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Title: Personality and Individual differences
Description: The following documents contain notes from a module that looks at personality and individual differences.Various topics are covered such as what personality is , individual differences, health and personality , the psychodynamic approach to personality , the humanistic approach to personality , emotion , motivation and creativity .
Description: The following documents contain notes from a module that looks at personality and individual differences.Various topics are covered such as what personality is , individual differences, health and personality , the psychodynamic approach to personality , the humanistic approach to personality , emotion , motivation and creativity .
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Personality & Individual Differences: SBC302: Lecture 1 & 2: Reading chapter 1-6
Chapter 1:
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Describing someone as having ‘no personality’ conveys meaning to most people; and most
people have a fairly good consensus about exactly what is meant
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These are intuitively based theories of human behaviour that we all construct to help us
understand both others and human behaviour
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Problems with implicit theories:
Implicit theories of personality appear to work quite well in our everyday life- however they
are flawed in several ways
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Implicit theories are also based on casual and non-random conversations,
By this we mean that they are not based on observations of behaviour that have been
systematically selected to portray accurately how that person spends his or her life
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Implicit theories are not scientific theories of personality
How is personality defined?
One difficulty that frequently arises is that many of the words used by psychologists are
already part of our everyday language or have been adopted into normal language use
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In most instances public or lay definitions tend to be very and not specific enough for
psychologists to use for research purposes
However lay definitions provide a good starting point for developing psychological
definitions
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Sometimes the emphasis is on aspects of the individual’s physical appearance, perhaps with
some comments on their social style
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Such definitions are essentially evaluations of individuals and include relative judgements, in
this instance about height and attractiveness
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These lay definitions are commonly linked to the implicit personality theories
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This may be an assumed match between a physical attribute and a personality attribute
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In summary, from lay definitions of personality, it seems that personality is judged in a social
context; that is, it has elements about how people get on with others and their style of
interacting as well comments on their appearance
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When people are alone, they
still display individual differences in terms of how they cope with solitude and their attitude
towards it
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Psychological definitions of personality:
Psychological definitions of personality differ from lay definitions in that they define
personality in terms of characteristics , or the qualities typical of that individual
Alport, a prominent early figure in personality psychology popularised the term ‘personality’
and provided a definition in 1961
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However, this dense definition requires some unpacking
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In other words, personality is conceptualised as being an active, responsive system
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Psychological systems refer to the inclusion of both our minds and our bodies in what we
refer to as personality
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The person’s characteristic patterns suggest that something relatively stable is being
produced that becomes typical of that individual
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Behaviour, thoughts and feelings refer to the fact that personality is a central component
influencing, and being discernible in, a wide range of human experiences and activities
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There is a consensus that the term ‘personality’, as now used, describes a psychological
construct; that is, a mental concept that influences behaviour via the mind-body interaction
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The idiographic approach focuses on the individual and describes the personality variables
within that individual
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They see each person as having a unique personality structure
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The possible differences are
infinite
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The single case study method is generally the research method of choice for idiographic
approaches to personality theorising
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Idiographic approaches mainly use qualitative research methodologies, such as interviews,
diaries, therapeutic sessions or narratives, to collect data on an individual
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Others will make some generalisations about human behaviour based on studying a number
of case studies
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Advantages of idiographic approach: depth of understanding of the individual
Disadvantages of idiographic approach: can be difficult to make generalisations from the
data
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The aim is to identify these personality variables or traits that occur consistently across
groups of people
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By studying large groups of people on a variable, we can establish the average levels of
that variable in particular age groups, or in men and women, and in this way produce
group averages-generally called norms for variables
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This approach, while acknowledging that each person will possess different degrees of
particular personality traits, concentrates on the similarities in human personality
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There are advantages and drawbacks to each approach
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Disadvantages of nomothetic approach: can lead to a fairly superficial understanding of
any one person
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Two celebrated personality researcher, Charles Carver and Michael argue that within
personality theorising, the distinction between idiographic and nomothetic is not clear-cut
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However they do not accept that there is an infinite number of personality variables
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The uniqueness of the individual comes from their particular mix set of variables from the
finite set
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Some idiographic also go beyond the focus purely on the individual
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In this way , they can generate theories and make predictions that can be
tested, often by using nomothetic approaches
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Personality is perceived to be a relatively stable, enduring important aspect of the self
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Personality characteristics in this way are thought to exert a relatively consistent influence
on behaviour in different situations
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While it is accepted that individuals can and do change over time, there is a contention that
personality is relatively stable over time
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The psychoanalytical theoretical school goes further making a distinction between the
conscious and unconscious aspects of personality
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From specific examples of behaviours or habitual styles, the existence of these personality
characteristics in the individual are inferred
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The private persona is conceptualised as being the ‘real’ inner person, while the public
persona is the way that the individual presents themselves to the outside world
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The first is the clinical strand that has developed from studies of the mentally ill
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Reading critically and evaluating theories:
Having a set criteria against which you can judge the theory will allow you to do this
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Where research evidence is available to support or refute aspects of the theories
presented
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These criteria are outline in no particular order of importance as evaluation will inevitably be
influence by the nature of theory being evaluated, and different criteria may assume greater
or lesser importance
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It should help to simplify, identify, and clarify the important issues
that need to be addressed
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Does the theory
provide a convincing explanation of typical commonly observed instances of that category of
behaviour? Does the theory explain how and why individual differences in commonly
observed instances of behaviour occur
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Testable concepts: Linked to prediction is the question of whether the concepts included
within the theory can be operationalised so that they can be tested
Comprehesiveness: A good theory should be able to encompass and explain a wide varierty
of both normal and abnormal behaviour
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In this respect, decisions have to be made about the importance of the behaviour so that the
limits are set
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Parsimony: A good theory should be economical in terms of the number of explanatory
concepts it includes
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Heuristic value: A good theory stimulates interest and research in an area
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Applied value: This criterion sets the theory in a wider context
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For example, does it lead to benficial changes in
the environment, or better control of unwanted beahviours
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Chapter 2: The basis of the Psychoanalytic Approach to Personality
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Freud’s theory of personality comprises of:
Level of consciousness, the nature of human beings and the source of human
motivation, the structure of personality, the development of personality
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Human beings were conceptualised as being in control of their lives and exercising
free will in their behaviour to the extent that their social circumstances allowed
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Freud disagreed strongly both with the rational view of human beings and with the
suggestion that unconscious idea were weaker than conscious ones
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Firstly, there is the level of conscious thought
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Next to this is what Freud termed preconscious mind
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The final level is the unconscious mind
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Freud argued that they were kept in our unconscious mind
because of their unacceptable nature
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The term he used for this process of keeping material unconscious was repression
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Although three levels if thoughts are described, there are no clear cut divisions
between conscious, preconscious, unconscious thought, rather, there are different
degrees or levels within each
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This unconscious material is usually in a modified form,
such as in dreams when we are asleep, at stressful times in symptoms of illness or
psychological disturbance or in the emergence of apparently alien impulses under
the influence of drugs or alcohol
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Freud compared the content of the mind to an iceberg, describing conscious and
preconscious thought as the small sections above the surface
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Dreams exemplify this very well
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Freud believed that dreams were a direct route into the patient’s unconscious
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The manifest content is the description of the dream as recalled by the dreamer
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He felt that skilled interpretation was often necessary to get at the real meaning of
the dream
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Freud claimed that different styles of thinking were associated with different levels
of unconsciousness
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This is essentially irrational mental activity
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The logically impossible becomes possible in our dreams
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This is not a desire to actively
seek pleasure, but rather an instinct to avoid displeasure, pain and upset
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Thus, the irrational thinking of dreams serves the function of
keeping us asleep by presenting our unconscious desires as being fulfilled
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This is
rational thought, which is logical and organised
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This means that we operate according to the actual situation in the external world
and the facts as we see them
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Freud suggests that the pleasure principle is an innate, primitive instinct driving our
behaviour while the reality principle is learnt as we grow up
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When Freud began his work on the development of personality, it was within a scientific
culture in which Darwin’s evolutionary theory was dominant
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Linked to Darwinism, there was great interest in explaining how specific behaviour arose
and in explaining how behaviour was energised
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He called
this energy the libido
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Freud emphasised not only the child’s biological inheritance in terms of instinctual drivesbut also the child’s environmental factors , such as developmental experiences
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The structure of the personality
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Freud’s theory include a concept of a mental apparatus consisting of 3 basic structures of
personality that assist us in gratifying our instincts
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They develop in the order stated
The ID can be thought of as the basic storehouse of raw, uninhibited, instinctual energy
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Freud thought that the id was present in the baby at birth and that, because of this, infants
try to gratify their needs very directly
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Babies cry
loudly when they are hungry, uncomfortable or in pain
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Infants have no sense of what is termed delayed gratification, that is, the notion that if you
wait patiently your needs will be met
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As the child develops, libido energy transfers from the id and the part of the personality
called the ego developes
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The ego operates according to the reality principle with related secondary process thinking
The ego becomes the mediator between the child and the outside world
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Finally, the third structure of personality develops the superego
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These interactions between the 3 structures of personality create what is termed intrapsychic conflict
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The development of personality:
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Freud described the personality as developing through 5 disitnc stages
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He suggested that at each stage the libido or energy souce is invested in a single part of the
body, which he called the erogenous zone
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Freud believed that biological factors were the main influence in development and paid little
attention to social factors
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For normal development, infant must receive sufficient oral stimulation so that their needs
are met
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This basic trust is a necessary prerequisite for all relationships
While the amount of oral stimulation required for normal development is not specified, the
results of under or over-stimulation are clearly described
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Freud describes fixation as an internal resistance to transferring the libidinal energy to a new
sets of objectives and activities
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Evidence of fixation can be observed in the personality and behaviour of affected adults,
according to Freud
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The adult who was over-indulged at the oral stage is described as having an oral receptive
character , beingly overly dependent on other people for gratification of their needs
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Freud argues that the child who has received sufficient oral stimulation will transfer their
libidinal energy to the next stage
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Freud suggests that the baby comes to receive sensual pleasure from bowel movements
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These two developments come together and help to shift the child’s attention from oral
stimulation and the mouth and to the anal region and this becomes the new erogenous
zone
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Toilet training can involve the child and the parent in interpersonal conflict, if the parents
make demands on the child to become toilet trained
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Freud suggested that this experience of conflict with demanding carers may lead individuals
to rebel against authority figures throughout their lives
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This personality type is described as having a constipated orientation, in that they are very
orderly, stingy, stubborn, with a tendency to hoard things and to delay gratification until the
last possible moment
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The opposing type resulting from anal fixation is the anal-expulsive personality
These individuals resists’ others attempts to control them, in the same way they resisted
their parent’s attempts at toilet training
They are untidy, disorganised and disregard accepted rules about cleanliness and
appropriate behaviour
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Phalic stage:
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As the child’s genitals become more sensitive as a result of physiological maturity, the
libidinal energy moves from the anal region to the genital area as the genitals are now the
source of pleasure
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This stage is thought to be particularly difficult for girls as they become aware that while
boys have penises, they do not
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This leads to feelings of deficiency in girls and wish to possess a penis
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These developments are accompanied by changes in the children’s relationship with their
parents
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This is termed the Oepidal complex
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This ‘inner father’ comes to serve as the core of child’s superego
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According to Freud this conflict results in girls having weaker ego functioning which makes it
more difficult for them to balance the competing demands of the id and reality
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The other alternative is that the male fails to adopt masculine characteristics; he develops
feminine characteristics and may become attracted to men
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This then is how Freud explains the process of children being socialised into male and
female roles
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Latency stage:
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This stage is described as the resting period in the child’s psychosexual development
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Freud suggested that peer group interaction during this phase was predominantly with
same-sexed children
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As children learn more about the world and become more involved in social interactions,
they develop defence mechanisms during this period to help them cope with the basic
anxiety caused by the conflicts between the ID, ego, and superego
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Freud claimed that from the beginning of this period, the sexual objects chosen were
always members of the opposite sex in normal development
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Some may have conflicts left from the Oepidal or Electra stage, so they do not cope with the
resurgence of sexual energies in adolescence
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Freud sees the child’s personality emerging as a result of these developmental processes
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It is also at these ages that the process of containing the id begins, first with the
development of the ego as the child learns about the world and parental discipline is
applied to frustrate the child’s id impulses
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Defence mechanisms:
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We discussed earlier how the conflicting demands of the ID, ego and superego create
anxiety in the individual at every age and that in the latency stage, the child is thought to
develop defence mechanisms
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The purpose of defence mechanisms is to make us feel better about ourselves and to protect
us from pain-in psychological terms, to protect our self-esteem
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The first defence mechanism that Freud described was repression
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Anna Freud added a 12th defence mechanism , sublimation, and others have been added
since then by later psychoanalysts
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Repression:
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As discussed previously, at times we all suppress inconvenient or disagreeable feelings
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We act as if we can’t recall can’t hurt us
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The women were then shown an
erotic video while physiological measures of their levels of sexual arousal were taken and
verbal self-reports of arousal level were given
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In the high sexual guilt group, the guilt associated with sexual arousal was causing the
women to repress their experienced arousal
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Anger is a natural response on
occasions for everyone, so what is likely to be happening is that the individual is not
allowing themselves to be angry for some reason; their anger is repressed
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If the volume of the water becomes too great, a problem arises, and similarly with
repression
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Denial:
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We deny unpleasant events or the reality of a situation
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They suspect it may be bad news, so the letter always goes unopened to the bottom of the
pile
Chapter 6: Humanistic Personality Theories
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In the early 20th century American Psychology, the two main influences were the
psychoanalytic tradition and the learning theory approaches
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However as neither theorist was comfortable with these approaches, they developed
alternative approaches
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There is no agreed upon definition of existential philosophy
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Existential
philosophers are concerned with how we find meaning for our existence, what motivates
us to keep on living
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The existential themes are incorporated into the work of both Maslow and Rogers
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Several characteristics define humanistic approaches
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Human beings are seen to be motivated by a need to grow and develop in a positive way
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The focus in humanistic theories is on the here and now
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While the past may have helped to shape the person you are, you are seen as being able to
change
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There is also an emphasis on personal responsibility
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Sometimes we assume that that we do not have choice, but the humanists would suggest
that this is because we find the alternatives too hard to undertake
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The final defining feature of humanistic theories is an emphasis on the phenomology of the
individual person
Phenomological approaches focus on trying to understand individual experience and
consciousness
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Individuals are conceptualised (seen) as being the experts on themselves, and humanistic
therapists aim merely to help their clients understand what their problems are and not to
provide solutions
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Human nature and human motivation:
Maslow wanted to move from the early focus of psychology on clinical populations and the
related psychopathology to explore how to make the average human beings happier
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Maslow described human beings as having innate tendencies towards healthy growth and
development that he labelled instinctoid tendencies
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If the instincoid tendencies in children are fostered, they will have the capacity to display
honesty, trust, kindness, love and generosity and will develop constructively into healthy
individuals
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Maslow suggests that such individuals feature among Freud’s case studies, and he
acknowledges that psychoanalytic theories and therapies provide useful tools for
psychologists having to deal with this disturbed population
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Maslow’s interest was in trying to understand what motivates us to go about our lives and
make the choices that we do
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In his early doctoral studies, Maslow had become interested in the needs that animals
display, and he demonstrated that it was possible to organise these needs into a
hierarchy
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From his observations, he suggested that a similar system existed for human beings
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The first are deficiency motives; that is, basic needs that we are driven to fulfil
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Maslow conceptualises these needs as representing something that we lack and are
motivated to get
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The need then
ceases to be a motivator
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Feedings their family became the dominant need for many people, so
they were happy to get any job that would allow them to achieve their goal
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Hunger is no longer a threat, so they are motivated to get a better house or car, or a more
interesting job and so on
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These needs are unique to each individual and are conceptualised as
gaining intensity as they are met
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They include things like giving love unselfishly, increases in drive, like curiosity and the
thirst for knowledge; developing skills and having new experiences
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This is a crucial difference between deficiency motives and growth motives
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In this way, deficiency motives are seen to ensure our survival, while growth needs
represent a higher level of functioning that can result in us becoming happier, healthier
and more fulfilled as individuals
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He acknowledged that human motives were complex and that behaviour could be
motivated by several needs
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If ate only to fulfil our hunger needs, obesity would not be such a health problem in western
societies
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However he argued that needs vary significantly in terms of their importance for ensuring
our survival
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Some needs have to be met before other needs are acknowledged and begin to motivate
our behaviour
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It begins with lower-level or survival needs, which have to be satisfied first before we seek
gratification of our higher-order needs
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Most of these
are deficiency needs, and once they are satisfied, the motivation to pursue the activity
ceases
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The exception are sexual
drive, the need for elimination and sleep, these are considered to be growth needs
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Rarely in western cultures are individuals in the position of being motivated only by their
physiological needs; however we can imagine that if you were starving, food be your
number one priority and all your other needs for respect, love and the like would be of little
importance
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The safety needs:
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Needs at the next level of Maslow’s hierarchy include need for security, safe circumstances
to live within, self-protection, law-abiding communities and a sense of order
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If you live in a large estate where violence and crime are rife , you can imagine being
motivated to work wither at getting a house in a safer place or at changing the environment
to make it safer
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For others, the choice might be getting securer locks on their doors or altering their
behaviour to minimise the risk of being harmed
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Maslow pointed out that the safety needs can be clearly observed in infants and young
children where they are upset by loud unexplained noises, rough handling or major
changes in their daily routine
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The absence of this safe, relatively predictable environment would impact badly on a
child’s development, although Maslow did not specify the specific negative effects likely to
occur
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This may be one of the reasons why that, in general elections, voters always seem to be
interested in issues of law and order
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Our safety needs also motivate us to buy insurance and save for pension or a rainy day, and
they may motivate us to train for a secure job where we feel our skills will always be in
demand and we are unlikely to be made redundant
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Belongingness and love needs:
Once our physiological and safety needs are largely taken care of, Maslow states that our
needs for belongingness and love become more important motivators of our behaviour
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Human
beings are conceptualised as social beings, and we need to feel that we are rooted in
communities, with ties to family and friends
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Once our more basic needs, we become more aware of our loneliness, absence of
companions and friends, and we become motivated to do something about it
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The first is D-love, which is based on a deficiency need, hence the label
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We want it for ourselves; the loved one is there to meet our needs
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Maslow defines this love as consisting of individual yearning for affection, tenderness,
feelings of elation and sexual arousal
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It can sometimes be observed in the young child competing for their mother’s attention
with their younger sibling
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He calls this latter type of love B-love and suggests that, once our basic need for D-love have
been met, we become capable of attaining B-love
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It involves showing respect for the other, accepting their individuality, putting their needs
before your own on occasion and valuing them
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It is possible only when the basic needs have been sufficiently gratified
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Maslow was concerned about the high numbers of individuals living alone in western
cultures and felt that, while this lifestyle is valued by some individuals, it creates loneliness
as belongingness and love needs may not be met sufficiently
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Maslow divided these into two types of needs
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Secondly, there is the need for esteem based on the evaluation of others
He claimed that we have a need for respect and admiration from other people but advises
that this must be deserved
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The needs for self-actualisation:
The highest level of need is for self-actualisation
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Individuals may be very successful financially and have enough power and success
that all their lower-level needs are being met, but they may still not be happy and
contented
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This restlessness comes from their need for selfactualisation
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It is about maximising their talents and finding meaning in life, so that they are at peace
with themselves
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It is a growth need that emerges only after the other basic needs have been addressed
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Maslow is clear that not all individuals achieve self-actualisation, although many strive to
do so
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He suggests that the needs of self-actualisers are qualitatively different; he describes them
as metaneeds
The foci of metaneeds are very different, ebingh concerned with higher aesthetic and
moral values such as beauty, truth, justice and ethics
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The reality is that, while the order makes sense for most people, there will be individual
exceptions
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At any level, a need does not have to be totally gratified for us to be motivated by higherorder needs
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Thinking about percentage needs in this way helps to get across Maslow’s idea that the
degree to which a need is unfulfilled will influence the impact it has on the individual
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This results in the individual becoming more motivated to seek solace and the person will
derive comfort from being with friends and other relatives as this helps increase their sense
of belonging
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He felt that we share many of the basic needs, such as physiological and safety needs, with
other animals, but the higher order needs are distinctly human
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He stressed that motivation for behaviour is frequently immensely complex and that many
behaviours are motivated by a variety of needs
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Thus, the activities we engage in may also satisfy more than one set of needs at a time
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He perceives the
instinctoid tendencies as being quite weak and easily overcome by situational factors, and
consequently we may often not be consciously aware of how they affect our motivation
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For example, our ultimate goal is self-actualisation driven on by our motivational needs
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There is some inconsistency in Maslow’s theorising here as he also accepts the validity of
the Freudian defence mechanisms
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So, here we have further evidence of unconscious motivation based on our past
experiences influencing behaviour
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He did not want to focus on clinical populations and their psychopathology, as is the case
with so many other personality theories
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Among those he studied were Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, William James
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From this study, he outlined the characteristics of self-actualising individuals
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Every healthy person studied was described by Maslow as being creative
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It did not necessarily mean that they painted pictures or produced poetry and so on, which
is how we tend think conventionally about creativity
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They might be a conventionally creative person as well, but an example he gave is a
woman who expressed her creativity in producing very interesting meals and presenting in
quite novel ways
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Self-actualisers have not lost their awe of the world and their interest in minutiae (trivial
details of something)
Self-actualisers also think differently, according to Maslow
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It is about accepting oneself and the world and just being and feeling at one with the world
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More recently, Csikzentmihalyi has defined this concept of peak experiences in some detail,
although he has renamed them optimal experiences
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B cognition is contrasted with the more normally occurring deficiency cognition (Dcognition)
D-cognition is judgemental, and in it we see ourselves as distinct from the world around us
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Maslow stresses that B-cognition states are transient ( lasting only for a short time) even for
self-actualisers
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In terms of their personal characteristics, self-actualisers tend to have higher levels of selfacceptance
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Maslow also claimed that they perceive reality more accurately with fewer distortions
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The use of a defence mechanism tends to distort reality
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Self-actualisers tend to have well-developed ethical and moral standards and are more
likely to accept responsibility for their actions
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Self-actualisers are good at focusing on problems and seeing them through to resolution
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They do things because they want to rather than it being a way to get on at work
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In their personalities, self-actualisers tend to have deeper personal relationships, preferring
to have a few close friends rather than a wide circle of acquaintances
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They find jokes based on superiority or aggressive hostility offensive and prefer more
philosophically based humour
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No one is self-actualising individual all
the time in all their activities
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At times, sefl-actualising
individuals can be as annoying and irritating as anyone
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Personality development:
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Maslow outlined some core principles
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This is a positive drive fuelled by the motivational needs outlined in the hierarchy needs
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This is when they decide whether they are going to listen to what he terms ‘their inner voice’
and develop according to their own instinctoid needs or whether they are going to follow
their parental dictates
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If you cast (throwback your head) back to the material you read about Summerhill school in the
introduction to this discussion , Summerhill exemplifies the sort of learning experience that
Maslow felt was the ideal for creating happy, fulfilled individuals
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This is the
reported Summerhill experience
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Maslow is clear that children need rules and limits to meet their safety needs
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Children need to be given considerable freedom of choice but they also need to be given
responsibilities
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The
satisfaction of a child’s needs, as specified in Maslow’s hierarchy, is the best way to
encourage healthy development; as long as this is done in a disciplined way and the child is
not pampered
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Description:
Maslow provides a reasonable, if somewhat simplified, description of human behaviour
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However, he does present an extremely positive
and almost simplistic view of human nature and human beings
This is somewhat at odds with his acceptance of many Freudian mechanisms
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Maslow does not acknowledge these
inconsistencies in his theorising
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There is no mention of geneic susceptibilities to mental illness and
sociopathic conditions, for example
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The reality is that behaviour is frequently
the result of many different motivators
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The job itself is not inherently satisfying; however, they may work with a good set of
colleagues, and this may meet their belongingness needs and compensate for the nature
of the work, so they are not motivated to seek more conducive or better paid work
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Although the job might bring extra money and be physically easier, they might not consider
this compensation for the loss of comradeship from the other cleaners
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Maslow’s work on defining types of needs and types of love is interesting
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In his work on general needs and types of love, he presents a less positive perspective on
human beings, seeing us as capable of being manipulative, disrespectful of others and very
demanding in the way that we treat others
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Empirical validity:
While self-actualisation is at the core of Maslow’s theory, the research on which it is based is
dubious
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These were not randomly selected; rather, Maslow chose to examine individuals whom he
believed to be self-actualisers
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In all, it was an extremely subjective process, more descriptive than evaluative
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Examples include peak experiences where it is unclear exactly what is meant
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This raises the issue of whether and how these artificially induced experiences relate to selfactualisation
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Thus, questions are raised about the
relationship between peak experiences and self-actualisation
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He does not provide a rationale for their selection, and many other human needs can be
identified
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He did argue against the empiricism of existing psychological methodologies, but this does
not excuse his lack of attention to providing objective support for his theory (Maslow, 1970)
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Shostrum (1966) developed a measure called the personal orientation inventory (POI)
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It measures the degree to which individuals are inner-directed on one major scale and
whether they use their time effectively on the second major scale, both of which are
thought to relate to self-actualization
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While the validity and the usefulness of the measure was established using several samples,
there are problems with it
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Comprehensiveness:
Maslow’s theory is really focused on positive growth and as such, it is not a comprehensive
theory
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He did attempt some discussion of
psychopathology and adopted aspects of Freud’s model, but this was not done in a
systematic or comprehensive fashion
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There is much more emphasis on selfactualisation, but even here the precise detail is missing
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Similarly, he talks only in very general terms about
the development of personality
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We have already
discussed how his concept of motivation is limited and how the selection of five basic needs
is somewhat arbitrary
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We
have also discussed the limitations of Maslow’s treatment of psychopathology and how the
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adoption of Freudian concepts such as defence mechanisms is inconsistent with the rest of
his theory
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Heuristic value:
Although Maslow’s theory has limitations, it undoubtedly has had a major impact on many
researchers, both in psychology and other disciplines
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His focus on human achievement and human values introduced new foci for
psychologists
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He wanted researchers to think creatively about developing methodologies that could
address important real-life issues, although it might mean losing some control of the
laboratory-based studies
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Applied value:
The area where Maslow’s work has had most impact is in business
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It led to an increasing emphasis on the need to offer development opportunities to
employees
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His influence also extended to counselling and healthcare professional training, as it
provided a neat system for examining human motivational needs
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He emphasised the importance of student-centred learning, suggesting that individuals want
to learn and that the role of educators is to provide the environement to facilitate such
learning
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His initial work was based mainly on his experience of working with disturbed
adolescent
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His personality theory
grew out of his theory of therapy
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He felt that individuals can play an active role in shaping their own lives
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In this way, he saw individuals as having the power to
shape their own lives
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He first named it client-centred therapy
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In this relationship, the therapists is the expert and the patient is less powerful and receives
the expert’s knowledge
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Adopting an existential humanistic stance Rogers (1951), felt that individuals are the best
experts on themselves, not the therapist
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The term ‘client-centred’ reflects Roger’s view that clients are the experts on themselves
and that the role of the therapist is to help the client to better recognise their problems and
formulate their issues
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Once clients understood what the
problem was, Rogers felt that they would know how to solve it in a way that suited their
particular life situation
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Rogers adopted a phenomenological position about the nature of reality
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He denied the possibility of an objective reality that we all share
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Instead, we all perceive our own reality
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Rogers, like Ellis, accepts that everyone perceives situations differently; therefore, to
understand an individual, you have to try to understand how they see the world
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He felt that clients are the best experts on themselves and that people are capable of
working out their own solutions to their problems
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His definition of self-actualisation is the same as Maslow’s: it is an innate, positive drive to
develop and realise our potential
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It is our single basic motivating drive, and it is a positive drive towards growth
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Rogers claimed that we can all cope with our lives and remain psychologically healthy as
long as our actualising potential is not blocked
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This role for the actualising tendency differs from Maslow’s conception
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The role that Rogers ascribed to self-actualisation is less specific
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There are two aspects to it
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The psychological aspect involves the development of our potential and the qualities that
make us more worthwile human beings
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It is a positive drive towards growth for Rogers, just as it was for Maslow
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In these circumstances, our self-actualisation is blocked and problems occur
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Effect of society of self-actualisation:
To understand fully the process of self-actualisation, we need to examine Roger’s coneption
of the self
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The real self is defined as being our underlying organismic self
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He asserted that human beings as a species are social animals
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Rogers was very clear about the nature of the emotional experienced that is necessary for
optimum development, and he termed it unconditional positive regard
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The term ‘regard’ means seeing oneself as making a positive difference in someone else’s
life
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They would feel that they had a gap in their life that would always be there
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However, Rogers suggested that unconditional positive regard is rare and that mostly what
we experience is conditional positive regard
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When we behave in ways that please our parents, for example, they reward us with praise
and this makes us feel good
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These experiences help us to learn that what we need to do get positive regard from other
people
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We learn that we are loved more when we do things that make our parents or other people
in our social world happy
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What is important about conditions of worth is that they can distort the natural direction of
our actualizing tendency
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Conditions of worth are important as they can keep us doing things that do not meet out
real needs, and this makes it difficult for us to ever achieve self-actualisation
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As children grow and become socialised, they develop a sense of who they are as people
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It is our perception of who we are based largely on how other people have described us and
evaluated us
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The easiest way to access your self-concept is to answer the question, ‘Who am I?’
Most of us find it relatively easy to produce a list of adjectives to describe ourselves, and this
is our self-concept
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We are conscious of the contents of our self-concept, whereas our real organismic self may
have become obscured as a result of our developmental experiences of socialisation
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In the longer term, we are unlikely to be able to self-actualise; if this the case, we will
experience feelings of being discontented at least and perhaps even psychological illnesses
such as depression
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We also tend to perceive things so that they fit our self-concept
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Firstly, we use and our related conditions of worth to judge our own personal adequacy
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These conditions of worth are very deeply embedded and are therefore more resistant to
change
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If we believe that we are uncoordinated, for example, then we are unlikely to enrol for a
dancing class
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To summarize, we tend to
judge ourselves according to what others think of us rather than on what we ourselves feel
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This may result in us relying more on other people’s judgements about our personal worth
than on our own views
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We are out of touch with our real needs
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Rogers believed that parents and educational establishments can create helpful
environments
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This is very much the environment that is provided at Summerhill
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This is a major study documenting around 100 young people from age 3
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In his model, the healthy individual has experienced significant amounts of unconditional
positive regard and consequently has relatively few conditions of worth
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Firstly, Rogers did not specify precisely how much unconditional positive regard qualifies as
a significant amount
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Secondly, as a consequence, we all have some conditions of worth
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High functioning adults are more accepting of themselves and of others and therefore
impose fewer conditions of worth on their children, for example
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The ways that the adequacy of parent’s self-concept affects how they relate to their own
children are summarized
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Being self-accepting means that you are less judgemental of yourself and others
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Rogers was keen that his ideas were tested, and Wylie (1979) and Swann (1984) found some
support among students for his idea, although it is not completely clear how well the
measures they used actually assessed perceptual distortions
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Perceptual distortions of this type are notoriously difficult to measure
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His emphasis in therapy, was to accept the individual’s perceptions-distorted or otherwise
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In the course of therapy, Rogers would expect perceptual distortions to decrease as the
individual became more in touch with their organismic values that can lead to selfactualization
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To maximise the chances of selfactualisation, the child needs to grow up with relatively few conditions of worth
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He advocated student-centred teaching, where the role of the educational establishment is
to provide the conditions that facilitate the child’s learning
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These schools do not encourage competition and are relatively non-judgemental
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Rogers felt that if conditions of trust develop, it is easier or individuals to work towards selfactualization guided by their actualising tendency
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Rogers stated that such children will be more in touch with their true selves and, as such,
will instinctively know which experiences are good for them
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Children need to be respected and to have freedom to make choices in their lives
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This position is very similar to the rights and responsibilities that Albert Ellis saw as the
corollary of human free will
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The emphasis
is on providing the right environment for optimum growth to occur
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Personality development can be a lifelong process, Rogers felt
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Individuals are always open to change in his model, and personality growth can occur at any
age
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Such an individual is described as being very open to experience and high in self-acceptance,
with few, if any, conditions of worth
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Their organismic valuing process guides the choices they make in life, and other people’s
expectation and judgement of them do not influence them
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Rogers suggested that such individuals are true to their inner selves
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Rogers saw individuals as continually growing, and he suggested that we have a concept of
how we wish to grow
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Such individuals display high levels of unconditional
positive regard for the other people in their lives and are capable of forming deep
relationships
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It is a process that the individual is continually engaged in, seeking out satisfying experiences
and discarding unsatisfying ones whenever possible or compensating for them in other
ways
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The self-actualising individual is described as being congruent with the totality of their lives
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From this it is clear that self-actualisation is about an attitude to life, to oneself and to
others
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Rogers’ conceptualisation of psychological problems:
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The fully functioning person, as we have seen, is the ideal and is rarely achieved as most of
us have conditions of worth associated with our self-concept
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The individual is alienated from their true self, and this situation is expressed either in
feelings of discontent, symptoms of psychological illness or antisocial behaviour or
combinations of all three
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His aim was to develop a more effective method of helping individuals, and through this his
conceptualization of what human beings are like emerged
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The disturbed individual has deviated from this positive path, as they have not had
sufficiently growth-enhancing relationships, experiences and environments
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The aim in counselling is to provide a safe environment and experience of a good
relationship as Rogers believed that this will be sufficient to allow the individual to get in
touch with their true organismic self and rediscover their way to self-actualization
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Group sessions based on Rogerian principles were common and led to what became known
as the encounter group experience
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Through these encounters with themselves and others,
they would their true selves
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To understand what this means, we need to return to conditions of worth and what they
imply
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If you were this ideal, then you would be more loveable and more admired than you
currently are
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We use this ideal self to judge ourselves
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To put it simply the individual with few conditions of worth accepts themselves as they are,
and the gap between their ideal self and real self is a narrow one
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The existence of this gap leads to unhappiness and discontent, and, in extreme conditions,
depression
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The individual then becomes more accepting of who they are and are happier consequently
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The clients have the ability to change within themselves, and the counsellor’s role is to
facilitate the process
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These conditions have come to be labelled the core conditions of counselling
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By this condition,
Rogers meant that counselling is about more than simply chatting to someone
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It is about discussing inner feelings focused on the self
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B) The client is in a state of incongruence and feels anxious about it
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It is this emotional upset that provides the
motivation for clients to come for counselling
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Rogers said that the counsellor must be
genuine and not simply role-playing
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They must also be able to communicate their feelings if this is
appropriate
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Counsellors are also required to have their work supervised regularly by another trained
counsellor
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This is one of the
crucial qualities required by counsellors, according to Rogers
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They have worth simply because they exist with Rogers’ humanistic
perspective, and all human beings should be treated with respect and dignity
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This condition is about accepting that here is no external reality, but that we all
have a subjective view of the world
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Empathy is a concept that is often
misunderstood and is frequently confused with sympathy
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To be empathic, the counsellor is required simply to try to understand what the client is
experiencing and feeling and not to judge or evaluate the experience
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In this way, the counsellor is facilitating the client’s understanding of their
situation
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Roger’s emphasised that it is crucial
for the counsellor to be able to convey their empathy and unconditional positive regard to
the client
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This is the
positive emotional environment that Rogers said we all need to optimise our chances of selfactualising
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This then is the relationship that Roger claimed will facilitate change
and growth
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They will also be more open to
new experiences
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They will be more in touch with their actualising
tendency, which guides them to grow in positive ways
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The level of personal responsibility that they take for their own behavioural choices will
increase
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Clients’ level of self-regard will increase
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Their feelings about
themselves are now based on their own values rather than on the praise and needs of
others in their lives
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Clients will also have an increased capacity for good personal relations
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Rogers (1959) clearly defined what he meant by good personal relationships
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Rogers believed that self-actualisation resulted in the individual living ethically
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There were very substantial claims to make about the benefits of Rogerian counselling, and
Rogers was keen to provide research to assess its validity
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To improve on the evaluation of the effects of
counselling, Rogers adopted the Q-sort to measure clients’ self-concepts
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What this means is that the individual does not accept themselves as they
are, they may wish to be cleverer, more reliable or whatever
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What this means in practice is that individuals are selecting the same items to describe how
they are and how they would like to be
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Truax and CARKHUFF (1967) provide a detailed review of this work
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Many of the measures of improvement are not objectively based; rather,
they are self-report ratings completed by the client and/or therapist
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Description:
Rogers, like Maslow, is criticised for his overly optimistic conceptualisation of human beings
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His initial focus is on abnormal development and psychopathology and its treatment
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His description of how the self is construed is innovative, and his comparison of self and
ideal self is valuable
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His phenomenological approach represents a real attempt to engage with the world as
individuals experience it
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Another danger of Rogers’ approach is that it may rely so much on individual observations,
that objective measurement is ignored and no knowledge is generated that is applicable to
the wider science of psychology
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Explanation:
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Rogers attempted to explain a vast range of human behaviour, ranging from what we
require for optimum individual development to the nature of the society that would
promote psychological health
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This ignores the social, historical and political factors that play a crucial role in developing
and maintaining these problems and leads to his explanation being limited in scope and
somewhat reductionist in nature
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While good communication is helpful, it is unrealistic and overly optimistic to see it as the
solution to what are very complex problems
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The results are generally positive, but all of this
research is heavily reliant on self-report measures
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Similarly, therapists’ provide reports of clients’ progress, and here the tendency must surely
be to provide a positive assessment
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Testable concepts:
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Concepts like unconditional positive regard and genuineness are ore difficult to define and
have proved difficult to measure
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Traditionally, his counselling approach has been described as being non-directive, in that
the therapist does not claim to know what is best for the client
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This idea that Rogerian therapists are somehow less directive than other therapist is
contentious
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In this way he is likely to have influenced clients
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Comprehensiveness:
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Most of Roger’s work focuses on understanding psychopathology and developing an
intervention that could be used as an effective treatment
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Later in his life, he expanded his interests to look in more detail a development, education
and the effect of culture and society’s institutions on mental health
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His work on social and political structures, while interesting,
is very speculative
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He fails the parsimony criteria by suing too few concepts and
assumptions
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A good example is his explanation of psychopathology
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Heuristic value:
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Rogers ’work has provoked a great deal of controversy within psychology and continues to
provoke debate
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His humanistic and phenomenological stance has led to a re-evaluation of the importance of
the indicial and their subjective worldview
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His ideas about the core conditions of counselling also led therapy and counselling trainers
to reflect on educational training of counsellors, and useful debates ensued
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This is certainly one of its strengths
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The recent trend, to encourage counselling psychologists to be trained in several schools of
counselling, generally results in rained counsellors beginning their education with Rogerian
therapy
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Rogers was also extremely influential in the development of group approaches to
psychological treatments
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These were group experiences designed to help individuals explore their true inner selves
and thereby set them on the road to self-actualisation
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Consider the concept of personality as used in the individual differences perspective,
in particular the notion of consistency of behaviour across time and situations
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Outline theories that propose a biological basis for individual differences and explore
the genetic contribution to individual differences in personality and the evidence of
heritability studies
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He described individual differences in traits such as modesty, bravery and vanity, seeing
them as important determinants of whether a person behaved ethically
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These fluids included blood,
black bile, yellow bile and phlegm
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When the humours were in balance, an equitable temperament was the result
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The terms Galen used to describe these mental disturbances are still part of the English
Language
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Strong activity in the body fluids resulted in an individual with strong emotions described as
being of choleric temperament, meaning that they had a tendency to become angry easily
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In the Middle Ages the German philosopher Immanuel kant revisited the humoural
temperaments and produced a description of four personality types
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Melancholic individuals had weak feelings, while sanguine individuals had strong feelings
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It was Wilhelm Wundt, the founding father of modern day psychology, who changed the
categorical types of personality into trait dimensions
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Individuals could then be placed along the dimensions of mood stability and strength of
emotions rather than being simply placed in one category
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Two assumptions underlie trait theory
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They also assume that personality traits influence behaviour
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They are interested in typical group behaviour
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Some trait theorists are more interested in describing personality and predicting
behaviour than identifying what caused the behaviour
To recap, within psychology, traits are considered the fundamental units of personality
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For a long time, there were arguments about how much the situation influenced the
individual’s behaviour and how much was down to their personality traits
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The development of trait theories within psychology
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Although the psychoanalyst Jung introduced the terms ‘extraversion’ and ‘introversion’ the
real founding figure of trait psychology is considered to be an American Psychologist,
William Shedom
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From his surverys of thousands of individuals, he conluded that there are here basic types of
physique, endomorphy, mesomorphy and ectomorphy
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While accepting that everyone had the same internal organs, Sheldon felt that individuals
were different in terms of which organs were most prominent in their bodies and thus were
their body’s focus lay
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This approach has come to be known as the lexical hypothesis
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Two additional criterial are included in the lexical hypothesis
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Secondly, the number of words in a language that refer to each trait will be related to how
important that trait is in describing human personality
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Gordon Allport identified 18,000 words, of which 4,500 described personality traits
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He felt that it was almost impossible to sue an individuals personality traits to predicgt how
they will behave in a specific situation
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Personality traits constitute this constant portion of behaviour
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It is how the traits come together that produces the uniqueness of all individuals, which he
was keen to stress
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Allport made the distinction between nomothetic and idiographic approaches to the study of
personality
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The aim is to identify these personality variables or traits that occur consistently across
groups of people
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By studying
large groups of people on a particular variable, we can establish the average levels of that
variable in particular age groups, or in men and women, and in this way produce group
averages, generally called norms, for variables
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The nomothetic approach concentrates on the similarities between individuals
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The term comes from the ancient Greek idios, meaning ‘private or personal’
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They see each person as having a unique personality structure
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The possible differences are infinite
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These approaches are usually based on case
studies of individuals
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He felt that the nomothetic approach allows the identification of common personality traits
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He felt that such comparisons based on common traits are not particularly useful
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The personal disposition represents the unique characteristics of the individual
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The other major contribution that Allport made to personality theorising relates to the
concept of self
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He hypothesized that children are not born with a concept of self, but that it gradually
develops
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Raymond Cattel made full use of the technique, having been instructed in it by Spearman,
the inventor of factor analysis
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From the lists of personality traits, he notes that many traits are very similar, and he argued
that the existing lists could be reduced to a much smaller number of raits
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Cattel’s work thus marks the beginning of the search for the structure of personality using
factor analysis
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This data set is then factor-analysed to identify which attributes cluster together
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What this method gives you is a general measure of some ability that you obtain by
measuring the individual’s ratings of their determination, persistence, productivity and goal
directedness
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His approach to personality was a broad one, and he identified a range of traits
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Traits are conceptualised as being relatively stable, long-lasting building blocks of
personality
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The first distinction relates to whether traits are genetically determined or the result of
environmental experiences
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In this application, it asks whether individual differences are caused by inherited aspects of
our personality, or are they explained by how we have been treated and the environmental
experiences we have had?
Cattel (1982) was keen to try to establish the relative contribution of genetics and
environment to various personality traits
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He administered personality tests to assess a particular trait in relation to complex samples
consisting of family members raised together, family members raise apart, unrelated
children raised together and unrelated children raised apart
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Next, Cateel defines three different types of traits: ability, temperament and dynamic traits:
Ability traits: determine how well you deal with a particular situation and how well you
reach whatever your goal is in that situation
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These are labelled temperament traits
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As Cattel (1965) considered the question of motivation to be at the heart of personality
theorising, the dynamic traits were heavily researched
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Attitudes are defined as hypothetical constructs that express our particular interests in
people or objects in specific situations
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Cattell defined sentiments as complex attitudes that include our opinions and interests that
help determine how we feel about people or situation
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He suggested that ergs are innate drives
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Cattel sugsets that all these types of dynamic traits are organised in very complex and
interrelated ways to produce the dynamic lattice
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A further distinction is between common traits and unique traits
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They would include intelligence,
sociability
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Cattel suggested an important distinction between surface traits and source traits
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For example, individuals who are sociable also tend to be carefree, hopeful and contended
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The technique of factor analysis suggests that there is an underlying trait, what Cattel calls a
source trait, that is responsible for the observed variance in the surface traits
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Extraversion is measured by the scores of the
surface traits of sociability, carefreeness, hopefulness and contentedness
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The source trait, on the other hand is the major difference in personality that is responsible
for all these related differences in observed behaviour
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By using a smaller number of source traits , psychologists can then construct personality
tests that include only measures of surface traits that relate to the source traits
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Cattel concluded that 46 surface traits are sufficient to describe individual differences in
personality
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He also ranked the traits in terms of how important they were in predicting an individual’s
behaviour
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At one end, individuals possess extremely high levels of the factor; at the other end, their
levels are extremely low
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Factor A, Outgoing-Reserved: This factor measures whether individuals are outgoing or
reserved
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Factor B, Intelligence: Cattel was the first to include intelligence as an ability trait
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Factor C, Stable-Emotional: This source trait measures emotional stability and the ability an
individual has to control their impulses and solve problems effectively
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Factor F, Happy go lucky-sober
Factor G, Conscienttious- expedient
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Factor Q, Self-sufficiency-group-tied
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Factor Q-controlled causal
Factor Q-tense-relaxed
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He acknowledged the complexity of factors that all contribute to explaining human
ebehaviour, including egentics and enviroenmtal facrors as well as ability and personality
characteristics
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The Sixteen Personality Factor questionnaire has become a standard measure of personality
and has been used consistently since its publication
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, 1971)
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Hans Eysenck’s trait theory of personality:
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Eysenck was stressing the importance of genetic inheritance, a view that has gained ground
within psychology
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Eynseck’s claim that there is a large biological determinant to personality was originally met
with skecticism, however, it has become accepted as supporting evidence has emerged from
biological research
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He suggests that this organisation is relatively stable and long-lasting
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Eynseck utilised factor analysis
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An example of the methodology he used will make this clear
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If this person spends a great deal of their time talking with friends, you can begin to observe
some of what Eynseck calls their habitual responses
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Form continued observations of the same individual, you might observe that this person
seeks out occasions to interact with others and really enjoys social events
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Specific responses that are found together in the individual make up habitual responses, and
collections of habitual responses that the individual produces make up the next level of
personality traits
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This means that an individual’s score on each of these traits are likely to be very similar
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Each supertrait represents a continuum along which individuals can be placed, depdending
on the degree of the attribute they possess
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The first is a measure of sociability with extraversion at one end of the continuum and
introversion at the other
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Introverts are quiet, introspective individuals who are oriented towards inner reality and
who prefer a well ordered life
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Individuals can be placed on this dimension according to the degree of neuroticism they
possess
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He describes several types of neurotic behaviour
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The distinguishing feature of neurotic behaviour is that the individual displays an anxiety or
fear level that is disproportionate to the realities of the situation
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These are individuals who behave in an antisocial manner and seem unable to appreciate
the consequences of their actions despite any punishment meted out
The recognition of this group of psychopaths by Eysenck led to the identification of a third
personality factor
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Psychotics display the most severe type of psychopathology, frequently being insensitive to
others, hostile, cruel, and inhumane with a strong need to ridicule and upset others
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This is called the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
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Eysenck’s task was to explain why individuals who differed along the supertrait dimensions
should behave differently
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Indeed, Eysenck claimed that about two thirds of the variance in personality development
can be attributed to biological factors
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Research evidence for Eysenck’s types:
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Many predictions have been made from this theory, and there is a high level of support over
a period of 40 years
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They like louder music and brighter colours, and they are more likely to smoke,
drink more alcohol and engage in more varied sexual activities
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Amirkham et al
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Eysenck and Eysenck (1975) reported that extraverts, because of their need for variety in
their lives, have more career changes or job changes
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While there continues to be a significant amount of research utilising versions of the EPQ,
the neuroticism and the extraversion scales have proved to be good reliable measures
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psychometrically; the psychoticism scale is more problematic, with much lower internal
reliability statistics
If the three-factor solution represents the basic structure of personality, it should be found
cross-culturally
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He reported that the primary factors were found in at least 24 nations in both males and
females
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From this data and from twin studies, Eynseck concluded that the three-factor structure has
a genetic basis and represents the basic structure of personality
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It was also translate into many languages, and again cross-cultural evidence was consistent
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This provided additional evidence for the theor
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Eynseck followed up this research with longitudinal studies to demonstrate that the
structure was stable across time
S
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They are all found cross-culturally, despite social pressures within different cultures to
develop in specific ways
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Reviwes of studies of identical and fraternal twins, raised together and raised apart, found
the same structures and personality similarlties between individual biological relatives and
lend considerable support for a significant genetic component to personality
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He was extremely hostile to all other therapies but particularly targeted psychoanalytic
approaches
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Eynsenck’s contribution to trait theorising
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Eysenck’s theorising is fairly comprehensive, although not all aspects of it are equally well
developed
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He also focuses heavily on genetic factors and pays much less attention to the social context
within which much behaviour occurs and that may affect personality and behaviour in
particular situations
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In terms of heuristic value, Eynseck has been very influential
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His work also has significant applied value
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He moved beyond many personality trait researchers in that he tried to provide not merely a
description of personality structure but also an explanation of what caused differences in
personality, with his genetic studies and his biological theory
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His work has stimulated an enormous amount of research
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Do three factors really represent the basic structure of personality?
The Five-factor model:
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Psychologists increasingly agree that five supertraits may adequately describe the structure
of personality
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You will recall that Cattell’s 16PF came from the factor analysis of the list of 4,500 trait
names identified by Allport and odbert (1936)
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Fiske (1949) reanalysed the same data but could not reproduce the 16 factors; he published
instead a five-facro soltions
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Norman (1963) revisited the earlier research and reproduced the same five-factor structure
using personality ratings of individuals given by their peers
Digman and Takemoto-Chock (1981) carried out further analyses and confirmed Norman’s
five factor solution
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Since then, Goldberg and his team have carried out an extensive research programme
investigating personality traits, and Goldberg (1990) concluded that the in the English
language trait descriptors are versions of five major features of personality: love, work,
affect, power and intellect
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Saucier and Ostendorf (1999) used a set of 500 personality traits and found a five-factor
structure in the German language
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Basically, what the researchers do is to use the personality terms that are found in the native
language of the country
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Saucier and Goldberg (2001) reported that etic approaches tend to replicate the five factor
structure while there is more variability reported in studies using emic approaches
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Costa
and McCrae are arguable the most influential researchers in this area, and their factor
resolution has come to be called the Big Five Model
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The resultatnt data set is then factor-analysed to uncover clisters of traits
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It is important to stresss that it is the analysis of data that has produced the facrors, not
exploration of a theory about the number of factors necessary in a model
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In other words, the Big Five model is a data-derived hypothesis as opposed to a theoreticaly
based one
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The Big Five factors are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and
neuroticism
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Each factor represents a continuum along which individuals can be placed according to their
scores
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These subordinate traits are sometimes called facets
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Each of the Big Five factors consists of six facets or subordinate traits
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The NEO-PI-R allows measurement at a general factor level or on more specific factors
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Evaluation of the Big Five and trait approaches:
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Can we conclude that the Big Five represent the structure of personality?
Unfortunately, it is premature to say there is total consensus on the model
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Indeed, Saucier and Goldberg (1998) and Saucier (1995) argue that research should look for
solutions beyond the current five-factor models
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Labelling factors depends on the researcher’s judgement about the best descriptor for the
cluster of correlated traits
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The same debate applied for all the other facors
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If a questionnaire does not have many items that measure openness, for example, then the
description of openness that is produced will be narrower
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McCrae and Costa suggest that the number depends on the nature fof the trait measures
that are included
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If evaluative traits are included, Almagor et al
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There has been some debate about what exactly some of the factors mean
Are they perhaps linguistic categories that do not actually represent the underlying structure
of personality?
Is it that the five factors represent our ability to describe personality traits in language and
are nothing to do with underlying strucurres?
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There is no easy anser to this question, although the accumulating weight of research
evidence would seem to negate it
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The model is data driven and was not derived from a theortical base
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This criticism applies more generally to the trait approach, although theorists such as
Eynseck saw theory building as being crucial within his aparoch
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For example, Mischel has pointed out that many of these measures are largely descriptive
and do not predict behaviour particularly well
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Miscehl demonstrates that on average personality traits measures statistically account for
only around 10% of the variance observed in behaviour
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However, Kraus (1995) has shown that the variance figure is not insgnificnat and is similar to
that found in studies measuring the relationshio between attitudes and behaviour
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The practice cucrently is to use multiple measures of personality assessment in work
settings
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Lecture 6: Personality and Interpersonal relationships:
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Discuss machiavellian and authoritarian personalities
Discuss the evidence related to personality factors regarding Dating and
Marital Relationships
Discuss and evaluate research based on the relations between the Big Five
dimensions and marital adjustment
Interpersonal attraction:
Lecture 9: Motivations and Emotions and Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence:
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Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand your own emotions and those of
people around you
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For these authors emotion is important, as it comprises feelings that encompass
physiological responses (for example, sadness, happiness, crying, fear) and cognitions
(for example, assessments of the meaning of emotion, learning about ourselves from
our emotions)
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Salovery and Mayer brought about these two areas together into one: emotional
intelligence
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By 1997 Mayer and Savoley had expanded on their model
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However within this branch of emotional intelligence, you would be able to identify
accurately your own emotions in relation to your own thoughts and feelings
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You would be to emotions to encourage the consideration of multiple viewpoints and
to understand that particular emotions can be used in problem-solving
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You
would also be able to understand the meaning behind emotions and know that some
emotions are linked together in a process
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Managing branch: reflective regulation of emotion to promote emotional and
intellectual growth- if you were high on this aspect of emotional intelligence, you
would have the ability to stay open to feelings that are both pleasant
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You would be able to monitor emotions in yourself and others,
and assess whether the emotion expressed is typical, is influencing you or is
unreasonable
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Furthermore, the authors have further broken these four branches into two main areas:
Experiential (relating to, or derived from, experience)- this area comprises the
perceiving brand and the facilitating branch
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This model of emotional intelligence is known as an ability model because it involves
abilities in having and dealing with emotion, using emotion to enhance thought and to
reflect and engage with a variety of emotions
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The order of sophistication ranging from lowest to highest
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0 is a 141-item scale
used to measure the emotional intelligence abilities described earlier: perception,
integration (facilitation), understanding and management
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For example, here are some typical items:
Ability to identify emotion- the participant would be shown a picture of a face and
asked to assess to what extent different emotions are shown in the face
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Ability to understand emotion- the participant would imagine someone who is
stressed about their work and whose boss gave them an additional project
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Ability to manage emotions- the participant would be asked to imagine someone
coming back from vacation feeling peaceful and content
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Authors such as John Mayer, Peter Salovey and David Caruso and Robert Emmerling and
Daniel Goleman suggest that ability models of emotional intelligence follow the
psychometric/measurement tradition by trying to define what the construct is
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Mayer and Salovey’s four-branch definition focuses on defining a set of emotional
intelligence abilities that are considered unique to emotional intelligence, and it does not
include personality or behavioural characteristics that belong to other psychological models
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suggest that following this strategy leads to clear definitions of emotional
intelligence
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Psychologists can then examine the real applied value of emotional intelligence by looking at
its relationship to other variables such as mental health, work and school achievement
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also suggest that, by using such an approach, you can clearly let people know
what exactly what emotional intelligence is and what it is not, and assure other psychologists
that it is not part of some other variable that already exists
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The framework suggests that there are two dimensions in any set of behaviours:
The purpose of a psychological system- the dimension reflects the contrast between response
to internal needs and experience and responses to the external world
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Mayer defines ‘low functions’ as reflecting biological factors, ‘middle functions’ as reflecting
interactive factors, and ‘high functions’ as reflecting learned factors
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The application of emotional in psychology:
• Emotional intelligence have been found to have mainly positive outcomes
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(2007), in a meta-analysis of 44 effect sizes based on the responses of 7,898
participants, found that higher emotional intelligence was associated with better health and
psychological health
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(2007) found that it was related to higher levels of
happiness
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g
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, 2007)
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(2008) found that emotional intelligence was significantly associated with
higher levels of academic achievement across a range of subjects among 209 Australian
secondary school students, suggesting the usefulness of emotional intelligence in education
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, 2007)
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Austin and her colleagues suggested that, as emotional intelligence comprises traits that
enable the individual to manage the emotions of others, then perhaps the emotional
manipulation capability of emotional intelligence might not always be sued positively
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To examine this idea, Austin et al
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Austin et al
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Austin et al
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Furthermore, they found that emotional manipulation was unrelated to emotional intelligence,
suggesting that there is no dark side to emotional intelligence
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Goleman (1995) provided separate descriptors of an emotionally intelligent man and woman
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The evidence examined sex differences in emotional intelligence among the samples in the
population suggests results are mixed, or that the effect size of any significant difference is
small
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Canadian psychologists Arla L
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Carrol found, among 246 undergraduate
students, that the effect size for emotional intelligence was higher in women and ranged from
0
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30
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Bar-On found no significant difference between men and women for overall emotional
intelligence scores
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Bar-On reports that women score significantly higher on all three aspects of interpersonal
skills (empathy, social responsibility and interpersonal relationships) and are more aware of
their own emotions than men are
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These differences are very small, with all but one of the effects being below 0
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45
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One of the first concerns is aimed directly at the mixed models of emotional intelligence
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Say, for example, that a mixed model of emotional intellilegnce is found to predict an aspect
of work performance
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However, Emmerling and Goleman (2003) argue that such an approach is fruitful
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To define overall ability and competence, the authors looked at the relationships between
several measures of intelligence, the five-factor model of personality, overall scores on the
Mayer-Salovey-Caruso emotional Intelligence Test and sex among 102 US college students
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These findings suggests that there is some speculation about the usefulness of emotional
intelligence for enhancing the understanding of human ability over and above what is already
available, such as general intelligence, the five-factor model of personality and sex
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He suggests that, while intelligence has benchmarks of
school grades and educational achievement, emotional intelligence has none
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A third concern arises from the lack of empirical research to confirm some of the biological
theories that were proposed alongside the models of emotional intelligence
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, 2004)
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Personality, health and illness: how might they be linked?
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Suls and Rittenhouse (1990) and Smith and Willains (1992) have suggested four possible
ways in which personality and illness may be linked to
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Researchers suggest that personality may directly influence biological activities ethat
influence the development of physical disease and influence its course in individuals who
are healthy
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He reports that it was the psychoanalysts who first described individuals with personality
characteristics that were thought to put them more at risk of developing physical illness
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It was thought that these individuals were more at risk of developing psychosomatic
conditions
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However, individual differences in terms of stress proneness and how the individual copes
with stress as well as genetic factors, also play a part in the formation and worsening of
duodenal ulcers
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The suggestion is that the same biological process might underpin personality traits and
illness outcomes
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(2003) give the example of coronary heart disease
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Her there is a positive correlation or association between possessing high levels of hostility
and having a cardiac disease but the relationship is not causal
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3) The third possible link is more complex
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For example, an individual with a high need for novelty and exciting experiences, what
psychologists have labelled ‘sensation-seeking’, may be more likely to engage in illegal drugtaking than an individual low in sensation-seeking
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For example, having a chronic conditions like severe arthritis, which results in the individual
having to live with pain all the time, may result in that individual going out less and feeling
less sociable
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Becoming physically ill and having to undergo a treatment in hospital may have a significant
psychological impact on individuals
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This is sometimes conceptualised as being a psychosomatic link; that is, where what has
happened to the body is influencing the patient’s mind
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Researching the links between personality, health and illness:
•
We are going to outline the discussion that surrounds the identification and
measurement of certain personality types and how this is linked to health and
illness, and particularly cardiovascular disease
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For example, Osler (1910) described the angina sufferer ‘as a man who is keen and
ambitious and is always at full speed ahead’
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They were physicians
who wanted to try to predict who would develop cardiovascular disease
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They identified a coronary prone behaviour pattern which they labelled ‘Type A’ and
contrasted with this non-coronary prone ‘Type B’ personality
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Such individuals dislike time-wasting do things efficiently but can be easily roused to
anger and hostility
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By contrast, the Type B personality is described as being very relaxed and unhurried
in their approach
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Type Bs are less interested in competition, achievement and power and are more
likely to take life as it comes
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Individuals with scores towards the Type A end of the scale have been shown to be
more likely to develop coronary heart disease than individuals lower down the scale
towards the Type B end and this is a significant health risk
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The sample was followed up 8
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However, a follow-up study of the same group after 22 years reported no effect
of Type A personality on mortality but quite marked effects on mortality from blood
pressure, cholesterol, smoking and age (Ragland and Brand, 1988)
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This study began between 1965 and 1967 and involved 5,127 men and
women being assessed
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They found the incidence of cardiovascular
disease to be significantly higher in Type As than Type Bs
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, 1980)
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Type A behaviour increased the risk of cardiovascular disease
in men aged between 55 and 64 years but only if they were white collar workers
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Here, 2,187 men were assessed over
an 8 year period
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4) British Regional Heart Study (Johnston et al
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The
researchers found no significant relationships between Type A personality and
cardiovascular disease
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A review panel, set up in the USA, concluded that there was a relationship between Type A
personality and cardiovascular disease, but that improved measures were required as
different studies used different measures, making comparisons difficult
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Metaanalysis is a statistical technique that allows the results of many studies to be entered into a
communal data set to test hypotheses relevant to the topic area
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They also concluded that studies using interviews to assess Type A/B produced more reliable
results than studied using self-report questionnaires
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Further psychological research on Type A personality
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The second strand of research in Type A behaviour has been undertaken mainly by
personality theorists as opposed to clinicians, and this has been fruitful
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2) A sense of urgency in everything they do
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There have been several attempts to explain the sources of these differences
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The evidence for this claim comes 3 research studies, although it is not very convincing
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Strube (1987) found that type As have high levels of motivation and high need for selfappraisal, indicative of a need for ongoing monitoring and/ or control in a situation
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By toxic component, they mean the behaviour that is causally linked to
the development of cardiovascular disease
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However, the majority of evidence relates to hostility being the toxic component
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, 1996; Miller et al
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The results are shown to be heavily dependent on the measures the researchers had used to
assess Type A personality, again emphasising the importance of methodology
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Since then, two further meta-analyses have been conducted, which reported some
association between hostility and cardiovascular disease but suggested that there is
inconsistency in the measures appearing to be more reliable than others (Rozanski et al
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However, an excellent meta-analysis of 45 studies where the methodology was judged to be
sound, concluded that hostility/anger was associated with a 20% increased risk of coronary
heart disease developing in people who are originally healthy, and also led to poorer
outcomes in patients with coronary heart disease
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, 2012)
These latter studies report that individuals with high scores on the personality traits of
hostility are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease than those with low hostility
scores
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Individual differences in the reaction to physical illness:
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The commonest individual difference associated with physical illness are responses to
anxiety and depression
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Hans Seyle, one of the early pionners of stress research, suggested that stress was a nonspecific response produced by the body to any kind of stimuli that the individual perceives as
noxious and hence threatening
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Seyle described the body’s defensive activity in response to stress as the General Adaptation
Syndrome
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The research here has shown us that repeated exposure to intense stressors is bad for out
health
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Responses to stressful situations, even physiological responses to painful stimuli, can be
powerfully influenced by psychological factors
...
For example, highly stressed individuals are more likely to eat less healthily, consume more
fat and fewer vegetables and fruit, smoke cigarettes, drink more alcohol and be less likely to
take exercise (Cartwright et al
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All of this research suggests that we have a finite capacity to deal with stress, with the result
that prolonged unremitting stress is bad for our health
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It is anxiety that frequently motivates
individuals to have their symptoms checked out
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Conversely, it is also anxiety that may prevent other individuals going to have their
symptoms checked out
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So, we have already identified a role for individual differences in terms of how quickly
individuals seek medical advice about symptoms
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This can be adaptive in that it can motivate the individual to comply with treatment with
treatment and make healthy life changes
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Barlow (2002) defines anxiety as an unpleasant inner state in which we are anticipating
something dreadful happening that is not entirely predictably from our actual
circumstances
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At the physiological level we are likely to want to avoid situations where danger might be
encountered
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At the cognitive level, we will be experiencing negative mod, worry about possible future
threats with thoughts (cognitions) such as: ‘Am I going to survive’
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Highly anxious individuals have a greater risk of developing a variety of physical illnesses
(Contrada and Goyal, 2004; Smith and Gallo, 2001)
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, 2007)
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Such individuals worry excessively about their health; they attend to every little change in
their body state, and constanly seek treatment, believing that they are ill despite what the
medical profession tell them ( Weck et al
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Both hypochondria and anxiety are associate with high levels of the personality trait of
neuroticism (Costa and McCrae, 1985)
Neuroticism is also associated with higher levels of somatic complaints, which are conditions
that are thought to have significant psychological component, like ulcers and asthma (
Fieldman et al
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Personality and well-being:
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Barak (2006) has examined the relationship between affective style, happiness, well being
and the functioning of the immune system
...
Finucane et al
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Evans and Egerton (1992) found that people who are not happy are more likely to become ill
and that mood has an effect on the immune system, with positive feelings boosting its
function (Stone et al
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Clearly, some individuals are never going to be as happy as others, but happiness has clearly
been established as beneficial for health and well being (Argyle, 1997)
While it is still early days for positive psychological approaches, the emerging evidence
suggests that it may well help us to deepen our knowledge of how to improve health and
well-being in the general population
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Objectives: By the end of the lecture students should be able to discuss:
• Associations between madness, genius and creativity
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• Thinking styles (e
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Out of the box thinking)
• The role of mental illness in creative thinking
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Psychologists have studied creativity from a number of psychological perspectives
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Person:
The person category of creativity includes theory and research that concentrates on the
personal characterisitcs of the person; for example, a theory or research that looked at the
motivation or particular traits as core characterisitcs of creative persons
...
Within psychoanalytic thought it is suggested that creativity results from succesfful
sublimation which converts unconscious desires into constructive behaviours of instinctual
demands
Also Maslow defined two aspects of creativity, creativity involved in the person findng selffulfiment; and secondary creativity, those aspects of creativity that allow the person to be
recognised in their chosen filed
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This has led to the development of traits measures such as the composite creative personality
scale
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Process:
The process category focues on the though, actions and behaviours that underpin the creative
process
...
In terms of formal theories of creativity that describe the process of creativity, one of the first
published was by Graham Wallas
...
Preparation: here the individual focuses first on the the problem, explores the parameters of
the problem and prepares to work on the problem
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Intimation: here the person begins to ‘feel’ a solution to the problem
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Verification: this is where the idea is present in the person’s consciousness, and they start
thinking about the creative idea and apply it
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Guilford made the distinction betwenn convergent and divergent production, which has been
later recognised as convergent and divergent thinking
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So examples of diveregent thinking includes ebing able to brainstorm, breaking problems into
parts, showing great thinking, understanding causality, identifying importance with topics and
ebing able to appreciate known and unknown qualities
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Other more recent modelks include Finke et al
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Press:
The press category focuses on the relationship between the creative individual and their
environment
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Therefore this category considers environmental influences such as cultural, organisational or
family or peer pressures
...
g
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This list is usually broken down into those situational influences that promote creativity and
those situational influences that inhibit (restrict) creativity
...
Those situational influences that inhibit creativity include:
Lack of respect, red tape (excessive regulation or rigid conformity to formal rules within the
environment) , lack of freedom, autonomy and resources, environments in which creativity is
not rewarded or discouraged, negative feedback, time pressures, competition, unrealistic
expectations
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Mednick highlighted the importance of time to creativity
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Research confirms this view of the influence of time on creativity
...
Product:
The product category focuses on outcomes or results of the creative process
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Often the study of eminent persons is a large feature within this category
...
Another example of the study of eminent persons was carried out by Diamond et al
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They found there was significantly smaller ratio
of neuron cells to glial cells compared to other ‘control’ scientists
...
argued that this implied that Einstein’s cortex may have had a different
‘metabolic need’ and that this produced greater levels of creativity from associative thinking
and the development of new concepts
...
Murphy looked at Dali’s behaviour and art from various sources, including his autobiography,
published interviews with himself, friends and family and information on his family history
...
On the assessment criteria Murphy found that Dalli met the diagnostic criteria for several
personality disorders, as well as for psychotic illnesses
...
Aristotle, the Greek Philosopher, said ‘No great genius was without a mixture of insanity’ ,
and since then it is well documented that great creative figures in history have shown signs of
psychopathology
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Van Gogh cut off the lobe of his left ear in 1888 and it is recognised that he was affected by
increasing mental problems, particularly in the last years of his life, but the causes are often
debated
...
Fry said that many victims of the condition preferred to endure the aching chasms of
depression without therapy or drugs because of the creative high they experienced in the
manic stage
...
Creativity has been long associated with different types of mood, neuroses, mental
rumination, schizophrenia, psychosocial problems and suicide
...
First, Glazer points to Richard and Kinney (2000), who have argued that there are five
possible relationships:
Psychopathology directly causes creativity
Psychopathology indirectly causes creativity
Creativity directly projects (being placed) onto the psychopathology
...
A third factor influencing the relationship, such as a family disposition for the
psychopathology
...
Glazer suggests that perhaps the best way to conceptualise the relationship between creativity
and psychopathology is as complex and the relationship depends on the individual being
studied, the type of psychopathology and the types of environmental factors involved
...
The existence of different kinds of creativity, each associated with specific types of
psychopathology:
Glazer considers whether there are different types of creativity based on the type of
psychopathology drawing on the distinction between schizophrenia versus affective disorder
...
Sass argues that individuals with affective disorder are preoccupied with the cultural norms
around them
...
Therefore Sass argues that affective disorder is related to creativity limited to the ‘normal’,
observations around everyday life, concentrating on feelings
...
Moreover Sass argues that the person witch schizophrenia, who is suffering from altered
states of perception or expressions of reality, is further detached from the world , works free
of social boundaries and considers alternative views of the world, or perceives things
differently and this predisposes them to ‘revolutionary’ creativity
...
For researchers in creativity and psychopathology, such as Claridge, the distinction between
affective disorder and schizophrenia provides useful parameters for any researcher looking at
the relationship between creativity and psychopathology
...
There are two parts to this model: Axis A corresponds to the extremities of creativity, ranging
from everyday creativity to the genius work of the eminent, and then outsider art and then
unrecognizable creativity
...
Glazer notes that unrecognizable creativity comprises remote creative associations that extend
past culturally recognizable work
...
That is not to say that all people on this axis are likely to have a psychopathology, but that
there is a great probability that individuals higher up on this axis will have a
psychopathology
...
Creativity as a single construct:
The final model presented by Glazer is creativity as a single construct: divergent thinking
...
Glazer maintains that divergent thinking is a feature of all the main theories of creativity
...
g
...
All these models describe thinking that could be described as divergent thinking
...
Title: Personality and Individual differences
Description: The following documents contain notes from a module that looks at personality and individual differences.Various topics are covered such as what personality is , individual differences, health and personality , the psychodynamic approach to personality , the humanistic approach to personality , emotion , motivation and creativity .
Description: The following documents contain notes from a module that looks at personality and individual differences.Various topics are covered such as what personality is , individual differences, health and personality , the psychodynamic approach to personality , the humanistic approach to personality , emotion , motivation and creativity .