13: Personality Flashcards
Personality
An individual’s characteristic style of behaving, thinking and feeling
Self-Report
A series of answers to a questionnaire that asks people to indicate the extent to which sets of statements or adjectives accurately describe their own behaviour or mental state
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
A well-researched, clinical questionnaire used to assess personality and psychological problems
Trait
A relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way
Oblique Factors
Items that correlate with each other
Orthogonal Factors
Items that are uncorrelated
Big Five
The traits of the five-factor model:
- Openness to experience
- Conscientiousness
- Extroversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
Subjective Wellbeing (SWB)
An individual’s evaluation of their own life in terms of how satisfied they are and how they feel about their life
Psychodynamic Approach
An approach that regards personality as formed by needs, strivings and desires, largely operating outside awareness - motives that can also produce emotional disorders
Id
The part of the mind containing the drives present at birth; it is the source of our bodily needs, wants, desires and impulses, particularly our sexual and aggressive drives
Ego
The component of personality, developed through contact with the external world, that enables us to deal with life’s practical demands
Superego
The mental system that reflects the internalisation of cultural rules, mainly learned as parents exercise their authority
Pleasure Principle
The psychic force that motivates the tendency to seek immediate gratification of any impulse
Reality Principle
The regulating mechanism that enables the individual to delay gratifying immediate needs and function effectively in the real world
Defence Mechanism
Unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce anxiety generated by threats from unacceptable impulses
Rationalisation
A defence mechanism that involves supplying a reasonable-sounding explanation for unacceptable feelings and behaviour to conceal (mostly from oneself) one’s underlying motives or feelings
Reaction Formation
A defence mechanism that involves unconsciously replacing threatening inner wishes and fantasies with an exaggerated version of their opposite
Projection
A defence mechanism that involves attributing one’s own threatening feelings, motives or impulses to another person or group
Regression
A defence mechanism in which the ego deals with internal conflict and perceived threat by reverting to an immature behaviour or earlier stage of development, a time when things felt safer and more secure
Displacement
A defence mechanism that involves shifting unacceptable wishes or drives to a neutral or less threatening alternative
Identification
A defence mechanism that helps deal with feelings of threat and anxiety by enabling us unconsciously to take on the characteristics of another person who seems more powerful or better able to cope
Sublimation
A defence mechanism that involves channelling unacceptable sexual or aggressive drives into socially acceptable and culturally enhancing activities
Psychosexual Stages
Distinct early life stages through which personality is formed as children experience sexual pleasures from specific body areas and carers redirect or interfere with those pleasures
Fixation
A phenomenon in which a person’s pleasure-seeking drives become psychologically stuck, or arrested, at a particular psychosexual stage
Oral Stage
The first psychosexual stage, in which experience centres on the pleasures and frustrations associated with the mouth, sucking and being fed
Anal Stage
The second psychosexual stage, which is dominated by the pleasures and frustrations associated with the anus, retention and exclusion of faeces and urine, and toilet training
Phallic Stage
The third psychosexual stage, during which experience is dominate by the pleasure, conflict and frustration associated with the phallic-genital region as well as coping with powerful incestuous feelings of love, hate, jealousy and conflict
Oedipus Conflict
A developmental experience in which a child’s conflicting feelings towards the opposite-sex parent are (usually) resolved by identifying with the same-sex parent
Latency Stage
The fourth psychosexual stage, in which the primary focus stage is on the further development of intellectual, creative, interpersonal and athletic skills
Genital Stage
The final psychosexual stage, a time for the coming together of the mature adult personality with a capacity to love, work and relate to others in a mutually satisfying and reciprocal manner
Self-Actualising Tendency
The human motive towards realising our inner potential
Unconditional Positive Regard
An attitude of nonjudgemental acceptance towards another person
Existential Approach
A school of thought that regards personality as governed by an individual’s ongoing choices and decisions in the context of the realities of life and death
Social Cognitive Approach
Views personality in terms of how the person thinks about the situations encountered in daily life and behaves in response to them
Person-Situation Controversy
The question of whether behaviour is caused more by personality or situational factors
Personal Constructs
Dimensions people use in making sense of their experiences
Outcome Expectancies
A person’s assumptions about the likely consequences of a future behaviour
Locus of Control
A person’s tendency to perceive the control of rewards as internal to the self or external in the environment
Self-Verification
The tendency to seek evidence to confirm the self-concept
Self-Serving Bias
People’s tendency to take credit for their successes by downplay responsibility for their failures
Narcissism
A trait the reflects a grandiose view of the self, combined with a tendency to seek admiration from and exploit others
