Chapter 14-105 - These are textbook notes. PDF

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Personality arises from human individuality. People differ meaningfully in the ways they think, feel, and act. One group of theorists noted, each of us is in certain respects like all other people like some other people, and like no other person who has lived in the past or will exist in the future. Personality also rests on the observation that people seem to behave somewhat consistently over time and across different situation. Personality traits that characterize individuals customary ways of responding to their world. After combining the notions of individuality and consistency, we can define personality as the distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that characterizes a person’s response to life situations. Individual’s personality typically have 3 characteristics. First, they are seen as components of identity that distinguish that person from other people. Second, the behaviours are viewed as being caused primarily by internal rather than environmental factors. Third, the person’s behaviours seem to “fit together” in a meaningful fashion, suggesting an inner personality that guides and directs behaviour. Personality has been guided by psychodynamic, humanistic, biological, behavioural, cognitive, and sociocultural perspectives. These perspectives provide different conceptions of what personality is and how it functions. Theory is scientifically useful to the textent that it provides a comprehensive framwork within which known facts can be incorporated, it allows us to predict future events with some precision, and stimulates teh discovery of new knowledge. Psychodynamic theorists look for causes of behaviour in a dynamic interplay of inner forces that often conflict with one another. Focus on unconscious determinants of behaviour. Charcot was treating patients who suffered from a disorder called conversion hysteria in which physical symptoms such as paralysis and blindness appeared suddenly and with no apparent physical cause. Freud’s experience in treating these patients convinced him that their symptoms were related to painful memories and feelings that seemed to have been repressed, or pushed out of awareness. When his patients were able to re-experience these memories and unacceptable feelings, which were often sexual or aggressive in anture, their physical sympotoms often disappeared or improved markedly. These observations convinced Freud that an unconscious part of the mind exerts great influence on behaviour. His techniques were hypnosis, free association (saying whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarassing), dream analysis. Freud’s work on dream analysis culminated in the publication of his book “The Interpretation of Dreams”. His theory provoked scathing criticism from a Victorian society that was not ready to regard people as seething cauldrons of sexual and aggressive impulses. His theory was based on careful clinical observation. Psychoanalysis became a theory of personality, an approach to studying the mind and a method for treating psychological disorders. Freud considered personality to be an energy system. Instinctual drives generate psychic energy, which powers the mind and constantly presses for either direct or indirect release. Mental events may be conscious, preconscious or unconscious. The conscious mind is what they are aware of. Preconscious contains memories, thoughts, feelings, images that we are unaware of at the moment (but they can be called into conscious awareness). Freud believed that these two areas were dwarfed in size and importance by the unconscious mind, a dynamic realm of wishes, feelings, and impulses that lie beyond our awareness. Only when impulses from the unconscious are discharged some way, such as in dreams, slips of tongue, or some

disguised behaviour does the unconscious unreveal itself. Freud divided personality into id, ego, and superego. The id is in the unconscious mind. Core of personality, the only structure present at birth, and source of all psychic energy. No direct contact with reality and functions in a totally irrational manner. Pleasure principle: seeks immediate gratification or release of rational considerations and environmental realities. “Want… take”. A new structure developes that has direct contact with reality. Ego functions primarily at a conscious level. Reality principle: tests reality to decide when and under what conditions the id can safely discharge its impulses and satisfy its needs. Superego, the moral arm of personaltiy. Develops at the age of 4-5. Values the society. With the development of superego, self-control takes over for rewards and punishments. Ego must achieve compromise between demands of id, and of reality. Balancing has earned ego the title of executive of the personality. Opposing forces of ego and superego. When ego confronts impulses that threaten to get out of control or is faced with dangers, anxiety results. Like physical pain, anxiety serves as a danger signal and motivates the ego to dea with the problem at hand. When realistic strategies are ineffective in reducing anxiety, the ego mayy resort to defense mechanism that deny or distort reality. Some of the defnce mechanisms permit the release of impulses from the id in disguished forms that will not conflict with the limits imposed by the external world or with the prohibition of the superego. DEFENSE MECHANISM ON 527 Psychoanalysts believe that repression is how ego “keeps the lid on id”. Sublimation: completely masking the forbidden underlying impulses. Freud argued that excessive reliance on defence mechanism, with their denial or distortion of reality, was a primary cause of maladaptive or dysfunctional behaviour. Freud proposed that children pass through a series of psychosexual stages during which id’s pleasure-seeking tendencies are focused on specific pleasure-sensitive areas in the body called erogenous zones. Potential deprivations or overindulgences can arise during any stages resulting in fixation, a state of arrested psychosexual development in which instincts are focused on a particular psychic theme. Freud opposed experimental research believing that the complex phenomena cannot be explained under controlled conditions. Others believe that clinic observations are not good enough proof, but also understand Freud’s position. According to Freud’s theory of pscyhosexual development, we develop our personality as we pass through a series of discrete developmental stages, each defined by an erogenous zone, a bodily source of pleasure. Cognitive psychologists have developed methods to identify and measure nonconscious processing of information, and a growing body of research has shown that much of our momentto-moment mental and emotional life does occur outside our awareness. On biological front, cognitive neuroscience has provided methods for tapping into mental processes as they occur by measuring brain activing. Neoanalysts were psychoanalysts who disagreed with certain aspect of Freud’s thinking and developed their own theories. Believed that he didnt give social and cultural factors a sufficiently important role in the development and dynamic of a personality. Infantile sexuality was stretched a lot. Erik Erickson: personality develops throughout lifespan.

Alfred Adler: inherently social being motivated by social interest (advance the welfare of others). Striving for superiority, which drives people to compensate for real or imagined defects in themselves (the inferiority complex), and to strive for a more competentcy in life. Carl Jung: analytic psychology. Believed that humans posses not only a personal unconscious based on their life experience, but also a collective unconscious consisting of the memories of the human past. Archetype: inherited tendencies to interpret experiences in certain ways. Expression in symbols, myths, beliefs. Object relations: focus on the images or mental representations that people form of themsleves and others as a result of early experience with caregiver. People that have difficulties forming and maintaining intimate relationships tend to mental represent themselves in a negative way, expecting painful interactions and attributing malevolence or rejection to others. Working models often create self-fulfilling prophesies, influencing the recurring relationships people form with others. Attachment styles: secure, avoidant, anxious/ambivalent. Psychoanalytic theory criticized because: - Its specific propositions have not held up under the scrutiny of research - Hard to test because it often explains too much to allow clear-cut behavioural predictions. Humanists embrace a positive view that affirms the inherent dignity and goodness in humans. Central role of conscious experience, as well as one’s creative potential and inborn strive for self-actualization (the total realization of one’s potential). Maslow: self-actualization is a human need and greatest expression of being human Kelly: primary goal of humans was to make sense out of the world, to find personal meaning in it. When they are unable to do so, they experience uncertainty and anxiety. To understand something, they try to explain and understand the events of their lives, and they test this understanding. - Personal constructs are cognitive categories into which they sort the people and events in their lives. - s Same events can be categorized, or perceived, in entirely different ways by different people. READ 533! Kelly developed a therapy technique called fixed-role therapy. He wrote role descriptions and behavioural scripts for his clients that differed from their typical views of themselves. Kelly hoped that by tying out the new role, the client might gain a firsthand appreciation for the ways in which different constructions and behaviour could lead to more satisfying life outcomes. He suggested that a willingness to experiment with new roles and ways of thinking can help all of us develop in ways that enhance our life. Carl Roger: humanistic theorist. Believed that our behaviour is not a reaction to unconscious conflicts but a response to our immediate conscious experience of self and environment. - self ; an organized, consistent set of perceptions of and beliefs about oneself. It plays a role in guiding our perceptions and directing our behaviour. Children cannot distinugish between themselves and the environment. Interaction causes distinction. Self-concept continues to develop in response to our life experience, though many aspects of it remain quite stable. After establishing self-concept, there is maintenance that helps us

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understand ourselves in relation to the world. Self-consistency is the absence of conflict among self-perceptions. Congruence is the consistency between self perceptions and experiences. Inconsistency evokes threat and anxiety. People can respond to threat by modifying self-concept so the experiences are congruent with self. Others choose to deny or distort their experiences to remove incongruence “problem in living”. People are pushed by self-consistency needs to behave in accord with their self-concepts. Innate need for positive regard (acceptance, sympathy, and love from others). Unconditional positive regard communicates that the child is inherently worthy of love. Conditional positive regard is dependent on how the child behaves. People need positive regard from themselves too therefore a need for positive self-regard also develops. Conditions of worth dictate when we approve or disapprove of ourselves. People who had achieved self-actualization were called fully functioning persons that do not hide behind masks or adopt artificial roles. They feel a sense of inner freedom, self0determination, and choice in the direction of thei rgrowth. Farily free of conditions of worth, they can accept inner and outer experiences as they are, without modifying them defensively to suit a self-concept or expectation.

Self-esteem refers to how positively or negatively we feel about ourselves, and it is very important aspect of personal well-being, happiness and adjustment. Success generates selfdoubt and anxiety among those low in self-esteem. READ 536 People are motivated to preserve their self-concept by maintaining self-consistency and congruence (self-verification). Self-enhancement is the tendency to gain and preserve a positive self-image. Culture provides a learning context in which self develops. Individualistic cultures place emphasis on independence and personal attainment, whereas collectivistic cultures emphasize connectedness and achievement of group goals. Gender schemas are organized mental strcutures that contian our understanding of the attributes and behaviours that are appropriate and expected for males and females. Humanistic theorists focus on the individual’s subjective experiences. Relies too much on individuals’ report of their personal experience. The goals of trait theorists are to describe the basic classses of behaviour that define personality, to devise ways of measuring individual differences in personality traits, and to use these measures to understand and predict a person’s behaviour. FACTOR ANALYSIS????

READ 540!!! Hans Eysenck linked Introversion-Extraversion and Stability-Instability to differences in individual’s normal patterns of arousal within the brain. Overaraoused(extreme introverts): brains too electrically active, so they try to mimize stimulationa dn reduce arousal to get down to their optimal level. Exact opposite for extreme extraverts. Introversion-Extraversion refelcts a person’s customary level of cotrical arousal. StabilityInstability represents the suddenness with which shifts in aturonomic nervous system arousal occur. Unstable people have hair-trigger nervous systems that show large and sudden shifts in arousal, where stable people show smaller and more graul shifts in arousal. Neuroticism. Cloninger attempted to link three borad personality traits (novelty-seeking, harm avoidance, and reward dependence) to the differences in the specific neurotransmitter systems. Noveltyseeking is related to high dopamine neurotransmitters. READ 542! When it comes to stability of behaviour, personality shows a degree of stability and some capacity for change. Three factors make it difficult to predict on basis of personality traits how people will react in specific situations: 1) Personality traits interact with other traits as well as characteristics of different situations. 2) Degree of consistency across situations is influenced by how important a given trait is for the person. 3) People differ in their tendency to tailor their behavior to what is called for by the situation. Whatever effects thae environment has are filtered through cognitive processes and are influence- even changed- by them. Social cognitive theorists have combined behavioural and cognitive perspectives into an approach to personality that stresses the interaction of a thinking human with a social environment that provides learning experiences. To understand behaviour, psychodynamic, humanistic, and trait-theorists emphasize internal, personal causes of behaviour, such as unconsciousness conflicts, selfactualization tendencies, and personality traits. They account for behaviour from “the inside out”. Radical behaviourist try to explain behaviour from out in. Social-cognitive theorists take an intermediate position, focuing on internal and external factors. According to the social congitiv principle of reciprocal determinism, the person, the person’s behaviour, and the environment all influence one another in a patter of two-way causal links. Rotter:the likelihood that we will engage a specific behaviour in a given situation is influenced by expectancy and reinforcement value. -Internal-external locus of control is an expectancy concerning the degree of personal control we have in our lives. People with external locus of control believe that their fate has less to do with their own efforts than with the influence of external facotrs such as luck.

Self-efficacy: how people regulate their lives. READ 547!!!!

Four important determinants of self-efficacy have been idenified.

Walter Mischet: argued that a more cognitive approach to personality was required, one that takes into account not only the power of situational factors, but also how people characteristically deal mentally and emotionally with experience. Although we expect and percieve a high level of consistency in people’s behaviour, the actual level of consistency is surprisingly low (consistency paradox). This called the idea of personality traits into question. Cognitive-affective personality system in which both person and the situation matter. There is a dynamic interplay between the characteristics that a person brings to the situation and the characteristics of the situation. If.. then… behaviour consistencies suggests that there is consistency in behaviour, but it is found within similar situations. A strength of the social cognitive approach is its strong scientific base. It brings together two perspectives, the behavioural and cognitive, that have strong research traditions. Another strength is its ability to translate insights derived from other perspectives into cognitive behavioural concepts. Helps us resolve an apparent contradiction between the central assumption that personality produces stability in behaviour and research findings that people’s behaviour is not very consistent across different situations. Suggests that across situations is actually a manifestation of a stable underlying cognitive effective personality structure that reacts to certain features of situations.

A test that measures a stable personality should yield similar scores when administered to the same individuals at different times (test-retest reliability). Another aspect of reliability is that different professionals should score and interpret the test in the same way (interjudge or inter-rater reliabilty). Structure interviews: frequently used to collect research data or make a psychiatric diagnosis, contain a set of specific questions that are adminstered to every participant. An attempt is made to create a standardized situation so that interviewees’ response to more-less identical stimula can be interpreterd and compared....