1. Personality Who Am I Ch 15

2. Nature of Personality A personality trait is a durable disposition to behave in a particular way across a variety of situations. Theorists agree that some traits are more basic than others, but there is great debate about how many fundamental traits are required to fully describe personality. According to the five-factor model, most aspects of personality are derived from 5 crucial traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

3. Psychodynamic Perspective

4. Freud’s Theory Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory grew out of his therapeutic work with clients and emphasized the importance of the unconscious. Freud divided personality structure into three components: the id, ego, and superego.

5. Id, Ego, Superego Id is the instinctive component that follows the pleasure principle. Ego is the decision-making component that follows the reality principle. Superego is the moral component

6. 3 levels of awareness The conscious (current awareness) The preconscious (material just beneath the surface of awareness) The unconscious (material well below the surface of awareness)

7. Anxiety Freud theorized that conflicts centering on sex and aggression are especially likely to lead to significant anxiety.

8. Defense Mechanisms 1. Denial Denial is the refusal to accept reality or fact, acting as if a painful event, thought or feeling did not exist. It is considered one of the most primitive of the defense mechanisms because it is characteristic of early childhood development. Many people use denial in their everyday lives to avoid dealing with painful feelings or areas of their life they don’t wish to admit. For instance, a person who is a functioning alcoholic will often simply deny they have a drinking problem, pointing to how well they function in their job and relationships. childhood

9. Regression Regression is the reversion to an earlier stage of development in the face of unacceptable thoughts or impulses. For an example an adolescent who is overwhelmed with fear, anger and growing sexual impulses might become clingy and start exhibiting earlier childhood behaviors he has long since overcome, such as bedwetting. An adult may regress when under a great deal of stress, refusing to leave their bed and engage in normal, everyday activities.

10. Projection Projection is the misattribution of a person’s undesired thoughts, feelings or impulses onto another person who does not have those thoughts, feelings or impulses. Projection is used especially when the thoughts are considered unacceptable for the person to express, or they feel completely ill at ease with having them. For example, a spouse may be angry at their significant other for not listening, when in fact it is the angry spouse who does not listen. Projection is often the result of a lack of insight and acknowledgement of one’s own motivations and feelings.

11. Repression Repression is the unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses. The key to repression is that people do it unconsciously, so they often have very little control over it. “Repressed memories” are memories that have been unconsciously blocked from access or view. But because memory is very malleable and ever-changing, it is not like playing back a DVD of your life. The DVD has been filtered and even altered by your life experiences, even by what you’ve read or viewed.memory

12. Displacement Displacement is the redirecting of thoughts feelings and impulses directed at one person or object, but taken out upon another person or object. People often use displacement when they cannot express their feelings in a safe manner to the person they are directed at. The classic example is the man who gets angry at his boss, but can’t express his anger to his boss for fear of being fired. He instead comes home and kicks the dog or starts an argument with his wife. The man is redirecting his anger from his boss to his dog or wife. Naturally, this is a pretty ineffective defense mechanism, because while the anger finds a route for expression, it’s misapplication to other harmless people or objects will cause additional problems for most people.

13. Stages of Psychosexual Development Oral- what you eat, drink birth-1 yr Anal- potty training 1-3 yrs Phallic – Oedipal Complex/ Electra Complex Latency – dormant ages 6-puberty Genital - puberty - death

14. Jung’s Theory Analytical Psychology emphasized unconsious determinants of personality, but he divided the unconscious into the personal and collective unconscious

15. Collective Unconscious Storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from people's ancestral past. These memories consists of archetypes, which are emotionally charged thought forms that have universal meaning.

16. Personality Types Introverted (inner-directed) Extroverted (outer-directed) Jung first to describe these

17. Alfred Adler’s Theory Individual psychology emphasized how social forces shape personality development. Argued that the striving for superiority is the foremost motivational force in people’s lives. Attributed personality disturbances to excessive inferiority feelings that can pervert the normal process of striving for superiority and can result in overcompensation. Stressed the social context of personality development and did pioneering work on the effects of birth order.

18. Behavioral Perspective Skinner’s Theory – Skinner’s work on operant conditioning was not meant to be a theory of personality, but it has been applied to personality. – Followers view personality as a collection of response tendencies that are tied to specific situations. – Skinnerians view personality development as a lifelong process in which response tendencies are shaped by reinforcement.

19. Bandura’s Theory Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory emphasizes how cognitive factors shape personality. 1.people’s response tendencies are largely acquired through observational learning. 2.Stressed the role of self-efficacy- ones beliefabout one’s ability to perform behaviors that should lead to expected outcomes. 3.Greater self-efficacy is associated with greater success in a variety of athletic, academic, and health pursuits.

20. Mischel’s Theory Walter Mischel’s brand of social learning theory emphasizes how people behave differently in different situations. His theory has sparked debate about the relative importance of the person versus the situation in determining behavior.

21. Humanistic Perspectives Rogers’s Theory – Carl Rogers’s person-centered theory focuses on the self-concept- a collection of subjective beliefs about one’s nature. – Incongruence is the degree of disparity between one’s self-concept and one’s actual experiences – Unconditional love during childhood fosters congruence while conditional love fosters incongruence. – Asserts that people with highly incongruent self- concepts are prone to recurrent anxiety.

22. Maslow’s Theory Abraham Maslow proposed that human votives are organized into a hierarchy of needs, in which basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused. At the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is the need for self-actualization-the need to fulfill one’s potential. Self-actualizing persons are people with very healthy personalities, marked by continued personal growth.

23. Biological Perspectives

24. Eysenck’s Theory Hans Eysenck views personality structure as a hierarchy of traits in wheich many superficial traits are derived from a handful of fundamental traits. Personality is largely determined by genetic inheritance. He theorizes that introversion and extraversion are shaped by inherited differences in arousability and ease of conditioning.

25. Evolutionary Approach Analyses focus on how certain personality traits may have contributed to reproductive fitness in ancestral times. According to David Buss, the Big 5 traits are especially important because they have had significant adaptive implications. CANOE

26. Behavioral Genetics Identical twins reared apart tend to be more similar in personality than fraternal twins reared together, which suggests that genetics shape personality. Heritability estimates for personality tend to hover around 40-50%. Behavioral genetics research has revealed that differences among families have surprisingly little impact on personality.

27. A Contemporary Empirical Approach Terror management theory

28. Terror Management Theory The collision between human’s self-preservation instinct and their awareness of death creates the potential for terror when people think about their mortality. Cultural worldviews and self-esteem buffer people from the anxiety associated with their awareness of their mortality. Increasing mortality salience leads people to work harder at defending their cultural worldview and their self-esteem. The need to defend one’s cultural worldview can fuel prejudice and aggression and can explain many aspects ov behavior, ranging from conspicuous consumption to political preferences.

29. Culture and Personality Cross-cultural studies suggest that the basic trait structure of personality may be pancultural. Cultures vary in the degree to which they embrace individualism v collectivism, and these differences influence the prevalence of personality traits in a culture. American culture fosters an independent view of the self, whereas Asian cultures foster a more interdependent view of the self. People from Western cultures tend to engage in self- enhancement, whereas people from Asian cultures are more prone to self-criticism.