Freud & Rogers: Key Concepts

Chapter 10: Personality

• Personality encompasses typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving
• Personality is consistent across time and situations, distinguishes individuals, and influences behavior patterns.

Biological and Evolutionary Approaches to Personality

• Personality is determined by combinations of genes
• Evolutionary theory suggests that personality traits conducive to survival and reproduction are preserved and passed on
• Twin studies highlight the role of genetics and environment in shaping personality
• Twin and adoption studies differentiate the effects of genes, shared environmental factors, and non-shared environmental factors
• Genetics influence personality traits but generally exhibit correlations below 1.0
• Non-shared environmental influences have a significant impact
• Shared environment has minimal influence
• Tellegen et al. found that identical twins raised apart showed considerable personality similarity.
• Certain traits are more heavily influenced by heredity versus others
• Studies caution that specific genes are not the sole determinant of personalities and genes interact with the environment
• Estimates of genetic influence are group-based not individual

Freud's Psychodynamic Approach to Personality

• Behavior is motivated by the unconscious, the part of personality containing memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, drives, and instincts
• Understanding requires exposing unconscious content which is disguised in symbolic meanings
• The Id is the raw, inborn part of personality that reduces tension created by primitive drives
• Drives in the Id are fueled by "psychic energy” called libido, which is a limitless source that constantly puts pressure on the personality.
• The Id operates on the pleasure principle, seeking immediate tension reduction and maximizing satisfaction/pleasure
• The ego develops shortly after birth, balancing id desires with the outside world.
• Operating on the reality principle, the ego maintains safety and integrates the person into society
• The ego is the “executive” of personality, making decisions, controlling actions, and enabling higher-order thinking.
• The superego represents societal rights and wrongs as learned from parents, teachers, etc.
• The superego has two components: the conscience, and the ego-ideal
• The Id and the superego are unrealistic because they do not consider societal realities
• Without restraint, the superego would create perfectionists unable to be flexible
• An unrestrained Id would create a primitive, pleasure-seeking individual
• The ego mediates between the Id and the superego
• The result of these ongoing "battles" creates personality
• Freud proposed 5 psychosexual stages, where children navigate conflicts between societal demands and sexual urges
• Failure to resolve stage conflicts lead to fixations that persist past their developmental period, possibly due to needs being ignored or overindulged.
• Anxiety signals the ego to take action
• Anxiety can arise from realistic anxiety and neurotic anxiety
• In order to deal with anxiety, defense mechanisms are utilized
• Defense mechanisms conceal the source of anxiety from themselves and others
• These mechanisms are adaptive in the short term but can become maladaptive if relied on chronically

Defense Mechanisms

Defense Mechanism Types

• Repression is the primary defense mechanism, pushing unacceptable id impulses into the unconscious and is because acknowledging them would provoke anxiety
• Projection defends against recognizing negative feelings and motivations
• Displacement unleashes emotions on a safer, socially acceptable target
• Rationalization generates reasonable-sounding explanations for unacceptable behaviors or personal failures

The Neo-Freudians

• Jung rejected Freud's emphasis on sexual urges, regarding unconscious urges as a positive force that drives creativity and promotes positive conflict resolution
• He proposed that we have a universal collective unconscious represented in people psychically gifted and creative geniuses
• Carl Jung tied every person's psyche tothe collective unconscious due to their shared heritage
• Archetypes are symbols and character types which seemingly span cultures and eras
• Karen Horney refuted Freud's concept of penis envy, saying women envy men for their independence, success, and freedom
• She suggested what shapes personality is social relationships, especially between children and their parents

Trait Approaches to Understanding Personality

• Trait theory seeks to identify basic traits to describe personality
• Traits consist of consistent characteristics and behaviors
• Individuals possess certain measured traits and the degree which a given trait is held varies
• Factor analysis is a statistical method identifying associations among many variables
• By computing what traits are associated with one another, one can identify the factors that underlie results
• Cattell posited that 16 pairs of traits represented the core of personality and made the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire
• Eysenck used factor analysis to identify patterns of traits
• Personality can be described using just three dimensions: extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism

The Big Five Personality Traits

• Five key factors lie at the center of personality (McCrae and Costa)
• Modern factor analytics identify a similar set of five factors: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism

Learning Approaches

• Personality is learned, external responses
• Thoughts, feelings, and motivations are irrelevant
• Skinner argued that personality is learned behavior patterns
• Responses are similar across situations when reinforcement patterns are similar
• What is learned can be unlearned, personal & societal problems can be improved through learning

Social Cognitive Approaches

• Personality is influenced by thoughts, feelings, expectations, observations and values
• Bandura's observational learning theory, is that people foresee the consequences of certain behaviors
• Examples of Bandura's theory include the Bobo doll studies, and media violence research
• Reciprocal determinism: the environment affects personality, people's behavior and personalities affect the environment
• Bandura emphasizes self-efficacy, the belief in one's capabilities to produce a desired outcome
• High self-efficacy corresponds to higher aspirations, greater persistence, and greater success
• Direct reinforcement and encouragement develop self efficacy

Humanistic Approaches

• People are inherently good which drives the need for higher functioning
• Personality stems from the abilities to change, improve, and be creative
• A state of self-fulfillment where people realize their potential represents need for self-actualization
• Rogers stated positive regard is related to wanting to be loved and respected
• We become increasingly reliant on others values to see eye self's, becoming preoccupied with what they think of us
• placing high value on the opinions of others can lead to conflict between their self-concepts
• Discrepancies between "ideal self" (who we want to be) and "true self" (who we are leads to dissatisfaction
• These issues are driven by conditions of worth
• Unconditional positive regard represents acceptance, no matter a person's behaviour
• Conditional positive regard stems from acceptance on external factors

Measuring Personality

• Phrenology is associating skull shape to one's personality
• Physiognomy: personality traits are detected via one's  facial features
• It has since been falsified but is experiencing a revival
• Projective tests are when a person is shown an ambiguous stimulus and asked how to describe it
  • Rorschach test: consists of showing stimuli and asking one are prompted to describe it
  • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): one makes a story of a of pictures
• The Rorschach test and TAT require particular skill and care to interpret
• Self-Report Measures are used to quantify personality
• It involves asking an individual what they are feeling and thinking
• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) identifies people with psychological challenges
• It requires one to respond true/false or cannot say to a series of statements to assess their mood, their opinions, and their physical health
• There are no rigth or wrong ansers, it involves the interpration of patters
• Behavioural Assessment measures behaviour to describe personality
• it involves being objective to quantify behaviour
• Behaviour is assessed naturalistically vs in a lab
• Provides the nature of particular problems and their frequency
• It objectively determins whether a particular intervention has been successful

Motivation

• Motivation represents factors that direct and energize behaviour
• Motivation has biological, cognitive, and social aspects
• Psychologists seek to explain motives via a variety of approaches, including instinct, drive reduction, arousal, incentive, cognitive, and hierarchy of needs

Instinct Approaches of Motivation

• Instincts consist of what is preprogrammed, biological, and not learned
• The role of instincts in motivation is minimal
• We are born preprogrammed to behaviour for our survival (e.g., seeking food/sexual partners, babies crying or suckling)
  • Instincts channel behaviours

Drive-Reduction Approaches of Motivation

• Behaviour is to reduce internal tension (disruption of equilibrium) caused by unmet biological needs
• Unmet needs “drive” us to reduce the subsequent tension and restore equilibrium
  • This works via negative feedback
• Homeostasis ensures a s that the body maintains a steady internal state
• Deviation stimulates a need to return to an optimal state using feedback
• Involves the utilization of primary drives and secondary drives

Challenges with the Drive-Reduction Approach

• Provides an explanation for how primary drives motivate behavior
• They cannot fully explain behavior in which the goal is to maintain or increase excitement or arousal.
  • What about a thirst for knowledge?
  • How do you explain thrill-seeking behaviours?

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Needs are hierarchical where lower needs must be fulfilled first before higher-er need can be looked for.
• Difficult to falsify, however, a person must first relativelly satsify a lower level need before moving on higher-order ones
• If you starve or fear, it is difficult to focus on relationships or accomplishments.
• Maslow stated people strive for a positive view of the self and without supportive environment self- actualization will not take place
  • Those self-actualized distinguish between values those society imposed

Arousal Approaches

• We try to maintain a level of stimulation by increasing and reducing.
  • if stimulation and activity become too high, we reduce
  • if stimulation and activity are too low, we seek to increase
• Variation exists on optimal arousal levels that individuals seek

Incentive Approaches

• Motivation stems from the desire to obtain valued external goals (incentives)
• Desirable properties of the external stimuli grade for money affection account for a motivation.

Cognitive Approaches

• Motivation is byproduct of thoughts, expectations, and its goals.
• There is intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation
• Intrinsic motivation stems from within
• Extrinsic motivation stems from external need

Challenges with Cognitive Approaches

• When there is motivation from internal sources, are we more likely to persevere?
• Providing rewards may deminish intrinsic motivation
• The cause for why we spend so little time on intrinsicallly valued tasks is unknown

Social Needs

• Need for affiliation: it stems from the need to associate with others
• There is a strong evolutionary compoenet to this
• Bonds are easily formed and we monitor the environment for signs of inclusion
• The social environment is critical to ensure social functioning
• In order to cope with being ostracized with leads to sadness reconnecting is encouraged.

Social Isolation and its Implications

• Being is deadly where it shortens your life by an estimated 15 years
• Biologists that loneliness triggers the release of stress hormones
  • Stress hormones are linked to higher blood pressure levels, decreased immune functioning, and a high cardiovascular risks
• High instances of loneliness are reported amongst young populations
• Many suggest our society is trending toward isolated, distant interpersonal relations
• Social capital represents the relationship aspect that helps you survive a given challenge

Need for Achievement

• The Need to achieve is learned and characterized strive for success
  • Some will seek out high competency situations that can create success or avoid situations they may come across as unlikely
  • Some fear failure

Emotions

• An agreement of it is not had
• Some suggest emotions are phenomenon however they affect cognitive and neurological science
• It encompass both biological and cognitive aspects, so all theories of emotion are not to be taken literally
• There are contradictory statements, some theories seem to falter on their prediction
  • The main functionality of emotion is to Prepare us for action where it forms a connection for our environmental cues, shape our behviour, and help function effectively in social interactions by better relating to others
• Describing in basic range often includes happiness, fear, disgust, sadness
• However many find these definitions vary across cultures
• Expression can be verbal, or written

Expression

• The cross-cultural similiarities between differentiating emotions is strong
  • Ekman was able to confirm 6 fundamental expressions
  • ( happiness, fear, disgust, sadness, surprise, anger)
• However significant differences in how emotions are regulated exists
• There rules for expressions on depending of what kind of culture
• One type of expressive indicator relates to non-verbal leakage in body cue
• In this event we have a spillover due to suppressive behaviour

The Roots of Emotion

• Describing general biological and physiological actions that company them is simple enough, However knowing is not really about explaining them
• Some Theorist state how the bodily reactions from an emotional stimulus is very important Others suggest biological actions are derived from emotional experience

Cannon-Bard and James Langs Theories of Emotions

• According in the James Lang theory, people feel an emotion based a particular action after a physical one It fails to express the complexities , where people can be active wih no feelings
• Cannon-bard countered this, suggesting one had simultaneous interactions
• Hypothalamus plays a more critical function emotional system than the Thalamus

Schachter-Singer's Two-Factor Theory Of Emotion

• A two-pronged approach where one can explain undifferentiated with ambiguous stat with arousal
• To explain the arousal or emotions people can look the stimulus in terms of their cognitive interpretations

Dutton & Aron's Capilano Suspension Bridge Study

• Misattribution can occur where a person's emotions is attributed to a false cause. Dutton and Aron had a attractive female ask people their name across 2 bridges
  • In secure one phone number was more likely to asked but a more wobbly one made others see the woman as a response to their current fear state Modern neuroscience suggests different areas get activated during each sensation

Examine Freudian concepts like ego, superego, and psychosexual stages. Explore Rogerian ideas: ideal self, true self, unconditional positive regard, and conditions of worth. See the impact on self-concept.