Chapter 12 Flashcards
Define personality
an individual’s characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling
What are projective tests (and are they any good)?
tests designed to reveal inner aspects of individuals’ personalities by analysis of their responses to a standard series of ambiguous stimuli; low reliability
What is the Thematic Apperception Test?
a projective technique in which respondents underlying motives and concerns and the way they see the social world are believed to be revealed through analysis of the stories they make up about ambiguous pictures of people
Define trait
a relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way
What are the Big 5 Personality traits?
1) Openness to experience
2) Conscientiousness
3) Extraversion
4) Agreeableness
5) Neuroticism
Which of the Big 5 Personality traits has the highest heritability?
extraversion
Which of the Big 5 can be easily observed in animals?
neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, extraversion
What is the social-cognitive approach to personality?
an approach that views personality in terms of how a person thinks about the situations encountered in daily life and behaves in response to them
What is the person-situation controversy?
the question of whether behavior is caused more by personality or by situational factors
Examples of person-situation controversy
- cheating on test vs. stealing money
- diff personalities of bilingual ppl in diff languages
Define personal constructs
dimensions ppl use in making sense of their experiences i.e. clowns are fun, scary
What are outcome expectancies?
a persons assumptions about the likely consequences of a future behavior
What is locus of control?
a person’s tendency to perceive the control of rewards as internal to the self or external in the environment; ppl who think outcomes are random, determined by luck, or controlled by other ppl have external locus of control
Define self-concept
a person’s explicit knowledge of their own behaviors, traits, and other personal characteristics
What is self-verification?
the tendency to seek evidence to confirm the self-concept
