What is Personality?
A pattern of permanent traits or characteristics that lead to some consistency in behaviour
What is a Trait?
Stable quality that characterizes one person from another
Loyal, adventurous, loving
What are the 3 Broad Factors of personality? (GSN)
What things influence personality
- Genetic Factors: Linked to our parents (number 1 role)
- Shared Environment Factors: Experiences that make people in the same family more alike (Plays little role)
- Non-shared Environment Factors: Experiences that make people in the same family less alike
2 Notes of Caution
- Genes code for proteins, NOT behaviour
2. Genes have indirect influence on traits
Freud’s 3 levels to Mental Life (CPU)
- Consciousness: Experiences we are aware of
- Preconscious: Experiences we aren’t currently aware of but can be
- Unconscious: Experiences beyond realm of awareness
Freud’s 3 Structures of the mind (IES) (ICEBERG)
- ID: The source of a persons instinct energy used through the pleasure principle.
- EGO: Seeks to satisfy a persons instinct in accordance to reality.
- SUPEREGO: Provides an ego ideal and conscience.
5 Psychosexual Stages of development (OAPLG)
- Oral (birth to 2)
- Mouth is the primary pleasure centre
- fixation leads to smoking, overeating, biting. - Anal (2-3)
- Learning to control bowels/bladder (immediate satisfaction)
- Learn how to be independent
- fixation leads to lack of order/too much (OCD) - Phallic (4-7)
- Want attachment with the opposite sex parent.
- See the same sex parent as a rival. Resolved when they identify with same sex parent. - Latency (7-puberty)
- friends, school become focus - Genital (Puberty on)
- Sexual urges reawaken and relationships begin.
* Failure to get thru these stages may lead to conflict in childhood.
9 Defence Mechanisms (RRRRDDPFS)
- Protects ego from feeling anxiety
1. Repression: Putting unwanted memories/feelings into unconscious.
2. Rationalization: Making bad behaviours sound right.
3. Reaction Formation: Acting opposite of their anxiety feelings.
4. Regression: Moving back to earlier stage of development.
5. Denial: Refuse to accept source of anxiety/reality.
6. Displacement: Diverts impulses for one thing onto another.
7. Projection: People attribute their undesirable traits onto others.
8. Fixation: Attachment to something bad/unhealthy.
9. Sublimation: Redirecting bad impulses into good goals.
2 Key Ways Neo-Freudians differed from Freud?
- Focused on social drives over sexuality.
2. More optimistic about personal growth.
5 Key things about Alfred Adler (PAOTC)
- People are motivated by feelings of inferiority which in turn leads to strive for superiority(unhealthy) or success(healthy)
- We adopt a style of life that leads to superiority.
- unique unconscious way of responding to/avoiding main task of living. - Overcompensating superiority can lead to domination(Hitler).
- The main goal is to better ourselves
- Creative power is the ability to shape our personality.
4 Key things about Carl Jung (PCAM)
- People are motivated to attain self actualization.
- Collective unconscious is an ancestral storehouse of ideas, memories, etc, that are passed down.
- Archetypes are inherited images/ideas that merge in art, religion and dreams (self, shadow, anima)
- Mandala represents the symbol of self (circle)
4 Behaviourist beliefs about personality (PPPF)
- Personality is learned
- Personalities are bundles of habits acquired by conditioning.
- Personality is under control of genetics
- Free will is an illusion.
Difference between freud and skinner view on behaviour?
Freud believed the cause of behaviour was inside us
Skinner believed the cause of behaviour was external and thinking plays no role.
What is the Humanistic Theory?
People are motivated to achieve personal goals by internal forces (Belief in free will)
-Rogers and Maslow
Carl Rogers 3 assumptions about behaviour? (BPH)
- Behaviour is goal directed
- People have the potential for growth
- How individuals see the world determines behaviour
Rogers 3 Parts of Self Theory (EUC)
- Empathy: accurate perception of ones feelings
- Unconditional Positive Regard: Complete acceptance from someone
- Congruence: When the other person is psychologically healthy.
= Fully Functioning Person
Albert Bandura and Self-Efficacy
-Canadian Psychologist
Belief/unbelief that a person can successfully engage in and execute a specific behaviour
What are trait types?
Personality categories in which broad collections of traits are loosely tied together.
Gordon Allport’s Theory (CCS) + Personal Disposition
Each individual has a unique set of traits.
- Cardinal: Life revolves around a dominant trait.(clergy)
- Central: Qualities of a persons daily interactions.(5-10)
- Secondary: Characteristics shown in specific situations.(easily changed)
Hans Eyesncks Factor Theory (EI,NS,PS)
- Extraversion - Introversion
- Neuroticism - Stability
- Psychoticism - Superego Function
The Five Factor/Big Five model of personality (OCEAN)
Developed by McCrae and Costa
- Openness to experience: creative/cautious
- Conscientiousness-undirectedness: reliable/unreliable
- Extroversion-Introversion: outgoing/isolated
- Agreeableness-antaganism: compassionate/challenging
- Neuroticism-stability: Sensitive/resilient
What is an Assessment?
Evaluation of individual differences through tests, interviews and observing physiological processes.
What is the MMPI-2? 4 things
- Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 2nd edition
- 567 true/false items
- Used to detect mental disorders using 10 scales
- Can be misused, redundant, not used for formal diagnosis
What is the NEO-PI-R?
- NEO-Personality Inventory Revised
- Uses the Big Five Factor Model and six traits related to each of them
