Describe and evaluate one or more explanation of personality development Bandura social learning Erikson neo-freudian Freud psychodynamic

Transcription

1 Describe and evaluate one or more explanation of personality development Bandura social learning Erikson neo-freudian Freud psychodynamic Freud suggested one of the oldest personality theories: the psychoanalytic theory. Freud suggested psychosexual development, with 5 stages during early childhood where the focus is on particular things: oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital (lasting through out life). He suggested that if extreme pleasure of severe problems occurred during any of these stages then when stress occurs later on in life (perhaps through conflict of the id and superego) then the person would regress back to the stage at which they were fixated. Slightly surprisingly, there is some evidence to support this; although Freud only used case studies two seem of particular importance Little Hans and Anna O. Little Hans showed signs of the Oedipus complex and fixation at certain stages where as Anna O managed to over come her problem with eating and drinking after realising she was fixated at a stage where she was disgusted by a dog drinking from a glass. Although these do seem to support the theory we must consider the fact that Anna O is retrospective data and that Little Hans is the only case study that Freud did with an actual child, and that Freud did not speak to little Hans himself only the father. Also, Freud only took notes after the sessions and this could have lead to researcher bias and selective note taking. William s did a study on sexual abuse and found 38% of those admitted to hospital after sexual abuse had repressed the memories, although we do have to consider a social desirability bias and socially-sensitive research here it seems to support the idea of defence mechanisms. Despite the support, it is evident that Freud put great emphasis on sex, although historically where sex was socially repressed it may have had more impact we need a more modern view of personality development. Erikson is a neo-freudian and developed a psychosocial model, which is used through out life. His stages were: infancy, toddler, preschool, childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle adult hood and old age. He believed we developed through conflict at each of these stages in either a positive or negative direction (or a bit of both). Each stage has a particular conflict e.g. at stage 1 it is trust and mistrust. Erikson himself only found clinical evidence (like Freud) but his work is supported indirectly through Ainsworth and Bell s research to do with secure, anxious and avoidant attachments as the type of attachment clearly relates to trust, relating to the first stage in Erikson s model. Damon and Hart also found evidence for stage 4 where the conflict is to do with inferiority. They found that the children at stage 4 were more likely to compare themselves with other children when asked about themselves than younger children. Erikson does give us a basic idea of the development over life, however he does not give ideas to transitions between stages or how or why these happen.

2 Another theory to personality development is social learning theory, here social factors are far more recognised than in the other models, however it is not as deterministic as some other behavioural approaches. It suggests that personality is developed through modelling, classical and operant conditioning, direct and vicarious reinforcement. Bandura had a theory for social modelling where the child must go through 4 stages. The child must pay attention to the behaviour, they must then retain and remember the behaviour, they must then have the personal skills to be able to reproduce the behaviour, and finally have the motivation (usually from reward or punishment reinforcement) to replicate the behaviour. This theory involves reciprocal determinism as Bandura accepts that a child s biological traits e.g. sex or aggression can affect the environment they live in and the types of behaviour they wish to replicate or are likely to. Bandura also had the idea of self efficacy (opposite to learned helplessness) which is how we perceive we will be able to cope with a situation (rather than how we actually will). This idea is supported by Bandura; children were asked how satisfied they were with their performance on a task and if they then repeated this performance next time if they had high self-efficacy they were more likely to put more effort in. Bandura also had another study with bobo dolls, children watched others play with the bobo dolls and saw vicarious reinforcement and Bandura found children replicated the behaviour towards the bobo dolls. However, this approach still has limitations, despite considering all social factors, there may be an over emphasis on the social context. It is not a development theory and therefore does not tell us how people progress through out personality development. The model predicts that we have several selves (supported by Harter et al) but we often don t feel like we do, and many dispute this, Baar, however suggests this is an unconscious part of our selves. None of these personality development theories are flawless, and we may also like to consider situationalism, however each give an idea to separate parts of the development of personalities. Outline two explanations of gender roles Psychodynamic Kohlberg Social learning Biosocial Socio-biological The cognitive psychologist Kohlberg suggests one explanation of gender roles. Social learning theorists suggests gender behaviour is due to reinforcement and reward, however Kohlberg suggested it is due to active structuring of the child s mind and that by behaving in line with their gender they are rewarded (intrinsic motivation). Kohlberg suggested three stages: Basic gender identity, where the child knows it is a boy of a girl, but does not consider this to be lasting over time or situation; gender stability, where the child realises that gender is stable over time but not situations (e.g. when the child sees a female doll dressed in males clothing, it may

3 consider the doll to be male as gender is not consistent over situations); gender consistency is when the child knows it s gender is stable over both time and situation. It is when gender consistency is reached Kohlberg suggests it receives rewards for acting in a way that is consistent with it s gender. Slaby et al found that children who have reached gender consistency are more likely to attend to same sex models, which supports this idea. Black found that children cross culturally go through these stages which is good support for the development model. However, we have to consider how children much younger than gender consistency age (4 ½ onwards) show signs of attending to same sex models and acting in gender consistent ways, in which case we must either accept that some gender consistency signs are obvious earlier on in the model, or that social context and reinforcement have some input, which Kohlberg tends to ignores. Another, more biological approach to gender role development is using the biosocial approach. This is the idea that even from before birth the biological sex differences in a child changes the way they behave e.g. hormones. Maccoby et al found that there were 4 actual gender differences in a study with very large sample these were: girls are less aggressive and have better verbal ability and boys are better at spatial, visual and arithmetical things. Schaffer also suggested girls show more emotional sensitivity and boys are more vulnerable during development. However, biosocial approach would suggest many more differences than just these 6 are affected by biological factors. Young found that if he injected pregnant monkeys with testosterone their female young would be born more aggressive and boy like, although this is only on monkeys so it is hard to know how far we can generalise. Despite this Money et al also found that pregnant mothers who were injected with testosterone to prevent miscarriages gave birth to tomboy like girls, however, this may have something to do with the counter act drug which also made the children very active, which could lead to tomboy like characteristics. Another case study where we can see that biological influences over ride social influences is a family in the Dominican republic where 4 boys were born girls and raised as girls, at around 12 they developed normally as boys and grew up to be men with little trouble at adapting, here we see that the biological fact prevail. However, there are also case studies for the opposite Mrs DW who thought she was a female until she couldn t conceive, went to the Dr and found she was in fact a male with testicles, she felt that despite this she was still a female and lived on this way, although it has to be mentioned that her condition meant her body did not react to testosterone. There are many case studies for both arguments, however each are very different with different outcomes and it is hard to tell quite how much we can generalise to the population due to the special cases. This theory also does not account for the huge social change gender roles have had over many years, from where only men went to university to where more women than men do, aspects originally thought biological have in fact turned out to be social stereotypes believe for thousands of years with few biological groundings. Despite this, Best did find that cross culturally on general men take instrumental roles and females take expressive roles, it could be suggested this is all social stereotyping but it is highly unlikely, so there must be an

4 underlying biological reasoning. Mead found some tribes in New Guinea did infact have females taking the instrumental role and males the expressive, but despite this males were still the more aggressive of the sexes, supporting Maccoby s real gender differences. Gender role development is a very complicated issue and one I feel would be better looked at through a diathesis-stress approach instead of single approaches and theories leading to a much greater understanding. Discuss research into relationships with parents and or peers during adolescence Erikson negative identity component Offer 91% like parents Durenk conflict in households Brendt conformity to peers Peers reduce anxiety Socio biological approach to conflict Piaget s formal operations Many theories into adolescence involve the idea of conflict (Marcia and Erikson especially) so it is natural to expect some conflict with parents as they are the in the direct firing line, but there are some more precise theories to why conflicts occur with parents. Firstly, socio-biological where we are developing and maturing into adults and need to become independent and gravitate towards our peers so we can start reproducing our genes, this need to get out then causes conflict. Another is the idea that in adolescence we are in formal operations stage of Piaget s cognitive modal, this means we think more abstractly and we may be considering our own opinions rather than taking on those from our parents (as Freud suggested with identification after Electra and Oedipus complexes) and this causes conflict and debates. Another idea is control and autonomy, either to do with our independence or with our safety. Erikson s theory has components of the identity vs. role conflict, one of which is negative identity. This includes ideas to do with hostility towards the positive roles offered to you by family or the community thus resulting in conflict with parents. However Erikison supported his theory with clinical evidence which was mainly from males, so there male be a beta bias from generalising the theory to females as well. Despite all these theories Offer found that cross culturally in fact only 91% of adolescences thought they had a problem with their parents, so perhaps it would be best to see adolescence through Coleman s focal theory that a crisis is not inevitable or healthy and that most adolescences have problems in different areas and at different times and are in constant states of adjustment and stability in different parts of their adolescent lives. Coleman himself supports this theory with a frequency curve where adjustments and problems of adolescents are shown to be dealt with without conflict. In terms of peer groups it is obvious that during adolescence we gravitate towards our peers more than our parents, this could cause conflict in the

5 home due to the sense loss of a child. It was found that those with a stable group of peers (friends) are less prone to anxiety and depression, however this is correlational data and we cannot assume a causal relationship (it could be that those less prone to depression or anxiety are more likely to have a stable peer group). There is much conformity in adolescence, however adolescents believe they are much more individual and different than they actually are. Brendt found that during adolescence conformity to adults and parents decreased and conformity to peers increased, this could be either normative or informative conformity, but most probably normative as people feel they want to belong and fit into groups. It could be that peers help and support us through Marcia s stages (identity diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium and identity achievement) as they are also going through these stages. Despite the above, we must consider the cultural differences in adolescent relationships to peers and parents. In collectivist cultures it is possible adolescents are less likely to have an option, e.g. not going to further education but work to contribute to family. This means that they will be in a foreclosure state and may never reach the idea of identity achievement we have in our collectivist cultures (Marcia). They then may not have the same relationships as we do with parents. Also if we consider individual differences some parents are extremely strict, the child may have learnt through operant conditioning to not argue with parents or push for freedom, these sorts of relationships are not considered in the above research. I believe it is correct that there is a trend of relationships with parents and peer in our individualistic cultures, however we must not disregard other cultures and other types of relationships, especially as adolescence is a recently new concept.