Personality HW pg 613-622 The Nature of Personality Defining Personality • _______________________ – Your personality hold constant over a wide variety of situations • _________________________– Why we act differently in the same situation ________________________ - A durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations • Adjectives such as honest, dependable, moody, impulsive, suspicious, anxious, friendly describe dispositions that represent personality traits • Most approaches to personality assume that some traits are more basic than others • For example using ____________________________, by making correlations among variables into closely related clusters of variables, Raymond Cattell was able to reduce ______________________ 171 personality traits into just 16 basic dimensions. • _____________________________ – The few central roots of personality • _____________________________ – secondary traits observed by others that might not be true ________________________ (Robert McCrae and Paul Costa) • Also known as the ________________________ 1. _________________________ – outgoing, sociable, upbeat, friendly, and assertive. Extraverts tend to be happier than others 2. ___________________________– anxious, hostile, self-conscious, insecure, and vulnerable. Tend to overreact more than others in response to stress 3. _______________________________ – curiosity, flexibility, vivid fantasy, imaginativeness, artistic sensitivity. Evidence suggests that openness fosters liberalism, so this trait is the key determinant of political views. Evidence also shows people high in openness tend to exhibit less prejudice against minorities than others 4. ____________________________– sympathetic, trusting, cooperative, modest, straightforward. On the opposite end suspicious, antagonistic and aggressive. Associated with constructive approaches to conflict resolution, making agreeable people less quarrelsome. 5. _____________________________ – disciplined, well organized, punctual, dependable. Referred to as constraint in some trait models, it is associated with being highly diligent in the workplace. • Research shows the _______________ traits are predictive of specific aspects of behavior. For example extraversion correlates positively with popularity and with dating a greater variety of people. Conscientiousness correlates with greater honesty, high job performance ratings, and relatively low alcohol consumption. Openness is associated with playing a musical instrument. • Other correlations _____________________ associated with higher conscientiousness. The higher level of neuroticism associated with elevated probability of divorce whereas conscientiousness and agreeableness less likely. Finally Neuroticism increased physical and mental illness. Conscientiousness experience less illness and reduced mortality • Big Five has become the dominant theory of personality in contemporary psychology • Critics – need more than 5 qualities to define human beings. Mnemonic – OCEAN/CANOE Assessing traits Some tests are ___________________ – a list of answers/some are __________________(projective) – open ended Personality Inventories – questionnaires covering a wide range of feelings, behaviors, and emotions. ____________________________________________ • Most widely used • It measures 10 personality traits • Contains 567 true and false questions _____________________________________________ (Cattell) NEO Personality Inventory – Uses to Measure the Big Five Personality HW pg 595-607 ____________________________________ • Freud’s theory grew out of decades of interactions with his clients using psychoanalysis. • Psychoanalytic theory attempts to explain personality, motivation, and psychological disorders by focusing on the influences of early childhood experiences, on unconscious motives and conflicts, and on methods people use to cope with their ________________________________ urges. • There were 3 reasons why people have a problem with Freud o You behavior is governed by ________________________ factors of which you are unaware. o Adult personalities are shaped by childhood experiences beyond your control o By emphasizing the great importance of ____________________ he offend those who held the conservative, Victorian values of his time • Structure of Personality. o ______– primitive, instinctive component of your personality. Your raw biological urges (eating, sleeping, sex, etc) The Id operates on the pleasure principle, which demands immediate gratification of its urges. The id engages in primary-process thinking, primitive, illogical, irrational, and fantasy oriented o ___________– the decision making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle. The ego mediates between the id, and the external world with its social realities, to decide how to behave. The ego is guided by the reality principle, which seeks to delay gratification of the id’s urges until appropriate outlets and situations can be found. In the end the ego wants to maximize gratification like the Id but uses the secondary-process thinking, which relativity rational, realistic, and oriented toward problem solving. o __________________ – the moral component of personality that incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong. The superego emerges around 3-5. In some people the superego can become irrationally demanding in its strive for moral perfection. Such people are plagued by feelings of guilt. o Freud said the 3 components are distributed differently across three levels of consciousness. • Levels of Awareness – often compared to an iceberg o ________________________– whatever you are aware of at a particular point in time. o ________________________ – material just beneath the surface that can be easily retrieved o _______________________ – thoughts, memories, and desires well below the surface but that nonetheless exert great influences on behavior • Freud felt that sexual and aggressive impulses had the most consequences coming from the ______ 1. He thought sex and aggression are subject to more complex and ambiguous social controls than other basic motives 2. Sex and aggression are thwarted more than other biological urges. Think about it if you get hungry or thirsty you go and satisfy those urges fairly easily. On the other hand someone causes you aggression you can’t just go off and hit them. Or if someone causes lustful urges you can’t just have sex with that person. • Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development o Now when you think about sex, you think about using your genitals for stimulation, rated R movies, sex, etc. However to Freud, sex was a concept that explained how we get our pleasure from the world. For most of you, although your parents would hate to think about it, your sexual pleasure comes from your genitals. But to younger children they do not. Freud believed that we all have a _________________________, or instinctual sexual energy. o Your libido changes throughout your lifetime, focusing on different parts of your body. Essentially, your libido has 4 stages of metamorphosis. If some outside force deters our social development in one of the following stages, Freud said we could become ____________ in that stage, meaning that we would become preoccupied with that earlier stage later on in our lives. o Freud believed in two types of instincts ___________ (life instincts – or sex) and Thanatos (death instincts – or aggression) o 1. ________________: About 0-2 years old, an infant’s libido is focused around their mouth. You will notice that babies see the world through their _________. If I give my 8 month old son some dog vomit, the first thing he will do is taste it. Freud believes that if you become fixated in the oral stage than you may overeat, smoke, or just have a childhood dependence on things. o 2. ________________________: About 2-4 years old, the child becomes focused on controlling ___________________. The libido is focused on holding in and releasing defecation (poo poo). This usually occurs during toilet training. The child meets the conflict between the parent's demands and the child's desires and physical capabilities in one of two ways: Either he puts up a fight or he simply refuses to go. The child who wants to fight takes pleasure in excreting maliciously, perhaps just before or just after being placed on the toilet. If the parents are too lenient and the child manages to derive pleasure and success from this expulsion, it will result in the formation of an _________________________________. This character is generally messy, disorganized, reckless, careless, and defiant. Conversely, a child may opt to retain feces. If this tactic succeeds and the child is overindulged, he will develop into an _____________ character. This character is neat, precise, orderly, careful, stingy, withholding, obstinate, meticulous, and passive-aggressive. The resolution of the anal stage, proper toilet training, permanently affects the individual propensities to possession and attitudes towards authority. o 3. ____________________: About 4-6 years old, the child first realizes his or her gender. The libido is focused on exploring the penis and vagina but not in the way you now think about playing with your genitals. During this stage Freud believed that boys can develop an ________ Complex, where he begins to have sexual feelings towards his mother (not the "Mom, I want to see you in a pink thong" feeling, but more like I want to be with you on my phallic stage level). This also where