Chapter 12: Personality

Question 1

self report

Answer 1

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 2

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2)

Answer 2

a well researched clinical questionnaire used to assess personality and psychological problems

Question 3

Projective techniques

Answer 3

a standard series of ambiguos stimuli designed to elicit unique responses that reveal inner aspects of an individual’s personality

Question 4

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Answer 4

a projective personality test in which individual interpretations of the meaning of a a set of unstructured inkblots are analyzed to interpret his or her personality structure

Question 5

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Answer 5

a projective personality test in which respondents real underlying motives, concerns, and the way they see the social world through the stories they make up about ambiguos pictures of people

Question 6

Psychodynamic Approach

Answer 6

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 7

Dynamic unconscious

Answer 7

an active system encompassing a lifetime of hidden memories, the person’s deepest instincts and desires, and the person’s inner struggle to control these forces

Question 8

Defense mechanisms

Answer 8

unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce anxiety generated by threats from unacceptable impulses

Question 9

Rationalization

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Reaction formation

Answer 10

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

Question 11

projection

Answer 11

a defense mechanism that involves attributing one’s own threatening, feelings, motives, or impulse to another person or group

Question 12

regression

Answer 12

a defense mechanism in which the ego deals with internal conflict and perceived treat by reverting to an immature behavior or earlier stage of development

Question 13

displacement

Answer 13

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

Question 14

identification

Answer 14

a defense mechanism that helps deal with 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 15

sublimation

Answer 15

a defense mechanism that involves channeling unacceptable sexual or aggressive drives into socially aceptable and culturally enhancing activities

Question 16

psychosexual stages (name them)

Answer 16

distinct early life stages through which personality is formed a children experience sexual pleasures from specific body areas and caregivers redirect or interfere with those pleasures (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital)

Question 17

self-actualizing tendency

Answer 17

the human motive toward realizing our inner potential

Question 18

existential approach

Answer 18

a school of thought that regards personality as governed by an individuals ongoing choices and decisions in the context of the realities of life and death

Question 19

social cognitive approach

Answer 19

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 20

person-situation controversy

Answer 20

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

Question 21

personal constructs

Answer 21

dimensions people use in making sense of their experiences

Question 22

outcome expectancies

Answer 22

a persons assumptions about the likely consequences of a future behavior

Question 23

locus of control

Answer 23

a persons tendency to perceive the control of rewards as internal to the self or external in the environment

Question 24

self-concept

Answer 24

a persons explicit knowledge of his or her own behaviors, traits, and other personal characteristics

Question 25

self-verification

Answer 25

the tendency to seek evidence to confirm the self concept

Question 26

self-esteem

Answer 26

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

Question 27

self-serving bias

Answer 27

peoples tendency to take credit for their successes but downplay responsibility for their failures