Ch 11

Question 1

Personality

Answer 1

“The long standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, and behave in specific ways”

Question 2

Trait

Answer 2

A unit of personality
A characteristic that describes a habitual way of behaving, thinking, and feeling

Question 3

Personality is distinctive and relatively stable

Answer 3

This assumption is why we often rely too much on first impressions, and leads to difficulties in making attributions about motives for behavior
- Attributions(the explanations that we identify the way people behave the way they are) can be situational( behave because of position they are in) or dispositional(behaving because this is who you are)

Question 4

Fundamental Attribution Error

Answer 4

Tendency to attribute motivations of others more to personality factors than to situational factors

Question 5

More likely to engage in self serving bias when making attributions about ourselves

Answer 5

Depression- opposite

Question 6

Self Serving Bias

Answer 6

Bad things for us situational, others are merely just by who they are

Personality drives our successes, situations drive out failures

Question 7

Projective Tests

Answer 7

Based on the assumption that the test taker will project unconscious conflicts and motives onto an ambiguous stimulus

Question 8

Personality Inventories

Answer 8

-Answer a series of questions about self
-There are no right or wrong answers
- From responses, develop a personality profile

Question 9

Thematic Apperception Test

Answer 9

Person is asked to tell a story about the “hero” in the picture

Psychologist interprets the needs and motives that are projected via the story

Question 10

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Answer 10

Show the person an ambiguous stimulus, ask them to explain why they see

Question 11

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Answer 11

-Measures personality across several personality “types” identified by Carl Jung
-Often used for employment/personnel management purposes
-Not well-supported by research

Question 12

Focus on the outer world or on your own inner world?

Answer 12

Extroversion or Introversion

Question 13

Focus on the basic information you take in or prefer to interpret and add meaning?

Answer 13

Sensing or Intuition

Question 14

When making decisions, do you prefer to look at logic and consistency or look at the people and special circumstances?

Answer 14

Thinking or Feeling

Question 15

In dealing with the world, do you prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options?

Answer 15

Judging or Perceiving

Question 16

MVTI

Answer 16

Example of personality tests

Called ISTP

Tells you stuff you already know

Question 17

Within the contemporary study of trait theory, ____ _____ is used to identify how these traits cluster together across the population

Answer 17

Factor Analysis

Question 18

Studies suggest personality is more strongly based on ____ than most people might expect

Answer 18

Genetics

Question 19

Costa and McRae proposed this Model

Answer 19

Five Factor Model

Question 20

Five Factor Model

Answer 20

• Openness to experience
• Consciousness (relied upon to meet obligations)
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness (level of argumentative)
• Neuroticism (how worrying you are)

Most stable over lifespan, though some have consistent variations
- Introversion increases and openness decreases with age

More similar with genetics,
exclude openness

Question 21

Parenting

Answer 21

Parenting influence will depend on genetics; parenting will vary according to the child’s personality

Question 22

Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory

Answer 22

looks at how children may learn personality through imitation and cognitive processes

Question 23

Reciprocal determinism

Answer 23

addresses how cognitive processes, behaviors and situational factors all interact to reinforce or punish personality traits

Question 24

Historical Theories of Personality

Answer 24

Freud

Question 25

Freud’s theory is a _____ theory

Answer 25

psychodynamic theory

Question 26

Psychodynamic Theory

Answer 26

Emphasizes interactions between different components of personality

Emphasizes psychosexual development of the Id, Ego, and Superego

Question 27

Id

Answer 27

part of our personality driven by pleasure principal, only cares about pleasure

Question 28

Ego

Answer 28

sense of ourselves, part of us that is doing stuff and making decisions

Question 29

Superego

Answer 29

conscience, concerned about consequences, develops early and middle childhood

buried in unconscious with Id fighting with Id to access ego indirectly

Question 30

Freud and Personality

Answer 30

Personality develops through developmental states

Focused on how we use and respond to the libido, and drive how we employ defense mechanisms to protect the ego

Question 31

Fixation when stages aren’t resolved successfully

Answer 31

Oral
Anal
Phallic
Latency period
Genital

Question 32

Oral stage of development

Answer 32

we are pursuing libidinal pleasure through the mouth

infancy stage

pleasure through the mouth

Freud emphasized being controlled by mother since birth, leads to psychological issues (access to breast)

Oral fixation with overindulgent mother- overeating in adulthood

If under indulgent- untrusting in the world (biting their fingernails)

Question 33

Anal stage of development

Answer 33

Potty Trained

Children at this age start to try to feel control over their pooping which is pleasurable for Freud

Mom has impact on toilet training, either under or overcontrolling

Overcontrolled- description of anal, hold in poop until mom told them to

Under controlled- anal explosive, deeply disorganized

Question 34

Phallic

Answer 34

Middle of childhood

Freud’s opinion- boys start recognizing having different parts then girls,

boy pride in parts, girl envy of them

development of controls on behavior (unconscious)- Freud says boy wants mother, but if does will be killed by father, therefore start acting more like father

Question 35

Genital

Answer 35

Now becoming aware of ourselves as conscious sexual beings

This is product of an insane dude

Question 36

Freud’s theory has little empirical support

Answer 36

Results are unfalsifiable

Based on the study of a dubiously useful population

based on patients’ fallible memories

Question 37

But if it’s unsupported, why waste time with it?

Answer 37

Set up personality as a domain of study

Set forth the idea of a stage theory

Emphasized impact of childhood experiences on adult personality

Emphasized unconscious motivations

Via all of these he laid groundwork that many others would ultimately follow

Question 38

Humanistic theories

Answer 38

focus on personality development as part of our quest for growth and achievement of potential

Question 39

Abraham Maslow

Answer 39

Emphasized pursuit of self-actualization

Question 40

Carl Rogers

Answer 40

Importance of unconditional positive regard, and congruence between real self and ideal self

Question 41

Humanist theory often criticized for lack of empirical support for what reasons?

Answer 41

-Terms often vague
-Little scientific testability
-However, it has returned the human side to psychology
-Extremely influential in the domain of therapy
-Has led to development of positive psychology, a subfield that emphasizes…