An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.
2 key historically significant perspectives that helped establish the field of personality psychology:
1) Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic thoery that proposed that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality.
2) The humanistic approach focused on our inner capacities for growth and self-fulfillment.
Today's personality researchers study:
The basic dimensions of personality, the biological roots of these basic dimensions, and the interaction of persons and environments. They also study self-esteem, self-serving bias, and cultural influences on one's sense of self. And the unconscious mind.
Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, quote states,
"There is no man who is not at each moment, what he has been and what he will be."
______ is to psychology what Elvis is to rock-n-roll.
Freud
Define psychoanalysis.
Freud's theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.
Define unsconscious.
According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.
Define Free Association.
In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and say whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarassing.
Define id and the pleasure principle.
Contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.
Define ego and the reality principle.
The largely conscious, "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.
Define superego.
The part of the personality that according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judement (the conscience) and for future aspirations.
Define identification.
The process by which according to Freud, children incorporate their parents' values into their developing superegos.
Define mechanisms.
The ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
Name 6 examples of defense mechanisms.
1) Repression: Underlies all the other defense mechanisms. Banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feeling, and memories from consciousness.
2) Regression: In which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage where some psychic energy remains fixated.
3) Reaction formation: The ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings.
4) Projection: People disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.
5) Rationalization: Offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions.
6) Displacement: Shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.
Define collective unconscious.
Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traes from our species' history.
True or False. Jung said that the collective unconscious explains why, for many people, spiritual concerns are deeply rooted and why people in different cultures share certain myths and images, such as mother as a symbol for nurturance.
True.
Projective tests aim to:
Provide a view by presenting an ambiguous stimulus and then asking test-takers to describe it or tell a story about it. The stimulus has no inherent significance, so any meaning people read into it presumbably is a projection of their interest and conflicts.
How do contemporary psychologists view the unconscious?
Freud was right about at least one thing. We indeed have limited access to all that goes on in our minds. The reality of implicit learning.
More than we realize, we fly on autopilot...complete this paragraph.
"Our lives are guided by off-screen, out-of-sight unconscious information processing. The unconscious mind is huge. This understanding of unconscious information processing is more like the pre-Freudian view of an underground stream of thought from which spontaneious creative ideas surface."
True or False. Freud never claimed that psychoanalysis was a predictive science. He merely claimed that looking back, psychoanalysts could find meaning in our state of mind.
True.
Some of Freud's enduring ideas were:
He drew our attention to the unconscious and the irrational, to our self-protective defenses, to the importance of human sexuality, and to the tension between our biological impulses and our social well-being. It was Frued who challenged our self-righteousness, punctured our pretensions, and reminded us of our potential for evil. Childhood experiences mold personality, that dreams have meaning, that many behaviors have disguised motives.
Trait is:
A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports.
True or False. Personality inventories are questionnaires on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feeling and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits.
One ex: Is the MMPI which stands for:
True.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.
True or False. Like learning theorists, social-cognitive theorists believe we learn many of our behaviors through conditioning or by observing other and modeling our behavior after theirs.
True.
True or False. Instead of focusing solely on how our environment controls us, soical-cognitive theorists focus on how we had our environment interact: How do we interpret and respond to external events?
True.
Three specific ways in which individuals and environments interact:
1) Different people choose different environments.
2) Our personalities shape how we interpret and react to events.
3) Our personalities help create situations to which we react.
Define personal control.
Our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless.
Define External locus of control and give an example of this.
The perception that chance or outside forces beyond one's personal control determine one's fate. Nursing home, prisons.
Define internal locus of control and give an example of this.
The perception that one controls one's own fate. Being independent, self-sufficient.
Define learned helplessness and give an example.
The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated adversive events. Caged animal.
Define psychological disorders.
Deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional behavior patterns.
Five anxiety disorders discussed in this chapter and their short definitions:
1) Generalized anxiety disorder - In which a person is unexplainably and continually tense and uneasy
2) Panic disorder - In which a person experiences sudden episodes of intense dread
3) Phobias - In which a person feels irrationally and intensely afraid of a specific object or situation
4) Obsessive-compulsive disorder - In which a person is troubled by repetitive thoughts or actions
5) Post-traumatic stress disorder - In which a person has lingering memories, nightmares, and other symptoms for weeks after a severely threatening uncontrollable event.
Define Dissociative disorders.
In which conscious awareness becomes separated (dissociated) from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings.
Dissociative Identity Disorder is:
A rare dissociative disorder in which a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities.
Define Personality disorders.
Psychological disorders characterized by inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning.
Define Antisocial personality disorder.
A personality disorder in which the person (usually a man) exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even toward friends and family members. May be aggressive and ruthless or a clever conartist.
Define Mood disorders.
Characterized by emotional extremes.
Define Major Depressive Disorder.
A mood disorder in which a person experiences, in the absence of drugs or a medical condition, two or more weeks of significantly depressed moods, feelings of worthlessness and diminished interest or pleasure in most activities.
Define Mania.
A mood disorder marked by a hyperactive, wildly optimistic state.
Define Bipolar disorder.
A mood disorder in which a person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania.
Define schizophrenia.
A group of severe disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions and inappropriate emotions and actions.
Delusions are:
False beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders.
Define psychotherapy.
Treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth.
Define biomedical therapy.
Prescribed medications or medical procedures that act directly on the patient's nervous system.
Define eclectic approach.
An approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client's problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy.
Define developmental psychology.
A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span.
Three issues research is centered for developmental psychology.
1) Nature/nurture - The relative impact of genes and experience on behavior.
2) Continuity/stages - Whether development is best described as gradual and continuous or as a sequence of predetermined stages.
3) Stability/change - Whether the individual's personality remains stable or changes over the life span.
What are teratogens?
Name 3 examples.
Agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.
Examples: Heroin, AIDS virus, alcohol causing FAS.
True or False. Mother's light drinking can not affect the fetal brain.
False.
True or False. On the day you were born you had most of the brain cells you would ever have.
True.
Define cognition.
All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
Define schema.
A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
Define assimilation.
Interpreting one's new experience in term of one's existing schemas.
Define accomodation.
Adapting one's current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.
What did Piaget believe?
That children construct their understandings from interactions with the world and experience spurts of change followed by greater stability as they move from one cognitive development plateau to the next.
What were Piaget's 4 stages of cognitive development and their distinctive characteristics and developmental phenomena.
1) Sensorimotor (0 to 2) - Experiencing the world through senses and actions. Object permanence and stranger anxiety.
2) Preoperational ( 2 to 6 or 7) - Representing things with words and images; use intuition rather than logical reasoning; pretend play and egocentrism.
3) Concrete Thinking (7 to 11) - Thinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetical operations; conservation, mathemtical transformations
4) Formal Operational (12 to adult) - Abstract reasoning; abstract logic, potential for mature moral reasoning
What is the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived?
Object permanence.
Define attachment and give an example.
An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress in separation.
Example: Harlow monkeys
Define imprinting.
The process by which certain animals form attachments during critical period very early in life.
Define basic trust.
According to Erik Erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.
True or False. Most abusive parents-and many condemned murderers-report having been neglected or battered as children. This means that today's victim is predictably tomorrow's victimizer.
False.
Three parenting styles defined as:
1) Authoritarian parents impose rules and expect obedience.
2) Permissive parents submit to their children's desires, make a few demands, and use little punishment.
3) Authoritative parents are both demanding and responsive. They exert control not only by setting rules and enforcing them but also by explaining the reason and, especially with older children, encouraging open discussion and allowing exceptions when making the rules.
Piaget believed that children's moral judgements build on their cognitive development. Kohlberg agreed and sought to describe the development of moral reasoning. Kohlberg believed that we develop intellectually by passing through three levels of moral thinking which are described as:
1) Preconventional morality before age 9 focusing on self-interest. They obey rules to avoid punishment or to gain concrete rewards.
2) Conventional morality by early adolescence, evolves to a more conventional level that cares for others and upholds laws and social rules simply because they are the laws and the rules.
3) Postconventional morality. Those who develop the abstract reasoning of formal operational thought may reach a third level of morality, affirming people's agreed upon rights or following self-desfined, basic ethical principles.
Define consciousness.
Our awareness of ourselves and our environment.
Define inattentional blindness and give an example.
Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.
Example: Gorilla passing through while tasked to count number of dribbles of the basketball.
Define circadium rhythm.
The biological clock; regular bodily rhythms for example of temperature and wakefulness that occur on a 24-hour cycle.
Define REM sleep.
Rapid Eye Movement sleep - a recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur. Also known as paradoxical sleep, because the muscles are relaxed (except for minor twitches) but other body systems are active.
False sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus called:
Hallucinations.
True or False. Allowed to sleep unhindered, most humans will sleep at least 9 hours a night.
True.
80% of students are "dangerously sleep deprived...Sleep deprivation entails?
Difficulty studying, diminished productivity, tendency to make mistakes, irritability, fatigue.
Define insomnia.
Recurring problems in falling or staying asleep.
Name 5 sleep disorders in addition to insomnia.
1) narcolepsy
2) sleep apnea
3) night terrors
4) sleepwalking
5) sleeptalking
Define narcolepsy.
A sleep disorder characterized by uncontrollable sleep attacks. The sufferer may lapse directly into REM sleep, often at inopportune times.
Define sleep apnea.
A sleep disorder characterized by temporary cessations of breathing during sleep and repeated momentary awakenings.
Quote by Philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"I do not believe that I am now dreaming, but I cannot prove that I am not".
True or False. According to the text, we spend 6 years of our lives in dreams.
True.
According to Freud, the remembered story line of a dream is called:
Manifest content
According to Freud, the underlying meaning of a dream is called:
Latent content.
Name five possible functions of dreams stated in the text.
1) To satisfy our own wishes. Dreams provide a psychic safety valve that discharges otherwise unacceptable feelings.
2) To file away memories. Dreams as information processing of the day's experiences.
3) To develop and preserve neural pathways. Dreams serving as a physiological function associated with REM sleep brain stimulation.
4) To make sense of neural static.
5) To reflect cognitive development. Dreams as part of the brain maturation and cognitive development.
Define addiction.
A craving for a substance despite adverse consequences and often with physical symptoms such as aches, nausea, and distress following sudden withdrawal.
True or False. Addictive drugs quickly corrupt; for example, morphine taken to control pain is powerfully addictive and often leads to heroin abuse.
False.
True or False. Addictions cannot be overcome voluntarily; therapy is required.
False.
We can extend the concept of addiction to cover not just drug dependencies, but a whole spectrum of repetitive, pleasure-seeking behavior.
False.
True or False. In large amounts, alcohol is a depressant; in small amounts it is a stimulant.
Why?
False.
Low doeses of alcohol may indeed enliven a drinker, but they do so by slowing the brain activity that controls judgement and inhibitions.
True or False. Nicotine, like other addictive drugs, is not only compulsive and mood-altering, it is also reinforcing.
True.
MDMA stands for the scientific name of ______ and the street name ______.
Methylenedioxymethamphetamine which is ecstasy.
Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol stands for what?
THC.
True or False. THC produces a mix of effects that makes the drug difficult to classify.
