Personality Psychology: Understanding Traits and Theories

Personality

• Personality refers to the internal characteristics in thinking, acting, and feeling
• Trait theorists use factor analysis to identify the basic personality traits needed to describe a human's personality
• The Five-Factor Model of personality (OCEAN) consists of:
  • Openness: curious, sensitive, open to new experiences
  • Conscientiousness: responsible, prefer planned activity, require "Need for Achievement", high self-control
  • Extraversion: assertive, seek excitement, sociable, action-oriented
  • Agreeableness: friendly, believe people are trustworthy, emphasize social harmony
  • Neuroticism: anxious, depressed, poor emotion control

Approaches to Personality

• Humanistic Approach (by Maslow):
  • Self-actualization is a human's maximum potential drive, built genetically
  • Emphasizes the importance of freedom and potential for personal growth
  • Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
• Social Cognitive Approach (by Albert Bandura):
  • Studies how cognitive factors can affect personality
  • Emphasizes conscious awareness, belief, goal, and expectation
  • Observational learning, locus of control, and self-efficacy are key processes and factors
• Psychoanalytical Approach (by Sigmund Freud):
  • Explains personality problems and psychological disorders with childhood experiences, unconscious motives, and conflicts
  • Solves sexual and aggressive desires
  • Uses psychoanalytical theory on treating patients
  • Three parts of personality: Id, Ego, and Superego

Emotions

• Emotions have three components:
  • Physical component: resulted from the autonomic nervous system, e.g., heart rate, breathing rate, sweating
  • Behavioral component: the product of motor neurons, e.g., facial expressions, gestures
  • Cognitive component: the cognitive appraisal of the situation, identifies the type of emotion
• Cultural and gender differences in emotions:
  • Western cultures: individualism, encourage the expression of emotions
  • Asian cultures: collectivism, discourage the expression of anger
  • Boys: act as protectors and strong, encourage to express anger and hostility
  • Girls: tender and emotional, encourage to express sadness, shame, and guilt

Theories of Emotions

• James-Lange Theory of Emotions: the perception of bodily arousal due to the stimulus provides the feeling aspect of emotions
• Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotions: the activation of the thalamus due to the stimulus provides the emotional feelings and bodily arousal simultaneously
• Schachter's Cognitive Theory of Emotions: the perception of the bodily arousal according to the past experience and situational cue due to the stimulus provides the emotional feelings and behavioral response
• Model of Emotion (by Lazarus): the facial expressions and emotional feelings do not contradict each other

Motivation

• Motivation is the set of internal and external factors that energize our behavior and lead us to our goals
• Model of motivation: refers to the process that initiates, sustains, and directs activities
• Drive-Reduction Theory: the need produces drive, drive produces motivated behaviors which obtain the goal to eliminate the need
• Incentive Theory: pulled by incentives, e.g., good grades
• Arousal Theory: our behavior is motivated to obtain a certain level of arousal
• Extrinsic motivation: motivated by external reinforcement, e.g., good grades, good income
• Intrinsic motivation: motivated by self-enhancement and personal growth, e.g., better knowledge

Problem-Solving

• Problem: refers to when people do not know how to reach a goal when there is a goal
• Problem-solving steps:
  1. Interpreting the problem
  2. Trying to solve the problem
• Blocks in solving problems:
  • Interpretation blocks: fixation, functional fixedness
  • Strategy blocks: over-reliance on past experience and previously successful solving strategy
• Problem-solving strategies:
  • Algorithm: step-by-step solving method that guarantees a correct answer
  • Heuristic: relies on past experience in solving similar questions, e.g., working back heuristic, means-ends analysis heuristic

Intelligence

• Intelligence refers to the problem-solving skills and cognitive abilities
• Elements of a good test in psychology:
  1. Standardization
  2. Reliability
  3. Validity
• Theory of intelligence:
  • Cattell and Horn: fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence
  • Robert Sternburg: analytical intelligence, practical intelligence, creative intelligence
  • Nature VS Nurture: both nature and nurture are important in determining our intelligence

Stress

• Stress: refers to the psychological and physical body response to a changing condition, with both positive and negative events
• Eustress: positive view towards stress, serves as challenges and positive motivation
• Distress: negative view towards stress, anxious and worried
• Stressor: refers to stressful stimuli and situations
• Reaction to stress:
  • Short-term stress: "fight or flight response", physical response
  • Long-term stress: General Adaptation Syndrome, behavioral response, emotional response, psychological response

Sources of Stress

• Environmental factors: illness, bad grades, financial burden
• Psychological factors: failure, unrealistic goals
• Conflicts: approach-approach conflicts, avoidance-avoidance conflicts, approach-avoidance conflicts
• Change: pressure, expectations, demand

Personality and Stress-Coping

• Type A personality: more easy to get angry, competitive, perfectionist, higher chance to get cardiovascular disease
• Type B personality: more relaxed
• Hardiness personality: takes control of their lives, treats stressors as challenges, has a positive view towards stress and goal, makes commitment

Influencing Human Behavior

• Conformity: refers to the change in behavior that is caused by other people or groups
• Compliance: refers to a change in behavior that is requested by others, for good social bonds
• Obedience: refers to a change in behavior that is ordered by the authority directly

Group Influences

• Social facilitation: individuals tend to perform better in the presence of other people

• Social loafing: people tend to make less effort to achieve their goal when working in a group

• Deindividuation: people lose their sense of self-awareness and perform undesirable and antisocial behavior when in a group

• Groupthink: when group members accept the group consensus without critical thinking, leading to poor decision-making

• Group polarization: when a group of like-minded people strengthen each other's opinions and these opinions become more extreme as they are discussed### Cultural Dimensions

• Individualism vs Collectivism: individualism emphasizes personal choices and honest sharing of feelings, while collectivism values long-term group loyalty and unquestioning conformity.

• Masculinity vs Femininity: masculine cultures value competitiveness, assertiveness, and quantity of life, while feminine cultures value relationships and quality of life.

• Long-term Orientation vs Short-term Orientation: long-term orientation focuses on future behaviors, while short-term orientation focuses on present and past behaviors.

• Interdependent vs Independent: independent self-construal focuses on the self, while interdependent self-construal focuses on others and the group.

Communication in Culture

• Non-verbal Communication: includes physical distance, proximity, kinesics (facial expressions, gestures, body movements, eye contact), and paralanguage (pitch, volume, and vocally-produced sounds).
• High-Context Communication: relies on oral communication with gestures, silence, internal rules, and indirect communication.
• Low-Context Communication: relies on speech, clear rules, and direct expression.
• Direct Communication: conveys a very direct message.
• Indirect Communication: emphasizes harmonious relationships.

Reaction to Cultural Differences

• Distance: avoiding things that feel different, through physical, emotional, and intellectual distancing.
• Denial: minimizing the importance of unfamiliar cultures and ignoring differences.
• Defensiveness: defending oneself in situations where one feels threatened.
• Devaluing: feeling superiority over other cultures.
• Discovery: seeking greater similarity in cultural differences.

Prejudice and Discrimination

• Prejudice: negative attitudes towards a group of people, including prejudicial attitudes, sexism, and racism.
• Cognitive Root of Prejudice: simplifying the world, overestimating similarities, paying attention to the majority, and category-based judgment.
• Emotional Root of Prejudice: finding a scapegoat for frustration.
• Social Root of Prejudice: ingroup (wealthy and powerful people) vs outgroup (jobless people).
• Discrimination: prejudiced attitudes turned into behavior.

Stereotypes and Categorization

• Stereotype: cognitive categorization of a group of people, which can accurately reflect the norm or apply the norm without allowing variation.
• Categorization: quickly processing and organizing information about a group, which can help cross-cultural psychology but can also create biased judgment and unfriendly behaviors.

Reducing Prejudice

• Reflecting on one's own biases.
• Contact with other groups to dispel stereotypes.
• Learning about other cultures to increase empathy and understanding.
• Allport's conditions for positive intergroup contact: equal status, cooperative work, getting to know each other, and authority support.
• 4 values to maintain integration: equality, acceptance, diversity, and harmony.