Class notes
Study Guide Intro to Psychology
- Course
- PSYCH 100
- Institution
- Washington University In St. Louis
Detailed class notes/study guide for Intro to Psych
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PERSONALITY:ORIGINS:
Who is Hagrid?
What is he like? (facets)
Is he always like that? (consistency)
Has he always been like that (stability)
Why? (causes/etiology)
How do you know? (indicators)
Personality: stable set of characteristics and tendencies that influence an individual's
response to a variety of circumstances
Why do we care about personality?
Useful shortcut for understanding people
o Descriptive words allow us to capture a person's essence quickly
Explains why people are the way they are and why they do what they do - explain
behavior
Helps predict behavior
Personality may mediate how much stress leads to illness
o Interactional Stress Moderation Model
Applications:
eHarmony - personality is helpful
Reality TV shows - rely on personality of the actors in order to create drama
Government - cares about personality for secret service members
NASA - cares because many people are together in close quarters for a long time and
they need to get along!
Origins of Personality:
Biological influences:
Oscar and Jack Stohr: had lots of weird characteristics in common (identical twins)
but raised in radically different environments
Genetic influences:
o Twin Studies:
Twins raised apart are more similar than siblings raised together - genes
influence personality
Monozygotic twins are more similar than dizygotic twins
, o Adoption studies:
Adopted siblings are no more alike than randomly selected people from the
population and personality is not especially similar to that of their family
conclude that family environment is less influential than genes
o Heritability estimates 40-60% of personality
o Genes exert influence through neurotransmitters - molecular genetic studies
Lower serotonin levels = more impulsive/aggressive
Higher baseline of dopamine = more novelty seeking
Temperament (Thomas & Chess 1977)
o Infants differ in ways that are observable and can predict future behavior
(distractibility, intensity of reaction, approach or withdrawal, persistence,
rhythmicity, etc.)
o 3 baby groups had personalities that were predictive of their future
temperament: easy, slow-to-warm-up, and difficult
Reticular Activating System (RAS) = Arousal system
o Introvert: baseline arousal is high, avoid social activities to lower it
o Extrovert: baseline arousal is low, want to bring arousal up by socializing
Further evidence of biological influences:
Personality changes with brain damage/disease (i.e. Phineas Gage)
Personality changes with medication
Similarities across cultures in how we describe people
Personality in animals: descriptions are objective and predictive of behavior (energy,
affection, anxiety)
o People describe their pets the way other people describe their pets
Environmental Influences on Personality:
Temperament interacts with the environment
How people (esp. parents) respond shapes personality
Birth order
o First born tends to be more conscientious, more dominant, and less sociable and
less open-minded
Culture:
o "National-character" - walking speed, efficiency of postal service, clock accuracy
in public places all can be used to understand the type of people that live in a
country.
THEORIES & MODELS:
Taxonomizing Personality:
Trait Approach:
, o Somatotypes - body builds associated with personality
o Endomorph = tolerant, fun-loving, sociable
o Mesomorph = bold, adventurous
o Ectomorph = internal, private, anxious, artistic
Gordon Allport: 18,000 personality descriptors in dictionary
o Factor analysis = statistical approach, how they clump together, boil down into
smaller subsets
Cattell: 170 most important adjectives - 16 source traits (warmth, dominance,
reasoning, etc.)
Big Five (Costa & McRae) = 5 traits for most people, each one can be broken down into its
facets
Openness (close-minded/simple - open-minded/creative)
Conscientiousness (careless/impulsive - organized/responsible)
Extroversion (solitary/quiet - social/talkative)
Agreeableness (quarrelsome/cold - cooperative/sympathetic)
Neuroticism (calm/collected - anxious/worried)
Summary of trait approach:
The trait approach describes personality but does not explain its origins
Personality theorists have tried to identify the most parsimonious number of key
personality traits
Converging evidence that there is a relatively small number of basic personality traits
Theories of Personality:
Psychoanalytic
Behavioral
Social-cognitive
Humanistic
PSYCHOANALITIC THEORY:
Freud: saw patients reporting psychosomatic symptoms - no physical explanation,
emotional reasons for ill-health
o Hysteria: physical symptoms but no physiological foundation
o Structure of the psyche:
Conscious - current awareness
Pre-conscious = not aware, but can become aware and bring to conscious
awareness
Unconscious = outside of conscious awareness and control, we make an
effort to keep it down
, Id: animalistic side of subconscious, hedonistic, primitive, instinctive,
impulsive, etc.
Ego: mediates between unrealistic id and external superego, more
rational than the id
Superego: regulates the id and keeps it in check, incorporates the
morals and values of society
Freud's Psychosexual stages of development: (crisis at each stage that needs to be
resolved)
Stage Age Focus Fixation (Personality)
Oral 1 Mouth Passive, dependent, oral behavior
(smoking)
Anal 2 Toilet training Fastidious, tidy, obstinate
Phallic 3-5 Masturbation, oedipal/electra Vain, reckless, gender confusion
complexes
Latancy 5-puberty N/A N/A
Genital Adolescent Intercourse, emotional Insecure, volatile
dependency
Criticisms of psychoanalytic theory:
Concepts are difficult to measure and test
Overemphasis on the negative parts of personality and human nature
Used men as the norm
Little acknowledgment of the role of culture in the development of personality
Useful principles from psychoanalytic theory:
Early childhood experience is important
Personality is influenced by developmental experiences
Behavior can be influenced by processes operating outside our conscious awareness
BEAHAVIORAL THEORY:
B.F. Skinner's "radical behaviorism"
o Train personality - conscientiousness can be taught through
reward/punishment, encouraged for being conscientious and discouraged for
being careless
Social learning theory
o Bandura's bobo doll experiments, vicarious learning
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