COURSE NOTES: Introductory Psychology
Notes for Psychology 101: based on Myers's text, Exploring Psychology, with supplements and modifications by the instructor, Prof. Cloninger.
| denotes a term that you should know how to define, and to recognize and give examples.
denotes an important person. You should remember this person's name and what (s)he has done.
denotes an important research finding.
denotes an issue that you should be able to discuss or explain.
PERSONALITY: an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting (Myers, 2005, p. 429)
example: a person's characteristic outgoing, extraverted personality; another person's hard-driving, competitive style
4 MAJOR PERSPECTIVES ON PERSONALITY
The Psychoanalytic Perspective
The Trait Perspective
The Humanistic Perspective
The Social-Cognitive Perspective
[Myers labels two of these as "historic perspectives": psychoanalytic and humanistic, and two as "contemporary": trait and social-cognitive.]
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE
EXPLORING THE UNCONSCIOUS: FREUD
The "father of psychoanalysis"
psychoanalysis: a method for exploring the unconscious and a treatment techniquefree association
Say whatever comes into your mind ...
Don't try to be logical.
Don't try to be creative, or to give "good answers."
Just say whatever comes into your mind.
(Harder than it sounds.)
- Free association helps to reveal the repressed fears and hidden wishes of the unconscious.
not conscious, but influences behavior and experience
... according to "Dr. Fraud" (oops--a classic "Freudian slip")
repression of sexual and aggressive urges
the two major instincts, which provide motivation for all of personality: sex and aggression
Freud's iceberg metaphor
Dreams provide evidence of the unconscious, through symbols.
"the royal road to the unconscious"
manifest content (recalled story)
latent content (symbolic interpretation)
id: the pleasure principle
superego: ideals; guilt
ego: the reality principle
- oral stage
- anal stage
- phallic stage
- latency stage
- genital stage
fixation at various psychosexual stages
- passive dependence
- messy, disorganized
- highly controlled, compulsively neat
THE PHALLIC STAGE
Putting unpleasant or anxiety-provoking thoughts out of your conscious thought. (Is involved in all defense mechanisms.)
ex: Most people don't think about the possibility of a nuclear war; it would cause overwhelming anxiety if we thought about it.
Functioning at an earlier stage of development.
ex: Child who has been toilet trained starts having "accidents" after a new brother or sister is born.
Doing the opposite of what you unconsciously wish.
ex: Acting very nurturant toward a younger sibling, when actually you are (unconsciously) angry because of the competition for the parents' love.
Seeing undesirable qualities in others that are actually in you.
ex: Thinking other people are doing "naughty" sexual things (but not realizing that these are your own unconscious desires).
Giving plausible, but false, reasons for what you do.
ex: A parent punishes a child, saying it is for the good of the child, unaware of his/her own aggressive impulses toward the child.
Expressing unacceptable impulses against substitute targets.
ex: You are really angry with your teacher for giving you a low grade, but you act grumpy toward your roommate instead.
Expressing sexual or aggressive impulses in transformed, socially acceptable ways.
ex: Playing a highly competitive game of volleyball, instead of acting in some directly aggressive way.
ASSESSING THE UNCONSCIOUS
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Rorschach inkblot test
EVALUATING THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE
FREUD'S EARLY DESCENDANTS AND DISSENTERS
childhood is important, but conflict is social (not sexual)
compensation for inferiority ("inferiority complex")
helplessness (the child's dependency)
love (parents don't give enough)
security (children are insecure)
role of women (culture; not only biology)
collective unconscious; spirituality
FREUD'S IDEAS IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN RESEARCH
repression of traumatic events? Doesn't occur as predicted
People REMEMBER trauma; they don't repress it generally.
unconscious mind: information processing view instead of repression
the "cognitive unconscious" is currently accepted, instead of Freud's "dynamic unconscious"
as scientific theory: failure to predict
THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE
The humanistic perspective emphasizes:
fulfilling our potential
ROGERS: person-centered perspective
unconditional positive regard
UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD: an attitude of total acceptance toward another person
example: being accepted and loved even if your grades are low, your weight is wrong, and your attitude is questionable
People nurture others' growth in these ways:
(applies to therapists, friends, family, etc.)
according to Carl Rogers's theory:
being genuine (open with feelings; self-disclosing)
being accepting (offering unconditional positive regard)
being empathic (sharing and mirroring our feelings; reflecting our meanings)
importance of the self-concept
assessing the self
- discrepancy between actual self and ideal self
Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective:
- impact on popular culture
- consistency with Western emphasis on the individual self
- vague, subjective concepts
- underestimates evil
THE TRAIT PERSPECTIVE
Allport's trait approach
trait: a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports (Myers, 2005, p. 443)
examples of traits:
types or traits
- types: categories
- traits: dimensions
factor analysis to identify traits
Eysenck's factor model
the INTROVERSION factor
the NEUROTICISM factor
[and a 3rd factor...]
the PSYCHOTICISM factor
(better called "creativity")
5-factor model: the Big Five
N: emotional stability ("neuroticism")
sense of well-being
The Big Five are stable, heritable, cross-cultural, and predictive of other characteristics.
Genetic predispositions influence personality (such as shyness).
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
- empirically derived (comparison of groups)
- yields a profile of scores on several scales
EVALUATING THE TRAIT PERSPECTIVE
What determines behavior? [graphic: personality and situations both influence behavior]
The Person-Situation Controversy
apparent consistency of traits
behaviors, though, may be inconsistent
tests don't predict specific behaviors very well (but do predict average behaviors, in a variety of situations)
Consistency of Expressive Style
Brief "slices" from films of expressive behavior predict lasting impressions.
THE SOCIAL-COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE
RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM: the mutual influences of situations, personality factors (thoughts and feelings), and behavior [diagram as a triangle]
- example: being in the library (situation); value of achievement (personality); and studying (behavior) all influence one another
Individuals and environments interact:
- Different people choose different environments.
- Our personalities shape how we interpret and react to events.
- Our personalities help create situations to which we react.
internal locus of control
external locus of control
Seligman's studies of dogs
experience with inescapable punishment leads to giving up, hopelessness, helplessness, depression
Rodin's studies of nursing home patients
leads to persistence
leads to health
must be balanced by realistic pessimism
Assessing Behavior in Situations
Behavior predicts behavior better than personality tests do.
Evaluating the Social-Cognitive Perspective
may over-emphasize situations (compared with traits)
Exploring the Self
possible selves: images of what we might become
example: I could become a doctor, or an Olympic athlete, or a college graduate, or an alcoholic, or ...
More examples of possible selves:
- a college graduate
- a drop-out
- a wife
- a single mother
- a candidate for political office
- a contented suburban housewife
spotlight effect: overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us). (Myers, 2005, p. 457)
SELF-ESTEEM: feeling of self-worth
- example: I'm great! I can be proud of who I am!
BENEFITS OF HIGH SELF-ESTEEM
more independence from pressures to conform
less drug use
more persistence on difficult tasks
Self-esteem could be cause, or it could be effect.
CULTURE AND SELF-ESTEEM
Does society's racism reduce self-esteem of minorities?
- African and Hispanic Americans do NOT have reduced self-esteem, compared with Whites.
- They value things at which they excel.
- They attribute problems to prejudice.
- They compare themselves with others in their own group.
We take credit for our successes and good deeds.
We blame our failures and bad deeds on reasons outside ourselves.
We see ourselves as "better than average."
CULTURE AND THE SELF
Students: You can also use resources for this text supplied by the publisher. These include a chapter overview, self-tests, and other resources.
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