Unit 8: Personality
12.2 Cultural and Biological Approaches to Personality
12.3 Psychodynamic and Humanistic Approaches to Personality
Videos
12.1 Contemporary Approaches to Personality
Idiographic vs. Nomothetic Approaches
Beyond the Big Five: The Personality of Evil?
Personality Traits over the Lifespan
Right-Wing Authoritarianism at the Group Level
Behaviourist and Social-Cognitive Perspectives
Culture and Personality
How Genes Affect Personality
From Molecules to Personality
The Role of Evolution in Personality
The Brain and Personality
The Psychodynamic Perspective
Perceiving Others as a Projective Test
Alternatives to the Psychodynamic Approach
Special Topics: Twins and Personality.
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PERSONALITY: a characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that is unique to each individual, and remains relatively consistent over time and situations
IDIOGRAPHIC APPROACH: focusing on creating detailed descriptions of a specific person’s unique personality characteristics
NOMOTHETIC APPROACH: examine personality in large groups of people, with the aim of making generalizations about personality structure
PERSONALITY TRAIT: describes a specific psychological characteristic that makes up part of a person’s personality; how that person is “most of the time.”
FACTOR ANALYSIS: used to group items that people respond to similarly;
FIVE FACTOR MODEL (FFM): a trait-based theory of personality based on the finding that personality can be described using five major dimensions (NEO-PI-R test)
O.C.E.A.N.
Extraversion - social contact
Agreeableness - relationships with others
Conscientiousness - organization and attention to detail
Neuroticism - emotion managing
Openness - curiosity and creativity
HEXACO MODEL OF PERSONALITY: a six-factor theory that generally replicates the five factors of the FFM and adds one additional factor: Honesty–Humility
DARK TRIAD—Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism—describe a person who is socially destructive, aggressive, dishonest, and likely to commit harm in general
MACHIAVELLIANISM: a tendency to use people and to be manipulative and deceitful, lacking respect for others and focusing predominantly on their own self-interest
PSYCHOPATHY: a general tendency toward having shallow emotional responses
NARCISSISM: reflects an egotistical preoccupation with self-image and an excessive sense of self-importance
RIGHT-WING AUTHORITARIANISM (RWA): a problematic set of personality characteristics that also predisposes people to certain types of violent or anti-social tendencies. RWA involves three key tendencies:
obeying orders and deferring to the established authorities in a society;
supporting aggression against those who dissent or differ from the established social order; and
believing strongly in maintaining the existing social order.
TEMPERAMENT: personality traits that determine how someone reacts to the worlD
Well-adjusted: Capable of self-control, confident, not overly upset by new people or situations
Under-controlled: Impulsive, restless, distractible, emotionally volatile
Inhibited: Socially uncomfortable, fearful, easily upset by strangers
The under-controlled children (relative to the other groups) had become the most likely to engage in externalizing behaviours (fighting, lying, disobeying)
The inhibited children developed mainly internalizing behaviour patterns (e.g., worrying, crying easily)
STATE: a temporary physical or psychological engagement that influences behaviour
BEHAVIOURIST PERSPECTIVE
The behaviourist would note any identifiable patterns of behaviour and seek to understand how that behaviour was elicited by specific environmental conditions.
SOCIAL-COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE
placed central importance on the role of cognition and the person’s inner subjective interpretation of their circumstances
self-efficacy, the belief that a person’s attempts to accomplish a specific task will be successful
RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM: based on the idea that personality emerges from the interactions between behaviour, internal (personal) factors, and external (situational) factors, all of which mutually influence each other
“WEIRD” stands for “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic
RESPONSE STYLES: characteristic ways of responding to questions, which affects the results
GEOGRAPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY: compare groups of people living within a single nation
Identical twin pairs show higher genetic correlations than do fraternal twins for each of the Big Five personality traits. Numerical estimates of genetic correlations differ depending on the populations sampled, but studies typically show a genetic basis for each of the five factors
HUMOURISM: explained both physical illnesses and disorders of personality as resulting from imbalances in key fluids in the body
PHRENOLOGY: the theory that personality characteristics could be assessed by carefully measuring the shape of the skull
AROUSAL THEORY OF EXTRAVERSION: arguing that extraversion is determined by people’s threshold for arousal (Hans Eysenck)
ASCENDING RETICULAR ACTIVATING SYSTEM (ARAS), plays a central role in controlling this arousal response
approach/inhibition model of motivation (Jeffrey Gray)
BEHAVIOURAL ACTIVATION SYSTEM (BAS) is a “GO” system, arousing the person to action in the pursuit of desired goals
BEHAVIOURAL INHIBITION SYSTEM (BIS), is more of a “danger” system, motivating the person to action in order to avoid punishments or other negative outcomes
A universal assumption of psychodynamic theories is that personality and behaviour are shaped by powerful forces in consciousness, a great deal of which is hidden from our awareness in the mysterious unconscious
CONSICOUS MIND: your current awareness, containing everything you are aware of right now
UNCONSCIOUS MIND: a much more vast and powerful but inaccessible part of your consciousness, operating without your conscious endorsement or will to influence and guide your behaviours
The Freudian Structure of Personality
ID: represents a collection of basic biological drives, including those directed toward sex and aggression
The id operates according to the PLEASURE PRINCIPLE, motivating people to seek out experiences that bring pleasure, with little regard for the appropriateness or consequences of their realization.
SUPEREGO: comprised of our values and moral standards
Our superego tells us what we ought to do, whereas the id tells us what our animal body wants to do
EGO: the decision maker, frequently under tension, trying to reconcile the opposing urges of the id and superego
The ego seeks to balance the two forces, operating according to what Freud called the REALITY PRINCIPLE. The id, ego, and superego are in constant tension, and it is this tension that gives rise to personality in two key ways.
different people’s personalities may reflect differences in the relative strengths of their id, ego, and superego
The second key dynamic that generates much of personality is how a person reacts to anxiety. Anxiety is a result of the tension among the id, ego, and superego.
DEFENCE MECHANISMS: unconscious strategies the ego uses to reduce or avoid anxiety
includes: denial, displacement, identification, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, repression, sublimation
FIXATION: involves becoming preoccupied with obtaining the pleasure associated with a particular stage as a result of not being able to adequately regulate themselves and satisfy their needs at that stage
PROJECTIVE TESTS: personality tests in which ambiguous images are presented to an individual to elicit responses that reflect unconscious desires or conflicts
RORSCHACH INKBLOT TEST: people are asked to describe what they see in an inkblot, and psychologists interpret this description using a standardized scoring and interpretation method
THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TEST (TAT): asks respondents to tell stories about ambiguous pictures involving various interpersonal situations
ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY: focuses on the role of unconscious archetypes in personality development (Carl Jung)
PERSONAL UNCONSCIOUS: (basically the same as the Freudian unconscious) a vast repository of experiences and patterns absorbed during the person’s life
COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS: a separate, non-personal realm of the unconscious that holds the collective memories and mythologies of humankind, stretching deep into our ancestral past
ACHETYPES: images and symbols that reflect common patterns of experience across all cultures
Alfred Adler
INFERIORITY COMPLEX: the struggle many people have with feelings of inferiority, which stem from experiences of helplessness and powerlessness during childhood
Carl Rogers
PERSON-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE: people are basically good, and given the right environment their personality will develop fully and normally
SELF-ACTUALIZATION: the drive to grow and fulfill your potential