Psychology 155: Personality Study Guide 2
Chapter 5: Biological Aspects of Personality
Temperament: Stable individual differences in emotional activity.
4 Basic Aspect of Temperament
1. Activity (Vigorous motion vs. passivity).
2. Emotionality (Easily aroused vs. calm and stable).
3. Sociability (Approaches and enjoy others vs. aloof).
4. Impulsivity (Aggressive and cold vs. conscientious and friendly).
Eysenck's Model
1. Extroverts have a low level of internal arousal and seek out external stimulation
1. Zuckerman's Theory
2. Introverts have a high level of internal arousal and shy away from external stimulation.
Jeffrey Gray
1. Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS): Overactive → anxiety
2. Behavioral Activation System (Behavioral Approach System; BAS): Overactive → impulsivity
Effects of Biology
1. Meniere's Disease
2. Environment: Mercury exposure, lead poisoning manganese, cadmium
3. Alzheimer's Disease, Pick's Disease, Strokes, etc.
4. Biological Determinism: The belief that an individual's personality is completely determined by
biological factors (and especially by genetic factors).
5. Drugs: tranquilizers, sleeping pills, antidepressants, cocaine can have both short and long term
effects on personality; Psychopharmacology
Tropisms: The processes by which some individual grow towards more fulfilling and health promoting
spaces while other individuals remain subject to darker, health threatening environments. Some of these
motivational forces originate in temperamental, differences, which themselves derive from
combinations of genetics, hormonal exposures, and early experiences.
W.H. Sheldon
1. Somatotypology: A theory relating body type to personality characteristics.
1. Mesomorph: A somatotype describing muscular, large-boned, athletic types of people.
2. Ectomorph: A somatotype describing slender bookworm types of people.
3. Endomorph: A somatotype describing overweight, good-natured types of people.
2. Physical traits affect how other view us therefore affect our personality
Cinderella Effect: Refers to evidence suggesting that parents give preferences to biological children
over step-children.
1. Attachment
Chapter 6: Behaviorist and Learning Aspects of Personality
Classical Conditioning of Personality
1. Used to explain emotional aspects of personality
1. Neurotic behavior
2. Phobias
3. Superstitious behavior
Generalization vs. Discrimination vs. Extinction
Thorndike's Law of Effect: The consequence of a behavior will either strengthen or weaken the
behavior; that is, when a response follows a stimulus and results in satisfaction for the organism, this
strengthens the connection between stimulus and response; however, if the response results in
discomfort or pain, the connection is weaken.
1. Operant conditioning: The changing of behavior by manipulating its consequences.
1. Reinforcement (Preceding response increases after the consequence occur) vs Punishment
(Preceding response decreases after the consequence occur)
Stimulus is Added
Stimulus is Removed
Response Increases
Positive Reinforcement
Negative Reinforcement
Response Decreases
Positive Punishment
Negative Punishment
Behaviorist Reinterpretation of Psychoanalytic and Neo-Analytic Concepts
Psychoanalytic or Neo-Analytic Concepts
Behaviorist Reinterpretation
Freud's notion of the id as the instinctual energies Skinner asserted that this is simply humans' innate
that form the undifferentiated core of personality. susceptibility to reinforcement, which is a product
of evolution.
The internal personality structure termed the ego
or “I,” which responds to the world according to
the reality principle.
The learned responses to the practical
contingencies of everyday life; there are different
behavioral repertoires for different environmental
contingencies.
The superego or “over-I” that internalizes societal Behavior is learned from the punitive practices of
rules that helps protect the ego from
society, controlling behavior not allowed by
overwhelming id impulses.
parents and society; “unconscious” simply means
that people are not taught to observe it and talk
about it.
The ego defense mechanism of repression, that
We learn to avoid behavior that is punish, and by
pushes threatening thoughts and motives back into not engaging in it, we avoid conditioned aversive
the unconscious.
stimulation.
Jung's notion of archetypes (universal emotional
symbols) and the collective unconscious of deep,
universal emotional symbols.
Skinner says that this is the evolution certain
universal characteristics of the human species and
the parallel cultural evolution of useful behaviors;
there is thus a sameness or universality of things
that are reinforcing, and a commonality of
behaviors that societies need to control.
Clark Hull
1. Habits: Simple associations between a stimulus and a response.
2. Primary Drive: A fundamental innate motivator of behavior, specifically hunger, thirst, sex, or
pain.
Dollard and Miller
1. Social Learning Theory: A theory that proposes that habits are built up in terms of a hierarchy
of secondary drives
1. Habit Hierarchy: A learned hierarchy of likelihoods that a person will produce particular
responses in particular situations.
2. Secondary Drives: Drives that are learned by association with the satisfaction of primary
drives.
2. Internal Conflicts
1. Approach-Avoidance Conflict: Conflict between primary and secondary drives that occurs
when a punishment results in the conditioning of a fear response to a drive.
2. Approach-Approach Conflict: Conflict in which a person is drawn to two equally attractive
choices.
3. Approach-Avoidance Conflict: Conflict in which a person is faced with two equally
undesirable choices.
Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis: Aggression is the result of blocking, or frustrating, a person's
efforts to attain a goal.
Act Frequency Approach: Assessing personality by examining the frequency with which a persona
performs certain observable actions.
Chapter 7: Cognitive and Social-Cognitive Aspects of Personality
Domain
Field Dependence vs Field Independence (Rod-and-Frame Test)
Characteristics
Children's Play Preferences
Field-independent children are more likely to
favor solitary play over social play.
Socialization Patterns
Field-independent people are more likely to have
been socialized with an emphasis on autonomy
over conformity.
Career Choices
Field-independent people are more likely to be in
technological rather than humanitarian
occupations.
Preferred Interpersonal Distance for Conversation Field-independent people are more likely to sit
farther away from a conversational partner.
Level of Eye Contact
Field-independent people make less frequent and
less prolonged eye contact with a conversational
partner.
Schema Theory
1. Schema: A cognitive structure that organizes knowledge and expectations about one's
environment.
2. Script: A schema that guides behavior in social situations.
Categorization: The perceptual process by which highly complex ensembles of information are filtered
into a small number of identifiable and familiar objects and entities.
1. Stereotypes
George Kelly
1. Personal Construct Theory: Approach to personality that emphasizes the idea that people
actively endeavor to construe or understand the world and construct their own theories about
human behavior.
2. Role Construct Repertory Test: An assessment instrument to evoke a person's own personal
construct system by making comparisons among triads of important people in the life of the
person being assessed.
Intelligence
1. Social Intelligence: The idea individuals differ in their level of mastery of the particular cluster
of knowledge and skills that are relevant to interpersonal situations.
2. Emotional Intelligence: The set of emotional abilities specific to dealing with other people.
3. Emotional Knowledge: The ability to recognize and interpret emotions in the self and others.
4. Multiple Intelligences: Howard Gardener's theory that claims that all human beings have at least
seven different ways of knowing about the world and that people differ from one another in the
relative strengths of each of these seven ways.
1. Language,
2. Logical-Mathematical Analysis
3. Spatial Representation
4. Musical Thinking
5. Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
6. Understanding the Self
7. Understanding Others
Julian Rotter
1. Six Psychological Needs:
1. Recognition-Status
2. Dominance
3. Independence
4. Protection-Dependency
5. Love and Affection
6. Physical Comfort
2. Specific Expectancy vs. Generalized Expectancy
3. Locus of Control: The variable that measures the extent to which an individual habitually
attributes outcomes to factors internal to the self vs. external to the self.
1. Internal Locus of Control vs. External Locus of Control
Albert Bandura
1. Self-System: The set of cognitive processes by which a person perceives, evaluates, and
regulates his or her own behavior so it's functionally efficient and appropriate.
1. Observational Learning or Vicarious Learning