How psychology works the facts visually explained (DK) (Z-Library)

What is it?

Personality is the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, motivations, and behaviors that impact how people see themselves, others, and the world around

them. It drives how people feel, how they think, what they want, and how they behave. Personality is what makes each person unique and it influences everything from relationships to careers.

Biological

Psychologists such as Hans Eysenck have emphasized the role of genetic and biological

factors in the formation of personality. This approach suggests that characteristics and traits are determined by brain structure and function, and that they can be inherited—that nature plays more of a role than nurture.

Behaviorist

According to this approach, personality develops through a person’s interaction with

the environment, and continues to evolve throughout their lives. New experiences, meeting new people, and new situations all influence responses and traits.

Psychodynamic

Encompassing the theories of Freud and Erik Erikson, this approach indicates that an

individual’s personality is shaped by unconscious drives and how successfully they resolve a series of psychosocial conflicts that occur at defined stages of life.

Humanistic

Humanists believe that people’s innate desire to realize their potential by exercising free will,

and the personal experiences they accrue as a result of free will, shape personality. Their view suggests that people can take responsibility for who they want to be.

Evolutionary

This approach takes the line that different personality traits evolve at the genetic level

in response to environmental factors. Different traits are therefore evolved adaptations as a result of natural selection or sexual selection. These are traits that in a particular environment increase the chances of reproduction and survival.

Social learning

Related to behaviorist theory, the social learning view is that social interaction

and environment mold personality. Traits develop from observing behavior modeled by others and through conditioning. People internalize actions and responses that feed into their personality. For example, a child who is consistently told that they are naughty internalizes this message and gradually assumes this personality.

Dispositional (trait)

Trait theory proposes that personality is made up of different broad dispositions or traits. How these traits combine and interact is

unique to each person (their “central traits”), although common traits (such as extroversion) may be shared by many people from the same culture. “Cardinal” traits are those that are so dominant that they come to define a person—for example, altruism and Nelson Mandela.

A number of prevailing theories attempt to understand how people’s individual personalities develop, and to classify personality traits or types. Whereas the biological outlook implies that personality traits are fixed, other approaches, such as the humanistic and behaviorist theories, indicate that environmental factors and experiences modify personality over time. Research using studies of twins suggests that both nature (biological) and nurture

(environmental) play a role in personality. The Big Five personality theory (below) is now widely used to categorize and measure the different characteristics or traits that make up an individual’s personality.

It implies that personality can be malleable—while some traits remain stable and consistent, others may change how they manifest themselves or take greater prominence, depending on the type of situation the individual finds themselves in.

LOW SCORE

Practical; inflexible; prefers routine; conventional

Impulsive; disorganized; dislikes structure; careless

Quiet; withdrawn; reserved; prefers solitude

Critical; suspicious; uncooperative; insulting; manipulative

Calm; secure; emotionally stable; relaxed

“I practically considered the prisoners cattle.”

Stanford University “prison guard”

Physiological

A person must satisfy their basic needs for air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, and

rest. These needs are usually met in childhood, and must be a given in adulthood

before an individual can start seeking higher needs that make life meaningful.

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Barriers to personal growth

Maslow believed that every person desires and is capable of self-actualization, but only 1 percent of people ever achieve it. Lower-level needs often

resurface throughout life, which make progression

to self-actualization impossible. Life experiences such as divorce, bereavement, or losing a job mean that people struggle to meet their needs for financial

security, safety, love, or esteem, and cannot fulfill their psychological, creative, and personal

potential. The pressures of today’s

for personal growth.

STEPS TOWARD

SELF-ACTUALIZATION

Do not compare Instead of measuring yourself against others, concentrate on your own personal progress.

Accept Rather than being self-critical, accept and understand your strengths and weaknesses.

Let go of defense mechanisms Denying unpleasant facts or feelings or regressing into childlike behavior are examples of mechanisms that hold you back. Find new and more creative ways to react to situations.

Make honest choices Examine your true motives so you make genuine choices and act with integrity.

Experience life fully Immerse yourself in the moment to truly enjoy experiences.

Trust your personal abilities Adopt a positive outlook so you feel in control and can deal with life’s challenges.

Keep growing Self-actualization is a continuous process, so seek new challenges.

ILLNESS

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“What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.”

Abraham Maslow, American psychologist

NEED TO KNOW

Peak experience Moment of transcendence or true fulfillment that reflects self-actualization.

Theories of attachment

Psychologist John Bowlby first developed attachment theory in 1958, backed by research into both human relationships and those of other species. According to Bowlby, a child’s earliest experiences dictate what kind of relationships they form as adults. Multiple studies support this theory, including Harry Harlow’s experiments with rhesus monkeys in the 1950s and 1960s. His findings showed that monkeys who were denied the affection of their own mother grew up to be more timid, less sure of how to behave with other monkeys, and less able to mate. In the 1970s, Mary Ainsworth built on previous experiments, observing interactions between human mothers and infants through a one-way mirror. She concluded that children with mothers who were highly responsive to their needs developed a sense of security in their attachment that children with less sensitive mothers lacked. This security, or lack of it, forms the foundation of adult relationships (pp.156–157).

COUPLES THERAPY

When it emerged as a psychological tool in the 1990s, couples therapy was aimed at getting two individuals to agree to bury their differences. However, based on extensive research by John Gottman at the University of Seattle, therapists now recognize that conflict in a

relationship is inevitable. Couples therefore should try to:Accept conflict and repair rifts.

Improve communication rather than burying their feelings and growing emotionally distant.

Be emotionally open and overcome fears of expressing a need for closeness.

“The quality of your life is … the quality of your relationships.”

Anthony Robbins, American author and life coach

COUPLES THAT PLAY TOGETHER STAY TOGETHER by enjoying small moments of daily life together, which helps to build a strong relationship.

The stages of love

Psychologists have explanations

for what happens at every stage of a relationship, from the emotional perils

of dating through the initial heady feeling of falling in love to either fulfillment or heartbreak. The skills required to negotiate and maintain

a relationship are established early on in life when a person forms an attachment to a parent or caregiver, although they can still be refined and built on in adulthood.

Bonding as a baby

The principle that the way in which a person bonds as a baby can dictate how they bond as an adult grew out of the pioneering work of John Bowlby. Like psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, he was interested

in how early childhood experience affects later life. Bowlby, whose theories were published in the 1950s and 1960s, believed that everyone is born with an

instinctive need to form attachments in order to survive; that everyone needs to have one close, continuous bond for the first two years of their life; and that failure in this process may cause depression, heightened aggression, suppressed intelligence, and difficulty showing affection as a child and later in life.

Over the ensuing decades, psychologists expanded and refined Bowlby’s hypothesis, creating experiments

Childhood attachment

SECURE

When a child feels sure that their needs are met, they develop a secure attachment. The caregiver is sensitive to the child’s needs, responding quickly and regularly. The child is happy enough to explore their environment and feels secure.

AMBIVALENT

The child does not believe the caregiver can be relied on to meet their needs. The caregiver’s behavior is inconsistent—they are sometimes sensitive but other times neglectful. The child becomes anxious, insecure, and angry.

AVOIDANT

If the caregiver is distant and somewhat unresponsive to the child’s needs, that child also becomes emotionally distant, subconsciously detecting that their needs are unlikely to be met. The child does not develop a secure attachment.

DISORGANIZED

The unpredictable caregiver scares the child, either by being abusive or because of their own passive, frightened state. The distressed child grows withdrawn, unresponsive, and confused, with no strategy for having their needs met.

LEADS TO

LEADS TO

LEADS TO

LEADS TO

Adulthood attachment

SECURE

As an adult, they feel confident in relationships and are willing to ask for help from a partner, as well as offer support and comfort to their partner when necessary. They retain independence but are loving toward their partner.

ANXIOUS PREOCCUPIED

Constant fear of rejection drives this adult to be clingy, demanding, and bordering on obsessive, not wanting to be separated from their partner at all. Their relationships are driven by emotional hunger rather than real love and trust.

DISMISSIVE AVOIDANT

Emotionally distant, the adult appears selffocused and independent. The independence is an illusion, a result of denying the importance of loved ones. If their partner is upset and threatens to end the relationship, they appear not to care.

FEARFUL AVOIDANT

The adult swings from one extreme to another, is emotionally unpredictable, and may end up

in an abusive relationship. They are torn between seeking comfort from their partner and being afraid to get too close for fear of being hurt.

to observe how infants behave with their mothers or other caregivers. This research revealed that the key in developing attachment is not who feeds or changes the infant but who communicates and plays with them. It also showed that individuals develop different ways of

attaching to other people. These styles of attachment emerge during early childhood and go on to shape relationship choices and behavior in adulthood. Today psychologists have recognized four attachment styles in childhood and four linked attachments in adulthood.

To form a successful romantic relationship, it helps to understand how the different adult attachment styles work in partnerships. People with secure attachment styles generally have the most stable relationships; those with less secure styles need to work harder at cementing a romantic partnership. The pairings below are based on

the original three attachment styles that psychologist Mary Ainsworth’s 1970s psychological experiments (p.154) revealed. A minority of people can have both anxious and avoidant qualities, in which case they should learn about how both anxious-preoccupied and dismissive-avoidant types behave in different pairings.

This coupling may have a passionate relationship but, given the emotional intensity of both partners, there may also be extreme highs and lows that ultimately pull the couple apart.

This difficult pairing reinforces the couple’s self-images. The anxious person fears rejection so has to grow stronger for the relationship to last. The avoidant fears intimacy so needs to grow closer to their partner.

In this partnership the secure partner can help the anxious one become less so, since each party seeks intimacy, and the secure person

is able to calm their partner’s anxieties and meet their needs.

This pairing rarely results in a long-term relationship since neither person can commit. Most avoidant individuals desire to connect with someone, but another avoidant is unlikely to bridge the gap.

A potentially strong coupling, the secure person can help the avoidant feel less trapped by giving them space, which in turn encourages

the avoidant to relax, enjoy, and learn to be intimate in the relationship.

With both partners easily able to share intimacy and communicate their needs and concerns, this should be a perfect match, providing fulfillment to both parties.

The rewards of romance

A scientific approach to the reason that people fall in love or commit to a relationship may seem contrary to the idea of romance, but psychologists have proposed some interesting explanations.

In the 1960s Robert Zajonc put forward a theory called the Mere Exposure Effect, which was based on observations of people in the same apartment building.

The theory proposed that one of the main reasons one person becomes attracted to another is due to regular close physical proximity. In another study in the 1980s, Caryl Rusbult observed the relationships of college students and came up with a mathematical explanation as to why people chose to commit or not, and why they may stay in an unhappy relationship. Her Investment Model put forward an equation that

Fatuous

Love

Passion

The physical attraction that may have ignited the relationship is a prime component in keeping love alive, but on its own is just infatuation.