Personality PDF

Personality: "The more or less STABLE, INTERNAL factors that make one person's behaviour CONSISTENT from one time to another and DIFFERENT from the behaviour other people would manifest in comparable situations" Individualistic cultures vs Collectivistic cultures Individual: Tend to conceive of p...

Personality: "The more or less STABLE, INTERNAL factors that make one person's behaviour CONSISTENT from one time to another and DIFFERENT from the behaviour other people would manifest in comparable situations" Individualistic cultures vs Collectivistic cultures Individual: Tend to conceive of people as self-directed and autonomous, and they tend to prioritize independence and uniqueness as cultural values (Personality is stable and people focus more on the self and on personality characteristics, ( I am an introvert, I am open to new experiences) Collectivistic cultures- Tend to see people as connected with others and embedded in a broader social context- as such, they tend to emphasize interdepended, family, relationships, and social conformity. ­( Personality is flexible and described according to social expectations, people describe themselves in terms of social roles ( I am a brother, I am a nurse ) Reliability vs Validity Reliability: Refers to the extent to which the personality assessment produces consistent results across various situations over time Validity: Refers to which a test is truly assessing particular aspects of personality Advantages Vs Disadvantages Advantage: It is assumed that you are the expert about your own life, thoughts, behaviors and feelings Disadvantages: very often we want to come across as social desirable individuals to appear in a better light either intentionally and unintentionally Bogus pipeline: technique, participants who thought that they were attached to a lie detector, described themselves less defensively whilst answering a personality questionnaire then during a normal condition Theories of Personality - Freud's psychoanalytic approach - Trait theories - Social cognitive theory Freud's Psychoanalytic approach The **unconscious** in Freud's view is like a reservoir of thoughts, wishes, feelings, memories, that are hidden from awareness because they feel unacceptable **Personality** develops from the efforts of our **ego,** our rational self, to resolve tension between out **id** based in biological drives and the Freud's psychoanalytic approach Trait theories Social cognitive the **superego**, society's rules and constraints. The mind is mostly below the surface of conscious awareness; it is mostly unconscious. Although Freud's psychoanalytic theory places a lot of importance on nature and human beings' innate instincts, it also highlights the importance of the environment (nurture), particularly the impact of the relationship with one's parents. » He believed that events that occur in our childhood, especially with our parents, and the way we interpret them will have a significant impact on who we become as adults: they form our personality. Significant experiences and our interpretations of them will be stored in our consciousness. The unconscious is the biggest part of our consciousness which, like a cauldron attempts to relieve that energy when the material inside is 'bubbling up'. This usually leads a person to experience anxiety. **ID THE EGO AND THE SUPEREGO** The id is the part of our personality, driven to satisfy basic biological drives. The sexual or biological energy resulting from the id is called the libido. The more 'gratified' the libido is, the more pleasure the person feels; the more frustrated the libido is, the more tension, the person experiences (Greem, Lewis & Willerton, 2015). The id is driven by the pleasure principle. It is the oldest part of our personality, with us since birth. Example: A test is coming up. The id may say something like: "You've been wanting to watch the new season of this series for a long time. Watch it! Don't study now". **The superego** The superego develops around the ages of 4 or 5. It is like a conscience, making us feel bad when we think of or actually disobey social rules. It develops as a result of rules that parents and significant people teach us, which we later unconsciously adopt as our own. It also predicts a rigid ideal of our 'self' in terms of good behaviour and punishes us with bad thoughts and feelings when we neglect this ideal. It follows the morality principle. Example: The superego would say "you must study all night. You cannot watch anything until the test it over. Only bad students would waste time" **The Ego** The ego develops when we are about 2-years old and we realise that, although we are autonomous, we have to fit in a social context. This means that we cannot always get what gives us pleasure. In this way, the ego mediates between the demands of the id and the pressures of external reality (later becoming the superego). It follows the reality principle. Example: The ego would say 'study now, whilst you have enough energy. Then you watch an episode whilst you have a break' Does the ego always manage to strike a balance between the ego and the superego? No. Sometimes, the ego and superego are too strong for the ego. According to Freud, when this happens, people experience defense mechanisms. **Defense Mechanisms** » Defense mechanisms are unconscious strategies, used by the ego, to defend against the anxiety that someone experiences when the ego does not manage to mediate successfully between the id and the superego. According to Freud, in such cases, the individual's ego develops these strategies that stop him or her from becoming consciously aware of any thoughts or feelings related to the traumatic situation (Cardwell & Flanagan, 2015). Psychosexual stages » According to Freud, psychological development in childhood takes place in a series of fixed stages, which he calls the psychosexual stages: as a person grows physically certain areas of their body become important sources of potential frustration, pleasure or both. » Each stage represents the fixation of libido (sexual drives or instincts) on a different area of the body. » People feel shame about these needs and can get fixated at one stage, remaining stuck in that phase and never resolving the dilemmas of a particular stage. » Freud considered the first 3 to be crucial for the development of personality. » If children receive too much or too little gratification in any of these stages, they are at risk of fixation (arrest in development). Therefore, they may need help  **Oral stage: (0-18 months)** » In the first stage of personality development, gratification is hypothesised to be achieved primarily through oral activities (the libido is centered in a baby's mouth). » At this stage in life everything is oral, or mouth orientated, such as sucking, biting and breast-feeding. » The baby is believed to get a lot of satisfaction (gratification) from putting all sorts of things in its mouth to satisfy libido, and thus the demands of the id. » Freud believed that fixation at the oral stage can stem from weaning that is too early or too late and that this may result in adult characteristics ranging from overeating or childlike dependence (late weaning) to the use of "biting" sarcasm (early weaning). **The Anal Stage ( 18 months to 3.5 years)** » The second stage of psychosexual development -- the child's ego develops to cope with parental demands for socially appropriate behaviour. » Freud believed that this type of conflict tends to come to full force in potty training. » The child is now fully aware that they are a person in their own right and that their wishes can bring them into conflict with the demands of the outside world (i.e. their ego has developed). » The nature of this first conflict with authority can determine the child\'s future relationship with all forms of authority. » Early or harsh potty training can lead to the child becoming an anal-retentive personality who hates mess, is obsessively tidy, punctual and respectful of authority. This is all related to pleasure derived from holding on to their feces when toddlers. » The anal expulsive, on the other hand, underwent a liberal toilet-training regime during the anal stage. In adulthood the anal expulsive is the person who is disorganized, messy, careless and rebellious. **The Phallic Stage ( 3.5 years- 6 years)** » Both boys and girls begin by loving their mother, because she satisfies their needs, and by seeing their father as a rival for the mother's affections. » Sensitivity now becomes concentrated in the genitals: the child becomes aware of anatomical sex differences, which sets in motion the Oedipus complex (in boys) and the Electra complex (in girls) **The Oedipus Complex** § According to Freud, between the ages of 2 and 5 a boy wants to possess his mother exclusively and as a result get rid of his father. The boy imagines that if his father had to find out about all this, he would cut off the boy's genitals as punishment for desiring the mother. Thus the boy develops castration anxiety. The boy sets out to resolve his anxiety by imitating, copying and joining in masculine dad-type behaviours. This is called identification. Identification means internally adopting the values, attitudes and behaviours of another person. By identifying with his father, the boy gets vicarious satisfaction of his sexual impulses toward the mother. At the same time he represses his dangerous feeling for her and converts it into tender affection. The consequence of this is that the boy takes on the male gender role and the boy's Oedipus complex is then said to have been resolved. **The Electra Complex** § According to Freud during the phallic stage the girl desires the father, but realizes that she does not have a penis. She believes that her lack of a penis is her mother's fault. As a ppresult, her love towards her mother turns to anger and she chooses her father as a sexual object because he has the penis she wants. This leads to the development of penis envy and the wish to be a boy. The girl then represses her feelings (to remove the tension) and identifies with the mother to take on the female gender role and displaces her feelings for her father onto other men. **The Phallic Stage** » Therefore, the phallic stage is resolved through the process of identification, which involves the child adopting the characteristics of the same sex parent. Freud believed that unresolved conflicts from the phallic stage can lead to many problems in adulthood, including difficulties in dealing with authority figures and an inability to maintain a stable love relationship. As the phallic stage draws to a close and its conflicts are dealt with by the ego, an interval of psychological peace occurs - the Latency Period. **The Latency stage ( 6/7 years-puberty)** » Latent means hidden. In this stage the libido is dormant. During this period, which lasts through childhood, sexual impulses stay in the background as the child focuses on education, same sex play and the development of social skills. Freud thought that most sexual impulses are repressed during the latency stage and sexual energy can be sublimated (defense mechanism) towards school work, hobbies and friendships. Much of the child\'s energies are channelled into developing new hobbies and acquiring new knowledge and play becomes largely confined to other children of the same sex. **The Phallic Stage ( from puberty onward)** In the genital stage, which begins at about age 12, people begin to love others for altruistic motives. The driving forces of previous stages are self-oriented. » Latency is a time of adolescent sexual experimentation, the successful resolution of which is settling down in a loving one-to-one relationship. Sexual instinct is directed to heterosexual pleasure, rather than self pleasure during the phallic stage. Gradually as people participate in group activities and prepare for work and marriage they change into socialised adults For Freud, the proper outlet of the sexual instinct in adults was through heterosexual intercourse. **p**