PSY230H1 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Tabula Rasa, Behavioral Activation, Conscientiousness
PSY 230 Midterm 2 Review
Chapter 5:Biological Aspects of Personality
A person is not born as a blank slate that is then written upon, but rather there are
inherent predispositions and abilities
Natural selection: The process by which certain adaptive characteristics emerge
over generations
Evolutionary personality: Area of study applying biological evolutionary theory to
human personality
Behavioural Genomics: The study of how genes affect behaviour
Temperament: Stable individual differences in emotional reactivity
Four basic aspects of temperament:
• Activity—always being in motion vs not
• Emotionality—easily aroused to anger or fear
• Sociability—enjoying the company of others
• Aggressive/impulsive—being aggressive and cold vs. conscientious
and friendly
Eysenck’s Model of Nervous System Temperament:
Extroverts have low levels of brain arousal so they seek stimulation to pump up.
Introverts have a higher level of central nervous system arousal so they shy away
from more nervous system stimulation
It is difficult to measure something like arousal and the body is a complex system
with many different physiological responses all the time
There is evidence that extroverts show less brain arousal at rest then introverts and
introverts are slower to habituate to sensory stimulation
Gray’s Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory :
A theory that says both observation and learning are key to survival
BIS (behavioural inhibition system):
• Orienting response to novel situations, responds to punishment
• If this system is over sensitive you are prone to anxiety
• Anxious obsessive people are concerned with avoiding unknown
situations and punishment
BAS (behavioural activation system)
• Regulates our response to reward
• If over active you are impulsive and prone to addiction, over seeking
reward
• Impulsive people are shaped by rewards
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Sensation seekers have a tendency to constantly seek out highly stimulating
activities. Might also have low neural activity and therefore are primed biologically
to seek out an engage their environments
More serotonin is related to less impulsivity, Sensation seeking might be related to
dopamine reward systems. More active right hemispheres might relate to
overreacting to negative stimuli
Eugenics: encouraged purifying the blood lines of humans by strengthening
eminent families . Galton saw that eminence seems to run in families
Jack and Oskar are identical twins who were raised separately but have similar
personalities
The similarities in personality between identical twins raised separate are more
than fraternal twins but less than identical twins raised together
There can be patterns of genes for certain attitudes. As twins get older their
personalities become more different
Non-shared environmental variance: environmental features that children raised in
the same house experience differently
Schizophrenia: person has a distorted view of reality, paranoia, odd emotional
reactions
Genes play some role but don’t necessarily control it fully
Homosexuality tends to run in families and monozygotic twins are more likely than
dizygotic twins to have the same sexual preference
Some evidence that part of the brain’s anterior hypothalamus, known to be related
to sexual behaviour is smaller in gay men
Exotic become erotic: inborn temperament influences to make either same or
opposite sex friends
Kin selection: Kin Selection
The idea that increasing the likelihood for the family members of an individual to
survive increases the likelihood that the individual’s genes will be carried on to
the next generation even if the individual did not reproduce him- or herself
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Meniere’s disease: inner ear disorder that produces disabling nausea and auditory
disturbances
Tropisms: the tendency to seek out specific types of environments
Somatopology: Sheldon’s theory relating body type to personality characterisitcs
Mesopmorph: a somatotype describing muscular boned athletic people
Ectomorph: describing slender bookworm types of people
Endomorph: overweight good natured type of people
What’s beautiful is good: People expect physically attractive others to do good and
to be good.
Chapter 6: Behaviourist and Learning Approaching
Classical conditioning: pairing an unconditioned stimulus with a neutral stimulus so
the neutral stimulus can elicit the same result as the unconditioned stimulus
Generalization: conditioned response would occur in response to stimuli that was
similar to the conditioned stimuli
Discrimination: the conditioned response would not occur for all possible stimuli
Behavioural pattern are a result of classical conditioning.
Extinction: conditioned response becomes less frequent; the association becomes
weaker until it disappears
Pavlov assumed that conditioning principles are general rules that apply uniformly
to all animals but different organisms are more easily conditioned to respond to
certain ways to certain stimuli
Behaviourism: introduced by john Watson that emphasizes the study of observable
behaviour, rejected introspection
Systemic desensitization: gradually extinguishing a phobia by causing the feared
stimulus to become disassociated from the fear response
• Even highly emotional aspects of personality can disappear over time
Reinforcement: An event that strengthens the behaviour and increases the
likelihood od repeating the behaviour in the future
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PSY230H1 Full Course Notes
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Document Summary
A person is not born as a blank slate that is then written upon, but rather there are inherent predispositions and abilities. Natural selection: the process by which certain adaptive characteristics emerge over generations. Evolutionary personality: area of study applying biological evolutionary theory to human personality. Behavioural genomics: the study of how genes affect behaviour. Temperament: stable individual differences in emotional reactivity: activity always being in motion vs not, emotionality easily aroused to anger or fear, sociability enjoying the company of others, aggressive/impulsive being aggressive and cold vs. conscientious. Extroverts have low levels of brain arousal so they seek stimulation to pump up. Introverts have a higher level of central nervous system arousal so they shy away from more nervous system stimulation. It is difficult to measure something like arousal and the body is a complex system with many different physiological responses all the time.
