PSYC 2130

Oral Stage

1-18m Erogenous Zone: mouth → breast feeding, thumb sucking etc Conflict: weaning off of breast feeding Early Oral Stage: child is passive and receptive Late Oral Stage: fusion of sexual and aggressive desires due to teeth Bruno Bettleheim on Fairy Tales: considered them as oral tales Ex: Hansel and Gretel ate food to surrender their oral compulses to eat

Anal Stage

2-3yr Erogenous Zone: anal area Conflict: toilet training → conflict between elimination and retention of pooing Society forces the child to eliminate something that causes pleasure which angers the child Passive vs Active Resistance: passive is when you resist by doing something unconventionally while active is when you resist by not doing it at all 2 Phases: anal sadistic (early) and anal erotic (later)

Case Example - Little Hans

5 yo with phobia horse would bite him so never left home → treated by father Age 3: big interest in penis (called widdler) and pleasure from touching it → mother threatened castration when he touched it Noticed penis in animals and compared animated and inanimate objects Denied that his sister and mom didn't have a penis due to castration anxiety Always noticed horse's large penis and thought his mom must have a similar one Interpretation of the Symptom: dad explained to Hans mom don't have penises Freud said Hans was dissatisfied with the size of his penis He had dreams where his dad was a big giraffe and his mom was a crumpled one Father disencouraged mom from taking Hans into bed because it encouraged Oedipal wishes Hans sent a summer alone with his mom and two significant events occurred: Friend's father told her to keep her fingers away because a white horse could bite them When pretending to be horses, a friend who rivaled for Hans crush fell down, hit his food + bled Witnessed a horse falling down and being pulled into a van kicking its feet Major Cause: oedipus conflict because Hans felt more affection for his mother than his phallic stage could handle because the summer alone with his mom he slept with her and had her to himself Solution/Cause: thought him and his mother can be parents and his dad is the granddad but it didn't resolve his hostility towards his dad, hence the phobia formed Hostility towards father was symbolized in the horse → feared the horse would bite him because he wished his father would fall down + feared horse would come to his room at night when his oedipal fantasies were most tempted Phobia expressed wish and anxiety and in a way allowed him to be with his mom because she comforted him when he had bad dreams Summary: fear horse would bite him + horse would fall down represented how his father was going to punish him for his evil wishes against him Change: caused by sexual enlightenment by father + analysis allowed unconscious to be conscious Father's interest in Hans resolved Oedipus conflict and resulted in identification with dad

Phallic Stage (

5-6yr Erogenous Zone: genitals → difference in genitals in genders leads to psychological differentiation Castration Anxiety: fear in a male that he may lose his penis Conflict: oedipal and electra complex Oedipus Complex: son is envious of father because he wants mothers affection → son's hostility is projected onto father with fear of retaliation Every boy fantasizes to kill their father and marry their mother Subliminal Psychodynamic Activation: presented stimuli tachistoscopically in a competition to see how oedipa activation affected performance → found that phrases like "beating dad is okay" produced higher scores than "beating dad is wrong" Results only came when stimuli was presented below threshold in unconscious Penis Envy/Electra Complex: females blame their mom for a lack of penis and love their father in hopes of restoring the penis by having a child with the dad Resolution: repression and defensive Identification Defensive Identification: you become similar to the parent of the same sex so you can vicariously attract your parent of the opposite sex Phallic Character: reckless, narcissistic, vain, prideful

Personality and Brain Data

Aids LOTS data by giving info about biological functions Electroencephalography (EEG): records electrical activity in neurons through electrodes on scalp Neurons have biochemical activity inside that generates electrical activity that can be detected Records what part of the brain is more active at what time Monitor subject's psychological state and EEG to relate psychological activity to the brain and identify regions in the brain that lead to that behaviour Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): visualizes brain and its active areas while one carries out psychological functions and tasks Detects blood flow to areas of the brain because more blood flow = more active brain

Supression

An experiment where half the people were told they cannt thik about sex and the other half could showed that people think more about something when they have to suppress it

Anal Adult Behaviour

Anal Expulsive - Messy, disorderly, disorganized, defiant, aggressive, extravagant reckless, careless Anal Retentive - Neat, orderly, careful, hoarding, parsimonious, prompt, withholding, passive-aggressive

Personality Theory and Assessment

Any standardized procedure with well specified steps for learning about one's personality or differences in personality in a population Four Targets of Assessment: different types of behaviour to look for in a personality assessment Average Behaviour: reveal inner personality structure and measure what people do on average Variability in Behaviour: explore variations in behaviour across social settings and look at patterns of variability to learn about personality structure Conscious Thought: conscious thoughts, feelings, and emotions → usually measured by asking them Unconscious Mental Events: thoughts/motives one is unaware of

Bender Gestalt Test

Assesses visual motor functioning → show 9 cards of geometric shapes one by one and ask them to draw each on a piece of paper, psychologist assesses accuracy and organization

Attachment Theory

Attachment Behavioural System (ABS): psychological system dedicated to parent-child relationships Innate + motivates infant to be close to caregiver to be protected from harm Adult attachment provides secure base for exploration of environment (Bowlby) Internal Working Models: symbolic mental representations of self and caregiver created from parent-child relationships → long lasting personality structures Differences in parenting lead to differences in internal working models Strange Situation Procedure (Ainsworth): identified individual differences in attachment styles (3 types) through observation of parent-child interactions when caregiver was separated and reunited from child Individual differences can be understood in three qualitatively distinct attachment styles (UOA) Secure Attachment: sad when mom left but returned to normal when returned (70%) Anxious-Avoidant: not sad when mom left and avoided her when she returned (20%) Anxious-Ambivalent: difficulty separating and reuniting from mom (10%) Certain cultures have different parenting styles so the proportions of attachment styles differ

Why Does Transference Work?

Basis for corrective emotional experience Conflict is less intense in analysis Analyst assumes attitude is different from those of parents Patients are oder and more mature in analysis so their ego is more developed

Joseph Wolpe

Behaviourist that disagreed with the length of time it takes for psychoanalysis treatment and used principles of conditioning to come up with behaviourism

Attachment in the Brain

Brain does not have a single attachment mechanism but multiple work together The attachment and emotion brain systems are the same therefore attachment is based on emotions Ex: a child feels happy when their parent cuddles with them and that feeling leads to attachment Oxytocin: neurotransmitter involved with attachment Ex: participants with insecure attachment were given oxytocin/placebo and shown attachment related drawings and asked to rate sentences about drawings → oxytocin participants chose more secure happy phrases Brain Regions Limbic System: neural circuits involved with emotions and motivation Cerebellum: controls motor movement + attachment related emotions Ex: studied individuals grieving a death and found avoidant attachment styles had lower cerebellar volume the more loss they experienced but secure attachment styles had higher cerebellar volume the more loss they experienced

Personality Theories Characteristics

Broad, sweeping, 'philosophies' of the person E.g. Freud vs. Skinner Formal attempts to describe and explain why people differ Ask different questions

Relevant Psychoanalytic Research

Can't be observed directly hence: Hypnotic Phenomena: people under hypnosis recall things they couldn't before + perform actions after hypnosis they aren't conscious of or aware that they were told to do this Patients when they recalled buried memories had strong emotions attached to them which led Freud to concluding our unconscious has parts of your conscious deliberately buried Perception Without Awareness: can someone know something without knowing they know it? Subliminal Perception: perceiving stimuli and being influenced by it without knowing Ex: participants were shown a picture for a second and had to draw a nature seen, those that saw a duck but couldn't recall seeing it drew more duck related things → the duck stimuli was not consciously pierced but still influenced thoughts Ex: people afraid of spiders were shown pictures below a level of awareness and they were able to touch a spider closet How is Motivation Involved in the Unconscious? Perceptual Defense: individual defends against anxiety that accompanies recognition of a threatening stimulus → people were shown neutral and harmful words like rape quickly, and they started sweating and being uncomfortable because they could even identify the harmful word Subliminal Psychodynamic Activation: showed people things that activate their unconscious thoughts but not long enough to be conscious, and people had emotional reactions unconsciously Silverman conducted a study where they showed conflict-intensifying material and then conflict-resolving material and found people repressing the conflict weren't aware of it but it affected their ability to memorize a passage Ex: study on people with eating disorders, those who were presented abandonment sentences and had abandonment issues presented a worse eating disorder There is a threshold of when content is perceived, and they catered thoughts to be above the threshold of perception (so you subliminally perceive unconsciously instead)

Strengths and Weaknesses of Research Methods

Case Studies and Clinical Research Strengths - Avoids the artificial lab - Study the full complexity of a person and environmental relationships - Lead to in-depth study of individuals - Only way to study certain traits Limitations - Lead to unsystematic observation - Encourage subjective interpretation of data from researcher (less objective) - Do not establish casual relationships - Findings aren't generalizable - Relies on verbal self reports that may be inaccurate Questionnaires and Correlation Research Strengths - Study a wide range of variables that are reliable - Study relationships among many variables - Large samples easily obtained Limitations - Establish relationships that are associational rather than causal - Problems of reliability and validity of self-report questionnaire (response styles) - Individuals not studied in depth Laboratory Studies and Experimental Research Strengths - Manipulate specific variables - Record data objectively - Establish cause-effect relationship Limitations - Exclude phenomena that cannot be studied in the lab - Create an artificial setting that limits generality of findings to human life - Foster demand characteristics and experimental expectancy effects

Three Strategies of Research

Case Studies: in-depth analysis of an individual to assess their psychological structures and processes that contribute to their personality → idiographic Can be used for research or clinical treatment Hubert Herman: studied why the idea of self-concept is multifaceted by observing different viewpoints as different positions one can take in viewing themself Individual was asked to list characteristics that describe them and list people/situations important to them, and then indicate what characteristic is prominent in each situation Correlational Studies: personality tests and questionnaires designed to study individual differences A lot of info on people is gathered but no individual is studied extensively Correlational Research: using the correlation coefficient to see how personality variables relate Refers to research strategies not just the statistical measure Correlation Coefficient: number (-1 to 1) that reflects degree two things are linearly related Positive Correlation: both increase/decrease in same direction (ex: anxiety + insecurity) Negative Correlation: both increase/decrease in opp. direction (ex: anxiety + confidence) Uncorrelation (0): no linear relationship (ex: anxiety + friendliness) Nun Study: studied correlation between personality characteristics and longevity in nuns that wrote autobiographies → studied their emotions and related it to their age of death and found nun with more positive emotions lived longer Experiments: participants are assigned at random to an experimental condition and one or more variables are controlled → only method to lead to causation conclusion because random assignment Claude Steel: conducted experiment on stereotype threats, where people try to perform a task wbut stereotypes concerning their abilities exist and influence their performance Intelligence test was given to black and white students, and black students who had to complete a demographic questionnaire did worse on the test

Reinterpreting Motivational Forces

Classical Psychoanalytic View: motivational forces are biological drives (id's drive towards pleasure) + personality develops by one managing these drives when they conflict with society Instinctual drives are primary → initial forces driving development Social relationships are secondary → do NOT determine personality structure, they are determined by personality developed by desires of id Interpersonal Psychodynamic View: social relations are primary and personality structures are developed as a result of interactions with others → acceptance by others is a motivational force

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Client interprets a photo and gives it a story Works because people are unaware they project themselves onto the story so defense mechanisms aren't applied and they can reveal things about themselves Instructions: tell a story with beginning, middle, and end given a photo Used in experiments about human motivation → individual differences in motives were revealed in TAT Measured implicit motives as compared to explicit in questionnaires

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Client says what they see and why, then psychologist interprets responses Says there is a connection between perception and personality The Projective Hypothesis: when faced with ambiguous stimuli individual will give meaning + structure Individual does so in an idiosyncratic manner which reflects underlying process of personality Rorschach Administration: 5 are achromatic, 2 black and red, and 3 are chromatic (10 total) Instructions: report what you see/are reminded of Phase 1: Free Association → person says what comes to mind Phase 2: Inquiry → determine why they thought what they did Response Determinants: location, originality, content, form, movement Interpretation Impressionistic Scoring: psychologist used their own theoretical models to interpret the score → sometimes it was successful Exner Scoring Technique: standard method for interpreting the Rorschach test

Case of Jim

College student in 1960s that volunteered as a subject to take personality tests over 25 years Born in NYC after WWII, had an affectionate childhood, good relationship with parents, loving mom Father is a college grad in automobile sales, mom is a housewife who voluntarily reads to the blind Oldest of four children - sister four years younger, two brothers 5 and 7 years younger Trouble being involved with women in a satisfying way, uncertain about pursuing grad school in business admin or clinical psychology, and has a need for success Rorschach Test: gave few responses → surprising because he was smart with creative potential Concluded he was conflicted about his sexual role because he wants nurturance from his mom but feels guilty about his hostility towards women → fixated at oral stage TAT: all stories included men and women putting each other down Concluded he was immature, native and in denial of all unpleasant dirty behaviour + he was indecisive between his sadistic urges and being the victim + confused about what meaningful relationships two people can have + sees sex as dirty and fears it but craves attention Overall Themes: Lack of warmth in interpersonal relationships + sadistic orientation towards women Experiences tension and anxiety behind a facade of poise Conflicted/confused about his sexual identity and has defense mechanisms to cope with them

Good Theories

Comprehensive theories of personality make formulations about: 1) Motivation 2) Mental Structures / Cognition 3) Individual Differences 4) Development

Two Types of Personality Variables

Concepts that define personality Personality Dispositions: descriptive words about what a person/thing does → based on tendencies and personality characteristics that are enduring and distinctive Ex: a vase is fragile because it can break Enduring: characteristics that are consistent across time and place Distinctive: characteristics that differentiate people (interindividual differences) Ex: being sad when something bad happens is not part of your personality because everyone feels that way Inner Mental Life: beliefs, emotions and motivations/desires that form an individual's mental life Intraindividual Functioning: difference in conflicting thoughts + emotions (Jack Block) System: any connected set of interacting parts that comprise whole Personality is thought of as a system because you are concerned with how multiple aspects of one's mental life are connected to another (cohere) Overall Definition: personality refers to psychological systems that contribute to an individual's enduring and distinctive patterns of experience and behaviour → A psychologist aims to identify one's psychological systems (aspects of inner mental life) to help explain their distinctive experiences and actions (their dispositions)

Levels of Consciousness

Conscious Level: mental contents you are aware of at all times Preconscious Level: mental contents you can easily become aware of Unconscious Level: mental contents you are unaware of and cannot become aware of unless under special circumstances They are hidden because they are anxiety provoking (traumatic or socially unacceptable) Forces oppose these thoughts and we have a desire to prevent the anxiety they cause

Defining Personality

Defining personality is important because people misunderstand and misuse the word often Formally, personality is NOT about charisma (ex: this person has a lot of personality)

Denial

Deny the existence of your trauma or socially unacceptable though in your conscious Starts off consciously denying but eventually becomes automatic and unconscious Adaptive when the action is impossible, maladaptive when it prevents you from taking action to change a situation that can be fixed Some say its maladaptive because you run away from reality and reality orientation is fundamental to emotional health, others say it is adaptive because self-deception allows you to control how you perceive things positively

Erikson's Psychosocial Stages of Development

Development was psychosocial and over entire life The way people resolve these issues influences their personality Trust vs Mistrust: 1yr, infant is unsure to trust mom in breastfeeding (oral) Positive Outcomes: feelings of inner goodness, trust in oneself and others, optimism Negative Outcomes: sense of badness, mistrust of self and others, pessimism Autonomy vs Shame/Doubt: 2-3 yr, toilet training helps gain autonomy but leads to shame/doubt (anal) Positive Outcomes: exercise of will, self-control, able to make choices Negative Outcomes: rigid, excessive conscience, doubtful, self-conscious shame Initiative vs Guilt: 4-5yr, taking pleasure in vs feeling guilty about being competitive (phallic) Positive Outcomes: pleasure in accomplishments, activity, direction, and purpose Negative Outcomes: guilt over goals contemplated and achievements initiated Industry vs Inferiority: latency stage Positive Outcomes: able to be absorbed in productive work, pride in completed product Negative Outcomes: sense of inadequacy and inferiority, unable to complete work Identity vs Role Diffusion: adolescence, main goal is developing your ego identity (genital) Positive Outcomes: confidence of inner sameness and continuity, promise of a career Negative Outcomes: ill at ease in roles, no set standards, sense of artificiality Ego Identity: ego reevaluates reality so how you view yourself matches past + others view Role Diffusion: people who don't really know who they are or if what they think of themself matches other people and where their future is leading → easily conform + regret life later Major Challenge: asserting independence from parents + role identification Bakan: adolescence is a social phase arising from culture it's not a life stage Intimacy vs Isolation: early adulthood, conflict between need for independence and need for intimacy Positive Outcomes: mutuality, sharing of thoughts, work, feelings Negative Outcomes: avoidance of intimacy, superficial relations Normative Transition Events: occur during this time (ex: career, marriage, parenthood) Riff and Migdal data on young and middle aged females Generativity vs Stagnation: adulthood, difficulties in productivity and contributing something meaningful Positive Outcomes: ability to lose oneself in work and relationships Negative Outcomes: loss of interest in work, impoverished relations Integrity vs Despair: later years, difficulties in sense of completeness Positive Outcomes: sense of order and meaning, content with self and one's accomplishments Negative Outcomes: fear of death, bitter about life, and what one got from it or what did not happen

Importance of Early Experience Second Study

Developmental psychologists studying early emotional relationship with moms + later psychopathology → attachment behaviour of boys/girls one y/o observed Period of play with mother in unstructured situation Departure of mom and period of play with child alone Return of mother and second free play period Behaviour of children was categorized into three: avoidant, secure, and ambivalent Six years later, child competency was seen by mother filling Child Behaviour Profile + teacher ratings Three Categories: normal group, at-risk group + clinically disturbed group Findings: Attachment classification related more to later pathology for boys (insecure boys showed more pathology than secure boys) while for girls there was no connection Difference in trying to predict future data from previous data (prospective) vs trying to understand later data from earlier data (retrospective) Ex: 80% of clinically disturbed boys were avoidant/ambivalent but 40% of avoidant/ambivalent boys were clinically disturbed

Three Goals of a Personality Theorist

Distinguishes personality between professionals Scientific Observation: have three features Study diverse groups of people - ensures your conclusions represent the entire world Important so you can exclude traits common in (sub) cultures Objective - information is not influenced by the subjective personal opinions and desires of the psychologist (ensure this in scientific methods used also) Allows for replicability of experiments - often an issue (replication crisis) because case studies cannot be replicated Use specialized tools to study thinking, emotion, and neurobiological systems - allows you to save money, work with larger groups, and avoid lies (based on questionnaires) Ex: a device can tell you what emotion someone feels without them saying Scientific Theory: explain the scientific observations - have three distinctive qualities Systematic - relate ALL ideas and possible theories to create one systematic organized theory Testable - theory must be tested by objective scientific evidence Comprehensive - address ALL significant questions about personality functioning, development, and individual differences → you have to explain the entire person not just parts Applications - From Observation and Theory to Practice: covert theory into beneficial applications

Personality Process

Dynamic change in psychological activity (thinking/emotion/motivation) over time AKA personality dynamics Units of Analysis: different approaches to the study of motivation Ex: biological basis behind it or the conscious thinking process, or unconscious thinking

Types of Oral Stage

Early (Oral Erotic) Overindulgence - Passive Optimism Frustration - Passive Pessimism Late (Oral Sadistic) Overindulgence - Active Optimism Frustration - Active Pessimism

Personality Assessment

Efforts to measure personality aspects of individuals to make a practical application Effort to understand an individual by obtaining information about them Ex: administering a personality test to understand the individual No one test gives you all the info about an individual's entire personality

Erikson's Main Contributions

Emphasized psychosocial + insiticutla psychosexual basis for personality development Extended stages of development to include entire life cycle Recognized that people look to future and past and how one sees the future affects their personality

Harry Stack Sullivan

Emphasized social + interpersonal forces → Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry Emotional experiences are not based on biological drives but are due to interpersonal relationships The concept of self and anxiety are social in original Good Me: associated with pleasure Bad Me: associated with pain and threats to security Not Me: part of self that is rejected because associated with intolerable anxiety Agreed with Erikson development goes past phallic stage → emphasized juvenile and preadolescence Juvenile Stage: child's experiences with friends and teachers are important because social acceptance becomes a source of self-esteem and anxiety Preasolscence: relationship with close friend of same + opposite sex becomes important

Id, Ego, and Superego

Expansion on idea of consciousness Id: unconscious great reservoir of mental energies + source of all drive energy → seeks release of tension or excitement to return to quiet internal state Pleasure Principle: id pursues pleasure and avoids pain only, its entire purpose is the immediate release of tension and it will do whatever it needs to achieve that Seeks gratification in two ways: action or imagining it has what it wants → fantasy of gratification is as good as real gratification because it cannot distinguish fantasy and reality Functions entirely in the unconscious and is unknown Superego: internal moral aspects of social behaviour and ethics → controls behaviour to follow these rules and rewards (self-love, pride) food behaviour while punishing (guilt, inferiority) bad behaviour Functions on a primitive level so incapable of testing reality (distinguishing action and thought) Ex: you feel guilty for thinking about doing something even if you didn't do it Black and white judgments because of perfection → there is only good or bad Can be understanding and flexible → people learn to forgive themselves Ego: express and satisfy desires of id in accordance to: opportunities and constraints that exist in real world, + demands of the superego Reality Principle: gratification is delayed until a time in reality where you can get the most pleasure with the least pain/consequences Blocks id and diverts the energy or gradually releases it in accordance to reality and superego Doesn't contradict pleasure principle, only temporarily suspends it Can distinguish fantasy from reality unlike id Logical, rational and tolerant release of tension while confirming to id, superego and reality Id seeks pleasure, superego seeks perfection, ego seeks reality

Reaction Formation

Express the opposite of an unacceptable impulse Ex: overprotective mothers that have thoughts of murdering their child

Personality Types

Fixations: failure to develop instincts in a psychosexual stage → due to little gratification from it so you are afraid to move on or too much gratification so you have no motivation to move on Regression: individual seeks to return to earlier mode of satisfaction (earlier point of fixation) → often due to stress and frustration (ex: overeating, alcoholism)

Fixed vs Flexible Measures

Fixed (Nomothemic): produces where the same measurements/test items are given to all people, and scores are calculated the exact same way → focuses more on describe a general population Advantage: objective and simple Disadvantage: some test items may be irrelevant to the individual Nomothemic: search for scientific laws applied in a fixed manner to everyone Flexible (Idiographic): procedures not same for everyone → focuses on describing a unique individual Ex: ask to indicate which items are more or less relevant, or give unstructured open questions Idiographic: personal, private and distinct characteristics

Object Relations Theory

Focus on mental interpersonal relationships with objects Object: refers to a person generally → the thing energy is directed to, to reduce tension in a drive Ex: a horny person will have sex with another person to fufill the drive Past relationships in childhood will influence your adult relationships

Karen Horney

Focused on universal cultural influences rather than biological (more optimistic) because Role of culture in gender identity → each culture defines what is masculine/feminine Association with Erich Fromm who showed her cultural and social influences Moved from Europe to US and noticed personality structure differences in her patients → Interpersonal relationships are the core of personality functioning Theory of Neurosis: a neurotic person has a conflict responding to basic anxiety → three patterns all characterized by rigidity and lack of fulfillment in individual potential Moving Toward: deal with anxiety with excessive interest in being accepted/approved Self-sacrificing and unselfish because they want other approval Moving Against: assumes everyone is hostile and life is a struggle against people All functioning is directed towards denying a need for others (looking tough) Moving Away: person isolates into neurotic detachment → look at others + self with emotional detachment so they don't get involved Views Concerning Women: said penis envy is the result of male bias and women are not victims of mashochistic views because of biology but rather because of cultural influences (feminist)

Hazan and Shaver

Gave love quiz survey to measure attachment styles where participants had to say which attachment style they fell under and how their love life is → measured attachment styles in adulthood Secure Styles: happiness, friendship + trust → viewed romantic feelings as stable but up/down Had better relationships with parents Perform better in workspace and approach work with confidence Avoidant Styles: fear of closeness, emotional highs/lows + jealous → skeptical of lasting love and felt it was rare to find someone to fall in love with Avoid social interaction and are less satisfied with their jobs Undergo more psychological stress than others under stressful situations Ambivalent Styles: obsessive preoccupation with lover, desire for union, extreme sexual attraction, emotional extremes + jealousy → felt it's easy to fall in love but rare to find true love Influenced by praise and fear of rejection and allow love to interfere with work ethic

Growth and Development

How one develops into the unique person they are → two challenges Characterize patterns of development experienced by most Understand developmental factors that contribute to individual differences (nature vs nurture) Genetic Determinants Temperament: biologically based emotional + behavioural tendencies seen in childhood Tells us a lot about genetic determinants and how it shapes fear Evolutionary Effect: some behaviour is predisposed because it increases survival and reproductive success over evolution Focuses not on individual differences but universal things in humans Environmental Determinants Culture: leads to learned patterns of behaviour, rituals, emotions and beliefs common in people, and defines one's needs and how they will satisfy them Social Class: socioeconomic status influences cognitive/emotional development and affects educational/job opportunities and resources that overall influence experience Family: parents influence children in three ways Through their own behaviour they elicit behaviour in children Serve as role models for identifications Selectively reward behaviours There can also be within-family differences due to factors like gender Peers: influence individuals into rules and norms for behaviour

Psychopathology and Behaviour Change

How people change and why sometimes cannot change Conceptual framework that specifies cause of a problem and factors that might bring change Helps build a personality theory to address issues any people face to help resolve them

Carl Rogers

Humanist that said psychoanalyst can hurt people because of a power imbalance and it only meets the elitist needs → psychoanalysts had their patients lie on a couch while they were behind them, and Rogers disagreed

Hysteria (Conversion Disorder) Study

Hysteric patients studied in fMRI while seeing pictures of different emotions → the patients had unexplained motor symptoms like tremors they confirmed were not fake 16 hysteric patients and 16 healthy patients tested → compared if brain activity differed in response to the emotional stimuli Brain activity between the groups was different which showed a biological basis for Freud's hypothesis Stronger connections between brain's emotion + motor movement regions in hysteric patients Emotional arouse disrupts normal brain functioning in motor movement brain regions

Identity Formation - Four Identity Statuses (Erikson + Marcia)

Identity Achievement: individual has sense of identity following exploration → function at high psychological level capable of independent thought, oral reasoning, resistance to conformity etc Identity Moratorium: individual in the midst of identity crisis → capable of high levels pf psychological functioning but struggle to answer who they are so they are less prepared for commitment Identity Foreclosure: individual committed to an identity without exploration → rigid, highly susceptible to conformity and sensitive to self-esteem manipulation Identity Diffusion: individual lacks any sense of identity/commitment → vulnerable to lowering self-esteem, issues with intimacy, disorganized thoughts

Isolation

Impulse is not denied in consciousness but emotions associated are Intellectualization: logically reminding yourself the emotions you feel are not normal, so you still think about the impulse but think of how it's "wrong" now and deny the original emotions Ex: think about murdering someone but then remind yourself it's wrong to do so Madonna-***** Complex: men categories women as love and no sex, or sex and no love Demonstrates how isolation may lead to detaching a feeling from an action

Dynamics of Functioning: i

Instincts are expressed differently in everyone (blocked, displaced or expressed) and hence variability in behaviour is due to how we differently express life and death instincts Every process involves the interplay of expression and inhibition, usually by forcing inhibition of expenditure of energy and gratification of an instinct Inhibition requires energy so people get tired and bored of it quickly Anxiety: painful emotional experience representing a threat/danger so it can signals to the ego Free-Floating Anxiety: individual unable to relate their tension to a specific danger Repetition of earlier trauma so often related to a past danger Conflict between the id insects and threat of punishment by superego

Projection

Internal unacceptable things projected as external actions Ex: turn your own insecurity onto someone else, so if you think you are rude, think others are Occurs because people dwell on things they dislike about themselves, and those ideas become chronically accessible, so you start interpreting other people's actions using that idea as well Your negative trait is projected onto others and denied within yourself Ex: experiment where people saw two negative qualities and then were asked to suppress one, they ended up projecting the suppressed trait onto others

Narcissism

Investment of mental energy in self → basis of self-psychology Healthy people can fulfill their needs while helping others or bring attention to themself positively Narcissistic Personality: when one has large sense of self-importance and is obsessed with success and power for themself → feel entitled to thing from others Lack empathy because a lot of energy is self-directed Need admiration from others so they are vulnerable to low self-esteem Muraay's Narcissism Scale: questionnaire to measure narcissism Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI): way to measure narcissism given use of self-reences Those scoring high rank their performance more positively than peers showing self-enhancement bias Often correlated + compared to other behaviour questionnaires Self-aggrandizing attributional style + cynical mistrust of others Rhodewalt and Morf: exposed high and low NPI people to two tests of intelligence where they were told they failed one and succeeded the other → high NPI individuals were angry about the failure and more prone to mood swings based on the feedback given

Projective Tests Validity

Issues They predict some types of outcomes but not others + scoring scheme depends on interpreter Lilienfeld et Al: found some scoring methods are valid for some purposes but those are rare exceptions and normally projective tests don't work and lack validity TAT responses are correlated with measures of motivated behaviour but are still invalid Rorschach interpretations varied and were not consistent to the client's outcome hence invalid Why don't they work? Inter-Judge Reliability: scoring is not reliable because dependant on interpreter Content of test has nothing to do with content of test-takers daily life, it can depend on one's way of thinking

Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939)

Jewish, born in Moravia, lived in Vienna most of his life, oldest child with 7 full siblings, and 2 half brothers from his dad who was 20 years older than his mother → was his mothers favourite and wanted to pursue government but due to anti-semitism pursued medicine Compared adult and fetal brains and concluded the earliest structures persist through life, which led him to developing his personality development theory Jean Charcot: introduced Freud to hypnosis but switched since not all patients are hypnotized Ernest Jones: early follower of Freud, forced to resign because inquired into patient's sex lives Ernst Brucke: Freud's professor at University of Vienna, contributed to mechanistic movement Became depressed after his father's death and to understand his problem started a self-analysis Analyzed contents of his experiences while focusing on dreams and continued for a long time Lost his financial savings in WWI and feared for his son's lives, and lost his daughter when she was 26 Lead to his theory of the death instinct, a wish to die rather than life Mechanism: argues nature and biology can fully explain an individual Vitalism: argues biology cannot fully explain life because life arose from nonmaterial forces (soul/spirit) Free Association: subject allows all their thoughts to come forth without inhibition or falsification Reveals hidden meaning among ideas (unconscious) → used as scientific method + therapy Interpretation of Dreams: his most significant work where he introduces psychodynamic theory Believed dreams reveal unconscious thoughts and desires His views about childhood were ridiculed and boycotted

Contemporary Developments in Personality Research - Social Media + Language Based Assessments

Language: when analyzed can assess certain traits and detect individual differences Numerical data is often used to quantitatively assess personality because it is easy to analyze Computerized Text Analysis Methods: software tools that analyze language Ex: use a system to see how many times a person uses first-person pronouns → more depressed people use first-person pronouns more often Social Media Can be combined by having computerized text analysis analyze one's social media language Ex (Park et Al): checked thousands of people's facebook status and their scores on an online personality questionnaire, and used statistical analysis to determine which language in the status lead to high and low scores on the questionnaire They then tried to predict one's personality characteristics (S/O data) from their status based on their findings above and were very successful There was a positive correlation in predicting the big five traits Big Five: extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism Ex: who used words like tonight and party in the status were found more extraverted

Measurement in Personality Psychology

MMPI: empirical true and false test that aids in diagnosis for mental illness Sack's Sentence Completion Test: less structured than MMPI, prompts that you are asked to finish

Latency Stage

Massive repression of sexual, oral and anal impulses → rechanneling to other activities Major personality develops during stages before this

Goals of Research

Measures of personality must be replicable and truly measure the theoretical concept Reliability: extent observations can be replicated → depends on if measures are dependable + stable Influenced by target's mood and ambiguity in test items Internal Consistency: do different items correlate to each other and truly reflect a common psychological construct? Test-Retest Reliability: if someone took the test at two different times would they do the same? You can decrease internal consistency by adding irrelevant questions but this doesn't always influence test-retest reliability Inter-Rater Reliability: degree of agreement between raters Validity: extent observations actually reflect interest of study Construct Validity: valid measure of the psychological variable → proven by showing test relates systematically to some criteria independent of the actual test Convergent Validity: tests that test similar constructs are related/correlated Divergent Validity: tests that test different constructs are not related/correlated Also involves comparisons of people who are relevant to the test to ensure people scoring high and low have true differences between each other Discriminant Validity: test is distinct empirically from other pre-existing tests Content Validity: degree to which content of test is representative of domain it covers

Aldred Adler

Member of Vienna Psychoanalytic Society → father of Individual Psychology Teleological Position: behaviour is directed by future goals → motivation is striving towards fulfillment People consciously experience inferiority and are motivated to compensate for that The feeling of inferiority determines the goal of one's existence + how we cope with inferiority shapes → personality is shaped by striving for superiority (fulfillment model) Greater emphasis on social urges and conscious thoughts than sexual urges + unconscious thought Fictional Finalism: idea that guide behaviour → humans strive for perceived imagined goals and the ultimate goal is superiority Social Interest: innate capacity for good will and sense of community All children face inferiority because parents are more powerful + older childrens are dethroned when other siblings are born so the first born understands power and authority the best because they lose power so they become highly dependant on authority to regain power

Development of Thinking Processes

Mind processes information in two different ways Primary Process: language of unconscious → illogical + irrational, reality and fantasy indistinguishable Ex: young children cannot be logical but think clearly → explained by primary process though Ex: dreams - body can physically react to prepare yourself because cannot distinguish reality Secondary Process: language of consciousness → reality testing + logical Only develops after child has capacity to undergo primary process thinking (hence second) Parallel to development of ego → without ego one becomes more differentiated Epstein's Ideas: experiential occurs first in evolution, then rational Experiential Thinking: analogous to primary thinking → holistic, concrete and heavily influenced by emotion, used in situations to be empathic/intuitive Rational Thinking: analogous to secondary thinking → abstract, analytical + follows rules of logic and evidence Conflict between two systems of thought: Ex: told to pick 1 in 10 or 8 in 100 odds, people know 1 in 10 is more rational but chose other → shows conflict between experiential and rational

Fraley and Shaver

Naturally observed relation between attachment style in adulthood and couple separation Contact Seeking: kissing + watching from window Contact Maintenance: hugging + unwillingness to let go Avoidance: looking elsewhere + breaking off contact Resistance: wanting to be held but resisting contact + signs of anger/annoyance → Only saw differences in women; avoidant women when saying goodbye to partner were showing avoidance yet when travelling with partner they should contact seeking

The Problem of Definition

No consensus Multiple competing theoretical alternatives which determine definition of the field, appropriate subject matter, methodology, etc.

Conflict and Defense

One seeks gratification for their fixations but their fixations are linked to past trauma and hence you have a conflict between a wish (instinct) and ego (anxiety) if the wish is expressed (discharged) One aims to handle anxiety from intrapsychic conflict with defense mechanisms → if conflict is too great the defense mechanisms can lead to neurotic/psychotic symptoms that express unconscious conflict between wish and anxiety Symptoms: unsuccessful defense mechanism where energy with unconscious sexual drive turns into a pathological symptom Abnormal behaviour arises from conflict in wish and a fear from childhood, problems of adulthood are due to childhood trauma

Three Types of Personalities - Resulting from Fixations

Oral Personality Type: narcissistic, no recognition of others as separate and valuable, others are only seen for what they can give (feed) → always asking for something as a request or demand Demanding, impatient, envious, jealous, rageful, depressed (empty), mistrustful, pessimistic Anal Personality Type: sees excretion as a symbol of power so they become power-hungry + demand Anal Triad: orderliness and cleanliness, parsimony and stinginess, and obstinancy Orderliness/Cleanliness: reaction formation against dirty things Parsimony/Stinginess: adamant in holding onto things due to retention of feces pleasure Obstinancy: stubborn because society tells them to poo when they don't wanna Rigid, power/control seeking, concerned with shoulds, anxiety over waste and loss of control, concern with whether to submit or rebel, pleasure and possessions Phallic Personality Type: occurs during Oedipus complex so different for genders → exhibitionist because they are scared of castration and want to show they aren't Male: exhibitionist, competitive, success hungry, emphasis on being narcissistic Strive to be very masculine to show they aren't castrated Female: hysterical, naive (idealize life), seductive, exhibitionist, flirtatious Flirtatious but denies sexual intent because she's used to seducing her dad Oral = I get, Anal = I control and Phallic = I am a man

Three Functions of Personality Theories

Organize existing information in a systematic manner Generate new knowledge about important issues in scientific knowledge Identify entirely new issues that should be studied Psychodynamic Theory: opened up the study of the unconscious Evolutionary Psychology: opened up the study of behaviour being inherited Behaviourism: opened up the study of free will and environmental influence

Sublimation

Original object of gratification is replaced by a higher cultural goal removed from direct expression of instinct → channelling the instinct into something new and useful Ego does not have to maintain constant energy to prevent discharge unlike other mechanisms because you channel the energy somewhere else Ex: artists or surgeons channel their impulses into their careers

Life and Death Instincts

Our lives are controlled by these two drives/instincts Life Instinct: drives associated with ego and sexual instincts → impels people towards preservation and reproduction of organism Libido: energy of the life instinct Death Instinct: impels people towards death to return to inorganic state Aligns with the basic human tendency to seek calmness + explains suicide Often the energy turned into aggression instead

Carl Jung

Past President of International Psychoanalytic Association, emphasized evolutionary foundations Left Freud because he thought he overemphasized sexuality → said libido is not a sexual instinct but a generalized life energy that strives for pleasure + creativity Didn't believe our childhood determined our adult life entirely, also believed in personality development having a forward-moving tendency Collective Unconscious: store of cumulative experiences of past generations → universal and shared by all humans due to common ancestry Archetypes: universal images/symbols in collective unconscious People struggle with opposing forces within them Ex: struggle between our persona (social roles) and self leads to a loss of one of them Ex: struggle between masculinity and femininity Femnine part in a male = archetype anima If one rejects they may be excessively absorbed in motherhood Masucline part in a female = archetype animus If one rejects they may be cold + insensitive and emphasize strength too much Gender stereotypes are a product of our ancestors experiences over evolution Self: archetype in collective unconscious acting as an unconscious force that functions as the main organizing centre of personality All individuals face a personal task to find unity in self → bring harmony into all opposing forces One is motivated on a path to knowledge by the self archetype Symbolized in circular figures that represent a sense of wholeness achieved through self-knowledge (ex: mandalas) The search for the self is never-ending but that realization is part of life Introversion vs Extraversion Introverted: oriented towards self → hesitant, reflective, cautious Extraverted: oriented towards outside world → socially engaging active, adventurous

Transference

Patient is reexposed to earlier emotional situations they couldn't handle before but can now with their therapist's help → change occurs when insight is gained about one's own conflicts Development of attitudes towards a person based on attitudes held in the past about others Patients expresses attitude towards analyst based on previous attitudes towards significant others Psychoanalysis exploits it as a force for behaviour change Ex: patient lying on coach + frequent sessions allow for good client-therapist relationship Patients become tied to analysts quickly so their responses are determined by neurotic conflicts and the patient projects their wishes/anxieties onto the analyst

Freud's View of the Person - The Individual in Society

People are born with sexual aggressive desires and society constrains these basic instincts Alternative Theory: people are born innocent and good, and society corrupts them from temptations Ex: story of Adam and Eve were born innocent but Satan corrupts them Rousseau: people are happy and compassionate but turn evil when competing for resources Pleasure Principle: individuals seek pleasurable gratification from their drives Society teaches you that the biological drives are socially unacceptable Children are born with aggressive sexual desires and society has to restrict them

Variability of Personality Test

Personality tests vary in how they are constructed Theoretical/Rational vs Empirical/Psychometric You can reach out to other resources and past studies to get an ideas or construct it on your own

Important Issues in Personality Theory

Philosophical View of the Person: the overall view of the person → arise in socio-historical contexts Personality theorists give philosophical views about the basic nature of humans Ex: if Freud was born in a different era his views + theory would have been different Currently scientists explore the nature of complex systems and theorists adopt system perspectives Internal and External Determinants of Behaviour Freud vs Skinner: Freud said internal forces (deep unconscious impulses/emotions) control us and Skinner said external forces (rewards/punishments) control us Nowadays people don't pick one side but believe both contribute to behaviour Looking at the units of analysis we can see some theories focus more on one side, ex: Trait Theories of Personality: basic units of analysis refer to structures in person that are inherited and produce generalized behaviour patterns Social Cognitive Theories of Personality: basic units of analysis are knowledge structures and thinking processes gained through social/cultural environment Consistency Across Situations and Over Time: consistency in personality is difficult to asses because it depends on how you interpret the trait in personality Ex: acting different to men and women could be considered inconstient to some but consistent under the psychoanalytical lens with the Oedipus complex People are consistent over time due to consistent genetic and environmental determinants The Unity of Experience and Action and the Concept of Self: life is chaotic but we don't recognize it that way because there is unity in our experiences and action → our thoughts are very short-term but life doesn't seem as chaotic as our thoughts because: Multiple components of the mind function as a complex system so we can function smoothly Concept of Self: we experience life from a consistent perspective of ourself which helps account for the unity of experience Varying States of Awareness and the Concept of the Unconsciousness: what aspects of personality occur outside awareness? → often they study conscious self-reflection to try and understand The Influence of the Past, Present, and Future on Behaviour: to what level do they influence each other? Meaning and Reasons for Action: people doing the same thing behaviourally are not doing it for the same reason psychologically Pay attention to subjective meaning behind behaviour rather than plain observation Can We Have A Science Of Personality? What Kind Of Science Can It Be? At first glance it seems possible but looking into it humans respond to meaning so explaining personality as a science with complex system is difficult Ex: you could list all the traits a person has but that doesn't fully encompass their personality

Early Discoveries

Principle of Overdetermination: symptoms are caused by more than one "pathogenic" cause/idea Patient whos hand wasn't functional was studied and he found three causes of her hysteria, different memories of events Unconscious material is actively repressed - evidence: unconscious resistance Intrapsychic Conflict Decompensation: complete dissociation from your personality → psychologists avoid this by trying to find a balance of letting a patient open up without losing it

Two Critical Principles

Principle of Psychic Determinism: all behavior (overt and covert) is caused by preceding mental event Overt can be observe and covert cannot be observed Psychological events have a causal effect, they determine behaviour!! Principle of Unconscious Motivation: unconscious material most potent cause of behavior

Importance of Early Experience First Study - Gaensbauer

Psychoanalyst involved in study of how infancy affected development (Jenny) Jenny: infant studied, abused for three months by father while mother nurtured her, and put in foster home with good physical care but lack of social interaction Systematic analysis of facial expressions showed five discrete affects: Sadness: shown with her natural mother Fear/Anger: shown when she was approached by a male stranger (not female) Interest/Curiosity: shown when she interacted with female strangers Later put in loving foster home and her signs of depression left when her loving foster mom brought her, but when her natural mother did she cried Separation from her natural mother caused serious distress, sadness + anger 8 Months Old: returned to her natural mother 20 Months Old: described as normal and good relationship with mother but anger/distress associated in separation from her mother → shows continuity and discontinuity between early and later emotions Suggested one major traumatic event is less important than a recurring persistent less dramatic event Early years are important in terms of patterns of interpersonal relationships

Psychoanalytic Unconscious vs Cognitive Unconscious

Psychoanalytic Unconscious: Emphasis on illogical + irrational unconscious process Content emphasis on motivates and wishes that are sexual + agrressive Emphasis on motivated aspect of unconscious Cognitive Unconscious: Absence of fundamental difference between conscious and unconscious processes Content emphasis on thoughts Sometimes they are overly routinized and automatic so they don't reach consciousness Focus on non motivated aspects of unconscious functioning (ex: cultural beliefs) Implicit Motives: motives outside awareness Explicit Motives: motives within awareness Implicit and explicit motivates are often not related and influence one differently Subliminal stimuli isn't always threatening and can still have an influence → Early childhood leaves emotional memories that influence later functioning without conscious memory of it because the amygdala (emotions) is formed before hippocampus (memory)

Summary of Personality Theories

Psychodynamic Theory (Freud): the mind is an energy system full of basic biological energies, and mental energies are directed to the area of need in the body unconsciously The need to gratify sexual and bodily desires often conflict with society → behaviour reflects a conflict between biological desires and social constraints The mind has different systems that serve different functions: satisfying bodily needs, following social norms and rules, and a balance between biological drives and social constraints Mental activity occurs outside of one's conscious awareness → desires are unconscious Unit of Analysis: unconscious forces Phenomenological Theories: focused on conscious experience and the higher meaning behind our motives like self-growth and fulfillment → greater emphasis on self and the understanding of oneself Unit of Analysis: the concept of self Personality Trait Approach: focuses on solving two scientific problems: which individual differences are most important to measure and developing a reliable measure of the differences Unit of Analysis: personality traits Biological Foundations of Personality: focuses on genetic bases of personality traits and how brain systems lead to individual differences Evolutionary Psychology: patterns of social behaviour are due to mental mechanisms created due to our evolutionary past Behaviourism: learning approach to personality → behaviour is an adaptation to rewards/punishments you experience in environment People experience different patterns of reward in different environments (different basic learning processes) which leads to different styles of behavior Challenges other theories because it claims their units of analysis are patterns caused by environment, not actual determining factors of behaviour Personal Construct Theory: addresses people's capacity to interpret the world and studies the subjective ideas and constructs people use to interpret their environment → individual differences in personality functioning are due to different consists people use to interpret their world Social Cognitive Theory: thinking processes affect how one interprets the world in two ways Explores social settings that people acquire knowledge, skills and beliefs in Reciprocal Interactions: personality develops through back-and-forth influences Self-Regulation: goal setting, controlling emotional impulses and how actions are executed Personality in Context: one's life context (social situations, culture, relationships etc) form personality

Four Categories of Data

Psychological data about people's behaviour, thoughts + emotions Life Record Data (L-Data): data from one's life history/record Ex: check transcript, health records, police records, etc Observer Data (O-Data): data from individuals who observed the target individual Ex: questionnaires given to friends and family of targets, Especially helpful for traits one cannot accurately describe themself (ex: emotional intelligence) Disadvantage: different people rate the same person differently sometimes Test Data (T-Data): data from experiments that measure performance on tasks Implicit Measures of Personality: participants are not explicitly aware of the trait a t-data task is asking for, so it is an implicit measurement Include tasks measured for time/speed or ability to perform difficult tasks (ex: marshmallow test) Self-Report Data (S-Data): data from participants themself → most often personality questionnaires Advantage: convenient and people can answer a lot about themself Disadvantage: response bias (overreporting or underreporting personal qualities) or when a quality is difficult to be assessed on yourself People may also be influenced by the phrasing or order of questions, or lie/distort answers to seem more positive and kind

Genital Stage

Puberty to adulthood Unresolved feelings in pregentical stages come back Erogenous Zone: genitals (heterosexual rather than autoerotic activity) One will be psychologically well-adjusted and "balanced" if they progress properly

Theories as Toolkits

Rather than asking if a theory is right or wrong ask how useful it is in advancing our knowledge → each theory has a set of tools (theoretic Tools include theoretical concepts, research methods, therapy and personality assessing techniques Each element of a theory is a tool that serves a purpose that allows you to perform a job like describing individual differences, identifying motivations, explaining the concept of self Essentially, each psychologist wants to perform a job, and each theory provides you with tools to perform those jobs This metaphor allows you to ask good questions and avoid bad ones and encourages multiple theories A toolkit is never "wrong" some are just more functional than others

Rationalization

Recognize existence of impulse but distort the underlying motive and reinterpret the behaviour in an acceptable way Ego constructs a rational motive to explain an unacceptable impulse from the id Interesting because sometimes you can express an id impulse without the superego interfering Ex: people that murder someone in the name of "love"

The Motivated Unconscious

Region that stores mental contents → the mental contents don't sit there: Mental contents enter the unconscious for motivated reasons Ex: mental contents that are traumatic and will cause pain if in the conscious We are motivated to do whatever avoids pain Unconscious thoughts influence conscious experience → conscious is determined by our unconscious

Erogenous Zones

Regions of body that instinctual drives focus on the most and get the most biological gratification from at a point

How Do Data From Different Sources Relate To One Another?

S-data from self-reports is often different from t-data from experiments because s-data is often generalized to many situations while t-data is specific to one situation S data from self-reports and O-data from observers are more closely related When the characteristic is highly evaluative (judgemental) self perception bias leads to a bigger difference in S and O data When the characteristic is more easily observed S and O data are ore similar How easy the person is to judge also affects the discrepancies and similarities S and O data have their own advantages and disadvantages, but personality psychologists try to focus on objective measures like experiments that can be more explicit

Three Indications of the Influence of Personality Psychology

Scholars (Haggbloom et Al, 2002) identified the most influential scientific psychologists at the end of the 20th century and majority were those who contributed to personality psychology Ending the millennium, a TV network polled historians to determine 100 most influential people in the past 1000 years and the only psychologist was Freud - personality theorist In 2007 a statistical analysis showed high impact book authors in humanities/social sciences and the most cited author was Albert Bandura - personality theorist

Recovered Memories or False Memories

Sexual abusers were found to accuse others of rape when they were the perpetuators Some people when they repress memories tend to remember it differently, especially depending on what a therapist says that brings up the memory Mazzoni and Memon: three experimental sessions separated by one week Session One: adults did survey on likelihood of experiencing life events in childhood Session Two: experimenters manipulate two of the life events (tooth extraction and removing skin from small finger) → one event they read a paragraph about the other event they were asked to imagine themselves in Session Three: adults completed survey again → the event they had imagined participants said they had experienced even though they hadn't

Projective Tests

Should be accurate/valid + quick/efficient → you can't directly ask a person because their conscious answer is different from unconscious and defense mechanisms protect the real answer Free association was possibly valid but not efficient because it took weeks or months to develop a client therapist relationship where the client would start opening up Logic of Projective Tests: test items are ambiguous so client must interpret something, and their interpretations reveal their own personality because they project their personality onto the test item Their answers reveal a typical style of thinking which shoes their unconscious Not developed by Freud but relate to psychoanalytic theory because: Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes complexity of personality and says personality is a dynamic system that individuals organize external stimuli in → projective tests allow people to answer in complex ways so their complex thinking patterns come forward Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes unconscious + defense mechanisms → the real purpose behind projective tests is hidden which allows for those to come forward Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes a holistic understanding of personality and so do projective tests which aim to show an overall pattern in the answers (not just focusing on one)

Dreams

Showed the mind has unconscious contents different from conscious thinking Manifest Content: dream storyline Latent Content: unconscious ideas, emotions, and drives in storyline → usually from symbolization Found the unconscious is alogical and disregards time and space The latent content is unconscious wishes and the manifest content fulfills the wishes The wishes are impossible to fulfill in daily life so you get fulfillment in your dreams

Drives/Instincts

Source of energy that can motivate any action depending on opportunity and constraints

The Clinical Interview

Strategy to talk to a person and observe their behaviour → includes O and S data Silverman Study: observed how long a physician took to note down what they think is wrong with a patient or make a judgement on their personality and found it was 10 minutes

Motivated Unconscious Processes in Political Judgments

Study One: fMRI on participants seeing either a political figure they favoured, opposed or were neutral to say something threatening → people were more defensive towards the figure they opposed and had higher brain emotional activity Study Two: subjects filled a page with four subliminal stimuli (RATS, STAR, ARAB, XXXX) and young man above the perceptual threshold → they were asked to evaluate the man as a political candidate and those who saw RAT in their subliminal stimuli were more negative

Freud's View of the Person - The Mind as an Energy System

The body and mind are a mechanistic energy system where the mind gets mental energies from the overall physical energies of the body The Mind as an Information System: contrasting theory where the mind serves to store info only Mental contents don't need to sit in storage inertly, the mental contents do things and act on instincts Ideas have mental energies that remain stored in the mind and under special circumstances the energy associated can be released The mind is a system that contains and directs energetic forces from instincts Major Issue: what happens to mental energy? - how does it flow, get sidetracked? → three core ideas: There is a limited amount of energy - if a lot of used one place there is less available for others Energy can be blocked from one channel to another → blocked energy does not go away, it gets expressed in another way along a path of resistance The mind functions to achieve a state of quiescence → bodily needs create tension that one is driven to reduce to return back to the quiet internal state The goal of all behaviour is the pleasure from reducing the tension and releasing energy Hermann von Helmotz: presented principle of conservation of energy (matter and energy can be transformed but not destroyed) → influenced Freud to form this idea Joseph Breuer: told Freud about his patient Anna O that had unexplained symptoms like blurry vision, persistent cough and difficulty speaking her native language Hysteria: disorder where people have physical symptoms caused by emotional problems Known as a conversion/somatic disorder because an emotional issue is converted to a psychological one with motor movement and perception symptoms Catharsis: release and freeing of emotions by talking about the problem → Anna's symptoms went away when she could trace them to a traumatic event Confirms Freud's view and showed the mind has mental contents one is aware of since people often forgot their trauma → therefore the mind has more than one part, which Freud deemed the unconscious

Personality Structure

The enduring building block qualities that distinguish individuals from each other Involve emotion, motivation, cognition, and skills → always stable over time Units of Analysis: different approaches that theories take to explain something → each theory provides different types of info about personality (ex: trait or type) Ex: one may describe a chair in terms of looks, another in terms of functionality Personality Trait: consistent style of emotion or behaviour one displays across situations Thought of as continuous dimensions so one can have more or less of a trait Dispositions is a synonym for trait because both describe what one tends to do Personality Type: clustering of several personality traits Thought of as distinctive categories people fall into, you don't have more of less of a type, you have one specific personality type

Some Definitions Of Personality

The underlying causes within the person of individual behavior and The dynamic and organized set of characteristics of a person that uniquely influences his/her cognitions, motivations and behaviours. (Ryckman, 1997) Consistent behavior patterns originating within the individual (Burger,1993) Dynamic organization of psychophysical systems that create the person's characteristic patterns of behavior, thoughts and feelings (Carver & Scheier, 1996)

Personality Theory and Personality Research Relation

Theories suggest areas for exploration in research + specify the types of data that qualify as evidence Theorists have preferences/biases concerning how much research should be conducted Ex: Watson (Behaviourism) preferred animal research and Freud preferred human, while Eysenck and Cattell (trait theorists) preferred statistical correlation Three Approaches to Research: Experimental (making things happen) vs Correlation (studying what has occured) Experimental (all persons) vs Clinical (individual) One aspect or few aspects of a person vs total individual

Evaluating Alternative Research Approaches

Think Aloud Methods: used to combat inaccurate verbal self reports, when the person is performing the task ask them to explain what they are doing Ex: if a person is scared they're doing bad they might say "my stomach hurts" to rationalize Response Styles: bias in self-report questionnaires where you answer questions improperly Acquiescence: tendency to agree or disagree consistency regardless of content Social Desirability: answer to seem more or less desirable on purpose Demand Characteristics: in experiments when something implicit gives away the hypothesis and participants act a certain way to confirm it → purpose and meaning beyond experimental design given to research vary between each subject and it reduces reliability and validity Experimenter Expectancy Effects: unintended sources of influence/error in an experiment Clever Hans: horse that by tapping his foot could do math → the questioner unknowingly signaled Hands to start and stop tapping his hoof by bending his head → Demand characteristics and experimenter expectancy effects can occur in all three but mainly experiments

Repression

Thought is dismissed from consciousness and buried in unconscious because its harmful Plays a part in all other defense mechanisms + requires constant energy to repress the idea Found when Freud's patients started remembering traumatic experiences over time Rosenzweig: study where he varied personal involvement in a task and asked participants to recall their success/failure in the activity When participants were personally involved they recalled more successful tasks than failed ones → showed they repressed their failures Women with more sex guilt claimed to be less aroused when they were more Some people have repressive personalities and seem calm but they respond worse to stress and are more prone to illness

Undoing

Undo an act or wish by performing another action Ex: attempt suicide but stop before you can

Free Association and Dream Interpretation

Used free association to go beyond manifest content to the latent content of the dreams → the process of psychological change requires you to face the emotions and wishes previously unconscious

Freud's View of the Science of Personality

Used physics as a model but had a bold theory steering away from science and evidence because he only focused on his patients not all humans Never ran experiments in a lab or used standard psychological tests → only focused on case study evidence, which was unexpected since he believed so much in science Used free association in case studies to build his theory, but scientists criticized it wasn't enough Inferential Mythology: inferred what his patients meant and analyzed them using inferences

Defense Mechanisms

Ways to defend ourselves against anxiety → controlled by ego to manage id impulses Denial Projection Isolation Undoing Reaction Formation Rationalization Sublimation Repression

Challenge of Constructing a Personality Theory

You must address what, how, and why and pursue a challenging set of scientific goals about all four personality topics → the complexity makes it difficult to have one universal personality theory since each has its own strengths/virtues and limitations