Chapter 1 Flashcards
Trait-Descriptive Adjectives
Adjectives that can be used to describe characteristics of people.
Personality
Set of psychological traits and mechanisms in an individual that are organized and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the intrapsychic, physical, and social environments.
Psychological Traits
Characteristics that describe ways in which people are different from each other.
Average Tendency
Tendency to display a certain psychological trait with regularity.
Psychological Mechanisms
Like traits, referring to personality. Three steps; input, decision rules, and output.
Within The Individual
Personality is something a person carries with themselves over time and from one situation to the next.
Organized
Psychological traits and mechanisms for a given person are not a random collection of elements but linked together in coherent fashion.
Enduring
When psychological traits are stable over time.
Influential Forces
Personality traits of any one person can have an effect on peoples lives.
Person-Environment Interaction
Person’s interactions with situations include perceptions, selections, evocations, and manipulations.
Perception
How we see or interpret an environment.
Selection
The manner in which we choose situations to enter.
Evocations
Reactions we produce in others, usually unintentionally.
Manipulations
Ways in which we intentionally attempt to influence others.
Adaptation
A central feature of personality concerns adaptive functioning; accomplishing goals, coping, adjusting, and dealing with the challenges and problems we face as we go through life.
Environment
Physical, social, and intrapsychic environment that every person faces around them.
Human Nature (Level 1)
LIKE ALL OTHERS. Traits and mechanisms of personality that are typical of our species and are possessed by everyone.
Individual/Group Differences (Level 2)
LIKE SOME OTHERS. Ways in which each person is like some other people, just as well as a group setting.
Nomothetic
Research involves statistical comparisons of individuals or groups,requiring samples of participants on which to conduct research.
Idiographic
Research focuses on a single person, trying to observe general principles that are manifest in a single life over time.
Domain of Knowledge
Specialty area of science in which psychologists have focused on learning about specific and limited aspects of human nature.
Dispositional Domain
Deals with the ways in which individuals differ from one another.
Biological Domain
Humans are collections of biological systems, and these systems provide the building blocks for behavior, thought, and emotion.
Intrapsychic Domain
Deals with mental mechanisms of personality, many of which operate outside of conscious awareness.
Cognitive-Experiential Domain
Focuses on thought processes and subjective experience, such as conscious ideas, feelings, beliefs, and desires about oneself and others.
Social and Cultural Domain
Personality is not something that merely resides within the heads, nervous systems, and genes of individuals.
Adjustment Domain
Personality play a key role in how we cope, adapt, and adjust to the ebb and flow of events in our daily lives.
Good Theory
Provides a guide for researchers, organizes known findings, and makes predictions.
Theory
Tested by systematic observations that can be repeated by others and the yield similar conclusions.
Belief
Personally useful and can crucially important to some people, but are based on faith, not on reliable facts or systematic observations.
Five Scientific Standards for Evaluating Personality Theories
Comprehensiveness, Heuristics Value, Testability, Parsimony, and Compatibility.
Comprehensiveness
Explains most or all known facts.
Heuristic Value
Guides researchers to important new discoveries.
Testability
Makes precise predictions that can be empirically tested.
Parsimony
Contains few premises or assumptions.
Compatibility and Integration Across Domains and Levels
Consistent with what is known in other domains; can be coordinated with other branches of scientific knowledge.
Individual Uniqueness (Level 3)
LIKE NO OTHERS. Every individual has personal and unique qualities not shared by any other person in the world.
