Summary 1.2C Differences Between People

1.2 Differences Between People Notes
PROBLEM 1
Step 2: Problem Definition
 Why was he thinking of Rachel?

Step 4: Analyzing the problem
 What is the connection between conscious/subconscious and behavior?
 What is the connection between personality and reaction?
 Unconscious and autopilot
 What creates our motives?
 Does stress affect how we behave?
 Can things happen by accident?
 What is the link between primary thoughts and behaviour?

Step 5: Formulating learning goals
1. What is consciousness (subconsciousness)?
2. Connection between them and personality
3. What is the Freudian slip?

PART 2
Step 2: Problem definition
 Why did the other lash out?
 Why did she insist her child was an angel?
 Why did her transgression feel like a relief?

Step 4: Analyzing the problem
 Why did she let her frustration build up?
 Did the child’s personality depend on its upbringing?
 What is the link between personality and behaviour?
 Why does she convince herself on mistruths on her child’s personality?
 Is the situation related to cognitive dissonance?
 How do social norms guide a parent’s attitude?
-Conforming to unsuited parenting styles (cultural differences)
 How does one’s perception of others link to their relationship with you?
 Why did she feel relief if she’s against severe punishment?
 Did her behaviour result from situational or dispositional factors?

Step 5: Formulating learning goals
1. What causes impulsive behaviour?

PART 3
Step 1: Unfamiliar terms
 Fixation: being obsessed/very focused on something

Step 2: Problem definition
 Why do the 3 women cope with stress in different ways?

,  Why does their coping style comfort them?
 How does their personality influence the style they choose?
 Do they consciously practice their coping mechanisms?

Step 4: Analyzing the problem
 How do different people cope?
-How does it relate to personality? (nature vs nurture)
 What are fixations, what causes them and how do they influence our coping mechanisms?
 Does the stress form affect the coping mechanism we select?
 Difference in needs and how they affect the coping mechanism we choose?
 Childhood & coping mechanism
 Coping mechanisms in relation to defense
 Why are coping mechanisms comforting?

Step 5: Formulating learning goals
1. What are the different tension-coping mechanisms and what influences them?
2. What are fixations, what causes them and how do they influence our coping mechanisms?

PART 4
Step 2: Problem definition
 Why did the politicians’ actions contradict their preaching?
 Were they trying to suppress a part of themselves?
 Why did they react so intensely against actions they themselves committed?

Step 4: Problem analysis
 Why do people publicly rebel against traits they have?
 How do subconscious fears influence behaviour?
 Why were they acting hypocritically?
 How do others’ expectations influence behaviour?
 Why do people act in extreme ways to convince themselves what they’re doing is right?
 Why do people reject parts of themselves?
-Trying to convince others of it
 Why is their own behaviour situational but others’ is dispositional?
 Instinct in relation to id, ego and superego

Step 5: Formulating learning goals
1. Why do people suppress their true selves?
2. Id, ego and superego

Step 6: Self-Study/ Step 7: Reporting Phase
NOTES
 Most of us think that we are aware of what we do and why

Psychoanalysis
 The approach to personality that opposes the view that things may happen by accident
 It originated by an Austrian physician named Sigmund Freud

,  His impact in the field was huge in the field of psychology
 His views started when behavioral sciences started
 He is the father od personality psychology
Psychodynamic: the idea that personality is a set of processes that are always in motion
o Forces that emerge can be channeled, modified, or transformed
 Personality is not one process but rather, several working against each other
o They compete for control over the persons behaviour

Theme 1: Defense
 The personality is filled with conflicting views
o Continual defense: This key aspect appears and becomes a very important
 This approach assumes that everyone experiences threats
o Something that makes you feel shameful
o Something you regret
o You feel unworthy
 Whatever threaten you, your defense mechanism keeps from overpowering you

Theme 2: experiences are suffused with qualities (Lust, aggression, sexuality, death)
 Links to Freud's evolutionary theory
 We are animals who's life's purpose is reproduction
 He emphasized the role of sexuality in an unusual way

 His perspective was metaphorical
 He was a physician and related a lot of biological processes to mental processes
 He has a method
o Process that goes up or down
 He believed that people acts are rarely what they seem but rather they symbolize hidden
qualities

Topographical model of the mind
 Freud used three forms to explain the mind
3 forms of the mind
Form of mind Explanation Example
Conscious What you are aware of now Thoughts, emotions
Preconscious They can be brought to awareness easily Ordinary memory
Unconscious Not directly accessible awareness. Not Desires, urges, ideas tied to conflict,
gone/ exert continual influence on anxiety, and pain
consciousness

 Material in the conscious and the preconscious can move back and forth
 Material in the conscious and the preconscious can move to the unconscious
 Material in the unconscious cannot move back (Mental gate)

The structural model
 The consciousness is the tip of the iceberg