What is Personality

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What is Personality?

• Exam is scheduled for Friday, Dec. 14th at 900

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Personality

• What qualities do you look for in friends?

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Definition

• Personality is the system of enduring, inner
  characteristics of individuals that contributes
  to consistency in their thoughts, feelings, and
  behavior (Leary, 2005).
• So Personality
• Is internal (inner)
• Is relatively stable (enduring)
• Contributes to behavioral consistency

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Personality and Environment

• Kurt Lewin (1951)
• Personality is a determinant of behavior
• B f(P,E)
• Behavior is a function of the environment and
  personality
• Importance of the strength of the situation
• Differences between the classes
• Personality is internal (inside the skin)
• Environment is external

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Fundamental Issues

• What is the structure of personality?
• How does personality develop and change?
• What are the consequences of individual
  differences in personality?

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Paradigms in Personality Theory

• Psychodynamic Paradigm
• Trait Paradigm
• Phenomenological (Existential/Humanistic)
  Paradigm
• Behavioral Paradigm
• Cognitive Paradigm

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The Trait Paradigm

• Focuses on how people differ from each other
• Lexical hypothesis
• All important traits must have been encoded in
  language (Gordon Allport)

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Traits

• nervous enthusiastic original
• altruistic careful rude
• arrogant cheerful warm
• supportive obnoxious friendly
• deceitful ambitious diligent
• artistic assertive curious
• energetic generous forgiving
• outgoing reliable unstable

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Trait Theory

• Tries to determine empirically what traits people
  do have instead of which characteristics a theory
  says they should have
• Factor analysis reduces many traits to fewer ones
  that go together (correlate)

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Five Factor Model (Costa McCrae)
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Five Factor Model
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Humanistic Tradition

• Early-mid 20th century
• Carl Rogers
• Major Themes
• People are basically good
• Humans strive toward self-actualization and can
  reach potential if given freedom to grow

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Person-Centered Therapy

• Important therapist attributes
• Congruence (genuineness)
• Empathy
• Unconditional positive regard
• Foundation of nearly all contemporary models of
  psychotherapy

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The Behavioral Model

• Emphasizes scientific approach to psychopathology
• Abnormal behavior is learned and can be unlearned
• Classical conditioning Pavlov and Watson
• Pairing neutral stimulus with unconditioned
  stimulus
• Systematic desensitization
• Relaxation training
• Gradual exposure

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The Behavioral Model

• Operant conditioning Thorndike and B. F. Skinner
• Most voluntary behavior is controlled by the
  consequences that follow behavior
• Punishment vs. reinforcement
• Relevance to ______?

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The Behavioral Model

• People are products of their environments
• Behavior therapy time-limited, direct, and
  focused on skills acquisition and symptom
  reduction
• Studied scientifically more often than other
  therapies

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The Cognitive Paradigm

• Also Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis
• It is more how we interpret or appraise what
  happens to us that determines how we feel
• AActivating Events
• BBeliefs
• CConsequences

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Cognitive Therapy

• Conventional wisdom
• A?C
• That driver made me so angry!
• CBT viewpoint
• A?B?C
• Your beliefs about the car driver made you so
  angry
• People must never inconvenience me!
• People must always respect me!

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Cognitive Therapy

• Cognitive restructuring
• Changing maladaptive beliefs

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Defense mechanisms and modern coping research

• Emotion expression
• AKA emotional disclosure
• Pennebakers disclosure paradigm

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• Trauma Disclosure
• I would like you to write for three minutes about
  an upsetting experience youve gone through. In
  your writing, I want you to really let go and
  explore your very deepest emotions and thoughts.
  You might tie your personal experiences to other
  parts of your life. How is it related to your
  childhood, your parents, people you love, who you
  are, or who you want to be? Again, in your
  writing, examine your deepest emotions and
  thoughts. Also, when you write, dont worry about
  grammar, spelling, or sentence structure these
  things are not important.

• Control Condition
• I want you to write for three minutes about a
  specific topic. The most important thing is that
  you describe the specific event or object in
  detail without discussing or exploring your
  emotions or feelings about the topic. In todays
  writing, I want you to describe your dorm room.
  The most important thing in your writing is that
  you describe your living room accurately and
  objectively without describing or exploring your
  emotions. Also, when you write, dont worry about
  grammar, spelling, or sentence structure these
  things are not important.

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Emotional disclosure

• Initially guided by inhibition/disinhibition
  theory
• Similar to suppression, repression?
• Research Design
• Participants engage in a disclosure or no
  disclosure control writing task for 4 days for
  15 min each day
• Physical health and psychological well-being is
  monitored before and after

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Effects of disclosure

• Physical health
• Immunological functioning
• Physician visits
• Psychological effects
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Life satisfaction
• Behavioral outcomes
• GPA
• Re-employment

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Pennebakers disclosure paradigm (contd.)

• What drives these effects?
• Maybe not disinhibition?
• Greenberg, Wortman, Stone (1996)
• Real vs. imaginary trauma disclosure vs. control
  group
• Effects on physician visits and upper respiratory
  symptoms for both disclosure groups
• Cognitive processing
• A mastery experience
• Narrative formation
• Emotional processing
• Exposure and habituation
• Methodological limitations

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Possible methodological Confounds

• Whats a confound?
• Possible confounding mechanisms of disclosure
  (Markowitz, Purdon, Oakman, 2007)
• Expectancies
• Cognitive dissonance
• Demand characteristics
• Task resentment
• Confounds or meaningful processes?
• My current research