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48 Cards in this Set

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William Sheldon
William Sheldon Theory of Personality: Somatotypes.Physical/ Biological variables related to human behaviors.
1. Endomorphy: Soft, spherical body. Temperament tolerant, love of comfort and luxury, extrovert

2. Mesomorphy: Hard, muscular, rectangular. Temperament courageous, energetic, active, dynamic, assertive, aggressive, risk taker

3. Ectomorphy: Thin, lightly muscled, fragile. Temperament artistic, sensitive, apprehensive, introvert
E.G. Boring
The Zeitgeist (changing spirit of the times) guides psychology's development.
Edward Titchener (what's his method? What's the system of Psychology?)
Edward Titchener's method of introspection: Formed Structuralism: Structural psychologists analyzed human experiences through introspection, breaking mental activity down into "basic elements" or "building blocks.
Sigmund Freud Theory of Personality (which theory? What are the three players?)
Sigmund Freud: Psychodynamic/ psychoanalytic theory: there's unconscious internal states motivating overt actions, determining personality.

Id, ego, superego.
1. Id: Reservoir of all psychic energy. Operates with Pleasure Principle: Aim to IMMEDIATELY discharge energy buildup.
Id PRIMARY process: Id's response to frustration... It helps alleviate frustration through "Wish Fulfillment" (a mental image of something you want but can't have right now).
Ego: Operated with "Reality Principle" (accounts for objective reality, guides or inhibits id's activity). Aim: To postpone the pleasure principle until the actual object is available. Ego services the id. Ego uses Secondary Processes (looking for an object in the real world that matches the mental image created by the id’s primary process.)
Superego: The moral branch of personality. Wants perfection.

Superego has two subsystems: Conscience: What you do wrong and get punished for.
Ego-Ideal: What you get rewarded for.
Instinct (according to Freud)
Instinct (according to Freud): Innate psychological representation (wish) of a bodily (biological) excitation (need).

Two types of instincts:
Eros (life)- for individual survival. Performs work with libido's energy.
Thantos (death).
Defense Mechanisms (what are they? Two common traits)
Defense Mechanisms: according to Freud, it's the ego's recourse to releasing pressures due to anxiety.

All defense mechanisms: Deny, falsify, distort reality. And operate unconsciously.

Describe them. Define them: repression, suppression, projection, reaction formation, rationalization, regression, sublimination, displacement).


Repression: The unconscious forgetting of anxiety-producing memories

Suppression: More deliberate, conscious form of forgetting

Projection: When you attribute your urges to others.
Reaction Formation


Reaction formation: Repressed wish is warded off by its opposite (ex. Loving the hell out of someone you can't stand)

Rationalization: Developing a socially acceptable explanation of inappropriate thoughts/ behaviors.

Regression: When a person reverts to an earlier stage of development in reaction to a traumatic event.

Displacement: Pent-up feelings are discharged on less-dangerous objects than the real culprit

Sublimination: Transforming unacceptable urges into socially acceptable ones.
Carl Jung (what theory base? What components of mind? What archetypes?)
Carl Jung's Psychoanalytic Theory: More emphasis to interpersonal, sociological, cultural influences.
Jung: Libido is psychic in general (not just sexual)

1. Ego is the Conscious mind.
2. Unconscious in two parts- Personal + Collective Unconscious (shared among all humans, a residue of experience from early ancestors).

CU's images, building blocks are ARCHETYPES: A thought or image with an emotional element.
Jungian Archetypes
Jungian Archetypes:
1. Persona: A mask in response to social convention. Originates from social interaction, assumes social roles have a useful purpose to mankind.

2. Anima/Animus: Help us understand gendered behaviors.

3. Shadow: Animal instincts, responsible for guilt-provoking thoughts.

4. Self: Person's striving for unity, the intersection of collective unconscious and conscious. (self= mandala- a magic circle, a reconciler of opposites).
Jungian Personality Types (2)

Jung's 4 psychological functions
Jungian Personality typology:

1. Introversion: Orientation toward inner, subjective world
2. Extroversion: Orient. toward external, objective world.

Jung's 4 Psych. functions: thinking, feeling, sensing, intuiting. One's usually more differentiated.

Jung believed all his systems interacted to form personality.
Alfred Adler (what's the creative self, style of life, inferiority complex, fictional finalism?)
Alfred Adler's theory: Attention to society and family and their effect on conscious factors.

Adler: Inferiority Complex (your sense of incompleteness, social and physical disabilities).
Adler: Superiority striving drives personality. Striving enhances the personality when it's socially oriented.

Adler's Creative Self: Force by which people shapes their uniqueness, personality.
Adler's Style of Life: The manifestation of the creative self, a person's special way of becoming superior.

Adler's Fictional Finalism: You're motivated by your subjective, fictional estimate of life's values, expectations for future.
Karen Horney (what needs? Why neurotic)
Karen Horney's ten needs of the neurotic personality.

Ten needs directed toward making life's interactions more bearable.
ex/ affection and approval, need to exploit others, need for self-sufficiency and independence.

Needs become neurotic (according to Horney) when: 1. They're out of proportion 2. provoke intense anxiety 3. Partially disregard reality 4. Indiscriminate in application.
Horney's strategies
Three strategies to reduce basic anxiety: Moving toward, moving against, moving away.

Highly threatened people: Use on of these rigidly and exclusively, carries into adulthood.
Anna Freud (what's the modification?)
Anna Freud: Founded ego psychology: More direct study of conscious ego, its relation to the world and the other parts of mind (id, superego).
Erik Erikson (and ego Psychology)
Erik Erikson: Made a direct extention of psychoanalysis to the psychosocial realm. Expanded Freud's stages to whole life, showed how even negative events can make life better. His framework describes a healthy person in his own terms.
Object relations theory
(what's an object? Who did it?)
Object-Relations Theory: Also psychodynamic.
"Object:" The symbolic representation of a significant part of a child's personality. O.R. theorists: Look for the creations, development of objects..

Examples of Object-Relations Theorists: Melanie Klein, D.W. Winnicott, Margaret Mahler, Otto Kernberg.
Psychanalytic Treatment
(objective? What does gaining insight do? hypnosis, free association- reconstruct what?)
Psychanalysis: Developed by Freud. Intensive, long-term.
Goal: To uncover repressed memories, conflicts STEMMING from problems in psychosexual development.

Insight to repressed material: Energy to deal with repressed conflict is freed up, available.

Early on, Freud used hypnosis, gave it up later.

Free Association: Client says whatever comes to mind. Helps reconstruct the nature of the client's original conflict.
Psychoanalysis II (Dream interpretation- why use? Resistance Transference- what is it? What can you do with it? Countertransferrence?)
1. Dream interpretation: During dreams, the mind is freer to express forbidden wishes, and the defenses are relaxed.

2. Resistance: Unwillingness or inability to relate to certain thoughts, motives. ex/ missing therapy, forgetting dreams, blocking associations.

3. Transference: Attributing attitudes to the therapist that developed in the patient's relationships with someone else.
- Transference: Helps the analyst recreate the patient's experiences so they can acknowledge their relationships with others

4. Countertansference: The therapist's range of emotions toward the client. Must be understood by therapist.
neo-Freudian approaches (what's the modification?)
Neo-Freudian approaches: Place more emphasis on current interpersonal relationships and life situations (vs. childhood/ psychsexual development)
Behaviorism (assumes what? Who's John Dollard and Neal Milller?)
Behaviorism: Assumes behavior is LEARNED as people interact with their environment.

Behaviorist theory of personality: Tend to look at behavior first.

John Dollard and Neal Miller: Blended psychanalytic theory with behavioral stimulus response reinforcement learning theory approach. Focused on CONFLICTING motives/tendencies in personality development.
Behaviorism II (B.F Skinner on personality? Albert Bandura- what's his theory called
B.F. Skinner on personality: Said "personality" a collection of behavior that is sufficiently reinforced to persist. Personality is the result of behavioral development of a person.

Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory: Learning principles explain personality devlopment. Learning= reinforcement and Vicarious Reinforcement (seeing another person's behavior reinforced).
Martin Seligman (re: depression. Which major framework?)
Martin Seligman's Learned Helplessness Theory of Depression: Shocked dogs..
So: Said that people who consistantly face difficult situations from which they can't escape learn to feel powerless.
Result is learned helplessness, depression, external locus of control.

Seligman's work is essentially Behaviorist.
Behavior Therapy (relationship of symptoms to disorder? Good for what?)
Behavior Therapy: Maladjustment is learned. The symptom IS the disorder.

BT works well with phobias, impulse control, personal care for mental retardation, hospitalized Psych. patients.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (Beck, Ellis?)
CBT: Blends Cog. and Beh. approaches. CBT: Tries to change the patient's distorted thoughts.

Beck's Cognitive Therapy for Depression: Client asked to write down negative thoughts about themselves, figure out why they're not justified, and find better thinking.

Ellise's Rational-Emotive Therapy: People develop irrational ways of thinking, and therapist should challenge an irrational belif, help client recognize it's irrational, change it to a rational one.
Behaviorism vs. Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis says that removing one symptom will just create Symptom Substitution: A new symptom will replace the old one.
Humanism (Phenomenology and Gestalt Theory of Personality
Humanism: Emphasiser internal processes (vs. behavior). Focuses on what distinguishes us from animals.

Phenomenology emphasizes the subjective experience of the individual.

Gestlt Theory of Personality: It teaches therapists and patients the phenomenological method of awareness, in which perceiving, feeling, and acting are distinguished from interpreting and reshuffling preexisting attitudes.
Kurt Lewin's Theory
1. Kurt Lewin's Field Theory: Loves Gesalt.

social environment as a dynamic field which impacted in an interactive way with human consciousness. Adjust elements of the social environment and particular types of psychological experience predictably ensue. In turn, the person's psychological state influences the social field or milieu.

Personality is dynamic and constantly changing. Personality can be divided into (ideally well-articulated) systems. Diffused regions with stress.
Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy
Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Motives: Organized from basic (physiological, safety needs...belonging and love needs... esteem, cognitive, aesthetic needs).

The highest need is self- actualization: Need to realize your full potential
Found: S-As have non-hostile sense of humor, original, creative, spontaneous, have some need for privacy. AND: PEAK EXPERIENCES: Profound experience that has lasting effects.
George Kelly (Humanism)
Humanist George Kelly: Individual as scientists (devises prediction about behavior of people in their lives).

Anxious person: Has difficulty constructing, understanding the variables in their environment.

Psychotherapy (according to George Kelly): Insight process, acquiring new constructs to predict bad events, then direct the constructs into preexisting ones.
Human-Existentialist Therapies
Human-Existentialist Therapies: Emphasize the process of finding meaning by making your own choices.

Mental illness: Problems of loneliness, meaningless experience.

Humanistic Therapy: Exploration into client's thoughts, feelings.

Existential: Empathy, positive regard.
Carl Rogers (humanist and phenomenological. What's his therapy? What's the objective? What's UPRegard?
Carl Rogers: A humanist w/ a phenomenological theory. Therapy with Client-Centered Therapy (Person-Centered, Nondirective): People can control their own behavior, reflect, make choices, take positive action, help determine own destiny

Objective of C-C T: Help the client be willing/able to be himself, increase congruence bet. ideal and actual self.

Need Unconditional Positive Regard.
Victor Frankl (Humanistic)
Victor Frankl (Humanist): Survived Nazi concentration camps. Mental problems: Stem from a life of meaninglessness.
Trait/ Type Theorists
Type Theorists:

(Ex. Raymond Catell, Gordon Allport, David McClelland)

Type theory: Refers to the psychological classification of different types of people. According to type theories, for example, there are two types of people, introverts and extroverts.

ex. Hans Eysench
Type A/ B
Type A: Competitive, compulsive. Most prevalent with middle/upper class men, more prone to heart disease.

Type B: Laid-back, relaxed
Raymond Catell
Raymond Catell (trait theorist): Used factor analysis (statistical method to explain variability among observed variables in terms of fewer unobserved variables called factors) to measure personality.

Raymond Catell found 16 basic traits (permanent reaction tendencies in individuals.. the building blocks of personality)
Hans Eysenck
Hans Eysenck (type theorist): Used factor analysis. Broad dimensions of personality are types , followed by more specific traits.

Hans Eysenck: Tested Jung's division of extroversion/ introversion. Found two dimensions in which human personality differed:
1. introversion- extroversion
2. emotional stability- neuroticism,
3. [later added] psychoticism
Gordon Allport (3 trait types? Functional autonomy? idiographic vs. nomothetic)
Gordon Allport (trait theorist): 3 basic types of traits:
1. Cardinal (traits around which your life is organized) Not everyone has em.
2. Central: Major characteristics (honesty, fatalism)
3. Secondary: More personal, limited in occurrence.

Allport re: Functional Autonomy = a given activity may become an end to a goal regardless of that activity's original purpose.

Allport: Idiographic (focus on individual case studies) and Nomothetic (focuses on groups of individuals to find commonalities)

Allport preferred ideographic for personality study.
David McClelland (nAch)
David McClelland (trait):
Identified trait called need for achievement (nAch).

High nAch: Concerned with achievement, take pride in accomplishments. Avoid too high, too low risks. Set realistic goals.
Herman Witkin
Herman Witkin: Relationship between personality and perception of the world.

Witkin: Field-dependence= people have different degrees of it. ONe end, specific response to specific stimuli (field independent)

Other end: More diffuse response to undifferentiated stimuli.
Julian Rotter
Julian Rotter: Internal Locus of control vs. external.

External: Believing that outside events and chance control destiny.

Internal: Higher self-esteem.
Machiavellianism: Someone manipulative, decietful.
Sandra Bem
Sandra Bem's androgyny: People can score high on femininity and masculinity, SO: They're two separate dimensions.

Androgyny: Being high in both!
Walter Mischel's Criticism
Walter Mischel's Criticism: Criticised explaining behavior based on personality types.

Mischel: Human behavior is determined by the characteristics of the SITUATION (not person)