PSY 239 401 Chapter 16 SLIDES

© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Personality PuzzleSixth Edition

by David C. Funder

Chapter 16:Personality Processes: Perception, Thought,

Motivation, and Emotion

Slides created byTera D. LetzringIdaho State University 1

Objectives

• Discuss the history of research on personality processes

• Discuss perception, thought, motivation, and emotion

2© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Personality Processes

• Includes perception, thought, motivation, and emotion

• Understanding these will help us understand someone’s personality

• Personality is a verb


The Historical Roots of Research Into Personality Processes

• Learning: but ignoring cognition is too limited• Social learning: focused on cognitive processes• Phenomenology: emphasizes importance of

the way an individual thinks about the world


The Historical Roots of Research Into Personality Processes

• Psychoanalysis: levels of consciousness and the need for compromise

• Biological approach: how representations of the self may be organized in the brain

• Trait approach: people have different traits based on different thoughts, feelings, and desires


Perception

• People are predisposed to perceive the world in different ways

• Priming and chronic accessibility– Part of our personalities– May come from evolution, temperament, or

experience– Different people have a predisposition to be

primed for certain concepts


Perception

• Rejection sensitivity– Affects interpretation of ambiguous signals– Often creates a self-fulfilling prophecy– Can result in seemingly inconsistent behavior

• Aggression

7© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company,

Inc.

Perception

• Perceptual defense– Similar to psychoanalytic defense mechanisms– People can have physiological reactions to

emotionally charged words before they are consciously aware of them

– Implication

• Vigilance and defense– Why do some people tend to see exactly what

they fear most?


Thought

• Determines many, but not all, actions• Not all thinking is conscious• Consciousness: whatever the individual has in

mind at the moment– Short-term memory (STM)– Limited capacity: 7 ± 2 chunks


Thought: Consciousness

• STM and thinking– Chunking can work with ideas– Funder’s Fifth Law: the purpose of education is to

assemble new chunks

• Consciousness and psychological health• Constructs, chunks, and consciousness


Thought: Unconscious Thoughts

• People can do things without knowing why, know things without knowing that they know, and have thoughts and feelings they do not understand.

• The unconscious is important.– We can do many things without thinking.– Consciousness is very small and life is more

complicated than that.


Thought: Two Ways of Thinking

• Dual-process models– Conscious thought is slower– Freud’s theory: rational and irrational thought– Reflective and impulsive



• Cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST)– Seeks to explain unconscious processing and the

seemingly irrational, emotion-driven sectors of the mind

– The rational system and the experiential system




• CEST– Different systems may generate different

decisions.– The systems interact.


Motivation

• What do you want? How will you try to get it?• Goals

– Drive behavior by influencing what you attend to, think about, and do

• Strategies• People may not always know what they want

– Explicit vs. implicit goals


Motivation: Goals

• Short-term and long-term goals• Idiographic goals

– Current concerns– Personal projects– Personal strivings


Motivation: Goals

• Properties of idiographic goals– Conscious at least some of the time– Describe thoughts and behaviors that are aimed at

fairly specific outcomes– Can change over time– Goals function independently of each other

• Limitation of idiographic goals– Goals are not theoretically organized


Motivation: Goals

• Nomothetic goals– Number of goals

• McClelland’s three primary motivations: needs for achievement, affiliation, and power

• Emmon’s five: enjoyment, self-assertion, esteem, interpersonal success, avoidance of negative affect

• Two: work and social interaction


Motivation: Goals

• Nomothetic goals– The goals

circumplex– Useful for seeing

the similarities and differences among goals

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Motivation: Goals

• Nomothetic goals – Judgment goals and development goals

• Can change over time and across situations• Lead to different outcomes: mastery

orientation and helplessness• Entity theories and incremental theories• Can be influenced by the person himself or by

the external situation


Motivation: Goals Across the Life Span

• Young: preparation for the future• Old (70+): emotional well-being• What are your current goals? How do these

differ from the goals you had 5 years ago? How do you think your goals will change in the next 5 years?


Motivation: Strategies

• Definition• Strategies and traits

– Traits can produce characteristic adaptations, or generalized scripts.

– The same strategy can result in different behavior patterns.

– Different traits can lead to the same strategies.


Motivation: Strategies

• Defensive pessimism (vs. optimism)– Coping, performance, and success are similar to

optimists– Find relief when the worst outcome doesn’t

happen– Some consistency– Advantages and disadvantages to both strategies


Emotion

• A type of procedural knowledge• A set of mental and physical procedures


Emotion: Experience

• Basic stages: appraisal, physical responses, facial expressions, nonverbal behavior, motives

• Stages can happen at the same time or in a different order

• Complex mixture of thought, physical sensations and motivations

• Possible sources: immediate stimuli, classical conditioning, memories, and thoughts


Emotion: Varieties of Emotions

• Core emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust

• Some emotions may be universal because they were evolutionarily advantageous

• It may be advantageous to be able to perceive these emotions accurately in others

• Circumplex figure


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Emotion: An Emotions Circumplex

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Emotion: Individual Differences in Emotional Life

• These are core aspects of personality• Emotional experience• Affect intensity

– Risk factor for bad outcomes

• Rate of change• Emotional intelligence

– Related to emotional expressiveness, quality of personal relationships, and level of optimism


Emotion: Happiness• Three components

– Overall satisfaction with life– Satisfaction with particular life domains– Generally high levels of positive emotion and low levels

of negative emotion

• The conception can vary with age• Three sources

– Individual set point– Objective life circumstances– What the individual does (intentional activity)


Emotion: Sources of Happiness

• Activity


Emotion: Sources of Happiness

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Emotion: Happiness

• Happiness may also be a cause of important outcomes.

• Happiness may have a dark side.• Happiness is related to effective functioning in

broad areas.


Think About It

• Does the concept of personality processes constitute a “basic approach” like the approaches considered in earlier chapters? Is it an amalgamation of these other approaches or is it something else entirely?


Clicker Question #1

Which of the following statements about perception is true?a)Everyone perceives the world in the same way.b)Everyone has the same chronically accessible constructs.c)Aggression is not related to perceptions.d)People who are sensitive to rejection are more likely to think that a partner is rejecting them.


Clicker Question #2

Conscious thoughta)is more important than unconscious thought.b)can happen at the same time as unconscious thought.c)works the same way when people are emotional or calm.d)has a large capacity.


Clicker Question #3

People are motivateda) to achieve their goals.b) by the same things across the life span.c) to always think of the best possible outcomes.d) by the same basic goals as everyone else.


PSY 239 401 Chapter 16 SLIDES

Education

norton company

goals shortterm

development goals

implicit goals

time goals function

goals drive behavior

goals circumplex useful

different people