Weeks 11 & 12

Personality
Personality traits are important in the study of personality and individual differences.  There are five widely accepted main personality traits, those of neuroticism, extraversion, openess to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness.  It has been found that those who score highly on extraversion are actually more likely to be happy.  This has been attributed to their greater capacity to experience positive emotions, which leads to better sociability, social dominance and being more adventurous.  Neurotics on the other hand are more likely to be unhappy, as they are more likely to avoid potentially punishing situations, which leads to a higher level of avoidance behaviour and emotional distress.

Arousal is an important part of human functioning.  Arousal effects the level of motivation humans feel towards a task.  A prime level of arousal is a midway point between too stimulated and not stimulated enough.  Under stimulation can lead to boredom and apathy.  Over stimulation can lead to stress and anxiety, which will in turn effect performance.

Sensation seeking is an important part of human behaviour; some people feel that must always be stimulated or trying new things.  These stimulation seekers shall actually have a drop in mood if stimulation lowers, and will push for intensely stimulating situations.  Those who have a high level of sensation seeking are actually more likely to form addictions, as they often try to escape daily life and look for situations outside the daily norm.


Unconsicous motivation
Three contemporary views of the unconscious are those of the Freudian unconscious, which automatically appraises the environment, the adaptive unconscious, which sets goals and initiates action, and implicit motivation, which automatically reacts to environmental events which have an emotional link for the individual.

Subliminal are below the threshold of normal detection, and do have an emotional effect.  This does not mean that people act on this info however.  The theories of psychodynamics is based on the clashing of subliminal forces, in particular those of conscious thoughts and actions against unconscious.