- Personality- An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking,
feeling, and acting.
- Psychoanalytic Perspective- In his clinical practice, Sigmund Frued encountered
patients suffering from nervous disorders. Their complaints could not be
explained in terms of purely physical causes.
- Frued's clinical experience led
him to develop the first comprehensive theory of personality, which
included the unconscious mind, psychosesxual stages, and defense
mechanisms.
- Exploring the unconscious- A reservoir (unconscious mind) of mostly unacceptable
thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. Frued asked patients to say
whatever came to their minds (free association) in order to tap the
unconscious.
- Dream Analysis- Another method to analyze the unconscious mind is
through interpreting manifest and latent contents of dreams.
- Psychoanalysis- The process of free association (chain of thoughts)
leads to painful, embarrassing unconscious memories. Once these memories
are retrieved and released (treatment: psychoanalysis) the patient feels
better.
- Model of mind- The mind is like an iceberg. It is mostly
hidden, and below the surface lies the unconscious mind. The
preconscious stores temporary memories.
- Personality Structure- Personality develops as a result of our efforts to
resolve conflicts between our biological impulses (id) and social
restraints (superego).
- Id, Ego, and Superego- The id unconsciously strives to satisfy basic sexual
and aggressive drives, operating on the pleasure principle, demanding
immediate gratification.
- Personality Development- Frued believed that personality formed during the
first few years of life divided into psychosexual stages. During
these stages the id's pleasure-seeking energies focus on pleasure
sensitive body areas called erogenous zones.
- Frued's Psychosexual Stages
- Oral (0-18 months)- Pleasure
centers on the mouth- sucking, biting, chewing.
- Anal (18-36 months)- Pleasure
focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands of control.
- Phallic (3-6 years)- Pleasure
zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings
- Latency (6- puberty)- Dormant
sexual feelings
- Genital (puberty on)-
Maturation of sexual interests
- Oedipus Complex A- boy's sexual desire for his mother and feelings of
jealousy and hatred for the rival father. A girl's desire for her
father is called the Electra complex.
- Identification- Children cope with threatening feelings by repressing
them and by identifying with the rival parent. Through this process
of identification, their superego gains strength incorporates their
parents' values.
- Defense Mechanisms- The ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by
unconsciously distorting reality.
- Repression
banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.
- Regression
leads an individual faced with anxiety to retreat to a more infantile
psychosexual stage.
- Reaction formation
causes the ego to unconsciously switch unacceptable impulses into their
opposites. People may express feelings of purity when they may be
suffering anxiety from unconscious feelings about sex.
- Projection
leads people to disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing
them to others.
- Rationalization
offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more
threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions.
- Displacement
shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less
threatening object or person, redirecting anger toward a safer
outlet.
- The Neo-Freudians
- Like Frued, Alfred Alder
believed in childhood tensions. However, these tensions were social
in nature and not sexual. A child struggles with
an inferiority complex during growth and strives
for superiority and power.
- Like Alder, Karen Horney
believed in the social aspects of childhood growth and development.
She cuntered Freud's assumption that women have weak superegos and
suffer from "penis envy."
- Carl Jung believed in the
collective unconscious, which contained a common reservior of images
derived from our species past. This is why many cultures share
certain myths and images such as the mother being a symbol of
nurturance.
- Assessing Unconscious Processes
- Evaluating personality from an
unconscious mind''s perspective would require a psychological instrument
(projective tests) that would reveal the hidden unconscious mind.
- Thematic Apperception Test
(TAT)
- Developed by Henry Murray, the
TAT is a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and
interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.
- Rorschach Inkblot Test- The
most widely used projective test uses a set of 10 inkblots and was
designed by Hermann Rorschach. It seeks to identify people's inner
feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.
- Projective tests: criticisms-
Critics argue that projective tests lack both reliability (consistency of
results) and validity (predicting what it is supposed to).
- Evaluating the psychanalytical
Perspective
- Personality develops throughout
life and is not fixed in childhood.
- Frued underemphasized peer
influence on the individual, which may be as powerful as parental
influence.
- Gender identity may develop
before 5-6 years of age.
- There may be other reasons for
dreams besides with fulfillment.
- Verbal slips can be explained
on the basics of cognitive processing of verbal choices.
- Suppressed sexuality leads to
psychological disorders. Sexual inhibition has decreased, but
psychological disorders have not.
- Frued's psychoanalytic theory
rests on the repression of painful experiences into the unconscious mind.
- The modern Unconscious Mind
- Modern research shoes the
existence of non-conscious information processing. This involves
- Schemas that automatically
control perceptions and interpretations
- The right-hemisphere activity
that enables the split brain patient's left hand to carry out an
instruction the patient cannot verbalize
- Parallel processing during
vision and thinking
- Implicit memories
- Emotions that activate
instantly without consciousness
- Self-concept and stereotypes
that unconsciously influence us.
- Evaluating the Psychoanalytic
Perspective
- The scientific merits of
Frued's theory have been criticized. Psychoanalysis is meagerly
testable. Most of its concepts arise out of clinical practice, which are
the after-the-fact explanation.
- Humanistic Perspective- By the
1960's, psychologists became discontent with Frued's negativity and the
mechanistic psychology of the behaviorists
- Self-Actualizing Person-
Maslow proposed that we as individuals are motivated by a hierarchy of
needs. Beginning with physiological needs, we try to reach the
state of self-actualization- fulfilling our potential.
- Person-Centered Perspective- Carl Rogers also believed in an individual's
self-actualization tendencies. He said that Unconditional Positive
Regard is an attitude of acceptance of others despite their
failings.
- Assessing the self- In an effort to assess personality, Rogers asked people
to describe themselves as they would like to be (ideal) and as they
actually are (real). If the two descriptions were close the
individual had a positive self-concept.
- All of our thoughts are
feelings about ourselves, in an answer to the question, "Who am
I?" refers to self concept.
- Evaluating the Humanistic
Perspective- Humanistic psychology has a
pervasive impact on counseling, education, child-rearing, and management
with its emphasis on a positive self-concept, empathy, and the though that
people are basically good and can improve.
- Concepts in humanistic
psychology are vague and subjective and lack scientific basis.
- The individualism encouraged
can lead to self-indulgence, selfishness, and an erosion of moral
restraints.
- Humanistic psychology fails to
appreciate the reality of our human capacity for ___. It lacks
adequate balance between realistic optimism and despair.
- The Trait Perspective- An individual's unique collection of durable
dispositions and consistent ways of behaving (traits) constitutes his or
her personality.
- Examples of Traits
- Honest
- Dependable
- Moody
- Impulsive
- Exploring Traits- Each personality is uniquely made up of multiple
traits. Allport and Odbert (1936, identified almost 18,000 words
representing traits. One way to condense the immense lists of
personality traits is through factor analysis, a statistical approach used
to describe and relate personality traits.
- Factor Analysis
- Hans and Sybil Eysenck
suggested that personality could be reduced down to two polar
dimensions, extroversion-introversion and
emotional stability-instability.
- Biology and Personality- Personality dimensions are influenced by genes.
- Brain-imaging procedures show
that extroverts seek stimulation because their normal brain arousal is
relatively low.
- Genes also influence out
temperament and behavior style. Differences in children's shyness
and inhibition may be attributed to autonomic nervous system reactivity.
- Assessing Traits- Personality inventories are questionnaires (often
with true-false or agree-disagree items) designed to gauge a wide range of
feelings and behaviors assessing several traits at once.
- MMPI- The Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory (MMPI) is the most widely researched and clinically
used dof all personality tests. It was originally developed to
identify emotional disorders.
- The Big Five Factors- today's trait researchers believe that earlier trait
dimensions, such as Eysencks' personality dimensions, fail to tell the
whole story. So, an expanded range (five facrors) of traits does a
better job of assessment.
- Questions of the Big Five
- How stable are these traits? Questionable in adulthood. However, they change over
development.
- How heritable are they? Fifty
percent or so for each trait.
- How about other cultures? These traits are common across cultures.
Evaluating the trait perspectives- The Person-Situation Controversy Walter
Mischel (1968,1984, 2004) points out traits may be enduring, but the resulting behaviors
in various situations is different. Therefore, traits are not good predictors
of behavior.
The Person-situation Controversy- Trait theorists argue the behaviors from
situations may be different, but average behavior remains the same. Therefore,
traits matter.
Traits are socially significant and influence our health,
thinking, and performance.
Consistency of Expressive style
Expressive styles in speaking and gestures demonstrate trait
consistency. Observers are able to judge people’s that behaviors and feelings
in as little as 30 seconds and in one particular case as little as 2 seconds.
Social-Cognitive Perspective
Bandura (1986, 2001, 2005) believes that personality is the
result of an interaction that takes place between a person and their social
context.
Individuals & Environments
Specific ways in which individuals and environments interact
1.
Different
peoples choose different environments
2.
Our
personality’s shape how we react
3.
Our
personalities shape situations
Behavior – behavior emerges from an interplay of external and internal
influences
Personal Control
Social-cognitive psychologists emphasizes our sense of personal
control, whether we control the environment or the environment control refers
to the perception chance or external loss of control refers to the perception
that chance of chance of outside forces beyond our personal control determines
our fate internal loss of control refers to the perception that we can control
our own fate
Learned Helplessness
When unable to avoid repeated adverse events an animal or human
helplessness
Optimism vs. Pessimism
An optimistic or pessimistic attritional style is your way of
explaining positive or negative events. Positive psychology aims to discover
and promote conditions that enable individuals and communities to thrive.
Positive Psychology and Humanistic Psychology
Such as humanistic psychology such as humanistic, attempts to
foster human fulfillment. Positive psychology, in addition seeks positive
social groups.
Assessing behavior in Situations
Realistic and simulated situations because they find that it is
the best way to predict the behavior of others in similar situations.
Evaluating the Social-cognitive Perspective
The social cognitive psychologist pay a lot of attention to the situations
and pay less attention to the individuals his unconscious mind his emotions and
genetics
Exploring the self
Research on the self has a long history because the self
organizes thinking feeling and actions and is a critical part of our
personality
1.
Research focuses on the different selves we
possess. Some we possess and others we dread
2.
Researchers studies how we overestimate our concern that others
evaluate our appearance, performance, and blunders (spotlight effect)
Benefits of self esteem
Maslow and Rogers argued that a successful life results from
healthy self-image. The following are two reasons why low self-esteem results
in personal problems.
1.
When self-esteem is deflated, we view ourselves
and others critically.
2.
Low self-esteem
reflects reality our failure in meeting challenges, or surmounting difficulties
Culture
& self-esteem
People maintain their self-esteem even with a
low status by valuing things they achieve and comparing themselves to people
with similar positions
Self-Serving Bias
We accept responsibility for good deeds and success more than
for bad deeds and failures. Defensives self-esteem is fragile and egotistic
whereas secure self-esteem is less fragile and less dependent on external
evaluation
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