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PERSONALITY: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND ASSESSMENT

PERSONALITY: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND ASSESSMENT. DEFINING PERSONALITY. Personality : refers to an individual’s unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits Used to explain 1)consistency in behavior and 2)distinctiveness of behavior. PERSONALITY TRAITS: DISPOSITIONS AND DIMENSIONS.

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PERSONALITY: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND ASSESSMENT

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  1. PERSONALITY: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND ASSESSMENT

  2. DEFINING PERSONALITY • Personality: refers to an individual’s unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits • Used to explain 1)consistency in behavior and 2)distinctiveness of behavior

  3. PERSONALITY TRAITS: DISPOSITIONS AND DIMENSIONS • Personality trait: a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations • Cattell concluded that personality can be described completely by measuring just 16 traits

  4. 5-FACTOR MODEL OF PERSONALITY TRAITS • McRae and Costa • 1) Extraversion • 2) Neuroticism • 3) Openness to experience • 4) Agreeableness • 5) Conscientiousness

  5. OTHER THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

  6. PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES • Def: include all the diverse theories descended from the work of Sigmund Freud, which focus on unconscious mental forces

  7. FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY • Attempts to explain personality, motivation, and psychological disorders by focusing on childhood experiences, on unconscious motives, and methods used to cope w/sexual and aggressive urges

  8. FREUD’S STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY • 3 parts: • 1) Id: primitive, instinctive component; operates according to pleasure principle • 2) Ego: decision-making component; operates according to the reality principle • 3) Superego: moral component; incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong

  9. FREUD’S LEVELS OF AWARENESS • Conscious: whatever one is aware of at a particular point in time • Preconscious: material just beneath the surface of awareness that can be easily retrieved • Unconscious: thoughts, memories, and desires that are well beneath the surface of conscious awareness but that nonetheless exert great influence on behavior

  10. CONFLICT AND TYRANNY OF SEX AND AGGRESSION • Freud: people’s lives are dominated by conflicts that center on sexual and aggressive impulses • Sexual and aggressive desires are thwarted more often

  11. ANXIETY • Lingering conflicts can produce anxiety • Worry about: 1) id going out of control and creating negative consequences or 2)superego out of control creating guilt about a real or imagined transgression

  12. DEFENSE MECHANISMS • Def: largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety or guilt

  13. DEFENSE MECHANISMS • Rationalization: creating false but plausible causes to justify unacceptable behavior • Repression: keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious • Projection: attributing one’s own thoughts, feelings, or motives to another • Displacement: diverting emotional feelings (anger) from original source to a substitute • Reaction Formation: behaving opposite of what you feel • Regression: reverting to immature behavior

  14. DEVELOPMENT: PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES • Def: developmental periods w/a characteristic sexual focus that leave their mark on adult personality • Fixation: failure to move forward from one stage to another as expected

  15. STAGES • Oral stage: 1st year; erotic focus is the mouth • Anal stage: 2nd year; erotic pleasure from bowel movements • Phallic stage: c. age 4; erotic focus on the genital; self-stimulation

  16. STAGES • Latency stage: expanding social contacts beyond the immediate family • Genital stage: refocus on genitals, channeled toward peers

  17. JUNG’S ANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY • Unconscious has 2 layers • 1) Personal unconscious: repressed or forgotten material • 2) Collective unconscious: a storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from people’s ancestral past

  18. JUNG CONTINUED • People share an unconscious • Archetypes: emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning

  19. JUNG CONTINUED • 1st to describe • Introverts: preoccupied w/the internal world of their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences • Extraverts: interested in external world of people and things

  20. ADLER’S INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY • Striving for superiority: a universal drive to adapt, improve oneself, and master life’s challenges • Compensation: involves efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one’s abilities

  21. ADLER CONTINUED • Excessive feelings of inferiority leads to an inferiority complex • People overcompensate and pursue status and power over others

  22. EVALUATING PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVES • Unconscious forces can influence behavior • Internal conflict often plays a key role in generating psychological distress • Early childhood experiences can have powerful influences on adult personality • People do use defense mechanisms to reduce unpleasant emotions

  23. EVALUATING CONTINUED • Criticisms: • Poor testability—ideas too vague to test • Inadequate evidence • Sexism—a bias against women exists

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