PERSONALITY

PERSONALITY

1. PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES

   • Freud's Topographic Model
     • Conscious
       • Rational, goal directed thoughts at centre of awareness
     • Preconscious
       • Not conscious, but can be brought to consciousness at any point
     • Unconscious
       • irrational, organised by associations not logic, inaccessible, repressed to avoid emotional distress
   • Freud's Drive Model
     • Sex
     • Aggression
   • Freud'sDevelopmental Model
     • Psychosexual stages- stages in the development of personality, sexuality and motivation
     • Oral
     • Anal
     • Phallic
       • Oedipus Complex
         • boys want an exclusive relationship with their mother, and girls with their father
     • Latency
     • Genital
     • Fixations
       • conflicts or concerns that persist beyond developmental period in which they arise
   • Freud's Structural Model
     • describes conflict in terms of desires on one hand and conscience on the other
     • Id
       • reservoir of sexual & aggressive energy, driven by impulses
       • Primary Process Thinking
         • wishful, illogical and associative thought
       • Pleasure Principle
         • seeks immediate satisfaction with little or no consideration for ramifications
     • Superego
       • acts as a conscience
     • Ego
       • balances desire, reality and mortality
       • Secondary Process Thinking
         • rational, logical and goal directed
       • Reality Principle
         • recognising desire for pleasure needs to be offset against consequences
   • Object Relations Theories
     • Object Relations
       • enduring patters of behaviour in intimate relationships, focus on interpersonal disturbances and the mental processes that underlie the capacity for relatedness to others
     • Relational Theories
       • adaptation to others is central motive, people will distort personalities to maintain close relationships
   • Defence Mechanisms
     • unconscious mental processes aimed at protecting the person from unpleasant emotions
     • repression
     • denial
     • projection
     • reaction formation
       • person fails to acknowledge unacceptable impulses and overemphasis their opposites. ie- sibling overpraising even though resentful
     • sublimation
       • converting sexual or aggressive impulses into socially acceptable activities. ie- sport
     • rationalisation
     • dispacement
     • regression
     • passive aggression

2. COGNITIVE-SOCIAL THEORIES

   • Encoding
     • Kelly's Personal Constructs
       • mental representations of people, places, things & events that are important to them. Roots of behaviour in cognition, not motivation. The way people conceive themselves and others, and encode, interpret and remember social info is central to who they are
   • expectancies
     • Behaviour-outcome expectancy
       • belief that a certain behaviour will lead to a particular outcome
     • self-efficiacy expectancy
       • persons conviction that they can perform actions necessary to produce desired outcome. ie- quitting smoking
   • Personal Value
   • Competencies
     • skills and abilities used for solving problems
   • Self Regulation
     • refers to setting goals, evaluating performance and adjusting behaviour to achieve these goals in the context of ongoing feedback. Personality is nothing more or less than problem solving efforts of people trying to fulfil life tasks.

3. TRAIT THEORIES

   • Traits are emotional, cognitive and behavioural tendencies that constitute underlying personality dimensions on which people vary. Can be measured by observation or self-report
   • Eysenck's Theory
     • Extroversion
       • tendency to be sociable, active and willing to take risks
     • Neuroticism
       • continuum of emotional stability to instability (anxious, moody, low self esteem)
     • Psychotism
       • tendency to be aggressive, egocentric, impulsive and antisocial.
   • Five Factor Model
     • Openness
     • neuroticism
     • Agreeableness
     • conscientiousness
     • Extroversion
   • Consistent?
     • Situational variables
       • circumstances determine behaviour
       • person-by-situation interactions
         • people express particular traits in particular situations
     • principle of aggregation
       • a trait does not refer to a specific behaviour in a specific situation, but a class of behaviours over a range of situations
     • Temperament
       • personality disposition heavily influenced by genes

4. HUMANISTIC THEORIES

   • Roger's Person Centred Approach
     • Carl Rogers believed that humans are basically good but their personalities become distorted by interpersonal experiences, especially in childhood. He believed empathy was important in understanding personality.
     • Phenomenal Experience
       • the way individuals conceive reality and experience themselves in their world
     • Empathy
       • capacity to understand another persons experience
     • Self Concept
       • organised pattern of thought and perception about ones self
       • True Self
         • a core aspect of being, but they often distort this into a false self
       • False Self
         • mask worn by individuals to gain positive regard of other people
       • Ideal Self
         • persons view of what they should be like
     • Actualising Tendency
       • Rogers proposed that the primary motivation in humans is to fulfil the full range of needs that humans experience. ie- needs for food and drink, needs to be open to experience, needs to express ones true self, however the need for positive regard opposes this
   • Exestentialism
     • believes no fixes nature, people must create themselves
     • Existential Dread
       • life has no meaning, we are all going to die

5. GENETICS & CULTURE

   • Heritability
     • refers to the proportion of variance in a particular trait that is due to genetic influences
   • Culture Pattern Approach
     • sees culture as an organised set of beliefs, rituals & institutions that shape individuals to fit its patters
   • Interactionist Approaches
     • view causality as multidirectional, with personality, economics & culture mutually influencing each other