Psychology in Your Life

Transcription

1 Sarah Grison Todd Heatherton Michael Gazzaniga Psychology in Your Life SECOND EDITION Chapter 13 Self and Personality W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

2 13.1 How Do We Know Ourselves? Personality The characteristic thoughts, emotional responses, and behaviors that are relatively stable in an individual over time and across circumstances Self-schema An integrated set of memories, beliefs, and generalizations about the self Researchers typically observe activity in the middle of the frontal lobes of the brain when people process information about themselves 2

3 Our Sense of Self Is Who We Believe We Are Each of us has a notion of something we call the self, but the self is difficult to define For college students, the sense of self typically includes Gender Age Student status Interpersonal style (e.g., shy, friendly) Personal characteristics (e.g., moody, optimistic) Body image (e.g., positive, negative) 3

4 Our Sense of Self Is Who We Believe We Are (3) 4

5 Our Sense of Self Is Who We Believe We Are (4) Working self-concept Reflects how people think of themselves at a given moment Research respondents are especially likely to mention features such as ethnicity, gender, or age if they differ in these respects from other people around them at that moment Self-esteem The affective aspect of the self Many theories propose that self-esteem is based on how we believe others perceive us This view is known as reflected appraisal 5

6 Our Sense of Self Is Who We Sociometer theory Believe We Are (7) Self-esteem is a sociometer, an internal monitor of social acceptance or rejection When our sociometer indicates a high possibility of rejection, we experience low self-esteem When our sociometer indicates a low probability of rejection, we tend to experience high self-esteem 6

7 Our Sense of Self Is Who We Believe We Are (8) 7

8 Our Sense of Self Is Who We Believe We Are (9) Self-esteem and life outcomes Evidence from psychology indicates that selfesteem may be less important than is commonly believed A review of several hundred studies found that although people with high self-esteem report being much happier than others, self-esteem is weakly related to objective life outcomes 8

9 Our Sense of Self Is Who We Believe We Are (10) One characteristic associated with inflated self-esteem is narcissism An analysis of many studies found increasing narcissism among American college students between 1979 and 2006 Even though we might encourage children to have high self-esteem, there is a tendency for self-esteem to fall during adolescence and be at its lowest for people, especially young women, aged 18 to 22 years 9

10 Our Sense of Self Is Who We Believe We Are (11) 10

11 We Try to Maintain a Positive Sense of Self (3) Better-than-average effect According to research, most people have positive illusions that is, overly favorable and unrealistic beliefs in at least three areas 1. They continually experience the better-than-average effect 2. They have unrealistic beliefs about how much they can control events 3. They are unrealistically optimistic about their personal future 11

12 We Try to Maintain a Positive Social comparisons Sense of Self (4) Downward comparisons: Comparing oneself to another person who is less competent or in a worse situation, which tends to protect one s high self-esteem Upward comparisons: Comparing oneself to another person who is more competent or in a better situation, which tends to confirm one s low self-esteem Temporal comparison is another form of downward comparison, in which people view their current selves as better than their former selves 12

13 We Try to Maintain a Positive Sense of Self (6) 13

14 We Try to Maintain a Positive Self-serving biases Sense of Self (7) Self-serving bias: The tendency for people to take personal credit for success but blame failure on external factors For instance, students who do extremely well on exams often explain their performance by referring to their skills or hard work Those who do poorly might describe the test as an arbitrary examination of trivial details 14

15 Our Sense of Self Is Influenced by Cultural Factors (1) Some cultures emphasize the collective self: connections with others, following norms etc. Such collectivist cultures include those in Japan, Greece, Pakistan, China, and some regions of Africa Individualist cultures emphasize rights and freedoms, self-expression, and diversity, This includes the cultures of northern and western Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States 15

16 We Try to Maintain a Positive Sense of Self (10) 16

17 13.2 How Can We Understand Personality? (1) In the past century, psychologists have studied personality based on several different approaches Psychodynamic theory Humanistic approaches Social cognitive approaches Trait approaches 17

18 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious Conflicts (1) Psychodynamic theory Freudian theory stating that unconscious forces determine behavior The central idea of this theory is that unconscious forces such as wishes, desires, and hidden memories determine behavior 18

19 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious Conflicts (2) Unconscious conflicts The conscious level of our mental activity consists of the thoughts that we are aware of The preconscious level consists of content that is not currently in our awareness but that could be brought to awareness The unconscious level contains material that the mind cannot easily retrieve 19

20 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious Conflicts (3) 20

21 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious Conflicts (4) Three structures of personality 1. Id: The component of personality that is completely submerged in the unconscious and operates according to the pleasure principle Freud called the force that drives the pleasure principle the libido. Today, the term has a specifically sexual connotation 2. Superego: In psychodynamic theory, the component of personality that reflects the internalization of societal and parental standards of conduct It is a rigid structure of morality, or conscience 21

22 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious Conflicts (6) 3. Ego: In psychodynamic theory, the component of personality that tries to satisfy the wishes of the id while being responsive to the superego The ego operates according to the reality principle, which involves rational thought and problem solving Conflicts between the id and the superego lead to anxiety. The ego then copes with the anxiety through various defense mechanisms Defense mechanisms: Unconscious mental strategies that the mind uses to protect itself from distress 22

23 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious Conflicts (9) Psychosexual stages of development In each stage, the libido is focused on one of the body s erogenous zones, which include the mouth, the anus, and the genitals Newborns to age two kids are in the oral stage Kids 2 to 3 years old enter the anal stage From ages 3 to 5, children are in the phallic stage The phallic stage is followed by a latency stage In the genital stage, adolescents and adults attain mature attitudes about sexuality and adulthood Oedipus complex 23

24 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious Conflicts (11) According to Freud, progression through these psychosexual stages profoundly affects personality For example, some people become fixated, or stuck, at a stage during which they receive either excessive parental restriction or indulgence Those fixated at the oral stage develop oral personalities Those fixated at the anal phase develop analretentive personalities 24

25 Psychodynamic Theory Emphasizes Unconscious Conflicts (12) Psychodynamic theory today Contemporary neo-freudians focus on social interactions In object relations theory our mind and sense of self develop in relation to others ( objects ) in our environment, and how we relate to these others shapes our personality Because Freud s central premises cannot be examined through accepted scientific methods, psychologists have largely abandoned psychodynamic theories 25

26 Humanistic Approaches Emphasize Goodness in People (1) Humanistic approaches Ways of studying personality that emphasize self-actualization, the search for fulfillment of potential through greater self-understanding Carl Rogers introduced a person-centered approach to understanding personality and human relationships Conditions of worth Unconditional positive regard 26

27 Social Cognitive Approaches Focus on How Thoughts Shape Personality (1) Social cognitive approaches Ways of studying personality that recognize the influence of how people think Expectancy theory According to Rotter s expectancy theory, our behaviors are a part of our personality They result from how we think about two things Our expectancies for reinforcement The values we ascribe to particular reinforcers 27

28 Social Cognitive Approaches Focus on How Thoughts Shape Personality (3) Personalities are based on locus of control The idea that personality is based on people s perception of whether they control the rewards and punishments they experience (internal locus of control) or not (external locus of control) 28

29 Social Cognitive Approaches Focus on How Thoughts Shape Personality (5) Reciprocal determinism Albert Bandura argued that three factors influence how a person acts 1. Person s environment 2. Person factors, which include the person s characteristics, self-confidence, and expectations 3. Behavior itself Because personality is explained by the interaction of all three factors, the model is called reciprocal determinism 29

30 Social Cognitive Approaches Focus on How Thoughts Shape Personality (6) 30

31 Trait Approaches Describe Trait approaches Characteristics (1) Ways of studying personality that are based on people s characteristics their tendencies to act in a certain way over time and across circumstances These allow us to predict a variety of different behaviors Traits exist on a continuum Most people fall somewhere in the middle, and relatively few are at the extremes 31

32 Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics (3) The Big Five, or Five Factor Theory This theory identifies five basic personality traits 1. Openness to experience 2. Conscientiousness 3. Extraversion 4. Agreeableness 5. Neuroticism (secure, calm, rarely angered) Evidence supports the five-factor theory The Big Five personality traits emerge across cultures and among adults and children, even when vastly different questionnaires are used to assess the factors 32

33 Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics (6) Biological trait theory Eysenck developed the biological trait theory Eysenck initially proposed that personality traits had two major dimensions 1. How outgoing people were 2. Whether their emotions tended to be stable or unstable 33

34 Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics (7) Introversion refers to how shy, reserved, and quiet a person is Extraversion refers to how sociable, outgoing, and bold a person is Eysenck believed that this dimension reflects differences in biological processes Eysenck also proposed a third dimension of personality traits. Psychoticism reflects a mix of aggression, poor impulse control, selfcenteredness, or a lack of empathy, and is now called constraint 34

35 Trait Approaches Describe Characteristics (9) 35

36 13.3 How Does Biology Affect Personality? Research has shown that certain genes can be linked with some personality traits Numerous studies have shown that identical twins are more similar than non-identical twins in personality traits described by the fivefactor theory Further evidence for the genetic basis of personality comes from adoption studies 36

37 Our Temperaments Are Innate (1) Temperament Biologically based tendency to feel or act in certain ways Life experiences may alter personality traits, but temperaments represent the innate biological structures of personality Three aspects of temperament Three personality characteristics can be considered temperaments 1.Activity level 2.Emotionality 3.Sociability 37

38 Our Temperaments Are Innate (4) Long-term implications of temperament Early childhood temperament appears to influence behavior and personality significantly throughout a person s development 38

39 Personality Is Influenced by Physiology (1) Research on the neurobiological basis of personality has explored the dimension of extraversion/introversion Reticular activating system (RAS) 39

40 Personality Stability Is Influenced by Biology and Situation (1) Genetic makeup may predispose people to certain personality traits or characteristics Whether personality is fixed or changeable depends on how we define the essential features of personality 40

41 Personality Stability Is Influenced by Biology and Situation (3) Cross-cultural findings suggest that agerelated changes in personality occur independently of environmental influences and therefore that personality change itself may be based in human biology Identical twins personalities become more similar as they age 41

42 Personality Stability Is Influenced by Biology and Situation (5) Other evidence suggests that some aspects of personality change in response to life events Basic tendencies: Personality traits that are largely determined by biology and are stable over time Characteristic adaptations: Changes in behavioral expression of basic tendencies based on the demands of specific situations Parenting style has less influence on personality than we used to believe it did 42

43 Personality Stability Is Influenced by Biology and Situation (7) Life events can also change personality Personality is usually stable because environments tend to be relatively stable Stability increases over time, particularly after 50 43

44 How Do We Assess Personality? Projective measures Personality tests examine unconscious processes by having people interpret ambiguous stimuli Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) Rorschach inkblot test 44

45 Several Methods Are Used to Assess Personality (2) Self-report measures Personality tests that use questionnaires to let people respond to items that reveal traits and behaviors NEO Personality Inventory Personality in everyday life Electronically activated record (EAR) People wear a device that unobtrusively tracks their real-world moment-to-moment interactions, picking up snippets of conversation and other auditory information 45

46 Several Methods Are Used to Assess Personality (5) Observational methods How well do observers personality judgments predict others behavior? Our close acquaintances may predict our behavior more accurately than we do ourselves Research suggests that we have blind spots about various aspects of our personality because we want to feel good about ourselves 46

47 Behavior Is Influenced by Personality and Situations (2) Interaction of personality and situation Mischel proposed that behaviors are determined more by situations than by personality traits Situationism: The theory that behavior is determined more by situations than by personality traits Personality psychologists differentiate between strong situations and weak situations Strong situations (e.g., elevators, religious services, job interviews) tend to mask differences in personality, thanks to the power of the social environment Weak situations (e.g., parks, bars, one s house) tend to reveal differences in personality Interactionists: Theorists who believe that behavior is determined jointly by situations and underlying traits 47

48 There Are Cultural and Sex Differences in Personality (1) Researchers found the five-factor theory personality traits in 56 countries, but there were modest differences across the countries Women and men are much more similar than different in terms of personality, but the differences between them largely support the stereotypes 48