Psyc1001: A Dummy's Guide - Personality Psychology PDF

PSYC1001 A Dummy’s Guide Personality L1: Introduction Describe the general history of personality psychology and explain why...

PSYC1001 A Dummy’s Guide Personality L1: Introduction Describe the general history of personality psychology and explain why there are difficulties in defining personality ★​ Personality ○​ We all know what personality is but don’t know how to precisely describe it ○​ Internal/external ○​ Sense of self & identity + what characterises us as individual ○​ Enduring (consistent) ways of thinking, feeling, acting that characterises person’s responses to life situations ​ What do you do/think (doing) ​ Like some other human beings & like no others ○​ Psychological systems that contribute to individual’s enduring & distinctive patterns of experience and behaviour ​ Causes of behaviour & cognition ○​ We attempt to understand the whole person rather than simply the parts ○​ Personality theory should account for integrated, coherent functioning of the individual ★​ Psychopathology: psychological disorders ← severe traumatisation ○​ Personality disorders ​ Borderline personality disorder: instability in self-image, emotions, relationships & impulsivity ​ Antisocial personality disorder: repetitive, irresponsible, delinquent, criminal behaviour ​ Personality theories act as implications for therapy  ​ Mental health & wellbeing ○​ Optimising socialisation ○​ Psychological needs (eg. sense of belonging) Describe and explain the distinction between idiographic and nomothetic approaches to personality Personality research addresses both human nature (common features) & individuality (specific factors) Idiographic Nomothetic ​ Focus on individual & recognition of uniqueness ​ Establish laws & generalisations about people ​ Private, subjective, conscious ​ Objective through scientific methods ​ Gain information unique to individual being studied ​ Gain numerical data or data that can be categorised Describe key issues in personality psychology and explain their relevance for making sense of persons ​ Personality theories deal w/ behaviour typically caused by stable internal factors rather than environmental ones ​ Social psychology: how individual behaviour is influenced by social environment ​ Person (nature) VS Situation (nurture) ○​ Person within situations (eg. culture) ○​ Nature VS Nurture ← are we born with particular personalities? ​ Epigenetics ​ Gene x Environment interactions → genes stronger when young but env stronger when older ​ Determinism (everything is caused) & Free will (we can make free choices) ○​ Causality important for explanation & treatment ○​ “I got no choice, it was caused anyway” ​ Is personality stable/changing? ○​ Change across lifespan?  ○​ Change according to situations (eg. bicultural personality) ○​ Personality paradox: personality is stable overtime (consistency) but behaviour varies according to situation (change) Describe and critique the general methodologies used in personality psychology for both research and practice ​ Critical appraisal: subjecting beliefs & theories to criticism ○​ Logical – testing logical coherence of theories ○​ Empirical – do observational tests support theories ○​ Replication ​ Case studies: in-depth study of single-person (idiographic) ○​ Researcher bias ○​ Concern in generalisability ○​ Clinical interviews ​ Self-report questionnaires (true/false, Likert scales) ○​ (+) Fast, easy data collection ○​ (-) Deception ​ Projective tests ○​ Ambiguous stimuli: individual interpretations reveal aspects of their personality ○​ (-) Interpretation ​ Personality assessment ○​ Remote behaviour sampling ​ Ethnocentrism ○​ Collectivism VS Individualism  L2: Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic approaches to Personality Describe and explain what is meant by the dynamic unconscious and defense mechanisms ★​ Repression: traumatic memories blocked from conscious awareness (Freud) ○​ Prevents emotional expression ○​ Psychosomatic illness: unexpressed emotions are redirected into bodily symptoms ○​ Develops free association ○​ Therapy = make the unconscious conscious ○​ Freud’s beliefs: ​ Not all psychological processes are within the conscious mind ​ There are psychological processes that prevent awareness of painful experiences ​ Psychodynamic theory of mind: dynamic interplay of the ‘forces’ in the mind ​ We sometimes have a moral conflict and repress our own desires ​ We repress sexual & aggressive desires ​ WHY? Triggered by intense shame, guilty, anxiety ★​ Defense mechanism: unconscious, automatic ways of dealing with conflict Identify defense mechanisms from examples. ​ Varieties of defense ○​ Denial: refusing to accept reality/facts that are too uncomfortable to face (eg. addiction) ○​ Projection: attributing one’s own unacceptable thoughts/feelings to someone else (eg. accusing someone of being angry when you’re the one who’s angry) ○​ Reaction formation: behaving in a way that’s opposite to one’s true feelings ○​ Sublimation: channeling unacceptable impulses into socially acceptable/productive activities (eg. redirecting aggression into competitive sports) Describe and explain the structural model of personality ​ Freud → personality can be divided into 3 functional domains: 1)​ Id: biological drives and foundation of our desires (we behave like animals) 2)​ Ego: self (I) 3)​ Super-ego: conscience, morality, ideal self (who we think we should be) ​ Personality dev & importance of childhood ○​ Infancy – originally all id & unsocialised desires ​ Pleasure principle (impulsivity) ○​ Ego dev → reality principle ○​ Socialisation → learn some desires (aggressive, sexual) lead to punishment ○​ Superego dev → shame & guilt → conflicts with superego → repress them ★​ Part of being human means controlling our desires & finding a compromise between our animal nature & society's expectations ​ Evaluation of Freud’s theories ○​ (-) Negatively views humanity ○​ (-) Outdated views of gender ○​ (-) Too much emphasis on the Id ○​ (-) Case study evidence serves subjective bias ○​ (-) Untestable theories ○​ (+) Still considered clinical relevance of defense mechanisms Describe and explain Freud’s theory of dreams ​ Interpretation of dreams ○​ Id desires, waking fantasy & sleeping fantasy  ○​ Undisguised wish-fulfillment (eg. kid needs to pee and wets the bed while sleeping) ○​ Regression to primary process (cognitive development, imagining events) ​ Unfulfilled desires & dreaming ○​ Dehydration causes desire/wish to drink during sleep ○​ Dream of drinking is an imaginary satisfaction ○​ Minnesota Starvation Exp (1944-50) → hunger made men obsessed with food, they’d dream about food ○​ Nightmares represent psychological conflict ​ Repression & censorship – Repressed wishes become active during sleep ​ Primary process thinking ​ Nightmares are disguised fulfilment of wishes ★​ Dreams are meaningful. No matter how bizarre dreams are, we can trace the meaning back to repressed wishes. ○​ Aserinsky & Kleitman (1953) → dreaming seems to be a product of rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep ○​ Hobson & McCarley (1977) → Activation-synthesis model: dreams occur due to chaotic brain stem activity associated w/ REM sleep → dreams are motivationally neutral (AKA meaningless) + nothing to do with repressed desires Describe what is meant by Neuropsychoanalysis and explain how it differs from Freud’s approach ★​ Neuropsychoanalysis ○​ Mesolimbic-mesocortical dopamine pathway is important for dreaming ○​ Damage to dopamine pathway → REM unaffected but dreaming ceases ​ Antipsychotics block dopamine (DA) inhibit dreaming ​ Chemical DA stimulation: increased frequency & vividness of dreams ○​ Dopamine associated w/ motivation & reward ​ Dreaming + dopamine → dreams linked w/ desires ○​ Panksepp → Id is based on Seeking system (lust, fear, rage, care, play, grief)  L3: Behavioural and Social-cognitive approaches to Personality Describe and explain Watson's and Skinner's approach to personality ★​ Watson’s Radical Behaviourism ○​ Radical environmentalism (nurture) = what we are born with is irrelevant ○​ Classical conditioning (eg. Pavlov, Little Albert) ○​ There’s no ‘inner’ personality, instead personality = what we habitually do ★​ Skinner’s Radical Behaviourism ○​ Rejects the concept of mental processes & mentalistic explanations ○​ Operant conditioning → consequences of our (voluntary) behaviour shape who we are ○​ Individual history of reinforcement & punishment → personality = observable behaviour ○​ Agrees w/ Watson that there is no inner personality ○​ Deterministic theory: rejection of free-will & the self as an agent of behaviour (we overlook how much our env actually controls us) ​ Implications of behaviourism = there’s no agent controlling behaviour ○​ We don’t really make choices ○​ We are controlled by the env Describe and explain limitations with the Behaviourist approach ​ (+) Strong experimental background & application ​ (-) No account of what humans do by nature (humans are simply teachable) ​ (-) Skinner’s theory is too basic & limited bcs it doesn’t explain the cognitive processes Describe and explain Bandura’s social-cognitive approach to agency and the role of the self-system ★​ Learning theory ○​ Influenced by behaviourism ○​ Emphasises environment ○​ Laws of conditioning ○​ Cognitive approach: acknowledges importance of cognition in learning ○​ Bobo doll study → observational learning ★​ Reciprocal determinism = person, env, behaviour all influence one another ★​ Self-system = person is regulated by the self-system: 1)​ Self-observation: self-monitoring in relation to standards 2)​ Judgments of one’s behaviour relative to others’ behaviours & one’s standards 3)​ Self-reaction: self-reward/punishments ★​ Agency = intentionally influencing life circumstances ○​ Features: ​ Intentionality ​ Self-regulation ​ Self-reflectiveness ​ Forethought ★​ Self-efficacy: individual’s belief in their ability to successfully perform something/handle a situation AKA perceived capability ○​ Ways of achieving: ​ Enactive attainments AKA accomplishments ​ Vicarious experience: comparing ourselves w/ others ​ Verbal persuasion (encouragement, discouragement) ​ Emotional arousal (anxiety, fear) Evaluate Bandura's social-cognitive account of personality ​ (+) Strong experimental basis ​ (-) Not enough account of human nature → how about evolutionary & biological factors? Describe and explain Mischel’s CAPS model and the role of the situation for understanding personality ★​ Mischel’s Cognitive-Affective Processing System (CAPS) = behaviour is shaped by both situational context + individual’s psychological responses ○​ Personality system involves: ​ Encoding strategies → ppl have different ways of making sense of events ​ Expectancies & beliefs ​ Goals & values ​ Affect AKA emotions ​ Self-regulatory processes ○​ Personality system is dynamic ○​ Behavioural signature: individual’s unique pattern of responding (If situation X occurs then behaviour Y is likely) ​ Personality is shown in stable patterns of behaviour ​ Eg. If Mia is with friends then she’s outgoing, if Mia is with family then she’s quiet & reserved ​ Same info activates different thoughts & feelings for different ppl (Shoda et al,. 2015 BSE) ○​ Evaluation: ​ (+) Addresses the personality paradox (both personality stability & variability across situations) ​ (-) Difficult to assess personality bcs: ​ Too many variables to consider ​ Mapping “if…then…” requires rich, repeated data ​ (-) Difficult to predict what someone will do in novel situations  L4: Humanistic approaches to Personality Explain what is meant by the ‘third force’ in personality psychology and the principles of Humanistic psychology ★​ Third force: we need to value subjective experience (phenomenology) ○​ Valuing the unique person AKA idiographic ○​ Non-deterministic = advocating free-will Describe and explain Rogers’ theory of the fully-functioning person and the development of psychopathology ​ Fully-functioning person ○​ Actualising tendency: at birth we have a blueprint on how we can expand, extend, develop, mature ○​ ‘Acorn to oaktree’ model: everyone has potential for goodness ○​ Why do humans have problems? ​ Negative socialisation ​ Conditional positive regard: giving someone esteem, love, or support only on the basis of certain conditions ​ Incongruence between real & ideal self → i am this but i should be that ​ Defensive mask (false self) ​ Denying awareness who we really are ​ Hostility & aggression as way of coping ​ Positive socialisation ​ Unconditional positive regard: value someone as a person w/o conditions ○​ Distinction between ‘person’ & ‘behaviour’ ○​ Basis for psychotherapy → fully-functioning person  1)​ Openness to experience → non-defensive attitude 2)​ Existential living: living in the present, not past/future 3)​ Organismic trusting: trusting yourself, not relying on others 4)​ Experiential freedom 5)​ Enhanced creativity → creative products & creative living (non-habitually) ​ Evaluation of Rogers’ theory ○​ (-) Difficult to scientifically assess ← vague constructs based on perception & experience ○​ (+) Clinical contributions → client-centered therapy Describe and explain Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and its relationship to self-actualisation ​ Maslow’s theory → we need to study psychologically healthy ppl to understand human nature, not psychopathological ones ○​ Methodology: identified colleagues & historical figures that he considered psychologically healthy ★​ Self-actualisation: becoming everything that one is capable of becoming ○​ Hierarchy of needs ​ Each level has a basic need that must be met before moving up the hierarchy ​ Requires meeting deficiency needs first ​ If lower needs are not met, growth stops ○​ Pinnacle of development: being motivation ○​ Self-actualisers 1)​ Efficient perception of reality 2)​ More accepting of themselves & others  3)​ Spontaneous 4)​ Problem-centered: focusing on problems outside of themselves (eg. env concerns) 5)​ Need privacy 6)​ Enjoy intimate relationships 7)​ Act independently of culture (non-conformists) 8)​ Peak experiences (eg. harmony, joy, beauty) 9)​ Creative 10)​Humorous ★​ Fourth force → Transpersonal psychology: going beyond the individual self, spiritual dev ​ Evaluation of Maslow’s theory ○​ (+) Very influential theory of motivation ○​ (-) Methodology: identified self-actualisers based on his own personal preference/bias ○​ (-) Hierarchy of needs is difficult to assess ○​ (-) Some exceptions to the hierarchy of needs (eg. starving artist) Compare & contrast Rogers’ and Maslow’s theories ​ Similarity: believe humans are basically good natured & growth directed ​ Differences: ○​ Maslow believes human problems arise not simply from conditional positive regard ○​ Frustration of lower needs leads to antisocial emotions Describe & explain what is meant by Positive Psychology and the two types of well-being ★​ Positive psychology: science of positive subjective experience ○​ Focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses​  ★​ 2 types of wellbeing 1)​ Hedonic approach: attaining pleasure & avoiding pain → happiness ○​ Subjective wellbeing (SWB) = life satisfaction ​ Positive predictors of SWB: long-term relationship, employment, prosociality, purpose/meaning in life 2)​ Eudaimonic approach: focuses on purpose & personal growth L5: Trait Approaches to Personality Describe what is meant by personality ‘trait’, ‘dimension’, and the lexical hypothesis ​ Gordon Allport → introduced idiographic VS nomothetic and personality research ★​ Traits: dispositions/tendencies to act in meaningfully consistent ways across time & situations ○​ Stable ○​ Nature over nurture ○​ Nomothetic approach ​ Treats traits as dimensions ​ Quantitative ★​ Lexical hypothesis: personality differences become encoded in language ​ How many traits are there? Describe & evaluate Eysenck’s biological explanation for personality trait differences ​ Hans Eysenck → rejects unique individual & identifies 3 ‘nature’ trait dimensions: 1)​ Introversion-Extraversion ○​ Extraverted: sociable, outgoing, expressive, easily bored  ○​ Introverted: private, quiet, sensitive, private, reflective, exhausted by groups 2)​ Neuroticism: degree of emotional reactivity ○​ Higher degree of neuroticism = more emotionally reactive (eg. moody, tense, anxious) ○​ Higher degree of normality = less emotionally reactive (still has emotions btw!) 3)​ Psychoticism: predisposition to psychosis, a non-conforming, anti-social trait (loss of touch w/ reality) ○​ “Would you like other people to be afraid of you?” ○​ Higher psychoticism characteristics ​ Evaluation: ○​ (-) Inconsistent biological evidence BUT there is some recent advances ○​ (-) Psychoticism is not linked to psychosis-proneness ​ Doesn’t address modern psychosis concepts like the ‘magicalness’ ○​ (+) Forms basis of subsequent trait theories like FFM ★​ Biological bases of traits ○​ Extraverted have ↓ nervous system arousal = how much stimulation is in the NS ​ They try to get extra stimulation from the environment ​ Vice versa for introverted → already have too much arousal ○​ Higher neuroticism have ↑ limbic system functioning = level of emotional brain activity ○​ Higher psychoticism have ↑ testosterone & ↓ dopamine ○​ Implications: ​ We’re born like this, there’s a genetic basis of personality ​ Personality is relatively stable Describe & evaluate the Five Factor Model & the relation of traits to culture ★​ Five Factor Model (FFM) (OCEAN) ○​ Trait: enduring tendency to think, feel, behave consistently ○​ Based on lexical hypothesis ○​ (+) Strong empirical basis & predictive validity ​ Alderotti et al: ↓ NA + ↑ OCE associated w/ job earnings ​ Malouff et al: ↑ N + ↓ CEA associated w/ clinical disorders ​ Mammadov: C predictor of uni perf, independent of intelligence ○​ Traits are stable but biological maturational processes, around age 30, lowers OEN & increases CA ○​ FFM is quite universal being replicated over 50 societies in 6 societies ○​ McCrae → traits are highly heritable & has little impact from envi & culture ​ Culture shapes expression of traits but not the traits themselves ○​ Evaluation: ​ Does not sufficiently address situationism = situations are stronger determinants of behaviour (eg. child shy w/ strangers but not w/ parents) ​ FFM traits explain what we do but does not explain why ​ Debate whether personality is really stable, recent evidence suggests “no” Describe & explain categorical VS dimensional approaches to personality disorders ★​ Personality disorders are… ← DSM-5-TR ○​ Enduring patterns of thinking, feelings, acting, relating ○​ Culturally deviant (not conforming to culture)  ○​ Pervasive & inflexible ○​ Lead to distress or social impairment ★​ Categorical model: separates PD into categories (traditional) ○​ Qualitatively distinct clinical syndromes ○​ (-) Extensive co-occurence of PDs = if you have one disorder you usually have other PDs too ○​ (-) Extreme heterogeneity = many ways to diagnose one PD ○​ (-) Poor inter-rater reliability = 2 clinicians diagnosing someone may come w/ diff conclusions ★​ Dimensional approach (AMPD): PDs involve criterion A = impaired personality functioning (can’t function in daily life) & criterion B = pathological personality traits (alternative) ○​ Potentially gives better treatment options (eg. if high C → target client to work on work-related goals) ○​ Evaluation: ​ Krueger & Hobbs ​ (+) Predicts meaningful clinical incidences (eg. self-harm) ​ (+) Better inter-rater reliability of disorder ​ (+) Reasonable psychometric properties of scales ​ (-) Debating whether AMPD > categorical  L6: Personality Assessment Develop a general understanding of the applications of personality assessment in clinical and workplace settings We assess personality for… ​ Organisational (recruitment) ​ Clinical (DSM5, PDs) Describe and explain what is meant by validity and reliability and why these are important for personality testing Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses associated with different forms of personality assessment ​ Reliability = consistency ○​ Inter-rater reliability: consistency of info found by different test users ○​ Test-retest reliability: consistency over testing occasions ○​ Internal consistency: consistency among diff components of test ​ Validity = accuracy ○​ Construct validity: does the test assess what it intends to assess? ○​ Convergent & divergent validity ○​ Discriminant & predictive validity  ★​ McAdams’s Personality Triad 1)​ Dispositional traits = stable dimensions of personality ○​ Nomothetic ○​ (-) Cannot study the individual intimately 2)​ Characteristic adaptations = how we’ve learned to adapt to situations in life (eg. goals, values, beliefs, defences) 3)​ Narrative identity as ‘life story’ ○​ Idiographic & humanistic ○​ Raises possibility of personality change ​ Why it’s important: ○​ Addresses both nomothetic & idiographic approaches ○​ Addresses both stability & change of personality Describe and explain how self-report inventories, performance-based assessment, and interviews help assess different aspects of personality Ways of assessing personality: ★​ Self-report inventories → assesses traits (direct) ○​ Personality dimensions ○​ Quantification & measurement ○​ Closed ended questions: response alternatives provided for respondent (eg. true/false, Likert) ○​ Evaluation: ​ (+) Easier to gather large amounts of data & comparison ​ (-) Biases eg. social desirability ​ (-) Faking goods & bads of themselves ← malingering ​ (-) Memory inaccuracy & limits of insight (how well you know yourself) ​ Concern: Emerging use of coaching & test cheating  ○​ How to prevent social desirability effects → Forced choice: choose between multiple socially desirable options ​ Can limit social desirability & acquiescence ​ Eg. Choose between conscientious & hardworking OR mentally healthy & well-adjusted ★​ Performance-based assessment (indirect) ○​ Involves inference & interpretation ○​ Not reliant on insight & self-reflection ○​ Projective tests: show ambiguous image then asked to interpret it ​ Inferences made from content of responses ○​ Evaluation: ​ (+) Relatively difficult to cheat on ​ (-) Problems w/ reliability & validity ​ (-) Time-consuming & difficult to score ★​ Interview ○​ Idiographic & humanistic ○​ Open-ended questions: respondent formulates their own answer ○​ Unstructured, structured, & semi-structured (specified topic but can ask follow-up questions) interviews ○​ Evaluation: ​ (+) Qualitative info → gives sense of types of experiences and events (how they make sense of themselves) ​ (+) Potentially more in-depth ​ (+) Ability to ask for clarification for both interviewee & interviewer ​ (-) Interviewer effect diff responses to diff interviewers due to diffs in body language, age, gender, etc. ​ Concerns w/ qualitative analysis: ​ (-) Time consuming  ​ (-) Subjective bias & interpretations Future directions for personality assessment: ​ Personality x Situation assessment: examines variability & stability of personality ○​ Experience sampling methods ​ Mixed-methods assessment: collects both qttv & qltv data ​ Big data assessment: analysing enormous data sets ​ Need to be more culturally aware → cross-cultural research due to internet, globalisation, cultural diversity