Personality Theories: Top-Down vs Bottom-Up

Personality Overview

• Personality is an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.
• Personality can also mean "What does it mean to be a person?"

Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Approaches to Personality

• Top-down approaches start with a theory of human nature and draw conclusions about variability among people.
• An example of a top-down approach would be to start with an idea about trust, and then try to group people as securely attached, or not
• Bottom-up approaches, figure out all the ways that people can vary or differ, then it finds which of these differences are most important to help lead us to general conclusions about human nature

Freud and Psychodynamic Theory

• Freud's ideas and terminology are still present in culture though most did not hold up to scientific scrutiny
• The job of society is to channel the drives that are biological in nature, but that are opposed in society
• Eros is the sex drive
• Thanatos is the aggressive drive.
• Freud believed that these drives stay in the unconscious mind.
• Dreams can uncover unconscious memories.
• Saying something one didn't mean to say can reveal true feelings (Freudian slips).
• Drives can lead to physical symptoms.
• Psychoanalysis involves guided talking to bring unconscious impulses to the conscious level.
• Free Association is unfocused talking that may touch on the source of unconscious tension.

Freud's Structures of the Mind

• Id is the completely unconscious part of the brain, which only wants immediate gratification.
• Superego represents the understanding of society's rules and is largely unconscious, this helps cause unconscious tension.
• Ego is largely conscious and balances the Id and the superego to elicit action or behavior in a way that achieves the most pleasure from the Id while following the rules.
• Defense Mechanisms are strategies the ego uses to manage unacceptable impulses, people tend to rely on different mechanisms.
• Repression banishes anxiety arousing thoughts from consciousness (necessary for other defense mechanisms to work)
• Reaction Formation makes unacceptable impulses look like their opposites.

Psychosexual Stages of Development

• Freud believed all development boils down to Eros (the sex drive).
• Oral Phase (toddlers): all pleasure comes through their mouth, like sucking, and eating.
• Anal Phase: Todddlers learn to control their anus and when to go to the bathroom, causing pleasure.
• Phallic Phase (ages 3-6): Id becomes centered in the genitals, leading to experiences of pleasure, and then boys and girls notice the difference.
• Latency Phase (age 6 to puberty): Id is waiting, not expressed.
• Genital Phase (puberty): Sexual interest goes away from parents and towards partners of the same age.

Fixation

• Fixation is getting stuck in one of Freud's stages.
• At the oral stage you can have an oral fixation from weening, and you will still derive pleasure from things in the mouth
• At the anal stage: Potty training, When one becomes too careful about managing their body, they are "anal."
• If the Oedipus or Electra complex isn't resolved, could feel it forever.

Critiques of Freudian Theory

• Modern views are that Freuds ideas were entirely wrong, with few exceptions
• Freud's view that human action boils down to sexual or aggresive motivation is very incomplete
• Freud's theory was based on individuals with disorders and little contact with children.
• Freud did not do empirical research for his ideas and theories.

Humanistic Personality Theory Basics

• Humanistic theory emphasizes that people as conscious individuals shape themselves and their minds
• This opposes the belief that people are driven by unconscious desires or external stimuli
• Humanists instead focused on Abraham Lincoln because of his attempts to “do the right thing” instead of his own desires or accepted societal norms
• Self-actualization is the motivation to grow, change, and fulfill one's potential.
• Important to have self-acceptance, apprecatiting yourself exactly as you are
• Humanists tried to define circumstances in which people accept themselves, they called it The Growth Promoting Climate
• They cited 3 examples, Genuineness or honesty, Empathy or understanding, & Acceptance or regaurd

Critique and Contribution to Humanistic Theory

• Critiques say this theory remains vague by asking "Who is best? Who is worst?"
• This theory may be too optimistic, by being too individual focused
• Strengths include that they focus on human strengths, and that it makes many good assumptions

Bottom-Up Personality Theories

• This approach attempts to analyze the variation in personality first, before attempting to explain it
• This helps observe people for their traits, described by their disposition to think, feel, and act in certain ways
• This helps identify traits through The Lexical Hypothesis:
• This suggests that the Important words for human nature and traits should be reflected in language
• This can define traits, but problems include that there are too many in the english language (18000), which can be reduced to 171 with synonyms, but isnt as helpful
• A tool to help is Factor Analysis, which is is achieved through a statistical technique for identifying items that can be grouped together such as friendly/polite or lazy/disorganized

Five Factor Model

• The five-factor model of personality can be remembered with the acronym OCEAN
• They involve Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism, and they are the best summary of the 171 word trait list
• Openness involves the interest in having new and modern experiences and is associated with more liberal political attitudes.
• Conscientiousness involves being hard-working and careful, which is related to education, job performance, health and longevity
• Extraversion involves having positive emotions, pleasure from social interactions, and more positive life events
• Agreeableness tends to adjust one's own thoughts and behaviors to the social context and is associated with being friendly, warm, kind, and generous
• Neuroticism involves the tendency to have negative emotions and is associated with higher risks for anxiety and negative life events

Five Factors & Human Nature

• It helps observe if humans are learners (openness), planners (conscientiousness), defined by emotions (extraversion & neuroticism), and social (agreeableness).

Social Psychology

• Social psychology is where the majority of behavior depends on behavior of conspecifics (fellow members of the species).
• Humans shape their thoughts and behaviors to be as appropriate as normal around our group of friends and families.
• Conformity is adjusting thoughts or behaviors to gain acceptance of a group.
• Groups have rules of behavior that are followed, called Social Norms
• There is also Informational Conformity: We adjust our beliefs to reflect other's views
• Obedience is adjusting behavior or thinking in response to an authority figure

Norms & Obedience

• Psychology got super interested in Norms, and specifically the norm of obedience after WWII and the holocaust.
• Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiments showed the power of this norm.
• The role of being social in shaping what we think about, how we think about other people, and how we think about ourselves.

Social Cognition

• Correspondence bias is assuming others' behaviors reflect their personal traits, even when behavior is situationally constrained.
• Motivation to have self esteem, which is a social concept
• A factor in social cognotion is how we dont just have general biases about ourselves, but more specific good things about ourselves
• There's also The Self Serving Bias where we attribute bad deeds to the situation, and we desire feedback from ourselves

The Bad of Consequence

• You can measure a persons personality by examining their living spaces, seeing if their room is dirty or clean
• Bad consequences of groups: Will have biases against outgroup members Doesn't mean you “dislike” the outgroup Prejudice: opposition to an outgroup Stereotypes: (mostly) negative beliefs about outgroup Aren't always negative, but ARE always overgeneralized But almost always have negative implications Eg. Asians are good at math It sounds like a good thing, but asians are compared then to calculators, or robots Eg. Women are more sensitive and spiritual than others Tends to believe that they are weak, not tough, and not practical

Defining Over & Implicit Prejudice

• There is Overt Prejudice: consciously experienced and endorsed
• Which is starting to become completely unacceptable in most areas in the world
• And Implicit Prejudice: mostly unconscious and consciously rejected
• Classical conditioning can apply here, we being to associate certain groups with certain feelings and ideas, because society around us does

Managing Good Aspects of Groups

• Norms are unwritten expectations or standards of behavior.
• Prosocial behavior is acting to improve the welfare of others: Helping build a house, donating to charity, signing a petition
• Reciprocity Norm: we help those who help us
• Social Responsibility Norm: we help those who depend on us
• A Group is any possible combination of people, regardless of proximity, organization, and so on

Disorders

• Behavior can be considered disordered if it is atypical, disturbing, maladaptive, or unjustifiable.
• American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is currently in its 5th edition (DSM-V).
• Categories of disorders include Anxiety disorder, Adjustment disorders, Eating disorders, Personality disorders, Mood disorders, Somatoform disorders, Psychotic disorders, Dissociative disorders, Sexual disorders, Impulse-control disorders, Sleep disorders, and Substance disorders.

Common Disorders

• Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder in which the person alternates between depression and mania.
• Mania is a hyperactive, wildly optimistic state.
• Major depressive episode: Mood in which a person, for no apparent reason, experiences two or more weeks of depressed mood, or diminished interest or pleasure in most activities with changes in eaiting, motor activity, diminishing self-worth, or thoughts of death.
• Biological causes: Depression tends to run in families and has a few relations with brain chemicals and hormones.
• Psychological causes: Anxiety disorders = conditions that involve distress, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety

Therapy

• One possible is Psychotherapy, which involves interactions with a trained professional (a therapist) to improve psychological well-being
• A factor includes the extend t which the client or patient believes that they can get better and that the therapist has unconditional positive regard
• Some of the primary approaches include Psychoanalytic therapy, Humanistic therapy, and behavioral therapy
• You can alter disordered behaviors, through using conditioning, operant conditioning, social learning, and cognitive therapy
• Can monitor for harmful thoughts and replace with positive ones

Addiction

• Substance use disorder (SUD) is the Continued use of a substance despite significant substance-related problems, and is typified by Impaired control, Impaired social life, risky use, and Tolerance & withdrawal
• Risk factors involve genetics with specific symptoms ranging
• There are 2 kinds of dependance to note, being the physiological & the psychological

Stress & How to Manage

• Stress is when perceived demands of a situation are greater than one's perceived resources.
• It can be typified through Daily Hassles, Chronic Stresses, or Stressful Life Events
• Stress = Consumption of Time + Energy
• This can be measured through Judgements, Emotions, and the release of The hormones cortisol
• You can reduce through Interpersonal Relations, Exercise, Sleep, and Meditation