PSYO 1012 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Factor Analysis, Oedipus Complex, Defence Mechanisms

• School: Dalhousie University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYO 1012
• Professor: Stevens L.

Document Summary

Personality is the unique and relatively enduring set of behaviours, feelings, thoughts, and motives that characterize an individual: personality is what distinguishes us from one another and makes us unique, personality is relatively enduring, or consistent. The concept of personality would not exist if everyone acted and thought alike. Personality psychology is concerned with the fact that some people do a(cid:374)d so(cid:373)e people do(cid:374)"t a(cid:272)t i(cid:374) a pa(cid:396)ti(cid:272)ula(cid:396) (cid:449)a(cid:455) i(cid:374) the sa(cid:373)e situatio(cid:374). Personality traits, like intelligence, are normally distributed in the population. The same is true for other traits, such as extraversion, warmth, and conscientiousness: traits are directly connected to behaviours, behaviour lower behavioural thresholds. Different people have different optimal levels of arousal, or threshold. Personality is shaped by the forces of both nature and nurture. The interaction between the two can be seen in at least four lines of reasoning and research: evolutionary theory, genetics, temperament and fetal development, and cross-cultural universality.