Introduction to Psychopathology and Personality II

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Introduction to Psychopathology and Personality II
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Review

• Abnormality
• Three foci of psychopathologists
• Theories

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Theories of Psychopathology/Personality

• Psychoanalytic
• Humanistic
• Behavioral
• Cognitive
• Trait
• Self

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Personality

• Personality is the system of enduring, inner
  characteristics of individuals that contributes
  to consistency in their thoughts, feelings, and
  behavior (Leary, 2005).
• Behavior is a function of person and situation
  (Lewin)

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Personality

• What is the structure of personality?
• How does personality develop and change?
• What are the consequences of individual
  differences in personality?

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Behaviorism

• Classical conditioning
• Operant conditioning
• Observational learning

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Behaviorism

• People are products of their environments
• Behavior therapy
• Time-limited
• Direct focus on symptom reduction

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Strengths Limitations

• Strengths

• Limitations

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The Cognitive Paradigm

• Also Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis
• ABC model
• AActivating Events
• BBeliefs
• CConsequences

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Cognitive Therapy

• Conventional wisdom
• A?C
• That driver made me so angry!

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Cognitive Therapy

• CBT viewpoint
• A?B?C
• Your beliefs about the car driver made you so
  angry
• People must never inconvenience me!
• People must always respect me!
• Cognitive restructuring

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Example

• Marissa was working at her desk when her
  supervisor said, By the way, I want to
  compliment you on the nice report you wrote
  yesterday. Unexpectedly, Marissa became nervous
  and scared. She couldnt shake this mood the rest
  of the morning.
• Greenberger Padesky (1995, pp. 46-47)

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Example (Contd.)

• Therapist What was scary about the situation?
• Marissa I dont knowjust knowing the supervisor
  noticed my work, I guess.
• T Whats scary about that?
• M Some day the supervisor will notice a mistake.
• T And then what might happen?

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Example (Contd.)

• M The supervisor will be mad at me.
• T Whats the worst that might happen then?
• M I hadnt thought about it, but I guess I could
  get fired.
• T And then what might happen?
• M With a bad recommendation, Id have trouble
  getting another job.

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Example (Contd.)

• T Can you summarize, Marissa, what your thoughts
  were that help explain why you were scared after
  receiving your supervisors compliment?
• M Now I can see that the compliment made me
  realize my supervisor is noticing my work. Since
  I know I make mistakes, I thought about what
  might happen if my supervisor noticed one of
  these mistakes. I guess I jumped to the
  conclusion that Id be fired and not able to get
  another job. It sounds a little silly now.

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Anxiety and Cognition

• Anxiety involves
• Increased perceived severity
• Decreased perceived ability to cope
• Increased perceived likelihood
• Teach client to recognize and combat this pattern
  of thinking

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Cognitive Therapy

• Strengths

• Limitations

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The Trait Paradigm

• Focuses on how people differ from each other
• Lexical hypothesis
• All important traits must have been encoded in
  language (Gordon Allport)

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Stability

• Stable attributes of personality (trait vs. state)

George was a good little monkey and always very
curious
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What are the Traits?
Talkative
Loving
Timid
Arrogant
Calm
Kind
Dominant
Conservative
Aloof
Shy
Friendly
Impulsive
Reserved
Cheerful
Grouchy
Nice
Fearless
Diligent
Curious
Confident
Agreeable
Reserved
Irritable
Affectionate
Calm
Jumpy
Anxious
Intellectual
Easy-going

• English - 2,800 trait terms

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Big Five Dimensions of Personality

• Openness to new experiences
• Conscientiousness
• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism
• OCEAN

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Openness - imaginative, with wide interests

• I often try new and foreign foods
• Predicts desire for challenges, frequency of
  changing jobs

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Conscientiousness - organized, thorough

• I strive for excellence in everything I do
• I am a productive person who always gets the job
  done
• Predicts job performance (Ones, 1993), grades,
  educational attainment, low use of alcohol
  (Paunonen, 2003)

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Agreeableness - sympathetic, kind

• I try to be courteous to everyone I meet
• I would rather cooperate with others than compete
  with them
• Predicts positive emotions (DeNeve Cooper,
  1998), low stress (Rantanen at e., 2005),
  perceived support (Branje et al., 2004)

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Extraversion - talkative, energetic

• I like to have a lot of people around me
• I laugh easily
• Predicts positive emotions (Watson et al., 2002),
  dating frequency, exercise, partying, alcohol
  intake (Paunonen, 2003)

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Neuroticism Emotional, Emotionally Reactive

• When Im under a great deal of stress, sometimes
  I feel like Im going to pieces
• I often feel tense and jittery
• Associated with anxiety, depression, physical
  illness (McCrae Costa, 1991)

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Trait Perspective

• Strengths

• Limitations

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Self Theories

• Your sense of self
• Self-concept
• Beliefs about self and selfs attributes
• Self-esteem

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Self-Esteem and Self-Help
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Self-Esteem

• Self-esteem
• Cognitive affective evaluation of our
  self-worth
• Depression, anxiety, substance abuse
• Interaction with stress

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Self-Verification

• Id never join a club that would have me as a
  member
• Julius Henry Groucho Marx
• Unpredictability is scary!
• We need perceived control, stability, coherence

• Groucho Marx

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Relationship Commitment

• Swann et al. (1992)
• 95 married couples
• Self-esteem (intellectual capability, physical
  attractiveness, athletic ability, social skills)
• Commitment
• Desire to stay in relationship
• Plans to stay in relationship

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Relationship Commitment HSEs
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Relationship Commitment
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Self-Verification

• Sometimes prefer negative feedback
• Depressed individuals too
• Predictability and control
• Create our environments

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Comments on Self-Theories

• Strengths
• Empirically examined
• Many correlates
• Intuitive appeal

• Limitations
• Origins?
• Change?

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Review

• Psychoanalytic
• Early childhood experiences
• Unconscious processes
• Humanism
• Positive emphasis
• Congruence, unconditional positive regard

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Review

• Behavioral
• Learning
• Cognitive
• Beliefs, appraisals
• Trait
• Stable individual differences
• Self
• Global evaluations of ones self

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Final Comments

• Not so great question
• Which theory is right?
• Better questions
• Which theories best explain which phenomena?
• How can we incorporate/integrate info. to make
  predictions?

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Etiology

• Biological and
• Environmental Factors

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Etiology

• Etiology
• Causal factors
• Treatment implications

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Multi-Dimensional Models

• Unidimensional models
• Multidimensional models
• Biology (genes, physiology, neurotransmitters)
• Social (friends, family, teachers)
• Behavioral (conditioning, modeling)
• Emotional (affectivity)
• Cognitive (maladaptive cognitions)
• Cultural (gender, race, ethnicity)
• Personality

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Terminology

• Behavioral genetics
• Francis Galton

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Genes

• Whats a gene?
• Long segments of DNA molecules
• Basic physical unit of heredity
• Phenotype
• Expression of a gene
• Influenced by genes and environment

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Research Methods in Behavioral Genetics

• Family study
• Confounding
• Adoption study
• Adopted children raised by vs. not by biological
  parents
• Twin study
• Identical and fraternal twins

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Psychopathology

• Psychopathology/Personality
• Genes Shared Environment Unshared Environment

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Research Findings

• MZ together and apart (Tellegen et al., 1988)
• 50 of variance ? Genetic
• Negligible ? shared environment
• Remainder (almost 50) ? unshared environment
  error