Transcript Unit 10 - Our Lady of Lourdes High School

Unit 10
Personality
Personality
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A person’s characteristic pattern of
thinking, feeling and acting
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2 major theories to why we develop our
personalities
• Freud's psychoanalytic approach
• Humanistic approach
Freud
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One of the most influential and most
known psychologists
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Inquisitive as a youth, searched for
answers to ailments with unknown
causes as a doctor
Psychoanalytic approach
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Free association
• Patients relaxing and just saying whatever
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comes into their minds, no matter how trivial
or embarrassing
Mental dominoes
• The mind is mostly hidden
• Our conscious awareness is only what we can see
• There is a vast amount that we cannot see
• Like an iceberg
Psychoanalytic approach
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Preconscious
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Repression
• Area where we can store temporarily
• What we do with our thoughts and desires
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that we cannot act out
They are forcibly blocked
We may not be consciously aware of them all
the time
Psychoanalytic approach
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Free associations would let some of
these repressed emotions out and may
answer some of the issues
• Freudian slips
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Dreams are also important
• Manifest content – what we can remember, is
a censored expression of what we really want
(the latent content)
Personality structure
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Personality comes from conflicts
between restraint and impulse
• Controlling our aggressive, pleasure seeking
biological urges
• How can we get pleasure from these urges
without feeling guilt or being punished?
Three interacting systems
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Id – unconscious psychic energy that is
constantly pushing us to fulfill basic
drives
• Reproduction, survival, and aggression
• Operates on the pleasure principle
• Immediate gratification
• Newborns
• Drug abusers
Three interacting systems
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Ego – executive part of the mind
• Acts as a mediator
• Operates on the reality principle
• How can I get what I want in a realistic way
• Contains our partly conscious perceptions,
thoughts, judgments, and memories
Three interacting systems
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Superego –emerges around 4 or 5
• The moral compass
• Consider not only the real, but the ideal
• How should we behave?
• Strives for perfection
• In direct contrast with the id
• Ego handles the battle
Personality development
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Psychosexual stages
• The id will focus on different areas as children
grow
• Pleasure will be derived from different
erogenous zones
Psychosexual Stages
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Oral – 0 to 18 mos
• Mouth
• Biting, sucking, chewing
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Anal - 18-36 mos
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Phallic – 3-6 yrs
• Toilet training
• Oedipus complex
• Electra complex
Psychosexual Stages
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Latency – 6 to puberty
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Genital – puberty onward
• Dormant sexual feelings
• Maturation of sexual interests
Personality
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Identification
• Threatening feelings get repressed and
•
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behavior is learned through an identification
process
Children gain many of their parents values in
their superegos
Unresolved conflicts can lead to fixation
• Being stuck in one pleasure seeking stage
Freud’s defense mechanisms
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Tactics used to reduce or redirect anxiety by
distorting reality
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1. Repression – banishing anxiety causing things to
the unconscious
• Underlies all others
• Sometimes slips
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2. Regression – retreating to a more child like state
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3. Reaction formation – taking unacceptable
impulses and making them the opposite
• Homesickness in college?
• Thinking “I hate Dad” but saying “I love Dad”
Freud’s defense mechanisms
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4. Projection – disguising impulses by
assigning them to someone else
•
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“The thief thinks everyone else is a thief”
5. Rationalization – generating explanations
to hide the real cause
• Drinking to be sociable
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6. Displacement – diverting attention to an
object that is more acceptable
• Taking frustration out on someone other than who
you are angry at
Freud’s defense mechanisms
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7. Sublimation – taking something
unacceptable and using it as motivation
to create something that is
• da Vinci – Mona Lisa and his mother
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8. Denial – protecting someone from a
painful event
• Denying child’s misconduct
Neo Freudians
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Id Ego and Superego
Unconscious
Defense mechanisms
• All accepted but…
• More importance placed on conscious mind
• Sex and aggression aren’t all consuming
motivations
Adler and Horney
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Childhood is important
• But social, not sexual, tensions are more
important to identity formation
• Adler’s Inferiority complex
• Horney – women aren’t as weak as Freud
•
thought, jealous of power in society
Carl Jung – collective unconscious
(evolutionary psy?)
Testing Personality
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Projective tests
• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
• Making up stories about ambiguous pictures
• Rorschach inkblot test
• Describe what you see
Evaluating Psychoanalytic
Perspective
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Research today contradicts much of
what Freud said
Overestimates parents involvement and
underestimates peer influence
• Infant amnesia
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Repression
• We do try to neglect painful memories but it
has yet to be proven
• People relive their worst memories
The modern unconscious mind
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Time to abandon Freud’s unconscious mind?
Unconscious also involves
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Schemas that automatically control interpretations
Split brain functionality (severed corpus callosum)
Parallel processing – vision and thinking
Instant emotion
Not so spontaneous
However
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False Consensus how much we think others agree with us
Terror management theory – awareness of our own
mortality
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We behave differently when faced with death
Major problems with Freud
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Untestable
After the fact explanations
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Cant predict how others will be affected
Never really meant to do those things
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Looking back cant predict things, it can help explain
Important studies done on unconscious, sexuality,
defense mechanisms
Humanistic POV
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Rather than looking at individuals as
“sick”, how do healthy people strive for
self realization?
• Using people’s self reported feelings and
experiences
Maslow
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Hierarchy
• Self Actualization – 2nd from the top
• Need to realize our fullest potential
• Self Transcendence – the top
• Looking for meaning beyond yourself
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Studied healthy, creative people
• Lincoln, Jefferson, E Roosevelt
Carl Rogers
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Person Centered Perspective
• People are generally good
• “We are all acorns”
• We can all grow and reach fulfillment as long
as we are raised with three things
• Genuineness – being open with our feelings
• Acceptance – having unconditional positive regard
(completely accepting another person)
• Empathy – sharing our feelings and mirroring them
Self Concept
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All the thoughts and feelings we have in
response to the question “Who am I?”
• If it’s a positive answer – view the world more
positively
• If its negative – we fall short of where we feel
we should be in our lives
Assessing the self
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Questionnaires –
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Rogers – describe how you actually are and how you
would like to be
• The closer these two were, the more positive outlook
there was
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Can you get the answers you want from a
standardized test?
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Many feel conversation is a better method than filling
in bubbles
Evaluating Humanistic
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Maslow and Rogers have had a huge
impact on education, childrearing and
parenting, management
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Influenced much of popular psychology
• Is a positive self concept important to
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happiness and success?
Are people basically good and capable of self
improvement?
Criticisms
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Concepts are too vague and subjective
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Too naïve?
• Is there a human capacity for evil?
• Terrorism
• Nuclear War
• Every thing will work out
• Its hopeless, why bother to try
Trait Perspective
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There are also stable patterns of
behavior that can be used to define
personality
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Fundamental traits
• Less concerned with explaining traits, but
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rather describing them
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• Thinking type vs feeling type
Exploring traits
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We are each a complex group of multiple
traits
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Factor analysis
• Statistics used to determine traits – answering
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questions that are related, but worded
differently
Eysenck – extra/introverted
emotionally stable/unstable
Exploring traits
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Biology
• Brain activity may shape personality
• Extraverts tend to need more brain stimulation
• Genes
• Breeding animals can make them more
intra/extraverted or more passive or aggressive
• Silver Foxes
Testing Traits
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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Test
(MMPI)
• Originally developed to search for disorders,
can be used to get an idea of a personality
characteristic
• Scored objectively, not subjectively
• Problems?
The Big 5
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CANOE
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Conscientiousness
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Agreeableness
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Neuroticism
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Openness
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Extraversion
• Careful or careless
• Helpful or uncooperative
• Calm or anxious
• Imaginative or practical
• Affectionate or reserved
The Big 5
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Generally accepted by psychologists
today
Stay stable through life
Almost half the time are inheritable
Can be used to predict other traits
• Conscientious do better in school
• Extraverted tend to be more night owls
Evaluating Trait Perspective
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Its more than just traits
• Different environments can bring out different
traits
• Traits do stabilize over time, but behaviors
can change
• People don’t act with predictable constancy all the
time
• But you can predict what they will do on average
Judging Personality
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Person Situation controversy
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Traits and behaviors don’t have to be the same
Look at the average across time
Music Preferences
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Asking about what type of music someone likes says a lot about their
personality
Facebook pages
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How can you present yourself here?
Bedrooms and offices
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Cleanliness or messy can also say quite a bit
Email
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A person’s writing voice – how they present info when writing
Social Cognitive Perspective
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Albert Bandura
• Behavior is influenced by the interaction
between peoples traits and their social
context
• We learn by observing others and modeling our
behavior after theirs
• Reciprocal determinism
• Influences are mutual
• Behavior, cognition, and environment all interact
Reciprocal determinism
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Different people choose different environments
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The environment you choose to be in shapes your
behavior
Personality shapes how we interact and react
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Anxious people react to things differently and see the
world differently
Personalities help create situations to which
we react
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How we view and treat people influences how they
treat us
Personal Control
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How much can you control your
environment?
• External Locus of Control
• Outside forces determine our fate
• Learned helplessness
• Internal Locus of Control
• We control our own destiny
• Generally achieve more in school
• Better at dealing with stress
Optimism vs Pessimism
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Optimists
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Too Optimistic?
• Enjoy better health
• Better relationships
• Fear of failure is a good thing (pessimism to a
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degree)
Can blind us to real risk
Social Cognitive Evaluation
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Focuses too much on the here and now
• Doesn’t take into account enough information
about individuals
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Our biological traits matter more than
may be realized
Exploring the Self
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Self – the center of personality
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Possible selves
• Organizer of thoughts, feelings and actions
• Thinking about all the people we could be
• Can motivate us to do great things
Self Esteem
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Feelings of self worth
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Spotlight effect
• Overestimating others thoughts about what
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they are thinking about you
Thinking that every one is looking at you
Benefits of self esteem
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People who feel good about themselves live
happier lives
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Can be used to predict employment and salary later
on in life
Feeling well follows doing well?
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Side effect?
Negative self feelings cause more judgmental
feelings of others
Self serving bias
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Readiness to perceive ourselves as
favorable
• People accept responsibility for good deeds
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more than bad, and success instead of failure
Most people see themselves as better than
average
All of us have inferiority complexes?
• Quick to defend our actions as right
Problems with self serving bias
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What about those who feel worthless?
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Self directed put downs are subtly
strategic
• No one likes me – you haven’t met everyone
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(can be reassuring)
Prepare us for possible failure
Looks at who they were not who they are
• At 18 I was a jerk, I am much more sensitive today
Culture and the Self
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Individualism – priority given to your own
goals over the group
• Sense of “me”
• Move in and out of groups easily
• More loneliness/divorce/stress
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Collectivism – group over self
• Deeper more stable attachments
• Avoiding direct confrontation