Personality and Behavior

- Franz Joseph Gall

Phrenology - We could measure personality by assessing the patterns of bumps on
people’s skulls
- William Herbert Sheldon
- We could determine personality fro people’s body types
- “endomorphs” rounder physique were more likely to be assertive
Somatology and bold
- “ectomorphs” thinner people were more likely to be introvert and
intellectual
- Now been discredited in contemporary psychology
- assess personality from facial characteristics
Physiognomy - Not guaranteed
- relatively enduring characteristics that nfluence our behavior across
many situations
- introversion, friendliness, conscientiousness, honesty, and
helpfulness
• Authoritarianism
• Individualism-Collectivism
Traits Internal versus external locus
•
• Need for achievement
• Need for cognition
• Regulatory Focus
• Self-consciousness
• Self-esteem
• Sensation seeking

- most widely administered personality test in the world

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI)
Five-factor (Big Five) Model of
Personalty
- Categorizes people into one of four dimensions: introversion vs
extroversion, sensing vs intuiting, thinking vs feeling, and judging
vs perceiving
- there are five fundamental underlying trait dimension that are stable
across time, cross-culturally shares, and explain a substantial
proportion of behavior
• Openness to experience - a general appreciation of art, emotion,
adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of
experience
• Consciousness - show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for
achievement
• Extraversion - experience positive emotions and to seek out
stimulation and the company of others
• Agreeableness - compassionate and cooperative rather than
suspicious and antagonistic toward others; reflects individual
differences in general concern for social harmony
• Neuroticism - experience negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety,
or depression; sometimes called “emotional instability”

Barnum effect
Minnesota Multi phasic
Personality Inventory (MMPI)
Projective Measures
Rorschach Inkblot Test
Thematic Apperception Test
Draw-A-Person Test and Free
Association Test
Psychodynamic Approach
- he observation that people tend to believe in descriptions of their
personality that supposedly are descriptive of them but could in fact
describe almost anyone
- Help us understand why people believe in astrology, horoscopes,
fortune-telling, palm reading, tarot card reading, and some
personality test
- used primarily to assess deviations from a “normal” or “average”
personality
- A test used around the world to identify personality and
psychological disorders
- A list of more than 1,000 true-false questions
- measures of personality in which unstructured stimuli, such as
inkblots, drawings of social situations, or incomplete sentences, are
shown to participants, who are asked to freely list what comes to
mind as they think about the stimuli
- Allow the respondent to freely express whatever comes to mind
- swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach
- A projective measure of personality in which the respondent
indicated his or her thoughts about a series of 10 symmetrical
inkblots
- Administered millions of time every year
- Henry Murray
- A projective measure of personality on which the respondent is
asked to create stories about sketches of ambiguous situations, most
of them are either alone or with others
- Assumes that people may be unwilling or unable to admit their true
feelings when asked directly bu these feelings will show up n the
stories about the pictures
- in which the respondent quickly responds with the first word that
comes to mind when the examiner says a test word
- one of the most important psychological approach to understand
personality
- Sigmund freud
- To understand personality
• Id - the component of personality that forms the basis of our most
primitive impulses, pleasure principle
• Ego - reality principle
• Superego - our sense of morality and oughts
- unconscious psychological strategies used to cope wth anxiety and to
maintain a positive self-image
 1. Displacement - diverting threatening impulses away from the
source of the anxiety and toward a more acceptable source
2. Projection - disguising threatening impulses by attributing them to
others
3. Rationalization - generating self-justifying explanations for our
Defense Mechanism negative behaviors
4. Reaction Formation - making unacceptable motivations appear as
their exact opposite
5. Regression - retreating to an earlier, more childlike, and safer
stage of development
6. Repression or denial - pushing anxiety-arousing thoughts into the
unconscious
7. Sublimation - channelling unacceptable sexual or aggressive
desires into acceptable activities
- theories based on Freudian principles that emphasize the role of the
unconscious and early experience in shaping personality by place
less evidence on sexuality as the primary motivating force in
personality and are more optimistic concerning the prospects for
personality growth and change in personality in adults
• Alfred Adler - most psychological disorders result from misguided
attempts to compensate for the inferiority complex in order to meet
the goal of superiority
• Carl Jung - collective unconscious, a collection of shared ancestral
Neo-Freudian Theories
memories; the underlying motivation that guides successful
personality is self-realization, or learning about and developing the
self to the fullest possible event
• Karen Horney - the underlying motivation that guides personality
development is the desire for security, the ability to develop
appropriate and supportive relationship with others
• Erich Fromm - focus on the negative effect of technology, the
independence that technology brings us also creates the need "escape
from freedom” that is, to become closer to others

• self-concept - the set of beliefs about who we are

• self-esteem - our positive feelings about the self
Humanistic Psychology
• self-actualization - the motivation to develop our innate potential to
the fullest possible extent
- Carl Rogers
- a set of behaviors including being genuine, open to experience,
transparent, able to listen to others, and self-disclosing and empathic
- We express understanding and support, even while we may
Unconditional Positive Regard
acknowledge failings
- Allows us to admit our fears and failures, to drop our pretenses, feel
completely accepted for what we are
- foundation of psychological therapy
- the basic biological unit that transmits characteristics from one
Gene generation to the next
- 25,000 genes
 - complex inborn patterns of behaviors that help ensure survival and
Instincts
reproduction
- a variety of research techniques that scientists use to learn about the
genetic and environmental influences on human behavior by
comparing the traits of biologically and non-biologically related
family members
- based on the results of family studies, twin studies, and adoptive
studies
• Family study - starts with one person who has a trait of interest and
examines the individual’s family tree to determine the extent to
which other members of the family also have the trait
• Twin study - researchers study the personality characteristics of
twins that rely on the fact that identical twins have essentially the sae
set of genes, while fraternal have a half-identical set
- the data from many pairs of twins are collected and the rates of
similarity for identical and fraternal pairs are compared:
1. Heritability - when the correlation coefficient for identical twins
Behavioral genetics exceeds that for fraternal twins, indicating that shared DNA is an
important determinant of personality
2. Shared environment - when the correlation coefficient for
identical and fraternal twins are greater than zero and also very similar
3. Non shared environment - indicated when identical twins do not
have similar traits, are the experiences that make individuals within the
same family less alike
• Adoption study - compares biologically related people, including
twins, who have been reared either separately or apart
1. Evidence for genetic influence
- found when children who have been adopted show traits that
are more similar to those of their biological parents than to those of
their adoptive parents
2. Evidence foe environmental influence
- found when the adoptee is more like his or her adoptive
parents than the biological parents
- the study of which genes are associated with which personality
traits
Molecular genetics
• knockout study - an approach used by researchers to remove or
modify the influence of a gene in a line of “knockout” mice

Psychological Behavior and Disorder

- the application of psychological science to understanding and treating
mental disorders
Abnormal psychology
- prevalence - the frequency of occurrence if a given condition in a
population at a given time

Psychological disorder
Bio-psycho-social model of illness
Comorbidity
Stigma
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders (DSM)
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD)
Autistic Disorder (Autism)
- an ongoing dysfunctional pattern of thought, emotion, and behavior
that causes significant distress, and that is considered deviant in that
person’s culture or society
- a way of understanding disorder that assumes that disorder is caused
by biological, psychological, and social factors
1. biological component of the bio-psycho-social model refers to the
influences on disorder that come from the functioning of the
individual's body
2. psychological component of the bio-psycho-social model refers to
the influences that come from the individual, such as patterns of
negative thinking and stress responses
3. Social component of the bio-psycho-social model refers to the
influences on disorder due to social and cultural factors such as
socioeconomic status, homelessness, abuse, and discrimination
- occurs when people who suffer fro one disorder also suffer at the
same time from other disorders
- a disgrace or defect that indicates that person belongs to a culturally
devalued social group
- a document that provides a common langugae and standard criteria
for the classification of mental disorder
- used by therapists to determine what services are appropriately
provided for treating patients with given symptoms
- the first edition of the DMS was published in 1952
- revised 5 times
- 400 disorders
- organizes the diagnosis of disorder according to five dimensions
relating to different aspects of disorder or disability
1. Axis I - mood disorders and anxiety disorders
2. Axis II - personality disorders as well as mental retardation
3. Axis III and IV - physical symptoms and social-cultural factors;
biological, personal, and socio-cultural factors
- a developmental behavior disorder characterized by problems with
focus, difficulty maintaining attention, and inability to concentrate
- symptoms start before 7 years of age
- in adults, forgetfulness, difficulty paying attention to details,
procrastination, disorganized work habits, and not listening to others
- 70% more likely to occur in males than in females'
- often treated with prescription medications, including stimulants
such as ritalin
- caused by combination of genetic and environmental factors, such
as mothers’ smoking, drinking, food additives during pregnancy
- disorder of neutral development characterized by impaired social
interaction and communication and by restricted and repetitive
behavior, and in which symptoms begin before 7 years of age
 - disorder that affects a child’s ability to socialize and communicate
Asperger's disorder effectively with others
- Symptoms begin before 7 years of age
- the nervousness or agitation that we sometimes experience, often
Anxiety
about something that is going to happen, is a natural part of life
- psychological disturbances marked by irrational fears, often of
Anxiety disorders
everyday objects and situations
- a psychological disorder diagnosed in situations in which a person
has been excessively worrying about money, health, work, family
life, or relationships for at least 6 months, even though he or she
Generalized Anxiety Disorder knows that the concerns are exaggerated, and when the anxiety
(GAD) causes significant distress and dysfunction
- Experience physical symptoms, such as irritability, sleep troubles,
difficulty concentrating, muscle aches, trembling, perspiration, and
hot flashes
- a psychological disorder characterized by sudden attacks of anxiety
and terror that have led to significant behavioral changes in the
person’s life
Panic Disorder
- Symptoms are shortness of breath, heart palpitations, trembling,
dizziness, chocking sensations, nausea, and an intense feeling of
dread or impending doom
- Phobos means fear
- A specific fear of a certain object, situation, or activity
- Can range from a sense of unease to a full-blown panic attack
• Social phobia
- extreme shyness around people or discomfort in social situations
such as speaking in public, using public restroom
- symptoms are sweating profusely, blushing, stuttering, nausea, and
dizziness
Phobia
- Women are more likely to suffer than men
• Agotaphobia
- anxiety about being in places or situations from which escape might
be difficult or embarrassing, or in which help ,ay not be available
- Typical places such as parking lots, crowded streets or shope,
bridges, tunnels, or expressways
- May have great difficulty leaving their homes and interacting with
other people
- a psychological disorder that is diagnosed when an individual
Obsessive-compulsive Disorder continuously experiences distressing or frightening thoughts, and
(OCD) engages in obsessions (repetitive thoughts) or compulsions (repetitive
behaviors) in an attempt to calm these thoughts

Post traumatic Disorder
Dissociative disorder
Dissociative amnesia
Dissociative fugue
Dissociative Identity Disorder
Both nature and nurture contribute to the development of anxiety disorders.
Anxieties are also learned through classical and operant conditioning.
Mood
Dysthymia
Major Depressive Disorder
(Clinical Depression)
- A frequent outcome of childhood or adult sexual abuse, a disorder
that has its own Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders diagnosis
- women are more likely to develop PTSD
- may experience high level of anxiety along with re-experiencing the
trauma, and a strong desire to avoid any reminder of the event
- May lose interest in things they used to enjoy, startle easily, have
difficulty feeling affection, and may experience terror, rage,
depression or insomnia
- condition that involves disruptions or breakdowns of memory,
awareness, and identity
- Used as a defense against the trauma
- a psychological disorder that involves extensive, but selective,
memory loss but in which there is no physiological explanation for
the forgetting
- Normally brought by a trauma such as disasters, accidents, physical
abuse, rape, and other forms of sever stress
- a psychological disorder in which an individual losses complete
memory of his or her identity and may even assume a new one,
often far from home
- May last for just a matter of hours or may continue for months
- once known as “Multiple Personality Disorder”
- A psychological disorder in which two or more distinct and
individual personalities exist in the same person, and there is an
extreme memory disruption regarding personal information abut the
other personalities
- Can be more than 10 personalities, can be differ from age, race,
gender, language, manner, and even sexual orientation
- the positive or negative feelings that are in the background of our
everyday experiences
• Mood disorders - psychological disorders in which the person’s
mood negatively influences his or her physical, perceptual, social,
and cognitive processes
- a condition characterized by mild, but chronic, depressive symptoms
that last for at least 2 years
- a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood
accompanied by low-esteem and by loss of interest or pleasure in
normally enjoyable activities
- Feel an intense sadness, despair, and loss of interest
• Major Depressive Episode with Psychotic Features - depression
which includes delusions and hallucinations
 - a psychological disorder characterized by swings in mood from
overly “high” to sad and hopeless, and back again, with periods of
Bipolar Disorder
near-normal mood in between
- Often chronic and lifelong condition that may begin in childhood
- known to be at least in part genetic
- Neurotransmitters also play an important role in mood disorders
Mood Disorders
- serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine
- Neurogenesis - the process of generating new neurons
- a serious psychological disorder marked by delusions,
hallucinations, loss of contact with reality, inappropriate affect,
disorganized speech, social withdrawal, and deterioration of
adaptive behavior
• Positive symptoms
- refer to the presence of abnormal behaviors or experiences that are
not observed in normal people
• Negative symptoms
- refer to the loss or deterioration of thoughts and behaviors that are
typical of normal functioning
• Cognitive symptoms
- the changes in cognitive processes that accompany schizophrenia
Psychosis - a psychological condition characterized by a loss of
contact with reality
Schizophrenia Hallucinations - imaginary sensations that occur in the absence of a
real stimulus or which are gross distortions of a real stimulus
Delusions - false beliefs not commonly shared by others within one’s
culture and maintained even though they are obviously out of touch
with reality
Delusions of grandeur - believe that they are important, famous, or
powerful
Delusions of persecution - believe that a person or group seeks to
harm them

Derailment - the shifting from one subject to another, without

following any one line of though to conclusion — and may exhibit
grossly disorganized behavior including inappropriate sexual behavior
Catatonia - a state in which a person does not move and is
unresponsive to others
- a disorder characterized by inflexible patterns of thinking, feeling, or
Personality Disorder relating to others that causes problems in personal, social, and work
situation

Borderline Personality Disorder
(BPD)
Antisocial Personality Disorder
Somatization Disorder
Conversion Disorder
Body Dysmorphic Disorder
Hypochondriasis
Factitious Disorder
Malingering
Sexual Disorders
Sexual Dysfunction
- a psychological disorder characterized by a prolonged disturbance
of personality accompanied by mood swings, unstable personal
relationships, identity problems, threats of self-destructive behavior,
fears of abandonment, and impulsivity
- Often associated with suicide
- Known as internalizing disorder
- Has both genetic and environmental roots
- The behavior entails are mostly directed toward the self
- a pervasive pattern of violation of the rights of others that begins in
childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood
- Referred to as “sociopaths” or “psychopaths”
- Feel little distress for the pain they cause others, egocentric and
frequently impulsive
- Biological and environmental factors
- Known as externalizing disorder
- Problem behavior focus primarily on harm to others
- also called as Briquet’s Syndrome or Brissaud-Marie Syndrome
- A psychological disorder in which a person experiences numerous
long-lasting but seemingly unrelated physical ailments that have no
identifiable physical cause
- type of somatoform disorder
- A psychological disorder in which patients experience specific
neurological symptoms such as numbness, blindness, or paralysis,
but where no neurological explanation is observed or possible
- a psychological disorder accompanied by an imagined or
exaggerated defect in body parts or body odor
- Usually begins in adolescence
- psychological disorder that is focused on preoccupation,
accompanied by excessive worry about having a serious illness
- Often misinterpret normal body symptoms such as coughing,
perspiring, headaches, or rapid heartbeat as sign of serious illness
- fake physical symptoms in large part because they enjoy the
attention and treatment that they receive in the hospital
- Münchausen syndrome- severe form of factitious disorder
- fabricating the symptoms of mental or physical disorders, but where
motivation for doing is to gain financial reward, to avoid school, work,
or military service, to obtain drugs or to avoid prosecution
- refer to a variety of problems revolving around performing or
enjoying sex
- Include diorders related to sexual function, gender identity, and
sexual preference
- a psychological disorder that occurs when the physical sexual
response cycle is inadequate for reproduction or for sexual enjoyment
Hypoactive Sexual Desire
Disorder
Sexual Aversion Disorder
Female Sexual Arousal Disorder
Male Erectile Disorder
Female Organismic Disorder
Male Organismic Disorder
Dyspareunia and vaginismus
Paraphilia
PSYCHOLOGY IN OUR SOCIAL LIVES
Social Psychology
Social Situation
Social cognition
Attitudes
- Most common sexual dysfunction
- refers to a persistently low or nonexistent sexual desire
- refers to an avoidance of sexual behavior caused by disgust or
aversion to genital contact
- refers to persistent difficulties becoming sexually aroused or
sufficiently lubricated in response to sexual stimulation in women
- may be comorbid with hypoactive sexual desire or orgasmic
disorder, or mood or anxiety disorders.
- sometimes referred to as “impotence”
- refers to persistent and dysfunctional difficulty in achieving or
maintaining an erection sufficient to complete sexual activity.
- refers to the inability to obtain orgasm in women
- woman enjoys sex and foreplay and shows normal signs of sexual
arousal but cannot reach the peak experience of orgasm
- includes a delayed or retarded ejaculation (very rare) or (more
commonly) premature ejaculation.
- refer to sexual pain disorders that create pain and involuntary
spasms, respectively, in women, and thus make it painful to have
sex
- can be treated with hormones, creams, or surgery
- a sexual deviation where sexual arousal is obtained from a
consistent pattern of inappropriate responses to objects or people,
and in which the behaviors associated with the feelings are
distressing and dysfunctional
- usually rejected by society but for two different reasons
• voyeurism and pedophilia - the behavior is unacceptable (and illegal)
because it involves a lack of consent on the part of the recipient of
the sexual advance. But other paraphilias are rejected simply because
they are unusual
• Sexual sadism and sexual masochism - usually practiced
consensually, and thus may not be harmful to the partners or to
society
- the scientific study of how we feel about, think about, and
behave toward the other people around us, and how those people
influence our thoughts, feelings and behavior
- the people with whom we are interacting
- the part of human thinking that helps us understand and predic the
behavior of ourselves and others
- our enduring evaluations of people or things
 - the accepted beliefs about what we do or what we should do in
Social norms
particular social situations
- the tendency to attribute personality characteristics to people on the
Stereotype
basis of their external appearance or their social group membership
- the tendency to dislike people because of their appearance or group
Prejudice
memberships

Discrimination - negative behavior toward others based on prejudice

- when our expectations about the personality characteristics of ther

Self-fulfilling prophecy
Social identity
Mere exposure
Causal attribution
Fundamental attribution error
(correspondence bias)
Self-monitoring
Self-perception
Cognitive dissonance
Altruism
Reciprocal altruism
Diffusion responsibility
lead us to behave toward those others in ways that make those beliefs
come true
- the positive emotions that we experience as a reult of our group
memberships
- the tendency to prefer stimuli (including but not limited to people)
that we have seen more frequently
- the process of trying to determine the causes of people’s behavior,
with the goal of learning about their personalities
- the common tendency to overestimate the role of person factors and
overlook the impact of situations in judging others
- the tendency to regulate behavior to meet the demands of social
situation
- when we use our own behavior as a guide to help us determine our
own thought and feelings
- the discomfort we experience when we choose to behave in ways that
we see as inappropriate
- any behavior that is designed to increase another person’s welfare,
and particularly those actions that do not seem to provide a direct
toward to the person who performs them
- the principle that if we help other people now, those others will return
the favor should we need their help in the future
- when we assume that others will take action and therefore we do not
take action ourselves

Aggression - behavior that is intended to harm another individual

- the idea that observing or engaging in less harmful aggressive actions

Catharsis
will reduce the tendency to aggress later in a more harmful way
- the tendency over time to show weaker emotional response to
Desensitization
emotional stimuli
- a change in beliefs or behavior that occurs as the result of the
Conformity
presence of the other people around us

Obedience - the tendency to conform to those in authority


Minority influence
Psychological reactance
Social facilitation
Social inhibition
Social loafing
Groupthink
Illusion of group productivity
Personality
- which a smaller number of individuals is able to influence the
opinions or behaviors of the larger group
- a strong emotional reaction that leads people to resist pressures to
conform
- the tendency to perform tasks better or faster in the presence of others
- the tendency to perform tasks more poorly or more slowly in the
presence of others
- a group process loss that occurs when people do not work as hard in a
group as they do when they are working alone
- a phenomenon that occurs when a group made up of members who
may be very competent and thus quite capable of making excellent
decisions nevertheless ends up, as a result of a flawed group process
and strong conformity pressures, making a poor decision
- the tendency for group members to overvalue the productivity of the
groups they work in