General Psychology: Personality PDF

General Psychology PERSONALITY Introduction u Personality: Characteristic way of thinking, feeling, and behaving Psychodynamic Perspective u Psychodynamic approaches to personality: Assume that personality is primarily unconscious u Motivated by inner forces and conflicts about which people have lit...

General Psychology PERSONALITY Introduction u Personality: Characteristic way of thinking, feeling, and behaving Psychodynamic Perspective u Psychodynamic approaches to personality: Assume that personality is primarily unconscious u Motivated by inner forces and conflicts about which people have little awareness Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind u Psychoanalytic theory: Unconscious forces act as determinants of personality u Theory by Freud u Conscious: Part of the personality that you are aware of in any given instance u Unconscious: Part of the personality that contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, drives, and instincts of which the individual is not aware u Unconsciousness consists of u Preconscious: non-threatening material that is easily brought to mind u Drives: instinctual wishes, desires, demands, and needs hidden from awareness because of the conflict and pain they would cause Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind u Structuring personality: Id, ego, & superego u u u Id u instinctual, unorganized, inborn part of personality u Sole purpose is to reduce tension created by primitive drives related to hunger, sex, aggression, and irrational impulses u Pleasure principle Ego u Part of the personality that provides a buffer between the id and the realities of the objective, outside world u Reality principle u Executive of personality Superego u Personality structure that harshly judges the morality of our behavior u Includes the conscience, which prevents us from behaving in a morally improper way u Makes us feel guilty if we do wrong Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind u Developing personality: Psychosexual stages u Psychosexual stages: Developmental periods that children pass through during which they encounter conflicts between the demands of society and their own sexual urges u Fixations: Concerns or conflicts that persist beyond the developmental period in which they first occur Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind u Developing personality: Psychosexual stages Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind u Threats to the balance between the ego, superego, and id can result in anxiety u Anxiety results in the ego using defense mechanisms to protect itself u Defense mechanisms: Unconscious strategies that people use to reduce anxiety by distorting reality and concealing the source of the anxiety from themselves u Repression: Primary defense mechanism u Ego pushes unacceptable or unpleasant impulses out of awareness and back into the unconscious Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind u Evaluating Freud’s legacy u Individual case studies seem supportive, but there is a lack of conclusive evidence, showing that personality is structured consistent with Freud’s theory u Sexuality is not the pervasive force that Freud believed it to be u The Oedipus complex is not as universal as Freud maintained u The first five years of life are not as powerful in shaping adult personality as Freud thought later experiences warrant attention u The ego and conscious thought processes play a larger role in personality than Freud believed. u Observations and theory was derived from a limited population u Sociocultural factors are much more important than Freud believed u Important method of treating psychological disturbances called psychoanalysis was developed The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud u Psychoanalysts who were trained in traditional Freudian theory but who later rejected some of its major points u Emphasized the functions of the ego u Suggested that, it has more control than the id over day-to-day activities The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud u Jung’s collective unconscious: Inherited set of ideas, feelings, images, and symbols that are shared with all humans because of our common ancestral past u Collective unconscious vs personal unconscious u Collective unconscious contains archetypes u Archetypes: Universal symbolic representations of particular types of people, objects, ideas, or experiences The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud u Horney’s neo-Freudian perspective u u Suggested that personality develops in the context of social relationships u Depends on the relationship between parents and child u Rejected Freud’s notion of penis envy in women Stressed the importance of cultural factors in the determination of personality The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud u Adler and the other neo-Freudians u u Alfred Adler – Proposed that the primary human motivation is striving for superiority in a quest for self-improvement and perfection u Birth order plays an important role in personality u Inferiority complex – Describes adults who have not been able to overcome the feelings of inadequacy they developed as children Erik Erikson and Anna Freud focused on the social and cultural factors behind personality Learning Approaches: We are What We’ve Learned u u B. F. Skinner’s behaviorist approach u Personality is a collection of learned behavior patterns u Humans are infinitely changeable through the process of learning new behavior patterns Social cognitive approaches to personality: Theories that emphasize the influence of a person’s cognitions and observation of others’ behavior, in determining personality Evaluating Learning Approaches to Personality u Learning theories have: u Helped make personality psychology a scientific venture u u Tend to share a highly deterministic view of human behavior u u By focusing on observable behavior and the effects of their environments Maintains that behavior is shaped by forces beyond the individual’s control Produced important, successful means of treating a variety of psychological disorders Humanistic Approaches: The Uniqueness of You u Emphasize people’s innate goodness and desire to achieve higher levels of functioning u Rogers and the need for selfactualization u Self-actualization: State of self-fulfillment in which people realize their highest potential, each in a unique way u Unconditional positive regard: Attitude of acceptance and respect on the part of an observer, no matter what a person says or does u Conditional positive regard depends on one’s behavior Evaluating Humanistic Approaches u u Benefits u Highlights the uniqueness of human beings u Guides the development of a form of therapy designed to alleviate psychological difficulties Criticisms u Difficulty of verifying basic assumptions of the approach u Making the assumption that people are basically “good” Trait Approaches: Placing Labels on Personality u Trait theory: Model of personality that seeks to identify the basic traits necessary to describe personality u Traits: Consistent, habitual personality characteristics and behaviors displayed across different situations Costa and McCrae’s Big Five Personality Traits Evaluating Trait Approaches to Personality u u Benefits u Provide straightforward explanation of people’s behavioral consistencies u Allow comparison of one person to another u Influence the development of several useful personality measures Drawbacks u Validity of trait conceptions of personality u Do not provide explanations for behavior