Upload
kerrie-baker
View
222
Download
1
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Personality
A person’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting
2 major theories to why we develop our personalities• Freud's psychoanalytic approach
• Humanistic approach
Freud
One of the most influential and most known psychologists
Inquisitive as a youth, searched for answers to ailments with unknown causes as a doctor
Psychoanalytic approach
Free association• Patients relaxing and just saying whatever
comes into their minds, no matter how trivial or embarrassing
• Mental dominoes
• The mind is mostly hidden• Our conscious awareness is only what we can see
• There is a vast amount that we cannot see
• Like an iceberg
Psychoanalytic approach
Preconscious• Area where we can store temporarily
Repression• What we do with our thoughts and desires
that we cannot act out
• They are forcibly blocked
• We may not be consciously aware of them all the time
Psychoanalytic approach
Free associations would let some of these repressed emotions out and may answer some of the issues• Freudian slips
Dreams are also important• Manifest content – what we can remember, is
a censored expression of what we really want (the latent content)
Personality structure
Personality comes from conflicts between restraint and impulse• Controlling our aggressive, pleasure seeking
biological urges
• How can we get pleasure from these urges without feeling guilt or being punished?
Three interacting systems
Id – unconscious psychic energy that is constantly pushing us to fulfill basic drives• Reproduction, survival, and aggression
• Operates on the pleasure principle• Immediate gratification
• Newborns
• Drug abusers
Three interacting systems
Ego – executive part of the mind• Acts as a mediator
• Operates on the reality principle• How can I get what I want in a realistic way
• Contains our partly conscious perceptions, thoughts, judgments, and memories
Three interacting systems
Superego –emerges around 4 or 5• The moral compass
• Consider not only the real, but the ideal
• How should we behave?
• Strives for perfection
• In direct contrast with the id• Ego handles the battle
Personality development
Psychosexual stages• The id will focus on different areas as children
grow
• Pleasure will be derived from different erogenous zones
Psychosexual Stages
Oral – 0 to 18 mos• Mouth
• Biting, sucking, chewing
Anal - 18-36 mos• Toilet training
Phallic – 3-6 yrs• Oedipus complex
• Electra complex
Psychosexual Stages
Latency – 6 to puberty• Dormant sexual feelings
Genital – puberty onward • Maturation of sexual interests
Personality
Identification• Threatening feelings get repressed and
behavior is learned through an identification process
• Children gain many of their parents values in their superegos
Unresolved conflicts can lead to fixation• Being stuck in one pleasure seeking stage
Freud’s defense mechanisms
Tactics used to reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality• 1. Repression – banishing anxiety causing things to
the unconscious• Underlies all others
• Sometimes slips
• 2. Regression – retreating to a more child like state• Homesickness in college?
• 3. Reaction formation – taking unacceptable impulses and making them the opposite• Thinking “I hate Dad” but saying “I love Dad”
Freud’s defense mechanisms 4. Projection – disguising impulses by
assigning them to someone else• “The thief thinks everyone else is a thief”
5. Rationalization – generating explanations to hide the real cause
• Drinking to be sociable 6. Displacement – diverting attention to an
object that is more acceptable• Taking frustration out on someone other than who
you are angry at
Freud’s defense mechanisms
7. Sublimation – taking something unacceptable and using it as motivation to create something that is
• da Vinci – Mona Lisa and his mother
8. Denial – protecting someone from a painful event• Denying child’s misconduct
Neo Freudians
Id Ego and Superego Unconscious Defense mechanisms
• All accepted but…
• More importance placed on conscious mind
• Sex and aggression aren’t all consuming motivations
Adler and Horney
Childhood is important• But social, not sexual, tensions are more
important to identity formation
• Adler’s Inferiority complex
• Horney – women aren’t as weak as Freud thought, jealous of power in society
• Carl Jung – collective unconscious (evolutionary psy?)
Testing Personality
Projective tests• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
• Making up stories about ambiguous pictures
• Rorschach inkblot test• Describe what you see
Evaluating Psychoanalytic Perspective
Research today contradicts much of what Freud said
Overestimates parents involvement and underestimates peer influence• Infant amnesia
Repression• We do try to neglect painful memories but it
has yet to be proven • People relive their worst memories
The modern unconscious mind Time to abandon Freud’s unconscious mind? Unconscious also involves
• Schemas that automatically control interpretations• Split brain functionality (severed corpus callosum)• Parallel processing – vision and thinking• Instant emotion
Not so spontaneous However
• False Consensus how much we think others agree with us• Terror management theory – awareness of our own
mortality• We behave differently when faced with death
Major problems with Freud
Untestable After the fact explanations
• Cant predict how others will be affected
Never really meant to do those things• Looking back cant predict things, it can help explain
• Important studies done on unconscious, sexuality, defense mechanisms
Humanistic POV
Rather than looking at individuals as “sick”, how do healthy people strive for self realization?
• Using people’s self reported feelings and experiences
Maslow
Hierarchy • Self Actualization – 2nd from the top
• Need to realize our fullest potential
• Self Transcendence – the top• Looking for meaning beyond yourself
Studied healthy, creative people• Lincoln, Jefferson, E Roosevelt
Carl Rogers
Person Centered Perspective• People are generally good
• “We are all acorns”
• We can all grow and reach fulfillment as long as we are raised with three things• Genuineness – being open with our feelings
• Acceptance – having unconditional positive regard (completely accepting another person)
• Empathy – sharing our feelings and mirroring them
Self Concept
All the thoughts and feelings we have in response to the question “Who am I?”
• If it’s a positive answer – view the world more positively
• If its negative – we fall short of where we feel we should be in our lives
Assessing the self
Questionnaires – • Rogers – describe how you actually are and how you
would like to be
• The closer these two were, the more positive outlook there was
Can you get the answers you want from a standardized test?• Many feel conversation is a better method than filling
in bubbles
Evaluating Humanistic
Maslow and Rogers have had a huge impact on education, childrearing and parenting, management
Influenced much of popular psychology• Is a positive self concept important to
happiness and success?
• Are people basically good and capable of self improvement?
Criticisms
Concepts are too vague and subjective
Too naïve? • Is there a human capacity for evil?
• Terrorism
• Nuclear War
• Every thing will work out
• Its hopeless, why bother to try
Trait Perspective
There are also stable patterns of behavior that can be used to define personality
Fundamental traits • Less concerned with explaining traits, but
rather describing them
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator• Thinking type vs feeling type
Exploring traits
We are each a complex group of multiple traits
Factor analysis• Statistics used to determine traits – answering
questions that are related, but worded differently
• Eysenck – extra/introverted emotionally stable/unstable
Exploring traits
Biology• Brain activity may shape personality
• Extraverts tend to need more brain stimulation
• Genes • Breeding animals can make them more
intra/extraverted or more passive or aggressive
• Silver Foxes
Testing Traits
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Test (MMPI)• Originally developed to search for disorders,
can be used to get an idea of a personality characteristic
• Scored objectively, not subjectively
• Problems?
The Big 5
CANOE• Conscientiousness
• Careful or careless
• Agreeableness• Helpful or uncooperative
• Neuroticism• Calm or anxious
• Openness• Imaginative or practical
• Extraversion• Affectionate or reserved
The Big 5
Generally accepted by psychologists today
Stay stable through life Almost half the time are inheritable Can be used to predict other traits
• Conscientious do better in school
• Extraverted tend to be more night owls
Evaluating Trait Perspective
Its more than just traits• Different environments can bring out different
traits
• Traits do stabilize over time, but behaviors can change• People don’t act with predictable constancy all the
time
• But you can predict what they will do on average
Judging Personality Person Situation controversy
• Traits and behaviors don’t have to be the same• Look at the average across time
Music Preferences • Asking about what type of music someone likes says a lot about their
personality Facebook pages
• How can you present yourself here? Bedrooms and offices
• Cleanliness or messy can also say quite a bit Email
• A person’s writing voice – how they present info when writing
Social Cognitive Perspective
Albert Bandura• Behavior is influenced by the interaction
between peoples traits and their social context• We learn by observing others and modeling our
behavior after theirs
• Reciprocal determinism• Influences are mutual
• Behavior, cognition, and environment all interact
Reciprocal determinism
Different people choose different environments• The environment you choose to be in shapes your
behavior Personality shapes how we interact and react
• Anxious people react to things differently and see the world differently
Personalities help create situations to which we react• How we view and treat people influences how they
treat us
Personal Control
How much can you control your environment?• External Locus of Control
• Outside forces determine our fate
• Learned helplessness
• Internal Locus of Control• We control our own destiny
• Generally achieve more in school
• Better at dealing with stress
Optimism vs Pessimism
Optimists• Enjoy better health
• Better relationships
Too Optimistic?• Fear of failure is a good thing (pessimism to a
degree)
• Can blind us to real risk
Social Cognitive Evaluation
Focuses too much on the here and now• Doesn’t take into account enough information
about individuals
Our biological traits matter more than may be realized
Exploring the Self
Self – the center of personality• Organizer of thoughts, feelings and actions
Possible selves• Thinking about all the people we could be
• Can motivate us to do great things
Self Esteem
Feelings of self worth
Spotlight effect• Overestimating others thoughts about what
they are thinking about you
• Thinking that every one is looking at you
Benefits of self esteem
People who feel good about themselves live happier lives• Can be used to predict employment and salary later
on in life
Feeling well follows doing well?• Side effect?
Negative self feelings cause more judgmental feelings of others
Self serving bias
Readiness to perceive ourselves as favorable• People accept responsibility for good deeds
more than bad, and success instead of failure
• Most people see themselves as better than average
• All of us have inferiority complexes?• Quick to defend our actions as right
Problems with self serving bias
What about those who feel worthless?
Self directed put downs are subtly strategic• No one likes me – you haven’t met everyone
(can be reassuring)
• Prepare us for possible failure
• Looks at who they were not who they are• At 18 I was a jerk, I am much more sensitive today