Unit 6 Study Questions

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Define the construct of personality in terms of consistency and distinctiveness. (p. 548) Personality is used to describe both the consistency of how one acts among various situations, as well as the distinctive set of personality traits one possesses.

Explain what is meant by a personality trait. Describe the five-factor model of personality. (pp. 548-550) A personality trait is a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations. Adjectives such as honest, dependable, moody, etc describe dispositions that represent personality traits. Out of all the different traits one may possess, through factor analysis, the Five-Factor Model was created by grouping traits that fit together, in which can be measured in a subject.

Comment: Considerable attention has focused on

traits, or “dispositions.” Liebert (2007) identified three assumptions

made by dispositional theorists:

Dispositions are relatively stable and enduring.

Dispositions have some consistency and generality.

Differences between individuals arise from differences in the strength, amount, and number of dispositions each person has.

Describe the three structures into which Freud divided personality.

Explain how his three levels of awareness are superimposed on these

psychic structures. (pp. 551-552) Freud divided personality into the following: The id is the primitive, instinctive component of personality that operates according to the pleasure principle (demands immediate gratification of it's urges), the ego is the decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle (seeks to delay gratification of the id's urges until appropriate outlets and situations can be found) and the superego is the moral component of personality that incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong. The three levels of awareness are the following: The conscious consists of whatever one is aware of at a particular point in time, the preconscious contains material just beneath the surface of awareness that can easily be retrieved, and the unconscious contains thoughts, memories, and desires that are well below the surface of conscious awareness but that nonetheless exert great influence on behaviour. Both the ego and super ego fit within all levels of awareness, but the id resides only in the unconscious.

Explain the dominance of sexual and aggressive conflicts in Freud’s

theory. Describe the operation of defence mechanisms. (pp. 553-555) Sexual and aggressive conflicts are subject to more complex and ambiguous social controls than other basic motives (unsure of what's appropriate) and sexual and aggressive urges thwarted more regularly than other basic biological urges, because while there are vending machines and washrooms, it's not easy to just punch someone who makes you angry, and it's not easy to obtain sexual gratification immediately from someone whom you lust over. Defence mechanisms are largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and guilt. Rationalization is creating false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behaviour. Repression is keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious. Projection is attributing one's own thoughts, feelings, or motives to another. Displacement is diverting emotional feelings (usually anger) from their original source to a substitute target. Reaction formation is behaving in a way that's exactly the opposite of one's true feelings. Regression is a reversion to immature patterns of behaviour. Identification is bolstering self-esteem by forming an imaginary or real alliance with some person or group. Sublimation occurs when unconscious, unacceptable impulses are channelled into socially acceptable, perhaps even admirable, behaviours.

Comment: The following defence mechanisms do not appear in Weiten and McCann (2013).

Denial: a person simply does not acknowledge a painful experience or thought.

Undoing: involves making restitution for an unacceptable act

or thought. It often involves magical rituals or gestures, such as

Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, who plotted to kill Duncan and then

continuously washed her hands as if to cleanse herself of his blood.

It has been suggested that age (Cramer, 2006) and habit (Liebert, 2007) may influence a person’s choice of defence mechanism.

Outline Freud’s psychosexual stages of development and their theorized relations to adult personality. (pp. 556-557) Psychosexual stages, Freud's stage theory, are developmental periods with a characteristic sexual focus that leave their mark on adult personality. Fixation is a failure to move from one stage to another as expected. The oral stage encompasses the first year of life, with the main source of erotic stimulation is the mouth (biting, sucking, etc). The anal stage, from 2-3 years of age, is where children get their erotic pleasure from the bowel movements. The phallic stage, age 4, is where the genitals become the main focus for the child's erotic energy (self-stimulation). This is the stage in which develops the Oedipal complex (children's manifested erotically tinged desires for their opposite-sex parent, accompanied by feelings of hostility toward the same-sex parent. Latency stage, from 6-12, is where the urges get suppressed and one focuses on expanding social contracts beyond the family. The genital stage, puberty onward, is now focused back on the genitals and sexual energy is channelled toward peers of the opposite sex.

Summarize the revisions to Freud’s theory proposed by Jung and by Adler. (pp. 557-560) With Jung, rather than there being 3 components to personality, he devised the following two: personal unconscious (houses material that is not within one's conscious awareness because it has been repressed or forgotten) and the collective unconscious (storehouse of latent memory traces from people's ancestral past). These ancestral memories are called Archetypes (emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning). Adler, instead of the main human motivation being sexual, states that the main motivation is Striving for Superiority (a universal drive to adapt, improve oneself, and master life's challenges). People overcome feeling of inferiority through Compensation (efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one's abilities).

Summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the psychodynamic approach to personality. (pp. 560-561) Psychodynamic theories demonstrated that (1) unconscious forces can influence behaviour, (2) internal conflict often plays a key role in generating psychological distress, (3) early childhood experiences can have powerful influences on adult personality, and (4) people use defence mechanisms to reduce their experience of unpleasant emotions. The weaknesses of Psychodynamic theories involve the following: poor testability (no means of proving theories), inadequate evidence (relies too heavily on clinical case studies), sexism (theories biased against women) and unrepresentative samples (narrow sample of upper-class, neurotic, sexually repressed Viennese women, that doesn't represent other cultures).

Explain how Skinner’s principles of operant conditioning can be applied to an understanding of personality. (pp. 561-563) Skinner's view was that people show some consistent patterns of behaviour because they have some stable response tendencies they have acquired through experience. He maintained that environmental consequences-reinforcement, punishment, and extinction-determine people's patterns of response. When responses are followed by favourable consequences (reinforcement), they are strengthened. When responses lead to negative outcomes (punishment), they are weakened.

Describe Bandura’s social learning theory. (pp. 563-564) Albert Bandura believes that the environment does determine behaviour, but also that behaviour determines environment. Reciprocal determinism is the idea that internal mental events, external environmental events, and overt behaviour all influence one another. Observational learning occurs when an organism's responding is influenced by the observation of others, who are called models (person whose behaviour is observed by another). Self-efficacy refers to one's belief about one's ability to perform behaviours that should lead to expected outcomes.

Identify Mischel’s major contribution to personality theory. Why have his ideas have generated so much controversy? (pp. 564-565) Mischel's version of social learning theory predicts that people will often behave differently in different situations, and that people exhibit far less consistency across situations than had been widely assumed. Mischel's ideas struck at the concept of personality, which assumes that people are reasonably consistent in their behaviour.

Summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the behavioural approach to personality. (pp. 565-566) Behavioural theories are firmly rooted in extensive empirical research rather than clinical intuition, and behavioural perspectives have shown how environmental consequences and conditioning mould people's characteristic behaviour. The weaknesses include the following: Dehumanizing nature of radical behaviourism (denying freewill and the importance of cognitive processes) and dilution of the behavioural approach (the introduction of cognitive factors in behaviourism ignores the core of what behaviourism is founded on).

Explain how humanism was a reaction against both the behavioural and

psychodynamic approaches. Outline the assumptions of the humanistic

view. (p. 566) The psychodynamic approach was heavily focused on unconscious motives for one's actions, and behaviourism was a mechanical view that saw animal research as equivalent to that of humans. Humanists believe that (1) people can rise above their primitive animal heritage and control their biological urges, and (2) people are largely conscious and rational beings who are not dominated by unconscious, irrational needs and conflicts.

Identify the single structural construct in Rogers’s person-centred

theory. Summarize his view of personality development. (pp. 566-567,

569) Roger's person-centred theory is based solely on the self-concepts (a collection of beliefs about one's own nature, unique qualities, and typical behaviour). Incongruence is the degree of disparity between one's self-concept and one's actual experience. One may change their memory of experience in order to uphold their self-concept.

Explain what Maslow meant by self-actualization. Summarize his findings on self-actualizing people. (pp. 569-572) Self-actualization is the need to fulfill one's potential, and self-actualizing persons are people with exceptionally healthy personalities, marked by continued personal growth. The traits include a clear perception of reality and comfortable relations with it, detachment and need for privacy, continued freshness in approach, and balance between polarities in personality, among others.

Summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the humanistic approach to personality. (pp. 572-573) The Humanistic approach has proven to be compelling, especially regarding the idea that a person's subjective views are more important than objective reality, and the introduction of the self-concept. The weaknesses include the following: Poor testability (not scientifically testable), unrealistic view of human nature (self-actualizing persons seem rare), and inadequate evidence (haven't been research oriented).

Describe Eysenck’s biological theory of personality. (pp. 573-574) Eysenck views personality structure as a hierarchy of traits, in which many superficial traits are derived from a smaller number of more basic traits, which are then derived from a handful of fundamental higher-order traits (extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism). Some people can be conditioned more readily than others because of differences in physiological functioning.

Summarize the evidence regarding personality similarity in twins and

other research on the heritability of personality. (pp. 574-575) Personality test have been administered to identical and fraternal twins reared together and apart, and the results concluded that identical twins reared apart were more similar in personality than fraternal twins reared together, with heritability estimates for the traits examined ranging from 40-50%, and these results support the hypothesis that genetic blueprints shape personality. As well, studies have concluded that shared environments do not influence personality.

Summarize the evolutionary approach to personality. (p. 576) The evolutionary analyses focus on how various personality traits, and the ability to recognize these traits in others, may have contributed to reproductive fitness in ancestral human populations.The big 5 personality traits stand out as important dimensions of personality because those traits have significant adaptive implications. The big 5 are fundamental because humans have evolved special sensitivity to variations in the ability to bond with others (extraversion), the willingness to cooperate and collaborate (agreeableness), the tendency to be reliable and ethical (conscientious), the capacity to be an innovative problem solver (openness to experience) and the ability to handle stress (low neuroticism).

Summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the biological approach to personality. (pp. 576-577) Biological factors exert influence over personality. The weakness include the following: Too heavily focused on heritability, and the results of efforts to carve behaviour into genetic and environmental components are ultimately artificial (it's both hereditary and environmental).

Describe the contemporary research on narcissism and terror management. (pp. 577, 580-582) Narcissism is a personality trait marked by an inflated sense of importance, a need for attention and admiration, a sense of entitlement, and a tendency to exploit others. Studies have been conducted that show gradual increases in narcissism among college students from 1980-2008. Terror management theory concerns the psychological consequences of the "juxtaposition of a biologically rooted desire for life with the awareness of the inevitability of death." Self-esteem is viewed as a sense of personal worth that depends upon one's confidence in the validity of one's cultural world view and the belief that one is living up to the standards prescribed by that worldview. Mortality salience is the degree to which subject's mortality is prominent in their minds. Culture provides a buffer between a person apart of the culture and the fear of death. If one is reminded of their own mortality, they engage in a variety of behaviours that are likely to bolster their self-esteem, thus reducing anxiety. Increasing mortality salience leads people to work harder at defending their cultural worldview, which may even fuel prejudice and aggression.

Describe the connection between culture and personality. (pp. 582-584) Culture influences personality based on whether it is a culture based on Individualism (involves putting personal goals ahead of group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group memberships), or Collectivism (putting group goals ahead of personal goals and defining one's identity in terms of the groups one belongs to). Individualistic cultures cultivates an independent view of the self (independent, self-contained, autonomous), while Collectivist cultures cultivate an interdependent view of the self, which emphasizes the fundamental connectedness of people to each other. Self-enhancement involves focusing on positive feedback from others, exaggerating one's strengths, and seeing oneself as above average. Individualistic cultures are more focused on self-enhancement, while collectivist cultures focus less on self-enhancement.

Outline the four principal uses of personality tests. (p. 586) Personality tests can be helpful in (1) making clinical diagnoses of psychological disorders, (2) vocational counselling, (3) personnel selection in business and industry, and (4) measuring specific personality traits for research purposes.

Describe the self-report inventories. Summarize their strengths and weaknesses. (pp. 586-588) Self-report inventories are personality tests that ask individuals to answer a series of questions about their characteristic behaviour. The advantage of self-report is that it can provide a more objective and more precise estimate of the person's measured trait. Disadvantages include the following: deliberate deception, social desirability bias, and response sets.

Describe the projective tests. Summarize their strengths and weaknesses. (p. 588) Projective tests ask participants to respond to vague, ambiguous stimuli in ways that may reveal the subject's needs, feelings, and personality traits. Advantages of projective tests are (1) they are not transparent to respondents (subject doesn't know how the test will provide information to the tester) and (2) the indirect approach used in these tests may make them especially sensitive to unconscious, latent features of personality. The disadvantage is the lack of scientific evidence on projective measures, and contains inconsistent scoring, low reliability, inadequate test norms, cultural bias, and poor validity estimates.

Describe the role of hindsight bias in everyday analyses of personality. (pp. 590-591) Hindsight bias is the tendency to mould one's interpretation of the past to fit how events actually turned out. Now only does hindsight bias present issues for scientific theories of personality (Freudian and Evolutionary), it is pervasive in everyday analyses of personality, due to the examination of the past being tainted by the new information acquired. It is difficult for one to imagine the past without knowing the information they know in the present.