CHAPTER 14 Learning Objectives Note Do NOT need to know Behavioral Social Learning Theories of Personality or Humanistic Approaches On completion of this chapter students should be able to 1 describe how twin and adoption studies shed light on genetic and environmental influences on personality text p 541 Identical monozygotic twins are more similar genetically than fraternal dizygotic twins there is a higher correlation of a trait among identical fraternal twins assuming environmental influences on both sets of twins are comparable suggests a genetic influence Identical twin correlations are equal to less or than fraternal twin correlations suggest the absence of a genetic component and instead point to nonshared environmental influences Concordance rate degree to which two twins are the same on a given variable ex like how extraverted they are All twins have a correlation rate less than 1 which shows that the nonshared environmental influences must play a key role in personality o These twins findings don t tell us what these nonshared environmental influences are review slide 1 page 4 Shared environment surprisingly plays little to no role in adult personality o Ex anxiety is very genetically based o Always going to be some differences w sibling o Some environmental play is going on Non Shared Environment contributes to personality traits Specific environment you seek out that not shared by everyone influences personality In class video Twins reared apart o Twins that never knew each other for 35 years ended up being very similar Case Study Researchers at the University of Minnesota studied over 130 identical and fraternal twins o Many separated at birth raised in different states and sometimes even countries Twins reared apart were strikingly similar in their personality traits Far more similar than fraternal twins reared apart Identical twins reared apart are about as similar as identical twins reared together o Once again shared environment plays little or no role in adult personality Adoption Studies children are more like their biological parents than adoptive parents o Genetic makeup is biggest in contributing to personality Genes code for proteins not specific behavior o Therefore genes have indirect influences on traits while the environment incluences how these are displayed in our lives 2 describe the core assumptions of psychoanalytic theory text p 545 Freud s psychoanalytic theory rests on three core assumptions psychic determinism symbolic meaning and unconscious motivation According to Freud personality results from the interactions among id ego and superego Ego copes with threat by deploying defense mechanisms Freud s five psychosexual stages are oral anal phallic latency and genital o Psychic determinism assumption that all psychological events have a cause o Symbolic meaning every action feel said has meaning may engage in behavior below our conscious actions Ex why do men build tall building to be superior o Unconscious motivation we rarely understand why we do what we do although we quite readily cook up explanation for our actions after the fact Freudian view of mind can be compared to an iceberg with the unconscious part of personality that were unaware being the vast and largely uncharted area of the psyche submerged underwater the conscious component of the mind part of personality of which were aware is the tip of the iceberg Study page 7 of Ch 14 notes to grasp concept of id ego and superego Defense mechanisms the ego will try to minimize anxiety Maneuvers we use to reduce anxiety Repression purposefully forget emotionally distressed no longer allowing yourself access to it o Ex repress memories of child sex abuse Projection take a negative quality about ourselves and project it onto other people o Ex hooking up w someone so throw on someone else Sublimation take something like an impulse and transform into something useful o Ex police firemen soldier all have low fear take a characteristic that could be bad but transform it into something good 3 describe key criticisms of psychoanalytic theory text p 552 do not need to know neo freudian theories There are five major criticisms concerning Psychoanalytic theory Unfalsifiability ex the concept of reaction formation offers a convenient escape hatch that allows many psychoanalytic hypotheses to evade falsification If we were to find evidence that most 5 year old boys report being sexually abused by their mothers would this oberservation refute the existence of Oedipus complex o Superficially the answer is yet but Freudians could respond that those bays are engaging in reaction formation and are attracted to their mothers at an unconscious level o Freud used ad hoc maneuvers from refutation ex one of freud s patients disliked her mother in law and took pains to not spend summer with her this falsifies freud s theory that all dreams are wish fulfillments he argued that her dream supported his theory that her underlying wish was to prove Freud incorrect Failed Predictions portions of the theory that can be falsified often have been Questionable Conception of the Unconscious subliminally presented stimuli presented below the threshold for awareness affects our behavior researchers observe the effects of subtle stimuli on people s behavior Researchers primed some participants but not others with words relevant to old age like florida and wrinkle in the context of language task after the study primed participants walked down the hallway more slowly than did unprimed participants o Doesn t provide evidence for the unconscious a massive reservoir of impulses and memories submerged beneath awareness o Freud viewed the unconscious as a place where sexual and aggressive energies along with repressed memories are housed Reliance on unrepresentative samples freuds method of inquiry were idographic his theory was nomothetic o studied a small number of individuals in depth but apeopleied his theories to virtually of humanity Flawed assumption of shared environmental influence ex freuidans claim that the child emerging from the phallic stage assumes the personality characteristics of the same sex parent behavior genetic studies show shared environment plays scant role in adult personality contradicting a key proposition of Freudian theory 4 describe trait models of personality including the big five text p 562 Interested primarily in describing and understanding the structure of personality Psychologists tried to find
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