PSYC104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Psychosexual Development, Nomothetic, Heredity
30 May 2018
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Week 6 - 7 Personality
What is personality?
- Studies those things about a person that remain stable across different
situations (e.g. anxiousness or extroverted)
- Examines effects whereby the effect of the situation on a person remains
stable across different types of people (e.g. stereotypes and conforming to
groups)
- Also studies how a person’s thoughts and actions interact with the conditions
in their lives
- People choose their environments, people affect their environments and in
return the environment affects how people think and adopt personality
Personality Definitions
Pervin 1994
- Personality is the complex organisation of cognitions, affects and behaviours
that gives direction and pattern to the person’s life
- Like the body, personality consists of both structures and processes and
reflects both nature and nurture
- Includes effects of the pat, including memories and construction of present
and future
Questions in Research
Key questions
- What are the basic elements of personality?
- To what extent is personality stable across time and situations?
Basic questions
- Nature vs nurture
- What is the best way of studying people? E.g. conflicts, motives, thoughts
- How easily can people change?
- What basic principles emerge from studying personality?
- What basic processes underlie how people deal with the world?
Issues in research
- Empirical does not mean experimental
- We see others through our own ‘glasses’, beliefs, understanding and bias
- Individual differences
- Contributions of biology, culture, history
- Change in illness, love and career
- Gender differences
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Research approaches
Clinical
Focus - involves systematic and in-depth research of individuals
Method - observation
Researchers:
Charcot
- Hysteria brought on with hypnosis
- Greatly influenced Freud
Prince
- Multiple personality
- Different selves exist within all of us
- E.g. procrastination, self-defeating behaviour, own worst enemy
Freud
- Tried to explain hysteria (paralysis, numbness, fainting)
- No apparent biological basis
- Thought there was an unseen force (the unconscious)
- Tried to explain phenomenon with theories
- Topographic model (unconscious, preconscious, conscious)
- Drive model (libido, aggression)
- Structural model (ego, superego)
- Developmental model (psychosexual stages)
Murray
- Children are little conscious of their states
- Promoted the use of variety of data
- Use of data from interviews, questionnaires, projective tests, situational tests
Strengths
- Does not assume the everyone has the same degree of insight into their own
functioning (self-reports)
- We all differ depending on the topic, day, mood, anxiety, esteem
- Observes a variety of phenomena
- Considers functioning of the whole person
- Generates hypotheses
Weaknesses
- Difficult to confirm observation
- Difficult to test
- Hard to replicate with questionnaires
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Correlational
Focus - establishes association between sets of measures on which people have
been found to differ. Studying relationships between elements
Methods - based on self-reports
Researchers:
Galton
- Explored differences due to heredity e.g. intellectual abilities
- Measured genius, boringness
- Devised composites of criminals
- Assumes trait is a fundamental unit of personality
Strengths
- Restricts self-report to set items and asks is this true
- Easy to use on large groups
- Cost effective
- Compares individuals to the norm
Weaknesses
- Correlation does not equal causation
- Factor analysis is subjective
- Vulnerable to distortions
- Can’t tap into the unconscious
Experimental
Focus - involves the systematic manipulation of variables to establish relationships
Method - experimental control and manipulation
Researchers:
Wundt
- Interested in the science of immediate experience
- How to changes in stimuli influence changes in experience
Pavlov
- Experimental neurosis and role of conflict in development
- Gradual increase stimulus similarity
Watson
- Emotional reaction conditioned in children
Strengths
- Close to scientific ideal
- Not reliant on self-reports
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Studies those things about a person that remain stable across different situations (e. g. anxiousness or extroverted) Examines effects whereby the effect of the situation on a person remains stable across different types of people (e. g. stereotypes and conforming to groups) Also studies how a person"s thoughts and actions interact with the conditions in their lives. People choose their environments, people affect their environments and in return the environment affects how people think and adopt personality. Personality is the complex organisation of cognitions, affects and behaviours that gives direction and pattern to the person"s life. Like the body, personality consists of both structures and processes and reflects both nature and nurture. Includes effects of the pat, including memories and construction of present and future. We see others through our own glasses", beliefs, understanding and bias. Focus - involves systematic and in-depth research of individuals. Different selves exist within all of us. E. g. procrastination, self-defeating behaviour, own worst enemy.
