Psychology Theories

Personality Theories - Part I

Defense Mechanisms:

Denial - Used to describe situation in which people seem to be unable to face reality. By definition, denial is an outright refusal to admit, or recognize, that something has occurred or is currently occurring.

Repression - Acts to keep information out of conscious awareness, but these memories don't go away, they continue to influence behavior.

Displacement - This defense mechanism involves taking out frustrations, feelings and impulses on people or objects that are less threatening.

Sublimation - Allow us to act out unacceptable impulses by converting these behavior into a more acceptable form.

Projection - Involves taking our own unacceptable qualities, or feelings, and ascribing them to other people.

Intellectualization - This one works to reduce anxiety by thinking about events in a clinical way, allowing us to avoid thinking about the stressful, emotional aspect of the situation and instead focus only on the intellectual component.

Rationalization - Involves explaining an unacceptable behavior in a rational manner, avoiding the true reasons of the behavior.

Antisocial Personality Disorder vs. Psychopathy

Serial Killers is a subject that nowadays appears in every newspaper and in some point in normal conversations. But, what is in fact a serial killer? How can you distinguish it from simple antisocial personality disorder?
A study published by Discovery Investigation had explored this subject, here's what they say about this controversy:

"Mental health professionals use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), developed by the American Psychiatric Association, to understand the illnesses of their patients and how to treat them. The DSM doesn't list serial murder among the 300 known mental disorders catalogued in its pages. It does, however, describe antisocial personality disorder, or ASPD. It's this condition that describes the behavior of many serial killers.
To understand ASPD, it helps to review the DSM criteria used to diagnose it. The most obvious indicator of the disorder is a total disregard for laws and social norms. People with ASPD have a long history of arrests and are often involved in physical fights or assaults. Some are capable of lying, cheating and deceiving so skillfully it is difficult to know when they are telling the truth or lying. They also act impulsively, with little care given to the safety of themselves or others.
To be diagnosed officially with ASPD, a person must be 18 years old, but symptoms generally begin to appear earlier, sometimes in the early teens. Adults with ASPD struggle to stay employed and, as a result, often have financial problems, according to the DSM. The manual also mentions that the disorder occurs more frequently in men than women — about 3 percent versus 1 percent.
Experts describe psychopathy as a more severe form of ASPD. Psychopaths have the antisocial symptoms just mentioned, but they also have additional traits that make them especially difficult to diagnose and treat. Chief among these traits is a lack of remorse or guilt for their actions. They also tend to be highly paranoid and suspicious.
Robert D. Hare of the University of British Columbia, a pioneer in the field, developed a diagnostic tool for psychopathy that measures the same antisocial symptoms as the DSM, but also evaluates interpersonal criteria, such as lack of empathy and shallow emotions. The tool is known as the Hare Psychopathy Checklist — a collection of 20 criteria that measure a person's antisocial behavior, emotional and interpersonal traits, and other factors.
The highest possible score is 40, but someone who scores 30 points is considered a psychopath, according to Kent Kiehl and Joshua Buckholtz, who explored the mind of a psychopath for Scientific American. Interestingly, the average score on the Hare Psychopathy is 4, write Kiehl and Buckholtz. That just means that psychopathy is a continuum, the way many other disorders are. It also means most psychopaths are not violent and are not destined to commit murder. A few, however, fall at the far end of the scale. These violent psychopaths may include serial killers."

So, hey you, be careful! 
 

Personality and Social Behavior by Frederick Rhodewalt

Here's a pretty cool book to read if you're really into psychology and social behavior: Personality and Social Behavior by Frederick Rhodewalt

Take a look at the sinopse:
The study of the relationship between the person and the situation has had a long history in psychology. Many theories of personality are set on an interpersonal stage and many social phenomena are played out differently as the cast of characters change. At times the study of persons and situations has been contentious, however, recent interest in process models of personality and social interaction have focused on the ways people navigate, influence, and are influenced by their social worlds.

Personality and Social Behavior contains a series of essays on topics where a transactional analysis of the person and situation has proved most fruitful. Contributions span the personality and social psychology spectrum and include such topics as new units in personality; neuroscience perspectives on interpersonal personality; social and interpersonal frameworks for understanding the self and self-esteem; and personality process analyses of romantic relationships, prejudice, health, and leadership.

This volume provides essential reading for researchers with an interest in this core topic in social psychology and may also be used as a text on related upper-level courses.

Facebook, the new personality test

Facebook it's one of the most powerful social network of today, and if you take that to area of psychology  you will see that you can take several aspects into analysis.

For instance, all users can choose the information they want to reveal, the photos that they want all other friends connected to them to see, and so on. 

Based on this factors, one study discovered that Facebook profiles are really good at conveying your real personality.

In the study, taken by University of Maryland, researchers looked at the online profiles of around 236 U.S. college-aged individuals.

The participants also filled out questionnaires designed to measure personality traits including extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness. Observers then rated the personalities of the participants based on the online profiles, and these observations were compared to the results of the personality questionnaires. The researchers found that observers were able to get an accurate read on a person's personality based on their Facebook profile.

Beyond this study, all over the world, began to appear several cases that have been reported on social media, such as employers using the public Facebook profil of the candidates to the job profile to evaluate their personality, as a common personality test.

This may sound awkard or even a invasion of privacy, but you must start to be careful with what you post online, because this type of customs are being increasingly used. 

So, before posting anything or upload any photo, think twice.

In conclusion, take a look at this infographic to fully understand the impact of facebook as a social network.