have 11 questions done by tmm from a psychology assignment
Personality Psychology
Part 1
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Personality
Investigating who you are
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What makes/made you who you are.
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Overview
What is personality?
Past Theoretical Approaches
Psychodynamic Approach
Humanists
Current Theoretical Approaches
Trait Approach
Social-Cognitive Approach
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Personality, defined
An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
Relatively stable across time and place.
Consistent ways in which one person’s behavior differs from the behavior of another.
Personality is unique to the individual.
The inner psychological systems that explain these patterns
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Elements of Personality Theories
Personality structures: those elements of personality that remain consistent over significant periods of time.
Between-person variability: variability across people (how are you different from your class mates)
Personality processes: Individuals’ distinctive patterns of change in psychological experiences and behavior that occur from one moment to the next.
Within-person variability: variability in one person’s personality (how are you different across time and situations)
Assessment
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Psychodynamic Approach
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Psychodynamic Approach
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
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Psychodynamic Approach
Emphasizes:
Unconscious determinants of behavior
Sexual & aggressive instinctual drives
Early childhood experience
Does not emphasize:
Systematically testing the theory
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Psychodynamic Approach: Structure
Id
Present from birth
Unconscious psychic energy
Irrational
Strives to satisfy basic sexual & aggressive desires
Operates on the pleasure principle – immediate gratification of all urges
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Psychodynamic Approach: Structure
Ego
Develops over time
Partly conscious
Rational
Acts as a mediator between id and the world.
Ruled by the reality principle
The capacity to postpone gratification
Seeks to gratify the id’s impulses in realistic ways
If no acceptable compromise to satisfy an impulse, ego can repress the impulse
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Superego
Develops as we internalize society’s rules
Partly conscious
Our conscience –standards for what is right or wrong
Self-evaluative, moralistic
If you fail to live up to your standards, imposes feelings of inferiority, guilt, shame, self-doubt, and anxiety
Psychodynamic Approach: Structure
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Psychodynamic Approach: Structure
Personality structures operate at different levels:
Conscious
Things you’re aware of.
Preconscious
Things that you’re unaware of but can easily be brought to the surface.
Unconscious
Things you are unaware of and generally cannot become aware of even if you wanted to
Reservoir of all the unacceptable thoughts, feelings, wishes, and drives you have.
Can be revealed in dreams and Freudian slips of the tongue
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Psychodynamic Approach: Process
Defense Mechanisms: ways for the ego to protect itself from anxiety by distorting reality.
Block anxiety-provoking ideas
Distort anxiety-provoking ideas
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Defense Mechanisms
Repression: the person refuses to consciously remember a threatening or unacceptable event, instead pushing those events into the unconscious mind
Denial: the person refuses to acknowledge or recognize a threatening situation
Displacement: redirecting feelings from a threatening target to a less threatening one
Rationalization: the person invents acceptable excuses for unacceptable behavior
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Defense Mechanisms
Projection: unacceptable or threatening impulses or feelings a person has are seen as originating with someone else, usually the target of the impulses or feelings
Reaction formation: the person forms an emotional or behavioral reaction opposite to the way he or she really feels in order to keep those true feelings hidden from self and others
Regression: the person falls back on childlike patterns of responding in reaction to stressful situations
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Defense Mechanisms
Compensation (substitution): the person makes up for deficiencies in one area by becoming superior in another area
Sublimation: channeling socially unacceptable impulses and urges into socially acceptable behavior
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Defense mechanisms, examples
| Denial: refusal to recognize or acknowledge a threatening situation. | Pat is an alcoholic who denies being an alcoholic. |
| Repression: “pushing” threatening or conflicting events or situations out of conscious memory. | Regan, who was sexually abused as a child, cannot remember the abuse at all. |
| Rationalization: making up acceptable excuses for unacceptable behavior. | “if I don’t have breakfast, I can have that piece of cake later on without hurting my diet.” |
| Projection: placing one’s own unacceptable thoughts onto others, as if the thoughts belonged to them and not to oneself. | Charlotte is attracted to her sister’s husband but denies this and believes the husband is attracted to her. |
| Reaction formation: forming an emotional reaction or attitude that is the opposite of one’s threatening or unacceptable actual thoughts. | Charley is unconsciously attracted to Sean but outwardly voices an extreme hatred of homosexuals. |
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Defense mechanisms, examples
| Displacement: expressing feelings that would be threatening if directed at the real target onto a less threatening substitute target. | Sandra gets reprimanded by her boss and goes home to angrily pick a fight with her husband. |
| Regression: falling back on childlike patterns as a way of coping with stressful situations. | Four-year-old Blaine starts wetting his bed after his parents bring home a new baby. |
| Compensation (substitution): trying to make up for areas in which a lack is perceived by becoming superior in some other area. | Ethan is not good at athletics, so he puts all of his energies into becoming an academic scholar. |
| Sublimation: turning socially unacceptable urges into socially acceptable behavior. | Ryder, who is very aggressive, becomes a mixed martial arts fighter. |
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Psychodynamic Approach: Assessment
Free association: psychologists encourage people to let their thoughts flow freely and say whatever comes to mind
Projective test: assessment tool in which test items are ambiguous and psychologists are interested in how test takers interpret the ambiguity.
Rorschach inkblot test
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Rorschach Inkblot Test
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Freud was correct about…
The idea that much of mental life is unconscious
Childhood experiences can influence our adult behavior
Individual differences in self-regulation
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Freud’s Theory Challenged
Inadequacy of evidence
Generalizability?
Aspects of theory are unsupported
Not scientifically testable
Lacked the tools to precisely and objectively measure the structures of the personality
Overemphasized sex
Sexist
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Humanistic Approach
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Humanists
Humans are innately good.
Emphasized personal growth, and the process of moving toward a meaningful life and psychological health.
Personality is based on the individual’s conscious feelings/beliefs about the self and the world.
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Humanists
Abraham Maslow
Self-actualization is the realization of one's true intellectual and emotional potential
We can only satisfy higher needs once the lower needs have been met.
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Humanists: Maslow
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Humanists: Carl Rogers
Structure
Focused on the self-concept
The “Actual” and “Ideal” selves
People strive for congruence: When our concept matches our ideal self.
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Humanists: Carl Rogers
Assessment
Q-sort: compares the actual self to the ideal self
Actual Self
Ideal Self
Incongruent
The actual self is different from the ideal self
There is only a little overlap
Self-actualization would be difficult
Actual Self
Ideal Self
Congruent
The actual self is similar to the ideal self
There more overlap
This person can achieve self-actualization
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Humanists: Carl Rogers
Process
Self-actualization: a motivation to realize one's inner potential
Condition of worth: A behavioral requirement imposed by others, such as parents, as a condition for being fully valued, loved, and respected.
People should work toward unconditional positive regard.
Seeing someone as they actually are, while accepting and giving positive regard without conditions or strings attached
This also forms the basis for Roger’s therapy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0neRQzudzw
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Humanists
Issues with the Humanist approach
Not comprehensive enough
Biological aspect of personality: individual differences in personality that may be inherited and evident early in life
However, it opened to the door to the study of “positive psychology” and human flourishing
Previous theories focus on treating disorders and human suffering.
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