Psychology Unit 6: Personality

Personality

- an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting - the unique attitudes, behaviors, and emotions that characterize a person. - Psychologists from each of the different perspectives have different ideas about how an individual's personality is created. Psychoanalytic, trait, biological, behaviorist, social-cognitive, and humanistic theorists all define and explain personality differently.

Trait Theorists

- believed that we can describe people's personalities by specifying their main characteristics, or traits - these characterisitcs (eg. honesty, laziness, ambition) are thought to be stable and to motivate behavior in keeping with the trait

Regression

- defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated. returning to an earlier, comforting form of behavior

Rationalization

- defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions

Abraham Maslow

Humanistic Psychologist that came up with the Hierarchy of Needs and believed if we went through all of the levels of the pyramid, we could self-actualize

Carl Rogers

Humanistic psychologist that was very positive and believed a growth-promoting climate was required. Unconditional positive regard was required for people to be their best most ideal self.

Carl Jung

Neo-Freudian who believed there was the personal unconscious as well as the collective unconscious. He also came up with the terms of introversion and extroversion.

Alfred Adler

Neo-Freudian who focused on social aspects of family and the childhood and their effects on unconscious factors. He came up with the term inferiority complex. He thought that birth order was important.

Karen Horney

Neo-Freudian. Personality is governed by the needs of love. Distinguished between neurotic and psychotic personality

Myers-Brigg Type Indicator

Personality test that classifies people according to personality types with 4 letters, the main differentiating factor being introversion vs. extroversion.

Eysenck Personality Questionnaire

Personality test that looks at two dimensions of personality- emotional stability and extroversion/introversion.

Gordon Allport

Trait theorist

Type B Personality

laid-back, easy going

Objective Tests

personality inventories are scored. You can complete them on a computer and are not subjective.

Reaction Formation

psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings

Albert Bandura

social cognitive personality theorist that self-efficacy is important to personality development. Also was a social learning psychologist that did the Bobo doll experiment

Julian Rotter

social-cognitive personality theorist that came up with internal vs. external locus of control.

Unconditional Positive Regard

- according to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person

Self-concept

- all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "Who am I?"

Big Five Personality Traits

- A number of contemporary trait theorists believe that personality can be desbribed using these five personality characteristics: 1. agreeableness- how easy to get along with someone is 2. conscientiousness- how hardworking, responsible, and organized someone is. 3. openness- how creative, curious, and willing to try new things one is 4. emotional stability (neuroticism)- how consistent one's mood is 5. extraversion- how outgoing and sociable someone is

Factor Analysis

- A statistical technique used to analyze results of personality tests. - allows researchers to use correlations between traits in order to see which traits cluster together as factors - For example, if a strong correlation is found between punctuality, diligence, and neatness, one could argue that these traits represent a common factor that we could name conscientiousness

Collective Unconscious

- Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history

Unconditional Positive Regard

- Carl Rogers' personality theory is base don the belief that people are innately good and require certain things from their interactions with others - Rogers believes that people must feel accepted in order to make strides toward self-actualization - Rogers argued that people need unconditional positive regard, a kind of blanket acceptance, in order to move toward self-actualization

Heritability

- For a specific characteristic, the percentage of variation between people that can be attributed to genetic factors - For example, if a trait is highly heritable (e.g. height) much of the variation between a group of people on that trait is determined by genes - Heritability can range from 0 to 1, where 0 indicates that the environment is totally responsible for differences in the trait and 1 means that all of the variation in the trait can be accounted for genetically

Psychoanalytic Personality Theory

- Freud theorized that personality consists of three parts: id, ego, and superego

Psychoanalysis

- Freud's theory of personality that attributes our thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions

Locus of Control

- Julian Rotter described two characteristic ways of thinking about influences on successes and failures. - People with an internal locus of control believe they are responsible for what happens to them. For instance, they tend to believe that hard work will lead to success - People with an external locus of control generally believe that luck and other forces outside of their own control determine their destinies - a person's locus of control can have a large effect on how he or she thinks and acts, thus impacting the individual's personality

Trait

- a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports

Temperaments

- a person's wmotional style and characteristic way of dealing with the world - infant's temperament seems to differ immediately at birth, some welcome new stimuli, wheras others seem more fearful. Some seem extremely active and emotional, while others are calmer. - Psychologists believe that babies are born with different temperaments. A child's temperament, then, is thought to influence the development of his or her personality

Reliability

- a personality test is reliable when it returns consistent results - a personality test can be reliable, but it may not be valid

Projective Test

- a personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics - Psychologists believe that people's interpretations reflect their unconscious thoughts

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

- a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes

Personality Inventory

- a questionnaire (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits - ex: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

Self-serving bias

- a readiness to perceive oneself favorably

Empirically Derived Test

- a test (such as the MMPI) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups

Oedipus complex

- according to Freud, a boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father during the phallic stage

Fixation

- according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved

Unconscious

- according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories

Self-actualization

- according to Maslow, the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one's potential

Individualism

- giving priority to one's own goals over group goals, and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications

Collectivism

- giving priority to the goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly

Validity

- good personality tests are both valid and reliable - a personality test is valid when it measures what the test claims to measure, it is accurate

Free Association

- in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

Repression

- in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness

Defense Mechanism

- in psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality - several kinds: repression, denial, displacement, projection, reaction formation, regression, rationalization, intellectualization, sublimation

Id

- one of the components of Freud's Psychoanalytic Personality theory - contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification

Ego

- one of the components of Freud's Psychoanalytic Personality theory - the largely conscious, "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.

Superego

- one of the components of Freud's Psychoanalytic Personality theory - the part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement (the conscience) and for future aspirations

Self-Esteem

- one's feelings of high or low self-worth

Personal Control

- our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless

Spotlight Effect

- overestimating others' noticing and evaluating out appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us)

Terror-Management Theory

- proposes that faith in one's worldview and the pursuit of self-esteem provide protection against a deeply rooted fear of death

Projection

- psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. Believing that the feelings one has toward someone else are actually held by the other person and directed at oneself

Displacement

- psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet

Psychoanalytic Psychosexual Stage Theory of Personality

- the childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id's pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones - Freud believed that one's personality was essentially set in early childhood. He proposed a psychosexual stage theory of personality. -Freud believed that sexual urges were an important determinant of people's personality development. Each stage is named for the part of the body from which people derive sexual pleasure during the stage - Freud suggested that children could get fixated in any one of the stages. A fixation could result from being either undergratified or overgratified.

Learned Helplessness

- the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events

Reciprocal Determinism

- the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

- the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), this test is now used for many other screening purposes.

Rorschach inkblot test

- the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

External Locus of Control

- the perception that chance or outside forces beyond one's personal control determine one's fate

Internal Locus of Control

- the perception that one controls one's own fate

Identification

- the process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parent's values into their developing superegos

Biological Theories of Personality

- view genes, chemicals, and body types as the central determinants of who a person is - A growing body of evidence supports the idea that human personality is shaped, in part, by genetics

Humanistic Theories of Personality

- view people as innately good and able to determine their own destinies through the exercise of free will - stresses on the importance of people's subjective experience and feelings - Focuses on the importance of a person's self-concept and self-esteem. Self-concept is a person's global feeling about himself or herself. Self-concept develops through a person's involvement with others, especially parents. Someone with a positive self-concept is likely to have high self-esteem - Two of the most influential humanistic psychologists were Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers

Social-Cognitive Perspective

- views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons (and their thinking) and their social context

Reciprocal Determinism

-Albert Bandura suggested that personality is created by an interaction between the person (traits), the environment, and the person's behavior - each of these three factors influences the other two in a constant reciprocal loop

Behaviorist Theories of Personality

-Argue that behavior is personality and that the way most people think of the term "personality" is meaningless - according to this view, personality is determined by the environment - the reinforcement contingencies to which one is exposed creates one's personality. Therefore, by changing people's environments, behaviorists believe we can alter their personalities

Personal-Construct Theory

-George Kelly argued that people, in their attemps to understand the world, develop their own, individual systems of personal constructs - Such constructs consist of pairs of opposites such as fair-unfair, smart- dumb, and exciting-dull - People then use these constructs to evaluate their worlds. Kelly believed that behavior is determined by how people interpret the world.

Self-efficacy

-People with high self-efficacy are optimistic about their own ability to get things done, whereas people with low self-efficacy feel a sense of powerlessness - Albert Bandura theorized that people's sense of self-efficacy has a powerful effect on their actions

Social-Cognitive Personality Theories

-combine behaviorists' emphasis on the importance of the environment with cognitive psychologists' focus on patterns of thought - Ex: Albert Bandura's Reciprocal Determinism

Positive Psychology

-the scientific study of optimal human functioning; aims to discover and promote strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive

William Sheldon

Came up with a trait theory based on body type- endomorph, mesomorph, ectomorph

Denial

defense mechanism when someone fails to acknowledge a truth or emotion.

Type D Personality

distressed personality, suffer from high degree of emotional distress but they consciously suppress their feelings- also prone to heart disease

Type A Personality

intense, competitive, impatient, time-conscious, super motivated. Prone to heart disease and high blood pressure.