiety-provoking thoughts, feelings, or impulses. All defense mechanisms share two qualities: They operate unconsciously. They deny and distort reality in some way. The most basic of all defense mechanisms is repression; it underlies all the other defense mechanisms. Repressionis the unconscious act of keeping threatening or disturbing thoughts, feelings, or impulses out of consciousness.

inferiority complex

Although all people do this to some extent, some develop an unhealthy need to dominate or upstage others as a way of compensating for feelings of inferiority

Alzheimer's Disease and Personality Change

Alzheimer's disease is a major degenerative brain disease whose hallmarks are severe dementia and memory loss. It eventually affects personality and ultimately leads to death (Azadfar et al., 2014). Using the NEO-PI as a measure of the Big Five personality dimensions, various studies have shown that every Big Five dimension of personality changes after the onset of Alzheimer's (Chatterjee et al., 1992; Clark et al., 2000; Henriques-Calado et al., 2016; Strauss, Pasupathi, & Chatterjee, 1993; Williams, Briggs, & Coleman, 1995): -Neuroticism increases -Extraversion increases in some and decreases in others -Openness decreases -Agreeableness sometimes decreases -Conscientiousness decreases

The biological theories of personality assume that differences in personality are partly based in differences in structures and systems in the central nervous system, such as genetics, hormones, and neurotransmitters

Among the most important of these theories for personality is the one proposed by Hans Eysenck (1916-1997), who argued for the fundamental importance of biology in shaping personality. Eysenck (1947, 1982, 1990) proposed three, rather than five, fundamental dimensions of personality. Two are included in the Big Five, neuroticism and extraversion. The third, psychoticism, is a combination of the three other traits from the Big Five of openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Psychoticism consists of traits such as "aggressive," "cold," "antisocial," "impulsive," "egocentric," "non-conforming," and "creative." Eysenck developed a model in which differences in personality are caused by the combined influences of genes, neurochemistry, and certain characteristics of the central nervous system (Eysenck, 1997). The main idea behind Eysenck's model is that differences in individuals' genomes (DNA) create a different level of arousal and sensitivity to stimulation. Eysenck argued that lower thresholds to arousal imply greater sensitivity to stimuli. Stimulation, Page 508whether it is a new place or new people, can easily become overwhelming for an introvert. Therefore, introverts consistently shy away from or withdraw from stimulating environments. By the same token, extraverts, with low cortical arousal and high thresholds of arousal, seek out and enjoy highly stimulating experiences (Eysenck, 1990, 1997). Introversion or inhibition can thus be seen as a way of coping with an inherently aroused and sensitive central nervous system.

self-actualization

An important concept that followed from his theory of needs was that of self-actualization, which stood at the top of the hierarchy. This term refers to people's inherent drive to realize their full potential (an idea that was influenced by Adler's notion of striving for superiority; Maslow, 1970)

reciprocal altruism

Another evolutionary explanation for altruistic behavior is reciprocal altruism, helping others in the hope that they will help you in the future (Trivers, 1971, 1985). It is easier for humans to survive when group members cooperate, and reciprocal altruism promotes such cooperation.

Obedience

Another kind of normative social influence, called obedience, occurs when people yield to the social pressure of an authority figure, complying with their demands. Social psychological research on obedience emerged in response to real-life concerns in the aftermath of World War II. The horrific events of the Holocaust raised troubling questions: How could an entire nation endorse the extermination of millions of people? Were all Germans evil? Adolf Hitler did not act alone—a supporting cast of thousands was necessary to annihilate so many people. Former Nazi officers who testified in war trials after the war said they were "following orders. One psychologist spurred into action by the Nazi atrocities was Stanley Milgram. A Jew whose family had left Europe before Hitler's rise to power, Milgram spent much of his early academic life trying to make sense of the Holocaust (Blass, 2004). With the support of his graduate advisor, Solomon Asch, Milgram decided to investigate whether people would conform even when their actions could harm others. Courtesy of the Graduate Center, CUNYStanley Milgram Milgram recruited people from the community to participate in an experiment at Yale University. A participant arrived at the lab and sat down next to another supposed participant, who was a confederate. The experimenter, who looked very official in a white lab coat, told both individuals that they would be participating in a study on the effects of mild punishment on memory. He then assigned them to be either a teacher or a learner by asking them to pull a note that said either "teacher" or "learner" from a bowl. The drawing was rigged, however, so that the real participant always landed the "teacher" role and the confederate got the "learner" role. Then the experimenter showed both the teacher and the learner to the room where the learner would sit. The learner's task involved learning and repeating lists of words. The learner was told that every time he made an error he would receive a mild electric shock, delivered by the teacher. With each mistake the shocks would increase in intensity. Both teacher and learner saw the chair where the learner would sit, which had restraints to make sure the electrodes had a good contact when he received the shock. The teacher then received a sample shock of very low voltage to get a sense of what the learner would experience. In actuality, this was the only real shock administered during the entire experiment. Then they went to the teacher's room. The teacher sat at a table behind a panel of switches. Under each switch was a label indicating voltage level, which ranged, in 15-volt increments, from 15 volts ("mild shock") all the way up to 450 (labeled "XXX"), with 315 volts designated as "Danger: Severe shock" (see Figure 2a). The teacher was reminded that if the learner made mistakes, he or she would have to deliver a shock and with each mistake would have to increase the level.

Sexual Attraction and Mate Selection

Apparently, scent matters in humans as well, but not in the way you would think. In a clever experiment, researchers instructed men and women to wear a clean T-shirt to bed for two nights (Thornhill et al., 2003). The shirt had no perfumes and was not washed with deodorant soaps. The T-shirts were returned to the lab and sealed in zippered bags. An independent group of students rated the attractiveness of pictures of the people who had worn the shirts. Another group of students smelled and rated the T-shirts on attractiveness of odor. Men preferred the scent of women in their fertile phase; fertile women preferred the scent of men who were most symmetrical. In a similar study in which men smelled women's shirts, researchers measured men's testosterone levels in response to the smells. Men released more testosterone when exposed to the scent of ovulating women than when exposed to the scent of nonovulating women (Miller & Maner, 2010).What qualities do you look for in a prospective sexual partner? Sexual strategies theory suggests that men and women often approach relationships differently (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). In virtually all societies, men and women use both short-term matings (affairs, one-night stands) and long-term matings (marriages, extended companionships). Buss (1999) found that men report wanting an average of 18 different partners throughout their lifetimes, whereas women report wanting only four or five. Men value qualities that may signal fertility and accessibility (e.g., large breasts, wide hips compared to waist, youth), especially in short-term partners. This is less true in evaluating long-term partners. Women, in contrast, value men who can provide resources to support their offspring.

Empathy

C. Daniel Batson (1991) has proposed that true selfless helping occurs only when there is empathy. Empathy can be defined as sharing feeling and understanding about another person's situation. According to Batson's empathy-altruism hypothesis, people will offer selfless help only when they truly empathize with the victim.

Deception

Most people think that they know when people lie to them. According to the research, however, most of us are not effective lie detectors. Most people perform no better than the accuracy rate of chance guessing in detecting deception from people's behavior

Connection (freud)

Cognitive psychologists refer to mental processes that occur outside awareness as "implicit" or "automatic." Much of what we learn and remember is implicit. Freud also developed the notion that the human mind has three distinct "provinces," or regions, involved in the control and regulation of impulses. These regions are where the internal conflict between having an impulse and controlling it gets played out.The first province—developed in infancy—is the id, the seat of impulse and desire. The id is the part of our personality that owns or controls us. Its sole function is to seek pleasure; it is therefore founded in the "pleasure principle" and operates on the "do it" principle. By the end of the first year of life, a sense of self, or ego, has begun to emerge. It is the only part of the mind that is in direct contact with the outside world, and it operates on the "reality principle." If the id wants pleasure, the ego makes a realistic attempt to obtain it. The last part of the mind to develop, around age 2 or 3, is the superego, the part of the self Page 497that monitors and controls behavior. The superego "stands over us" and evaluates our actions in terms of right and wrong; hence, it is our conscience. It operates on the "moralistic principle," is the control center of the personality, and frequently applies the brakes to the impulses of the id. In a healthy person, the ego mediates this conflict between impulse and control. Freud believed that some people are mostly id-driven, whereas others are mostly superego-driven.

birth order

First-born children tend to have strong feelings of superiority and power. After all, by definition, first-born children are older and more mature than their siblings. First-borns can be nurturing of others, but they are sometimes highly critical and have a strong need to be right. Second children tend to be motivated and cooperative, but they can become overly competitive. Youngest children can be realistically ambitious but also pampered and dependent on others. Finally, only children can be socially mature, but they sometimes lack social interest and have exaggerated feelings of superiority.

trait

Friendliness is a personality trait, or a disposition to behave consistently in a particular way. Although traits make up a large part of an individual's personality, they are not quite synonymous with it. Personality is the broader term, because it comprises traits but also motives, thoughts, self-concept, and feelings.

Group Living & Social Influence

Group living offered many advantages in human evolution, such as increased safety in the presence of danger, cooperation with others to complete challenging tasks (such as hunting), and child rearing (Brewer & Caporael, 2006; Melis & Semmann, 2010). This heritage explains why people work to preserve group membership and why they modify their behavior when in the presence of others.

Additional evidence that both nature and nurture shape personality comes from cross-cultural research on personality traits.

If personality dispositions are part of our biology, we would expect the same personality dimensions or traits to appear in cultures all over the world. Environment and culture, however, might modify temperament and make certain traits more likely in some societies than in others. There is evidence for both of these perspectives.

testosterone and serotonin.

In addition to these brain structures, two hormones are consistently related to high levels of aggression: testosterone and serotonin. A number of lines of evidence point to testosterone's role. As the male sex hormone, it may be responsible for boys being more aggressive than girls at most ages

Physical and Chemical Attractiveness

In research on attractiveness, people rate average and symmetrical faces as more attractive than less average and less symmetrical faces. Average, in this case, does not mean "common." Rather, average means that the size, location, and shape of each feature of the face—nose, eyes, mouth, cheekbones—are mathematically average in the population. They are neither too big nor too small, neither too far apart nor too close together. Look at the faces in Figure 7. These faces were produced by computer technology that morphed images of several real faces together. The more faces averaged, the higher the attractiveness ratings. People rated the 8-face composite as more attractive than the 4-face composite; the 16-face composite as more attractive than the 8; and the 32-face composite as more attractive than the 16 (Langlois & Roggman, 1990; Langlois, Roggman, & Musselman, 1994). Although standards for beauty vary by culture, average faces are rated as most attractive all over the world (Langlois & Roggman, 1990). Furthermore, infants as young as 6 or 9 months of age also tend to prefer average faces over others, although they are too young for other people to have had much influence over their face preferences

Minority Social Influence

In social psychology, a single person or small group within a larger group is called a minority, while the larger group is referred to as the majority. Just as the majority pushes for group unity, the minority can push for independence and uniqueness. After all, if people always conformed, how would change occur (Moscovici, 1985)? In order to change the majority view, however, the minority must present a consistent, unwavering message.

groupthink

Indeed, sometimes people go to great lengths to do what the group is doing, when it does not make sense, especially when groups are engaged in decision making. This phenomenon, called groupthink, occurs when the thinking of the group takes over, so much so that group members forgo logic or critical analysis in the service of reaching a decision (Janis, 1983). It should not be surprising, then that any group-preserving behavior such as conformity would be valued and encouraged in a collectivist culture. In Japan, a collectivist culture, the company that one works for is elevated to the status of family. An employee is expected to make personal sacrifices for the company to preserve group unity (Miller & Kanazawa, 2000). Psychological scientists have replicated the Asch experiments in Japan and the United States. The results show that people in collectivist cultures like Japan are more likely to conform than are people in individualistic cultures like the United States (Bond & Smith, 1996).

interviewing

Interviewing is an ideal way to gather important information about a person's life. From the participant's perspective, interviewing is usually more engaging and pleasant than completing a questionnaire. The clear advantage for participants is the open-ended nature of the interview, in which they can say anything they wish in response to a question.

Prosocial Behavior

Just as people can harm others through aggression, sometimes people can be extraordinarily kind to others. Prosocial behavior benefits others. In this section we will explore social processes that benefit others: altruism and empathy. action that is beneficial to others

Love as Attachment

Love is also closely connected to a well-known psychological phenomenon: attachment. An important concept in human development, attachment is an affection-based bond between infants and their primary caregivers that protects infants from threats to their survival (Bowlby, 1969). Attachment researchers distinguish among secure, avoidant, and anxious/ambivalent attachment styles (Ainsworth et al., 1978). The attachment system established when we are infants forms a template for our adult relationships with others, including our intimate partners, according to Cynthia Hazan and Phillip Shaver (1987). Hazan and Shaver argued that the infant-caregiver attachment system underlies the important dynamics and individual differences in adult romantic relationships. By categorizing people's infant-caregiver attachment style based on an adult attachment interview, they found that securely attached adults report that they easily get close to others, readily trust others, and have more satisfying romantic relationships. Anxious/ambivalent adults tend to have less satisfying relationships, are more preoccupied with them, and fear that their partners do not want the intimacy they desire. Avoidant adults are uncomfortable being close to others and have less satisfying relationships

Both natural and sexual selection operate in the evolution of human personality traits

Naturally selected traits are favored if they increase one's chances of survival and reproductive success, whereas sexually selected traits make one more attractive to the opposite sex. For example, intelligence and creativity are sexually selected traits because people are attracted to intelligent and creative people (Buss, 1989; Kaufman et al., 2016; Miller, 2000; Nettle & Clegg, 2005). To be sure, there are psychologically both costs and benefits to each personality dimension (Nettle, 2006, 2011)

social learning theory

Observing aggressive people and the consequences of their actions can make us more aggressive. This is the fundamental idea behind Albert Bandura's social learning theory. Bandura's research demonstrated repeatedly that, if children see adults punching an inflatable Bobo doll, they will do it, too, especially if they see the adult being rewarded for the aggressive behavior.

Solomon Asch

One of the classic studies of in social psychology, conducted by Solomon Asch in 1951, demonstrates the power of conformity. Asch devoted his career to understanding situations in which perception is not a direct function of the physical properties of stimuli. For example, he found that our perceptions of the angle of a line can be biased by the frame around it (Witkin & Asch, 1948). Asch wondered whether the social world might also shape our perceptions. If pressured by the opinions of others, would people say they saw something that clearly wasn't there? Asch didn't think they would, but he was wrong. Asch assembled several groups of six or seven people in the lab and told them he was researching visual acuity. He was really interested in conformity but didn't tell his participants what he was really researching, in case the information influenced their behavior. Asch then showed the participants two cards—one with a standard line, the other displaying three lines of varying length. The participant's job was to pick the one line out of the three that matched the standard line. Participants faced a choice: Agree with everyone else's clearly erroneous judgments or give the answer that they personally thought was correct. While none of the participants agreed with the group all of the time, 76% of them went along with the group at least once when a group answer was clearly wrong. On average, participants answered incorrectly 37% of the time. Yet when left alone to do the task, participants made errors less than 1% of the time. To summarize, when in the presence of a majority of other people who answered the simple question incorrectly, most of the participants knowingly gave the wrong answer at least once.

Types of Love

One well-known theory is Robert Sternberg's triangular theory of love (Sternberg, 1986). Sternberg proposed that three components—intimacy, passion, and commitment, in various combinations—can explain all the forms of human love (see Figure 8). Intimacy refers to close, connected, and bonded feelings in loving relationships. Passion refers to the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation, accompanied by physiological changes and arousal. Commitment refers to both the decision to love someone—or not—and the decision to commit to love for the long term. In Sternberg's model, all types of love are made up of three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment. Each type of love consists of a different balance of the three components. When all three exist in equal proportions, consummate love exists (Sternberg, 1986). These three components are present in different amounts for different kinds of love. Companionate love exists when intimacy and commitment are high and passion is low. In passionate love, intimacy and passion are high and commitment is low. Lust is characterized by a lot of passion but no intimacy or commitment. In contrast, arranged marriages are all about commitment, at least in the beginning, with no intimacy or passion.

five dimensions

Openness (O) How interested in new experiences or new ideas is someone? How imaginative, original, and curious is he or she? Conscientiousness (C) How planned, organized, orderly, hard-working, controlled, persevering, punctual, and ambitious is someone? Extraversion (E) How sociable, talkative, active, outgoing, confident, and fun-loving is someone?Agreeableness (A) How friendly, warm, trusting, generous, and good-natured is someone? Neuroticism (N) How anxious, worrying, tense, emotional, and high-strung is someone?

dismissed freud

Over the last generation, however, many research-oriented psychologists have dismissed Freud as a pseudoscientist, because he did not support his ideas with research that could be replicated. His status as a scientist is questionable, but his insights as a clinician still have scientific merit. In the late 1990s, a group of neuroscientists began to argue that the latest evidence from neuroscience confirms some parts of Freud's ideas. According to Antonio Damasio, a well-known contemporary neuroscientist, "we can say that Freud's insights on the nature of consciousness are consonant with the most advanced contemporary neuroscience views" (quoted in Solms & Turnbull, 2002,)

Schemas

People develop models, or schemas, of the social world, which function as lenses through which we filter our perceptions. We first discussed schemas in the chapter "Memory" and defined them broadly as ways of knowing that we develop from our experiences with particular objects or events. In the area of social perception, schemas are ways of knowing that affect how we view our social world.

fundamental attribution error

People tend to explain other people's behavior in terms of dispositional attributions rather than situational ones, a bias in judgment known as the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977). This is not to say that dispositions don't matter but rather that, when making attributions of other people's behavior, we tend to think that dispositional characteristics matter the most.

Resistance to enculturation

Self-actualizing people are less likely than most people to be influenced by the ideas and attitudes of others. Their ideas are solidly their own; because they have a clear sense of direction in life, they don't look to others for guidance on what to think or how to behave.

Prejudice and Discrimination

Prejudice and Discrimination We have discussed many processes that affect group behavior and how we view others. Unfortunately, as people try to make sense of each other and rely on schemas to decide who is similar or who is different, they sometimes use stereotypes to unfairly categorize others, which can fuel prejudice and discrimination. A prejudice is a biased attitude toward a group of people or an individual member of a group based on unfair generalizations about what members of that group are like (Allport, 1954). Prejudicial thinking often stems from stereotypes rather than from careful observation of people's behavior. Prejudices are generally negative and often based on insufficient information. Prejudices based on race-ethnicity are called racism; those based on sex are called sexism. If a business executive does not seriously consider a highly qualified female applicant for a high-level management job because he is convinced that women are not capable of leading a company, his thinking is prejudicial. More precisely, he is sexist. Not offering her an interview—even if she is the best-qualified applicant in the pool—is discrimination. Discrimination is the preferential treatment of certain people that is usually driven by prejudicial attitudes. Discrimination can also result from Page 544institutionalized rules, such as the requirement that flight attendants cannot be excessively overweight. Prejudicial attitudes are learned early in life; and even if they are formally abandoned later in life, these reactions can become quite automatic (Banaji & Greenwald, 1995). Consider the case of Edith, a 21-year-old European American college student who is politically liberal and an activist for progressive causes. However, when Edith walks to her car at night, if an African American man is on the other side of the street, she becomes nervous without knowing why. She is not a racist! Why does this happen?

Creativity (self-actualizing rather than specialized)

Problems confront us dozens, if not hundreds, of times each day. Self-actualizing people are able to readily solve problems with originality and novelty. By creativity, Maslow does not mean creativity as expressed in art or science (specialized creativity) but rather the kind of creativity that can be found in everyday life (self-actualizing creativity). Practical, everyday creaativity is more important than professional achievement, although self-actualized people may be creative in their work as well.

Compassion

Psychological science has recently turned to understanding other prosocial states underlying prosocial behavior; foremost among them is compassion. Compassion is a state of relationship in which one feels kindness toward another who is suffering and one feels motivated to help relieve that suffering. Compassion may motivate helping behavior.

Temperament and the Fetal Environment

Recall from the chapter "Human Development," that temperament is the biologically based disposition to behave in certain ways, which lays the foundation for later personality traits. Evidence suggests that temperament and personality differences are manifest even before birth. Apparently, fetal activity and heart rate can reveal something about temperament differences over the first year of life. In particular, a high heart rate at 36 weeks' gestation (nearly full term) foreshadowed less predictable eating and sleeping habits 3 and 6 months after birth and less emotionality at 6 months after birth. Having high activity levels at 36 weeks' gestation predicted being slow to adapt to new people or situations and having more irregular eating and sleeping habits at 3 and 6 months, as well as being more difficult or fussy at 6 months

foot-in-the-door

Rehearsals of this ritual tested followers and their faith in Jones. In essence, Jones was making use of what social psychologists call the foot-in-the-door technique by getting people to agree to a moderate request (i.e., rehearsal). Once cult members had agreed to engage in frequent rehearsals of mass suicide, it became easier for them to go through with the real thing.

Stereotypes

Schemas of how people are likely to behave based simply on the groups to which they belong are known as stereotypes. When we resort to stereotypes, we form conclusions about people before we even interact with them just because they are of a certain race-ethnicity or live in a certain place. As a result, we end up judging people not by their actions but by our notions of how they might act. Stereotypes are handy, because they allow for very quick assessments of people based only on their membership in certain groups. People resort to stereotypes because they allow for quick—but often inaccurate—impressions, especially if we do not know someone very well. The human mind has a tendency to categorize and understand all members of a group in terms of characteristics that are typical of the group (Rosch, 1975). So if we meet someone new and learn that he or she belongs to a particular (racial-ethnic, social, political, or religious) group, we rely on what we think we know about that group to anticipate how this new person might behave.

Deep interpersonal relations

Self-actualizing individuals are likely to have few but profound relationships. They do not call 10 or 15 people their "best friends" or even "friends" but instead may have close relationships with only one or two people.These relationships, however, are intensely intimate; they share deep thoughts and feelings about themselves, each other, and the world.

Problem-centered (have a "calling")

Self-actualizing people often experience moments of profound personal importance or personal meaning (what Maslow called "peak experiences"), and these experiences shape the rest of their lives. A sense of what they were meant to do with their lives is suddenly revealed to them, and they devote the rest of their lives to it. These individuals are focused and secure in who they are and what matters most to them—and often their concerns have great philosophical, spiritual, political, artistic, or scientific meaning.

Spontaneity, simplicity, naturalness:

Self-actualizing people sometimes can appear quite childlike in their ability to be spontaneous and straightforward; they do not pretend to be what they are not.

shared environment

Shared environment consists of living conditions that people have in common, such as the same parents, same schools or same peers, whereas non-shared environment consists of things like birth order, different parents, different friends, different teachers, and different social groups. Surprisingly, research indicates that the "unshared" environment—differences in birth order or peer groups or even changes in parenting style and attitudes over time—seems to matter most (see Figure 10; Arseneault et al., 2003; Bouchard & Loehlin, 2001; Krueger & Johnson, 2008; Plomin & Caspi, 1999; Rutter, 2006). Personality is influenced by our environment, but surprisingly more by the experiences we do not share with our family members, such as peer group influences.

social perception

Social processes not only influence our behavior but also guide our perceptions of the behavior of others. For example, we wonder why people do what they do. Why does Maria wear those clothes? We wonder whether we can believe what people say. Is he lying to me? We form impressions and attitudes about other people. Ashan is smart. These are all matters of social perception, the way in which we make sense of our social world.

Attitudes and Behavior

Social psychologists define attitudes as a person's favorable or unfavorable feelings, beliefs, or actions toward an object, an idea, or a person (Olson & Zanna, 1993). Thus, attitudes have affective, cognitive, and behavioral components. The affective component includes the feelings or emotions associated with the belief; the cognitive component consists of the rational thoughts and beliefs that make up the attitude; and the behavioralcomponent includes the motive to act in a particular way toward the person or object of the attitude. Consider Elizabeth, who is a huge Giants fan. She loves the team (affective), knows all about each starting player (cognitive), and has bought season tickets to their home games (behavioral).

explicit and implicit

Social psychologists distinguish between explicit and implicit prejudice. Explicit ideas are plainly stated. Implicit views are indirect, perhaps unconscious. An explicit reference to a desire to have sex with someone is "I want to go to bed with you." An implicit reference is "Why don't you come by my place and watch a movie with me?" Measuring implicit knowledge and beliefs presents a challenge.

Between the 1930s and the 1980s, dozens of different measures of personality were developed, but almost none of them measured the same personality traits.

Some psychologists argued for the central importance of hostility, authoritarianism, introversion, intelligence, repression, and impulsivity, while others cited psychopathic deviance, tolerance, or psychological insight. After going through and counting all the personally descriptive words, he came away with nearly 18,000 words in English. A few problems arose, however. First, some of these terms—such as sad, angry,bored, or annoyed—described temporary states. Others were personal evaluations (wonderful, unhelpful) or descriptions of Page 505physical traits (tall, heavy). Finally, others were essentially synonyms, such as friendly and nice. When he fixed these problems, he still ended up with more than 4,000 English words that were personally descriptive. He went on to argue, however, that most individuals could typically be described with only about 10 or so central traits. By the 1980s, personality researchers had amassed evidence for the existence of five universal and widely agreed-upon dimensions of personality (Costa & McCrae, 1992; Digman, 1990; John & Srivastava, 1999). This perspective is known as the Big Five or five-factor model; the five dimensions are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (see Figure 7). An easy way to remember these is to use the acronym O-C-E-A-N or C-A-N-O-E.

social exchange theory

Some social psychologists argue that in our relations with others we try to maximize our gains and minimize our losses (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). This is the essence of social exchange theory, a nonevolutionary explanation of altruistic behavior that says we help others because such behavior can be rewarding, but we will help only if the rewards will outweigh the costs. How can helping be rewarding? For one thing, helping someone in need relieves our own distress at witnessing suffering. Also, helping someone is an investment in the future, because it is possible that they will help us when we need help. In this sense, social exchange is essentially the same as reciprocal altruism.

Mere exposure

Sometimes we like ideas or objects simply because they are familiar. Mere exposure, or direct experience with an object, an idea, or a person, increases our overall preference for it (Zajonc, 1968). The things that we come to like from exposure can be trivial, such as abstract symbols, or very meaningful, such as human faces. For example, Zajonc (1968) showed people nonsense words 5, 10, or 25 times; the more often they saw a word, the more they reported liking it.

basic tendencies

The Big Five dimensions are more of a taxonomy, or categorization scheme, than a theory. They describe but do not explain personality. The Big Five personality dimensions, along with our talents, aptitudes, and cognitive abilities, are referred to as basic tendencies, and they have their origin in biological forces. McCrae and Costa take a clear but somewhat controversial stance in arguing that these basic tendencies are due solely to internal or biological factors such as genes, hormones, and brain structures.

archetypes

The collective unconscious is made up of archetypes: ancient or archaic images that result from common ancestral experiences. Their content is made manifest most often in our dreams but also in fantasies, hallucinations, myths, and religious themes. Jung postulated many archetypes, including the shadow, anima, and animus. The shadow is the dark and morally objectionable part of ourselves. We all have impulses that are dark and disturbing; in fact, most often we project

Neuropsychoanalysts argue that at least seven core assumptions made by Freud have received recent scientific support

The importance of early childhood experience on later personality development, Unconscious motivation Repression and defense mechanisms, The pleasure principle, Primitive drives, Dreams as wish fulfillment, Thinking and perception being guided by unconscious motives and emotions.

The Bystander Effect

The researchers led some of the participants to believe that they were the only ones hearing the person choking, while others thought many participants were hearing it. Of the participants who thought they alone were hearing the choking man, 85% tried to help. Of those who thought many other people were also hearing the man choking, only 62% tried to help. Here's the bottom line: The more people who witness an emergency, the less likely any one of them will help. Latané and Darley called this phenomenon the bystander effect. One explanation of the bystander effect involves diffusion of responsibility; that is, when there are many people around, an individual's responsibility to act seems decreased. It makes sense when you think about it. When you alone witness an emergency, you know that you are the only source of aid. If several people are present, however, you might not regard it as your responsibility to help the person in need. Someone else might take care of it. Indeed, this is probably why no one helped poor Kitty Genovese. A lot of people were around, so everyone assumed "somebody else must have called the police."

self-serving bias

The tendency to make situational attributions for our failures but dispositional attributions for our successes.

Altruism

The term altruism refers to a selfless concern for and giving of aid to others. Because altruists often expose themselves to greater danger than those who selfishly protect themselves, helping poses risks to personal survival. For this reason, altruism makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective

collectivism

This dimension of personality reflects how people in Asian cultures tend to be more concerned about the impact of their behavior on their family, friends, and social groups (known as collectivism), whereas people in Western cultures are more concerned with how their behavior will affect their personal goals (known as individualism; Cross & Markus, 1999; Hofstede, 2001; Triandis, 1996). Thus, an Asian employee who is offered a promotion that would require relocating to another city may be concerned primarily with how the move would affect his family

Adler, Carl Jung

Though younger than Adler, Carl Jung (1875-1961) became more widely known. Jung's signature idea was that the unconscious has two distinct forms: personal and collective (Jung, 1964). The personal unconscious consists of all our personally experienced repressed and hidden thoughts, feelings, and motives. This is similar to Freud's notion of the unconscious.Jung also believed, however, that there is a second kind of unconscious, one that belongs not to the individual but to the species. He called it the collective unconscious, and it consists of the shared universal experiences of our ancestors—God, mother, life, death, water, earth, aggression, survival—that have been transmitted from generation to generation. Jung decided that there must be some kind of collective unconsciousness that would explain the many instances in which dreams, religions, legends, and myths share the same content, even though the people who created them have never directly or even indirectly communicated with one another. The idea of a collective unconscious came naturally to Jung, because he was extraordinarily well versed in world mythology, world religion, and archaeology.

Evolutionary Explanations of Personality

Two basic problems of all living things are survival and reproduction. These problems must be solved if any species is to survive. Biologists and evolutionary psychologists dub the adaptive solutions to these problems mechanism.

Sigmund Freud

Undoubtedly the most famous of all psychologists is Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Freud not only proposed an overarching theory of personality and psychotherapy but also founded the movement known as psychoanalysis and, in the process of doing so, essentially invented the field of psychotherapy. As mentioned in the chapter "Introduction to Psychology", the starting point for Freud's theory of psychoanalysis is the idea that the unconscious is the most powerful force in personality. More generally, Freud described three layers of Page 496consciousness: unconscious, preconscious, and conscious. The conscious layer is what we are aware of at any given moment in time, whereas the preconscious is just below the surface of awareness. It is not currently conscious but can become so relatively easily. Because the conscious and preconscious layers are less important in Freud's theory, we will focus instead on the unconscious. According to Freud, the unconscious contains all the drives, urges, or instincts that are outside awareness but nonetheless motivate most of our speech, thoughts, feelings, or actions. Before Freud, most people assumed that what we consciously think, feel, and believe is a relatively accurate and important source of information for explaining our behavior and personality.

Attribution

We often wonder why people do the things they do (Kelley & Michela, 1980), and we try to explain their actions. Attributions are the inferences we make about the causes of other people's behavior. Social psychologist Fritz Heider (1958) made an important distinction between two types of attributions. Internal, or dispositional, attributions ascribe other people's behavior to something within them, such as their personalities, motives, or attitudes. Let's say that Chris flunked a test. A dispositional attribution would be "Chris flunked the test because he is too lazy to study." The person making this attribution assumed that Chris's flunking is a result of something about him, but it is also possible that Chris's failing grade resulted from some external factor. Perhaps the test was too hard. People make external, or situational,attributions when they think that something outside the person, such as the nature of the situation, is the cause of his or her behavior. If Jake says that Chris failed because the exam was too hard, Jake has made a situational attribution for Chris's grade.

Implicit Associations Test (IAT).

When Banaji took the same test, her results looked about the same as Greenwald's. Banaji and Greenwald, though concerned about what their scores might reveal about their own latent attitudes, knew they were on to something. They dubbed the new test the Implicit Associations Test (IAT). Most famously, Greenwald and Banaji applied the IAT to concepts of race and ethnicity. Faster response times on the test indicate that people more readily associate two concepts; slower response times indicate a less automatic association. European Americans tend to respond more slowly to pairings of "black" (words or faces) with positive words than they do to pairings of "black" with Page 545negative words

Milgram's experiment

When asked, "Who is going to take responsibility if that guy gets hurt?" the experimenter would say, "I have full responsibility, please continue." Somehow, the belief that someone else (the authority figure) was responsible for their actions alleviated feelings of guilt or concern in some of the participants. This is akin to former Nazi officers saying, "I was just following orders," but who really has the final responsibility? Because participants clearly experienced mental anguish while taking part in the study, it sparked a fierce debate about ethics in research. Milgram contacted his participants later and asked whether they regretted having participated. Less than 2% did (see Figure 3). In the 2000s, Jerry Burger modified Milgram's original study with American college students

personality

When psychologists use the term personality, they are referring to the unique and relatively enduring set of behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and motives that characterize an individual.The definition of personality includes two key components. First, personality is what distinguishes us from one another and makes us unique. Second, personality is relatively enduring, or consistent. Let's consider these key components in more detail.

Exclusion and Inclusion

When we show positive feelings toward people in our own group and negative feelings toward those in other groups, we are displaying in-group/out-group bias. Think back to the rivalry between your high school and its crosstown rival. Everyone who went to your school was part of your in-group, and you identified with all of them and felt pride belonging to that group. Everyone who went to the other school was part of the out-group, and you felt competitive whenever the two schools interacted.Moreover, you likely made many distinctions between students and groups at your school but categorized Page 541everyone who went to the other school into one group: "them." The tendency to see all members of an out-group as the same is known as out-group homogeneity. One result of the human tendency to include and exclude others is that sometimes we get left out. As illustrated by the scenario that opens this chapter, rejection hurts. One possible reason it hurts to be left out is that social connections are as important to us as our physical safety—so important that the brain's physical pain circuits also evolved to signal when we have been excluded from the group

Rorschach Inkblot Test

a series of ambiguous inkblots are presented one at a time, and the participant is asked to say what he or she sees in each one (see Figure 13). The responses are recorded and then coded by a trained coder (most often a psychologist or psychotherapist) as to how much human and nonhuman "movement," color, form, and shading the participant sees in each card (Exner, 1974; Masling & Borenstein, 2005). Not only is the test used to measure unconscious motives, but its supporters also claim that responses can help them diagnose various psychological disorders, such as depression, suicidal thoughts, pedophilia, posttraumatic stress disorder, or anxiety disorders

Dehumanization

a tendency to portray groups of people as devoid of basic qualities or rights attributed to most people, is a common tactic in racial prejudice that aims to make people feel unworthy

Mischel

agreed with the idea that personality involves stable and consistent behavior over time, but he did not completely agree with it involving stable and consistent behavior across situations. A hostile person may be less hostile in one situation (for example, being run into by a child) than in another (for example, being cut off in traffic). Compared to a nonhostile person, he or she is likely to be more hostile in many—but not all—situations. Mischel says that people are not always consistent across all situations (Mischel, 2009; Mischel & Shoda, 1995 Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (1995). A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: Re-conceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure. Psychological Review, 102, 246-268. , 1999), because it would be pathological not to change one's behavior when the situation changes. This hypothetical situation demonstrates how the person, situation, and behavior interact.

Personality questionnaires

consist of individual statements, or items; respondents indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with each statement as it applies to their personalities. Responses Page 517are usually arranged on a Likert scale, which attaches numbers to descriptive responses, such as 1, "completely disagree"; 3, "neither agree nor disagree"; and 5, "completely agree."

empirical method

focuses on whether responses to various items scientifically or empirically differentiate between the groups it should

anima and animus

he anima is the female part of the male personality, and the animus is the male part of the female personality. All people possess characteristics and traits—not to mention hormones—that are typical of both genders. Yet most people downplay or even repress in themselves the qualities and traits of the opposite sex—men tend to deny and repress their feminine side, or anima, and women tend to deny or repress their masculine side, or animus. As we saw in the chapter "Human Development,"however, gender identity has become a topic of exploration for more and more people

first major component of personality

involves the uniqueness of an individual's thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Different people will respond to almost every situation in different ways. Consider what happens when one driver cuts in front of another. Some people react to such an incident with "road rage," while others take it in stride. A characteristic of personality—hostility—may determine whether someone responds with road rage or not. Personality, therefore, is about uniqueness, or individual differences. The concept of personality would not exist if everyone acted and thought alike. Personality psychology is concerned with the different ways people act in the same situation.

rational, or face valid, method

involves using reason or theory to come up with a question. If we wanted to develop a new measure of anxiety, we could include an item like "I feel anxious much of the time."

Conformity

is a subtle way in which the presence of others changes our actions. More direct social factors also pressure us to act in certain ways. Society imposes rules about acceptable behavior, called social norms. Most of the time we conform to the social norms of our culture. Conformity occurs when people adjust their behavior to what others are doing or adhere to cultural norms. The reasons for conformity vary, depending on the situation. Informational social influence occurs when people conform to the behavior of others because they view them as a source of knowledge about what they are supposed to do. Consider the incoming freshmen who look to other students for information about where to hang out, how to behave in class, and the like. Normative social influence is the type of conformity that occurs when people go along with the behavior of others in order to be accepted by the group. A classic example is peer pressure, in which people engage in certain behaviors, such as drinking or trying drugs, so that they will be accepted by a particular social group

Persuasion

is an attempt by a person or group to change our opinions, beliefs, or choices by explaining or arguing their position. Persuasion is all around us all the time; friends, family, teachers, politicians, salespeople, and advertisers often want to change our minds about something. The success of persuasion depends on three things: who the persuader is (source), the method used to convey the message, and who the receiver (audience) is (Lippa, 1994). First, how trustworthy, prestigious, and likeable is the source of the message? The more prestigious and trustworthy the persuader, the more likely he or she is to succeed in persuading us. If the persuader is also attractive and familiar, so much the better. This is why people want to buy pain relievers promoted in commercials by famous TV doctors rather than unknown figures. The perceived credibility of the character enhances the credibility of the product. Fear campaigns work only if they actually create fear in the audience (Witte & Allen, 2000). Most ads meant to scare us don't scare us enough to change our behavior. Simply citing statistics about the health risks of smoking is not very effective at getting people to change their behavior

Basic hostility

is anger or rage that originates in childhood and stems from fear of being neglected or rejected by one's parents. Because hostility toward one's parents is so threatening, it is often turned inward and converted into basic anxiety, which Horney defined as "a feeling of being isolated and helpless in a world conceived as potentially hostile" (1950, p. 18). Although basic anxiety in itself is not neurotic—it can give rise to normal behaviors—in some people it can result in neurotic behaviors. Horney argued that all people defend themselves against basic anxiety (isolation and helplessness) by developing either normal/spontaneous or neurotic/compulsive defenses that take the shape of particular needs or trends.

Another important principle of traits

is that they are directly connected to behavior. They lower behavioral thresholds, or the points at which you move from not having a particular response to having one (Allport, 1937; Feist & Barron, 2003; Rosenberg, 1998). A low threshold means you are very likely to behave in a particular way, whereas a high threshold means you are not. For instance, Carlos is shy, which means he has a low threshold for feeling awkward. If he were introduced to a group of strangers, he would likely feel uncomfortable. In the same Page 494situation, however, Karen, who is outgoing, would probably feel comfortable, because she has a much higher threshold for social awkwardness. Their optimal levels of arousal—or thresholds—are different. In short, traits lower behavioral thresholds and are directly connected to behavior.

Unconditional positive regard

is the ability to respect and appreciate another person unconditionally—that is, regardless of the person's behavior. This may sound easy, but, in fact, it is very difficult. Even if someone violates our basic assumptions of what it means to be a good, decent, and moral person, we still appreciate, respect, and even love him or her as a person. It requires that we separate person from behavior, which can be difficult even for parents and their children. To love people only when they do things that we want and like is to love them conditionally.

Kin selection

is the evolutionary mechanism that prompts individuals to help their close relatives, or kin, so that they will survive to reproduce and pass on related genes to their offspring. Kin selection is more common in social animals, such as bees. Greenberg (1979) bred bees to have varied degrees of genetic relatedness and then released them near a nest watched by guard bees. Because the nest was crowded, not every bee could get in. Guard bees more often let in the closely related bees than the distantly related bees. There is evidence for kin selection in humans, too. Burnstein and colleagues (Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama, 1994) asked people to specify whom they would be most likely to help in life-and-death situations and in non-life-and-death situations. People reported they would be more likely to help a relative in life-and-death situations. In fact, when people are rescuing others from a burning building, they are much more likely to look for relatives first

Cognitive Dissonance

is the feeling of discomfort caused by information that is at odds with one's conception of oneself as a reasonable and sensible person (Festinger, 1957). Because we don't like feeling uncomfortable, we are motivated to try to reduce the discomfort. Three options are available for decreasing the discomfort created by dissonance: 1. We can change our behavior to make it consistent with dissonant cognition. 2. We can attempt to justify our behavior by changing one of the cognitions to make it more consistent with our behavior. 3. We can add new cognitions that are consistent with the behavior and that therefore support it.

social loafing

is the opposite; it occurs when the presence of others causes individuals to relax their standards

second method for examining the effect that genetics plays in behavior and personality

is the study of twins, both identical and fraternal, who have been raised together or apart. The amount of similarity between identical versus fraternal twins on a given trait provides a measure of its heritability. In general, twin-adoption studies suggest that between 40% and 60% of the differences in personality traits are genetic/heritable (Bouchard & Loehlin, 2001; Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2003; Krueger & Johnson, 2008; Loehlin et al., 1998; Plomin & Caspi, 1999; Polderman et al., 2015; Tellegen et al., 1988). In other words, an individual's genetic makeup goes about halfway toward explaining his or her basic traits. Such a figure leaves roughly 50% of the differences in personality to be explained by three nongenetic sources: shared environment, non-shared environment, and error.

second component of personality

its relatively enduring consistency: both over time and across different situations. Consistency over time is the extent to which a person behaves the same way throughout his or her life span. Consistency across situations, in contrast, refers to the consistently unique way a person behaves in different situations. For example, if a person has a "friendly" personality, she will behave in a friendlier manner than most (uniqueness) at a party, while having coffee with friends, or when meeting someone for the first time (across different situations).

inter-rater reliability

measure of agreement among observers on how they record and classify a particular event. When children or others, such as animals, who cannot evaluate or report on their own personalities are being assessed, behavioral observations are required. The advantages of behavioral observations are that they do not depend on people's view of themselves, as self-report measurements do, and they are direct and relatively objective. Despite these strengths, behavioral observations are costly and time-consuming. Moreover, not all personality traits can be observed by other people. For these kinds of personality traits, a person's own reporting—a self-report—is more reliable. Self-reports can be obtained in three ways: interviewing, projective tests, and questionnaires.

Neurotical movement

moving toward others involves consistently needing or clinging to other people, belittling oneself, getting people to feel sorry for "poor little me," and almost completely repressing feelings of anger and hostility. Neurotically moving against others involves puffing oneself up in an obvious and public manner, "chest-beating," competing against others at almost everything, and being prone to hostility and anger. Finally, neurotically moving away from others involves developing a detached and "cool" demeanor—not responding emotionally, not caring, and being "ab

reaction formation

occurs when an unpleasant idea, feeling, or impulse is turned into its opposite. This often results in exaggerated or compulsive feelings and behavior (S. Freud,)

Social facilitation

occurs when the presence of others improves our performance

projection

people deny and repress their own particular ideas, feelings, or impulses and project them onto others. For example, a man may desire a married woman, but instead of recognizing his feelings, he projects his desire onto the woman and believes that she is seducing him.

Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler

pioneers in research on real-life (non-electronic) social networks, report that attitudes, behaviors, and habits move through social networks via the three degrees rule. For instance, your behavior (say, your food preferences) can affect your friends (one degree) and their friends (two degrees) and their friends' friends (three degrees). So we are influenced by and influence our friends within three degrees of separation, but not much beyond that

Projective Tests

present an ambiguous stimulus or situation to participants and ask them to give their interpretation of or tell a story about what they see. These techniques are based on Freud's notion of "projection" as a defense mechanism, that is, that unconscious wishes, thoughts, and motives will be "projected" onto the other people or situations. By interpreting an entire series of such answers, a psychologist can identify consistent unconscious themes. One of the most widely used projective tests is the Rorschach Inkblot Test.

The major explanations can be grouped into five distinct theoretical perspectives:

psychoanalysis, humanism, social-cognitive learning, trait theory, and evolutionary-biological theory. As you will see, each offers a different perspective on the phenomenon of personality.

Aggression

refers to violent behavior that is intended to cause psychological or physical harm, or both, to another being. By definition, aggression is deliberate. A dentist who performs a root canal may hurt a patient, but we hardly would call that behavior aggressive. Aggression is often provoked by anger, but not always. When aggression stems from feelings of anger, it is called hostile aggression. When aggression is a means to achieve some goal, it is called instrumental aggression. The hostile type of aggression is easy to understand. While you are driving, someone cuts you off on the road. You honk and, in response, the other driver makes an obscene hand gesture toward you. The hand gesture is an aggressive action. An example of instrumental aggression occurs in football when a defensive lineman smashes down a ball carrier to prevent the opponent from scoring. The goal is to prevent scoring by the other team, not to hurt the ball carrier. In this case, the aggressive action is considered to be justified by its instrumental goal.

sublimation

which involves expressing a socially unacceptable impulse in a socially acceptable and even desirable way. Thus, for example, someone plays football or boxes as a socially acceptable outlet for violent and aggressive impulses.