Essay About Psychology Of Personality And Normal Individual Difference

Psychology of Personality – Lecture Notes
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lOMoARcPSD|1958796Psychology Of Personality – Lecture notes – psych jan 12January 12 – Class 2 Tuesday, January 12, 2016 2:24 PM Chapter 1: The study of the personPersona: Latin for “mask” Book: An individuals characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms – hidden or not – behind these patterns  Better definition: “Set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individuals that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the environment.”  Strong situation: lots of pressure for you to act in a particular way● Unlikely to see personality   Psychology triad: How people Think Feel behave Sub disciplines intersect, but the greatest overlap is with clinical psychology Personality disorders Personality psychology: Normal personality or normal individual difference – Clinical : extreme manifestation of personality psychology Personality is a risk factor for psychopathology   3 levels of personality analysis : most are studied in Human Nature, and Individual and Group Differences   Human Nature How we are “like all others” Focus on identifying traits and mechanisms Individual and Group Differences How we are “like some others” Ex) Sex, gender, social class Individual Uniqueness How we are like “no others”   Idiographic ApproachReally good ways to do it, and may be very useful to use across radarsPerson Centered: Goal is to understand one person, what makes people unique PROS: Complete understanding of a single individual Great for important people CONS: Subjective, not easily falsifiable Need to be able to get a lot of information about the person Not generalized Need a biographer Example: Dodge Morgan: First American to sail to nonstop around he world, a feat in which he cut the prior time in half Completed battery of psychology tests on an almost daily basis Results correlated with content analysis from Morgans log; biographical, historical information Goal: To learn about what kind of person can persevere to successfully   Nomothetic Approach: Variable-centered approach: Focus on the relation between variablesExample: Self-esteem and life satisfaction PROS: Objective, can be tested More complete understanding of more people Great for everyday people like you and me CONS: Boring Difficult, need to understand stats   “Mission Impossible” Requires a basic paradigmUnderstanding everything about a person/people at once is impossible ❍ Think of  an important behavior that you performed recently and ALL of the reasons for the behavior The basic paradigm (approach) involved limiting the focus at any one time so the task is do-able Focus on one things at a time [pic 1][pic 2][pic 3]Conceptualization of individual differences Measurements of individual differences [pic 4][pic 5]Anatomy Physiology Genetics Evolution most associated with personalityFreudPsychoanalytic –[pic 6]What is unique about being human Phenomenological- Humanistic psychology  Cross-cultural psychology Conscious awareness and experience  [pic 7]Behaviorism – Skinner (you are the way you are because of awards  and punishments that have happened In your life  Social Learning Theory Cognitive personality psychology Basic Approaches: Not mutually exclusive Difference approaches address different questions ❍ Each ignores many key concerns Not one big theory that works because every theory has something wrong with them Interested in “Why” people do something – psychoanalyst”who” should you hire – Trait approach  Characteristics of Personality Psychology