Exam 4 Study Guide Includes Personality Emotion Motivation Psychological Disorders and Treatment This exam is just like the others and isn t cumulative This information is taken from class lectures notes and the textbook I ve come to class every day and read the textbook Good luck Personality 1 What is personality What do personality psychologists seek to do a Personality people s typical ways of thinking feeling and behaving Made up of enduring predispositions that influence our behavior across many situations b People respond differently to the same event so personality psychologists i Describe psychologically meaningful and stable differences among seek to people ii Explain and predict behavior 2 From textbook Be able to define and differentiate between two methods personality psychologists use to study personality idiographic approach and nomothetic approach b a Nomothetic approach approach to personality that focuses on identifying general laws that govern the behavior or all individuals Idiographic approach unique configuration of characteristics and life history experiences within a person approach to personality that focuses on identifying the 3 What are three things behavior genetics methods try to disentangle What two types of studies are often used What did the finding of these studies show the genes you get from your parents a Genetic factors b Shared environmental factors alike such as living in the same place and knowing the same people less alike an example of this is birth order c Non shared environmental factors experiences that make family members experiences that make family members more d The studies often used are twin studies and adoption studies These studies look for how similar the twins are in personality These correlations show that identical twins are not only closer genetically than fraternal but they are also further correlated in many other aspects such as aggression and advancement orientation This implies that genetics could play a role in these personality factors e Adoption studies are used to separate genetics from the environment In these studies the correlations were mostly the same inferring that genetics definitely does play a role but shared environment does not Because the correlations are less than 100 it probably means that some of this comes from our non shared environment f Results suggest strong genetic component for personality and almost no effect of shared environment Adoption studies show the same things 4 According to Freud what are the three parts of personality Be able to define and differentiate between them a Id reservoir of primitive impulses unconscious desires that are driving force of behavior i Sex aggression ii Pleasure principle seek immediate gratification sense of morality most of it is unconscious but some of its b Superego conscious i Sense of right and wrong internalized from society parents c Ego decision maker i ii Resolve demands of the id and superego iii Reality principle delay gratification until appropriate outlet interact with the real world 5 From textbook What are defense mechanisms Know four of the defense mechanisms repression reaction formation projection displacement and be able to give an example of each a Repression b Reaction formation transformation of an anxiety provoking emotion into its motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses Example a person who witnesses a traumatic combat scene finds himself unable to remember it opposite Example a married woman whose sexually attracted to a coworker experiences hatred and revulsion toward him unconscious attribution of our negative characteristics to others Example a married man with powerful unconscious sexual impulses toward females complains that other women are always after him safer and more socially acceptable target Example a golfer angrily throws his club into the woods after he misses an easy putt directing an impulse from a socially unacceptable target onto a d Displacement c Projection 6 What are three problems with Freud s theory of personality as discussed in class a Difficult to falsify his theories hard to test if the id does or does not exist b Evidence against defense mechanisms c Used case studies typically of upper class Viennese women which is a very specific group making his theories impossible to generalize to everyone 7 From textbook What do social learning theories of personality focus on What do they think is important to personality What is reciprocal determinism What is locus of control What is the difference between an internal and external locus of control a Social learning theories of personality focus on thinking as a cause of b Reciprocal determinism personality Observational learning is believed to be the most important to personality other s behavior c Locus of control punishers lie inside or outside of their control extent to which people believe that reinforcers and tendency for people to mutually influence each d Someone with more of an internal locus of control believes they have more control over their environment and think if something happens to them it s their fault good or bad Someone with more of an external locus of control believes most of the control over their environment is out of their hands whether they attributed it to fate or someone else etc People with internal loci of control tend to be better adjusted 8 What are traits What is the lexical approach to coming up with traits What is factor analysis a Trait theories of personality are concerned with describing and understanding b Traits c Lexical approach the enduring predispositions that influence our behavior across many structure of personality situations Personality is composed of many different traits language Search dictionaries that one might use to describe people found thousands of words and had to narrow it down to general traits factors by looking at correlations The goal of this is to find the smallest number that still adequately reflects the complexity of human personality statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items crucial features of personality are embedded in our d Factor analysis 9 What are the Big Five traits What do they predict a This theory states that all personality traits can be grouped into five general categories They all exist on a continuum and knowing where someone falls on all of these can give you a good idea of someone s personality i Openness to experience imaginative
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