Chapter 11 Flashcards
personality
An individual’s characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling.
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.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
A well-researched, clinical questionnaire used to assess personality and psychological problems
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.
trait
A relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way.
Big Five
The traits of the five-factor model: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion.
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.
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.
ego
The component of personality, developed through contact with the external world, that enables us to deal with life’s practical demands.
superego
The mental system that reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly learned as parents exercise their authority.
defense mechanisms
Unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce the 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 (mostly 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 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.
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 redirect or interfere with those pleasures.
oral stage
The first psychosexual stage, in which experience centers on the pleasures and frustrations associated with the mouth, sucking, and being fed.
anal stage
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.
phallic stage
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.
Oedipus conflict
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.
latency stage
The fourth psychosexual stage, during which the primary focus is on the further development of intellectual, creative, interpersonal, and athletic skills.
genital stage
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.
self-actualizing tendency
The human motive to realize 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 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
A person’s explicit knowledge of his or her own behaviors, traits, and other personal characteristics.
self-verification
The tendency to seek evidence to confirm the self-concept.
self-esteem
The extent to which an individual likes, values, and accepts the self.
self-serving bias
People’s tendency to take credit for their successes but downplay responsibility for their failures.
narcissism
A trait that reflects a grandiose view of the self combined with a tendency to seek admiration from and exploit others.
