Ch.12 "Personality" Flashcards
Personality:
an individual’s characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling.
Prior events:
can shape an individual’s personality
Anticipated events:
might motivate a person to reveal particular personality characteristics
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 behavior or mental state
actuarial method:
if people in some identifiable group answer any self-report item differently than do other people, answers on that item can be used to predict membership in that group; basis of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2)
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2):
a well-researched, clinical questionnaire used to assess personality and psychological problems; measures tendencies towards clinical problems including depression, hypochondria, anxiety, paranoia; also gender identification, socialization, and impulsivity
MMPI-2’s validity scales:
assesses a person’s attitude toward test taking and any tendency to try to distort the results by faking answers.
Projective techniques:
a standard series of ambiguous stimuli designed to elicit unique responses that reveal inner aspects of an individual’s personality.
Rorschach Inkblot Test:
a projective personality test in which individual interpretations of the meaning of a set of unstructured inkblots are analyzed to identify a respondent’s inner feelings and interpret his or her personality structure.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT):
a projective personality test in which respondents reveal underlying motives, concerns, and the way they see the social world through the stories they make up about ambiguous pictures of people.
Tests like Rorschach’s Inkblot and TAT are:
open to interpretation an theoretic biases of the examiner.
Trait:
a relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way.
Traits affect behavior as…
preexisting dispositions that causes behavior
motivation that guides behavior
Examining traits as causes of behavior uses:
personality inventories
Examining traits as motives uses:
projective tests
Big Five:
the traits of the five-factor model: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion.
Conscientiousness:
organized-disorganized
careful-careless
self-disciplined-weak-willed
Agreeableness:
softhearted-ruthless
trusting-suspicious
helpful-uncooperative
Neuroticism:
worried-calm
insecure-secure
self-pitying-self-satisfied
Openness to experience:
imaginative-down to earth
variety-routine
independent-conforming
Extraversion:
social-retiring
fun loving-sober
affectionate-reserved
Genetics seem to make up about…
40%-60% of personality.
Social Role Theory:
behavioral differences between sexes developed as a result of cultural standards and expectations
Anthropomorphize:
to give human qualities to animals
Extraverts pursue stimulation because their…
reticular formation is not easily stimulated
Introverts
are easily stimulated
Behavioral activation system (BAS):
a “go” system, activates approach behavior in response to the anticipation of reward; extravert
Behavioral inhibition system (BIS):
a “stop” system, inhibits behavior in response to stimuli signaling punishment; introvert.
Psychodynamic approach:
personality is formed by needs, strivings, and desires largely operating outside of awareness; motives that can produce emotional disorders.
id
contains drives present at birth; sex, desires, impulses, aggression; immediate gratification (pleasure principal)
ego
developed through contact with the external world, enables us to deal with life’s practical demands; delays immediate gratifying needs (reality principal)
superego
reflects internalization of cultural rules, learned as parents exercise authority; code of conduct (conscience)
defense mechanisms:
unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce anxiety generated by threats from unacceptable impulses
Rationalization:
a defense mechanism that involves supplying a reasonable-sounding explanation for unacceptable feelings and behavior to conceal (from oneself) one’s underlying motives or feelings.
Reaction formation:
a defense mechanism that involves unconsciously replacing threatening inner wishes and fantasies with an exaggerated version of their opposite.
Projection:
a defense mechanism that involves attributing one’s own threatening feelings, motives, or impulses to another person or group.
Regression:
a defense mechanism in which the ego deals with internal conflict and perceived threat by reverting to an immature behavior or earlier stage of development.
Displacement:
a defense mechanism that involves shifting unacceptable wishes or drives to a neutral or less threatening alternative.
Identification:
a defense 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 defense mechanism that involves channeling 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 caregivers direct or interfere with those pleasures.
Fixation:
the person’s pleasure-seeking drives become stuck, or arrested, at that psychosexual stage.
Oral stage:
first year and a half; Personality traits associated include depression, lack of trust, envy, and demandingness
Anal stage:
2-3 years; occupied with possessions, money, issues of submission and rebellion, and concerns about cleanliness vs. messiness.
Phallic stage:
3-5 years; Oedipus conflict
Latency stage:
5-13 years; focuses on further developing of intellectual, creative, interpersonal, and athletic skills
Genital stage:
Puberty- ; if fixated on a prior stage, this stage cannot be reached
Self-actualizing tendency:
the human motive toward realizing our inner potential.
Hierarchy of needs:
basic, then complex to achieve self-actualization
Existential approach:
regards personality as governed by an individual’s ongoing choices and decisions in the context of the realities of life and death.
angst:
the anxiety of fully being.
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 behavior is caused more by personality or by 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 behavior.
Locus of control:
a person’s tendency to perceive the control of rewards as internal to the self or external in the environment.
Self-concept:
how we think about ourselves
Self-esteem:
how we feel about ourselves
The “I”
the self that thinks, experiences, and acts in the world; knower; consciousness
The “Me”
the self that is an object in the world; the self that is known; the concept of a person
Self-concept:
a person’s explicit knowledge of his or her own behaviors, traits, and other personal characteristics.
Autobiographical memory:
organizes the knowledge of ourselves as narratives and in terms of traits
Self-narrative:
a story that we tell about ourselves
Self-schemas:
the traits people use to define themselves
Self-relevance:
remembering traits better when you think about them in terms of yourself
Medial prefrontal cortex:
involved in understanding people; more active when judging yourself
Self-verification:
the tendency to seek evidence to confirm the self-concept
Self-serving Bias:
people tend to take credit for their successes but downplay responsibility for their failures.
Narcissism:
a grandiose view of the self combined with a tendency to seek admiration from and exploit others.
Name-letter effect:
being bias towards aspects of your life based on you name
Implicit egotism:
unknowingly being influenced by your name
