1. Personality Psychology

2. Personality
The distinct patterns of behavior, thoughts, and feelings that characterize a person’s adaptation to life.

3. Psychodynamic Theory Sigmund Freud
Emphasizes the importance of unconscious motives and conflicts as forces that determine behavior
Dynamic struggle
Drives (sex, aggression, superiority) conflict with moral codes, laws, and social rules

4. Mind is like an Iceberg Conscious-self awareness
Preconscious-capable of being brought into awareness by focusing attention
Unconscious-not available to awareness by simple attention

5. Unconscious
Conscious
Preconscious
Unconscious

6. Psychic Structure
In psychodynamic theory, a hypothesized mental structure that helps explain different aspects of behavior Id
Ego
Superego

7. Id
Present at birth
Represents physiological drives and is fully unconscious
Pleasure principle-demands instant gratification without consideration of law, social custom, or the needs of others

8. Ego
Develops during the first year of life
Stands for “reason and good sense”
Characterized by self-awareness, planning, and delay gratification
Stands between id and superego
Reality Principle-considers what is practical and possible in gratifying needs

9. Ego Defense Mechanisms: Repression Regression Rationalization
Displacement
Projection
Reaction formation
Denial
Sublimation

10. Fixation
A lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage.
Where conflicts were unresolved.
Orally fixated people may need to chain smoke or chew gum.
Or denying the dependence by acting tough or being very sarcastic.
Anally fixated people can either be anal expulsive or anal retentive.

11. Defense Mechanisms
The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by distorting reality.
Never aware they are occurring.
Seven major types.

12. Repression The Mac Daddy defense mechanism.
Push or banish anxiety driven thought deep into unconscious.
Why we do not remember lusting after our parents.

13. Regression
When faced with anxiety the person retreats to a more infantile stage.
Thumb sucking on the first day of school.

14. Reaction Formation
Ego switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites.
Being mean to someone you have a crush on.

15. Projection
Disguise your own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.
Thinking that your spouse wants to cheat on you when it is you that really want to cheat.

16. Rationalization
Offers self-adjusting explanations in place of real, more threatening reasons for your actions.
You don’t get into a college and say, “I really did not want to go there it was too far away!!”

17. Displacement Shifts the unacceptable impulses towards a safer outlet.
Instead of yelling at a teacher, you will take anger out on a friend by peeing on his car).

18. Sublimation
Re-channel their unacceptable impulses towards more acceptable or socially approved activities.
Channel feeling of homosexuality into aggressive sports play.

19. Superego Develops throughout early childhood
Functions as the moral guardian and sets forth high standards for behavior
Identification-values of parents
Moral principle-hands out judgments of right and wrong, floods the ego with shame and guilt

20. Psychosexual Development
Sexual impulses are pivotal factors in personality development even among children
5 stages:
Oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital

21. Oral Stage Weaning could lead to frustration
Fixation-stuck in the stage and displays traits of that stage
Oral traits-dependency, gullibility, optimism/pessimism
Oral fixation-exaggerated desires for “oral activities” such as smoking, nail biting, overeating, alcohol abuse
clinging, dependent relationships

22. Oral Stage 0-18 months Pleasure center is on the mouth.
Sucking, biting and chewing.

23. Anal Stage
Sexual gratification is attained through contraction and relaxation of the muscles that control the elimination of waste products
Begin the second year of life
Children learn to control their urge to eliminate
may cause conflict between parent and child

24. Anal Stage 18-36 months Pleasure focuses on bladder and bowel control.
Controlling ones life and independence.
Anal retentive

25. Anal Stage Anal-retentive: excessive use of self-control
Anal fixation may lead to two traits:
Anal-retentive: excessive use of self-control
Anal-expulsive: unregulated self expression (messiness, carelessness, sadism)

26. Phallic Stage 3-6 years Pleasure zone is the genitals.
Coping with incestuous feelings.
Oedipus and Electra complexes.

27. Phallic Stage Occurs in the third year
Major erogenous zone is the phallic region (penis, clitoris)
Parent-child conflict over masturbation
Children may develop strong sexual attachments to the parent of the opposite gender and view the same gender parent as a rival (marry mommy and daddy)

28. Phallic Stage
Oedipus complex:conflict for boys who wish to possess his mother sexually and perceives his father as a rival in love
Electra complex: girl longs for her father and resents her mother

29. Oedipus and Electra Resolved by ages 5 and 6
Repress their hostilities toward and identify with the parent of same gender
In adolescence, feelings are displaced or transferred to socially appropriate members of the other gender

30. Latency A phase characterized by repression of sexual impulses
focus more on schoolwork
engage in gender role behaviors
prefer to play with children of same age

31. Latency Stage
6- puberty
Dormant sexual feeling.
Cooties stage.

32. Genital Stage Begins during puberty
Adolescents again have sexual urges for their mothers and fathers but the incest taboo encourages repression and displacement onto other adolescents or adults
Sexual gratification through intercourse
Freud’s view-oral and anal stimulation, masturbation, homosexual activity
pregenital fixations-less mature

33. Carl Jung
Analytical psychology:
Collective unconscious: racial memories that contain archetypes (young hero, nurturing mother, wise old man, wicked witches, rebirth and resurrection)
Self-unifying force of personality that gives purpose and direction

34. Alfred Adler
Inferiority complex: feelings of inferiority serve as a central motivating force
Creative self-self-aware aspect of personality that strives to achieve its full potential
Individual psychology

35. Karen Horney Parent-child relationships extremely important
Basic anxiety-lasting feelings of insecurity from harsh or indifferent parents
Basic hostility-lasting feelings of anger directed at nonfamily members in adulthood

36. Erick Erickson More psychosocial than psychosexual
Social relationships are more crucial determinants of personality
We are the conscious architects of our personalities
Stages of psychosocial development-based on traits that may develop

37. Trait Perspective
A relatively stable aspect of personality that is inferred from behavior and assumed to give rise to consistent behavior.

38. Gordon Allport Catalogued 18,000 human traits
Physical traits (short, brunette, skinny)
Behavorial traits (shy, emotional)
Moral traits (honest, loyal)

39. Raymond Cattell
Reduced this universe of traits to smaller lists of traits that show common features.
His new list of primary personality traits would enable us to predict the person’s behavior in various situations
16 Personality Factors Scale

40. Hans Eysenck Emotional stability vs. instability
Introversion: characterized by intense imagination and the tendency to inhibit impulses
Extroversion: characterized by tendencies to be socially outgoing and to express feelings and impulses freely
Emotional stability vs. instability

41. Eysenck Personality Questionnaire

42. The Big Five
Conscientiousness-organized/disorganized, careful/careless, disciplined/impulsive
Agreeableness-soft-hearted/ruthless, trusting/suspicious, helpful/uncooperative
Neuroticism-Emotional stability
Openness to experience
Extroversion/introversion
CANOE

43. Evaluation Trait theory is descriptive, not explanatory
Circular explanations-merely restates its own concepts instead of offering additional information

44. Social-Cognitive Theory
Albert Bandura:
See people as influencing the environment just as the environment influences them
Observational learning
Person variables (expectancies, competencies, and values) influence behavior

45. Social Cognitive Theory
Focus on how we interact with our environment.
Reciprocal Determinism: the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors.

46. Social Cognitive Perspective
Different People choose different environments.
The TV you watch, friends you hang with, music you listen to were all chosen by you (your disposition)
But after you choose the environment, it also shapes you.

47. Social Cognitive Perspective
Our personalities help create situations to which we react.
If I expect someone to be angry with me, I may give that person the cold shoulder, creating the very behavior I expect.

48. Personal Control
Our sense of controlling our environment rather than the environment controlling us.

49. External Locus of Control
The perception that chance or outside forces beyond one’s personal control determine one’s fate.

50. Internal Locus of Control
The perception that one controls one’s own fate.

51. Learned Helplessness
The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.

52. Competencies Knowledge and skills
Ex: academic skills, athletic skills, social skills, job skills, etc…

53. Expectancies
Personal predictions about the outcomes of potential behaviors
Based on our observations of others and on our own experiences
Self-efficacy expectations-beliefs to the effect that one can handle a task

54. Humanistic/Existential Perspective
Humanism:the view that people are capable of free choice, self-fulfillment, and ethical behavior
Existentialism:the view that people are completely free and responsible for their own behavior
Agree or disagree?

55. Carl Rodgers Frames of reference:
One’s unique patterning of perceptions and attitudes according to which one evaluates events
Self-esteem: one’s evaluation and valuing of oneself

56. Carl Rogers’s Person-Centered Perspective
People are basically GOOD.
We are like Acorns
Need Water, Sun and Nutrients to Grow into a big Oak Tree.
We need genuineness, acceptance and empathy for us to grow.

57. Genuineness Being open with your own feelings. Dropping your facade.
Being transparent and self-disclosing.

58. Acceptance Unconditional Positive Regard:
An attitude of acceptance regardless of circumstances.
Accepting yourself or others completely.

59. Positive Regard
Unconditional-accepting a person as having intrinsic merit regardless of their behavior at the moment
Conditional-accept them only when they behave in a desired manner
can lead to low self-worth

60. Empathy
Listening, sharing, understanding and mirroring feelings and reflecting their meanings.
Preschool study

61. Self-Concept
All of thoughts and feelings about ourselves trying to answer the question….
WHO AM I?

62. Self-Concept
Both Rogers and Maslow believed that your self-concept is at the center of your personality.
If our self concept is positive….
We tend to act and perceive the world positively.
If our self-concept is negative….
We fall short of our “ideal self” and feel dissatisfied and unhappy

63. Assessing your Self-ConceptME
Ideal Self

64. Self-Ideal A mental image of what we believe we ought to be
Rodgers believed that the process of striving to meet meaningful goals, the good struggle, yields happiness

65. Self-Serving Bias A readiness to perceive oneself favorable.
People accept more responsibility for successes than failures.
Most people see themselves as better than average.

66. Acculturation and Self-Esteem
Acculturation:the process of adaptation to the dominant culture and making behavioral and attitudinal changes
Bicultural-become fluent in the languages of their country of origin and their new country and integrate the customs and values of both cultures
highest self-esteem

67. Measurements of Personality
Objective tests-tests whose items must be answered in a specified, limited manner. Tests whose items have concrete answers that are considered correct.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
Most widely used psychological test in the clinical setting

68. Projective Tests
Tests that present ambiguous stimuli onto which the test taker projects his or her own personality in making a response
Thematic Apperception Test
Rorschach Inkblot Test
LETS TRY IT :)

69. Hans Eysenck

70. The Big Five