Ch.12 (Personality) Flashcards
Personality
An individual’s characteristic style of behaving, thinking and feeling.
Self-Report
A method of personality inventory in which people provide subjective information about their own thoughts, feelings or behaviors (typically via questionnaire or interview). In most self-report measures, T/F and circling a number on a scale is common.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
A well researched, clinical questionnaire used to assess personality and psychological problems. (Current version: MMPI-2RF)
Projective Tests
Tests designed to reveal inner aspects of individuals’ personalities by analysis of their responses to a standard series of ambiguous stimuli.
Rorschach Inkblot Test
A projective technique in which respondents’ inner thoughts and feelings are believed to be revealed by analysis of their response to a set of unstructured inkblots.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
A projective technique in which respondents’ make up stories about ambiguous pictures of people to reveal their underlying motives, concerns and views.
Trait
A relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way. (As behavioural dispositions vs motives)
Big Five
The Traits of the five factor model: [O]pen to experience, [C]onscientiousness, [E]xtraversion, [A]greeableness, [N]euroticism
Psychodynamic Approach
An approach that regards personality as formed by needs, strivings and desires largely operating outside of awareness – motives that can also produce emotional disorders.
Dynamic Unconcious
An active system encompassing a lifetime of hidden memories, the person’s deepest instincts and desires, and the person’s inner struggle to control those forces.
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.
Super Ego
The mental system that reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly learned as parents exercise their authority.
Ego
The component of personality, developed thru contact with external world - enables us to deal with life’s practical demands.
Defense Mechanisms
Unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce anxiety generated by threats from unacceptable impulses.
8 Examples of Defense Mechanisms
- Repression (first one tried)
- Rationalization
- Reaction Formation
- Projection
- Regression
- Displacement
- Identification
- Sublimation
Psychosexual Stages
Distinct early life stages thru which personality is formed as children experience sexual pleasures from specific body areas and caregivers redirect or interfere with those pleasure
Fixation
A phenomenon in which a person’s pleasure seeking deices become psychologically stuck or arrested at a particular psychoosexual stage.
List Psychosexual stages
Oral Stage-Experience centre focus on pleasure of the mouth, sucking and being fed (years 0-1.5)
Anal Stage-Experience is dominated by the pleasures associated with the anus: retention and expulsion of feces and urine TP training (years 2-3)
Phallic Stage-Experience is dominated by pleasure associated with genital region, as well as coping with powerful incestuous feelings of love and hate (years 3-5)
Latency Stage- Primary focus is on further development of intellectual, creative and interpersonal skills (5-13)
Genital Stage-The coming together of the mature adult personality with a capacity to love
Self-Actualizing Tendency
The human motive toward realizing our inner potential.
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
An approach that 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 by situational factors.
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.
