Chapter 11

Question 1

personality

Answer 1

An individual’s characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling.

Question 2

self-report

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Answer 3

A well-researched, clinical questionnaire used to assess personality and psychological problems

Question 4

projective techniques

Answer 4

A standard series of ambiguous stimuli designed to elicit unique responses that reveal inner aspects of an individual’s personality.

Question 5

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

trait

Answer 7

A relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way.

Question 8

Big Five

Answer 8

The traits of the five-factor model: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion.

Question 9

psychodynamic approach

Answer 9

An approach that regards personality as formed by needs, strivings, and desires, largely operating outside of awareness—motives that can also produce emotional disorders.

Question 10

id

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

ego

Answer 11

The component of personality, developed through contact with the external world, that enables us to deal with life’s practical demands.

Question 12

superego

Answer 12

The mental system that reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly learned as parents exercise their authority.

Question 13

defense mechanisms

Answer 13

Unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce the anxiety generated by threats from unacceptable impulses.

Question 14

rationalization

Answer 14

A defense mechanism that involves supplying a reasonable-sounding explanation for unacceptable feelings and behavior to conceal (mostly from oneself) one’s underlying motives or feelings.

Question 15

reaction formation

Answer 15

A defense mechanism that involves unconsciously replacing threatening inner wishes and fantasies with an exaggerated version of their opposite.

Question 16

projection

Answer 16

A defense mechanism that involves attributing one’s own threatening feelings, motives, or impulses to another person or group.

Question 17

regression

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

displacement

Answer 18

A defense mechanism that involves shifting unacceptable wishes or drives to a neutral or less threatening alternative.

Question 19

identification

Answer 19

A defense mechanism that reduces 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.

Question 20

sublimation

Answer 20

A defense mechanism that involves channeling unacceptable sexual or aggressive drives into socially acceptable and culturally enhancing activities.

Question 21

psychosexual stages

Answer 21

Distinct early life stages through which personality is formed as children experience sexual pleasures from specific body areas and caregivers redirect or interfere with those pleasures.

Question 22

oral stage

Answer 22

The first psychosexual stage, in which experience centers on the pleasures and frustrations associated with the mouth, sucking, and being fed.

Question 23

anal stage

Answer 23

The second psychosexual stage, which is dominated by the pleasures and frustrations associated with the anus, retention and expulsion of feces and urine, and toilet training.

Question 24

phallic stage

Answer 24

The third psychosexual stage, during which experience is dominated 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.

Question 25

Oedipus conflict

Answer 25

A developmental experience in which a child’s conflicting feelings toward the opposite-sex parent are (usually) resolved by identifying with the same-sex parent.

Question 26

latency stage

Answer 26

The fourth psychosexual stage, during which the primary focus is on the further development of intellectual, creative, interpersonal, and athletic skills.

Question 27

genital stage

Answer 27

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.

Question 28

self-actualizing tendency

Answer 28

The human motive to realize our inner potential.

Question 29

existential approach

Answer 29

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.

Question 30

social cognitive approach

Answer 30

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.

Question 31

person-situation controversy

Answer 31

The question of whether behavior is caused more by personality or by situational factors.

Question 32

personal constructs

Answer 32

Dimensions people use in making sense of their experiences.

Question 33

outcome expectancies

Answer 33

A person’s assumptions about the likely consequences of a future behavior.

Question 34

locus of control

Answer 34

A person’s tendency to perceive the control of rewards as internal to the self or external in the environment.

Question 35

self-concept

Answer 35

A person’s explicit knowledge of his or her own behaviors, traits, and other personal characteristics.

Question 36

self-verification

Answer 36

The tendency to seek evidence to confirm the self-concept.

Question 37

self-esteem

Answer 37

The extent to which an individual likes, values, and accepts the self.

Question 38

self-serving bias

Answer 38

People’s tendency to take credit for their successes but downplay responsibility for their failures.

Question 39

narcissism

Answer 39

A trait that reflects a grandiose view of the self combined with a tendency to seek admiration from and exploit others.