PSYC - Chapter 14 (Theories of Personality) PDF

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Chapter summary for intro to psychology. ...

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PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES OF PERSONALITY -

Emphasizes the movement of psychological energy within the person, in the form of attachments, conflicts, and motivations

 Freud and Psychoanalysis

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Three major systems: o ID  Birth  Reservoir of unconscious psychological energies and motives to avoid pain and obtain pleasure  Two competing things  Life/sexual instinct  Death/aggressive instinct o Ego  Between needs of instinct and the demands of society o Superego  Voice of conscience  Rewards pride and satisfaction must keep all 3 in balance if anxious when the wishes of the id conflict with social rules, ego has defense mechanisms o 1) Repression of an idea or emotion o 2) Projection when a person’s own unacceptable feelings are repressed and then attributed to someone else o 3) Displacement when people direct their emotions toward things to release the emotion (usually anger) o 4) Regression when a person reverts to a previous phase of psychological development (8 year old may go back to sucking his thumb) o 5) Denial when people refuse to admit something unpleasant is happening

Personality develops in psychosexual stages o Anal stage, oral stage (pg. 544) o Crucial stage = phallic stage, ages 3-6 (OEDIPAL)

OTHER PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACHES

 Jungian Theory

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Collective unconscious o Universal memories, symbols, etc.  Called archetypes  Can be a figure or item, such as wicked witch  Shadow archetype is fear of wild animals o Pg. 547)

 Object Relations School

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Melanie Klein Central problem in life is to find a balance between the need for independence and need for others o Needs constant adjustments o Way we react to this is based on first year or two in life “object” because the baby creates a mental representation of her mother Predicts if a client will benefit from psychothereapy Pg. 547

EVALUATING PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES

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Psychodynamic theories are guilty of three scientific failings o 1) violating the principle of falsifiability o 2) Drawing universal principles from the experiences of a few atypical patients o 3) Basing theories of personality development on the retrospective accounts of adults  Illusion of causality

MODERN STUDY OF PERSONALITY

 Popular Personality Tests

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Myers-Briggs Type Indicator o 1-16 types o No evidence Objective Scientific Tests (Inventories) o Standardized, answers many things about different personality traits

CORE PERSONALITY TRAITS -

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Gordon Allport o Not all traits have equal weight and signfi. In people’s lives o Central traits, secondary traits Raymond Cattel o Factor analysis  Identifies clusters of correlated items that seem to be measuring some common, underlying factor o “Big Five”  1) Extroversion versus Introversion  2) Neuroticism (negative emotionality) versus emotional stability  3) Agreeableness versus antagonism  4) Conscientiousness versus impulsiveness  5) Openness to Experience versus resistance to new experiences o The big five is culturally relevant o Changes with age and situational opportunities o Missing some traits involved in mental disorders and others

GENETIC INFLUENCES ON PERSONALITY -

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Only inferable of gene relevance Animals and their personalities o Evolutionarily adaptive for humans to vary in their temperaments and ways of responding to the world and those around them, as well as animals Samuel Gosling dog experiment (pg. 555)

HEREDITY AND TEMPERAMENT -

Babies different as toddlers Born with genetically determined temperaments (dispositions to respond to the environment I certain ways o Includes:  Reactivity (excitable or arousable)

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 Soothability (how easy it is to calm a baby)  Positive and negative emotion Jerome Kagan o Highly reactive infants are excitable, nervous and fearful, overreacting to anything  Tend to be wary and fearful of new things  At 5 years old, still timid o Non reactive infants are California, laid back babies

HEREDITY AND TRAITS -

Heritability o Statistical estimate of the proportion of the total variance in some trait that is attributable to genetic differences among individuals within a group o Comes from behavioural genetic studies of adopted children and of identical and fraternal twins reared apart and together  Identical twins reared apart have many similarities o PG. 556-557

EVALUATING GENETIC THEORIES -

Genetic predisposition doesn’t imply genetic inevitability Plomin, McCrae, Costa Pg. 557

ENVIRO INFLUENCES ON PERSONALITY  Situations and Social Learning

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Inconsistent behaviours are rewarded (act diff with parents, friends, etc.) Social-Cognitive Learning Theorists o Argue people do acquire central personality traits from their learning history and resulting expectations and beliefs.  E.g., a student that works hard for grades and is properly rewarded will become ambitious and industrious Can have stable traits and their behaviour can vary Social interaction whereby rewarding or extinguishing other behaviour is called: o Reciprocal determinism (pg. 559)  Nonshared environment – unique aspects of a person’s experiences and environments

PARENTAL INFLUENCES – AND ITS LIMITS

1) The shared environment of the home has little if any influence on most personality traits 2) Few parents have a single child-rearing style that is consistent over time and that they use with all their children 3) Even when parents try to be consistent in the way they treat their children, there may be little relation between what they do and how the children turn out

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Longitudinal study ages 3-21 (pg 561)

POWER OF PEERS -

Cornell study of private lives in students Peers influence usually trounces that of the parents (pg. 562)

CULTURAL INFLUENCES OF PERSONALITY -

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Individualist cultures or collectivist cultures affect the question’s answer of “Who are you?” Table 14.1 Romin Tafarodi examined interaction between individualist and collectivist cultural affiliations on self-esteem Game experiment with Americans and Chinese Collectivists think their self changes in context and for society, individualists don’t believe their self changes hardly Cross-cultural study of children in Kenya, India, States, etc. o Measured how often children behaved altruistically or egoistically o Pg. 565 Male Aggression o Many men kill for property, insults, etc.  Result of economic disparity  People kill because being robbed can destroy their lives o Pg. 566 o Nisbett

EVALUATING CULTURAL APPROACHS -

Humans are not blank slates on which any cultural form can be written

INNER EXPERIENCE  Humanist Approaches

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Maslow, Rogers, May o Emphasizes our uniquely human capacity to determine our own actions and futures Maslow: o We ignored positive aspects of life, peak experiences, etc. o Personality dev. Could be viewed as a gradual progression toward selfactualization Rogers: o “fully functioning individual” o How you behave depends on subjective reality o Need unconditional positive regard  Love and support for the people we are o Many children are raised with conditional positive regard: I will love you if you behave well” o Congruence with your emotions and self May: o Emphasized ideas of loneliness, anxiety, and alienation o Existentialism, inevitable challenges of human existence as the search for the meaning of life, need to confront death, and the necessity of taking responsibility for our actions o Free will carries a price in anxiety and despair

NARRATIVE APPROACHES -

The story each of us develops over time to explain ourselves Incorporates many theories of personality David Epston Reflects needs, justifies actions, determines if you have control

EVALUATING HUMANIST AND NARRATIVE APPROACHES -

Many of it is untestable Hard to define operationally Added to “positive psych” Pg. 572...