Chapter 14 - Personality Psych Flashcards
1
Q
personality psych
A
an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting
2
Q
psychoanalytic perspective
A
- 1st personality theory, although mostly wrong
- Freud’s theory about our mind: ego, supergo, ID
- emphasized unconscious
- created psychosexual stages based on erogenous zones
3
Q
unconscious
A
part of our mind containing thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories of which we aren’t aware
4
Q
ID
A
- unconscious mind
- pleasure principle
- it wants what it wants -> if you’re hungry and you see a chocolate bar on someone’s desk, if your ID was in control, you’d grab it and eat it
5
Q
ego
A
- conscious mind
- reality principle
- realizes that in reality, there are consequences to actions -> if you steal someone else’s food, you may be punished or viewed as weird
6
Q
supergo
A
- outside awareness, but accessible
- our conscience
- sense of right and wrong -> we can’t take someone else’s food because it’s just wrong
7
Q
oedipus complex
A
- boy’s sexual desire for his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for rival father
- inaccurate
8
Q
electra complex
A
- girl’s sexual desire for her father (opposite of oedipus complex)
- inaccurate
9
Q
defence mechanisms
A
- repression
- reaction formation
- projection
- retraction
- rationalization
- displacement
- denial
10
Q
repression
A
banishes anxiety-inducing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness
11
Q
reaction formation
A
switches unacceptable impulses to their opposites
12
Q
projection
A
leads people to disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
13
Q
psychoanalysts
A
- carl jung
- karen horney
- alfred adler
14
Q
Carl Jung
A
collective unconscious: contains images derived from our species’ universal experiences
15
Q
Alfred Adler
A
emphasized social rather than sexual tensions of childhood
16
Q
Karen Horney
A
- shared Adler’s emphasis on social tensions of childhood rather than sexual ones
- countered Freud’s assumption that women have weak superegos and infantile tendencies
17
Q
projective personality tests
A
- show us something ambiguous and ask us questions about it -> we project our unconscious mind onto it when we tell therapist what we see in the image
- ex. TAT, Rorschach, etc.
18
Q
Thematic apperception test (TAT)
A
people express their personality through telling a story about an ambiguous picture
19
Q
rorschach inkblot test
A
- most widely used projective test
- people express personality through interpretation of inkblots
- interprets form (how common), colour, use of details or white space, motion, special categories (pairs, humans or animals, morbid, etc.)
- not very scientific - little correlation
20
Q
projective test problems
A
- reliability/consistency: if you give someone the same test multiple times within a short timespan, results should be very similar (Rorschach fails this)
- validity/accuracy
21
Q
evaluating psychoanalysis
A
- general idea of unconscious is right
- not developed through science, not testable, many testable premises have been refuted and/or shown to be harmful
22
Q
humanistic perspective
A
- unlike Freud, focused on positive traits people have
- Maslow and Carl Rogers
23
Q
Maslow
A
- humanistic perspective
- self-actualization and hierarchy of needs
- self-transdecence
24
Q
maslow’s hierarchy of needs
A
- certain needs take precedence over others
- top: self-actualization -> esteem needs -> love needs -> safety needs -> basic needs (food, shelter, etc.)
25
carl rogers
- person-centered perspective
- everyone has potential for self-actualization
- unconditional positive regard: accepting others despite their failures
26
how to convey person-centered perspective
- acceptance
- empathy
- reflective listening
- non-directive (allowing client to talk about what they want without directing the conversation)
27
evaluating humanistic perspective
- concepts are vage, subjective, and lack scientific basis
| - ingredients of person-centered therapy have had huge impact on counselling, education, child-rearing, and management
28
trait perspective
dominant perspective in personality psych
29
trait
- characteristic pattern of behaviour
- disposition to feel/act
- stable over time (unlike mood, which fluctuates)
30
ways to assess traits
- personality inventories
- true-false or Likert scale formats
- self-report questionnaires (ie. MMPI)
31
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
- developed mid-1900's, but updated and still used today
| - empirically-derived rather than rationally derived (ie. developed from science rather than personal reasoning)
32
how to measure traits
- Factor Analysis
- Eysenck's Personality Dimension
- Big Five Factors
33
factor analysis
- looks for clusters of correlations in a survey (ie. clusters of things like "I am a people person", "I like being around others", "I enjoy going to parties")
- identified which characteristics are related to each other and together might identify a trait (ie. for examples above, those might identify extroverts)
- administered to very large samples, could have hundreds of items
34
Eysenck's personality dimension
- 2 factors: extraversion-introversion and emotional stability-instability
- crossing these traits leads to tons of different dimensions of personality
35
Big Five Factors
- most popular trait theory with lots of research support, has established measures that are used every day
- CANOE - Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, Extroversion
36
how testable are the big 5 traits
- very!
- stable over time (once adulthood is reached)
- heritable (about 50% due to genetics)
- cross-cultural
- traits relate to other personal attributes (ie. extroverted people go to social events more often)
37
can mood effect personality
- it can, but minimally (ie. if you're having a bad day, you might choose more neuroticism items than normal)
- can test this by randomly assigning people to different mood conditions to see if mood changes their responses of personality
38
person-situation controvery
- do traits or situations matter more for predicting personality? Answer: BOTH!
- situations can predict short-term behaviour
- traits can predict average long-term behaviour
- better question -> how do people and situations interact?
39
Albert Bandura
- interaction between a person and their social context
- different people choose different environments
- our personalities shape how we react to events
- our personalities shape situations
40
external locus of control
outside forces determine fate
41
internal locus of control
we can control our own fate (healthier because you feel less powerless)
42
biopsychosocial approach
like aggression, we need look at personality through a biological, psychological, and socio-cultural lens
43
free association
in psychoanalysis, a process of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing
44
identification
according to Freud, process by which children incorporate their parent's values into their developing superegos
45
fixation
according to freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage at which conflicts were unresolved
46
retraction
withdrawing into a more infantile psychosexual stage
47
rationalization
offering justifying explanations in place of the real reasons for your actions
48
displacement
shifting impulses towards a more acceptable or less threatening object/person
49
denial
refusing to believe reality
50
Freudian slips/Spoonerisms
switching up words/letters (ie. "bare shoulders" instead of "share boulders" or "hissing my mystery class" instead of "missing my history class") -> what you mistakenly said reveals your unconscious desires
51
manifest content of dreams
the content that appeared in the dream
52
latent content of dreams
the unconscious desires that your dreams symbolized
53
self-transdecence
- Maslow
| - seeking meaning, purpose, and communion beyond self
54
self-concept
- our thoughts and feelings about ourselves - who we believe we are
- if you're happy with ourselves, we'll have a more positive outlook on life (and vice versa)
55
self
center of personality, organizer of thoughts, feelings, and actions
56
spotlight effect
overestimating other's noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and actions
57
self-esteem
- one's feelings of high or low self-worth
| - doesn't really affect how well/bad you do
58
self-efficacy
- one's sense of competence and effectiveness
| - can affect how well you do
59
excessive optimism
being so optimistic that you don't consider the possible risks of something (success requires optimism and realism)
60
blindness to one's own incompetence
people are often most overconfident when they are incompetent
61
self-serving bias
readiness to perceive oneself favourably - accepting more responsibility for good things than bad
62
narcissism
excessive self-love and self-absorption
63
defensive self-esteem
fragile, focuses on sustaining self, threatened by failure and criticism
64
secure self-esteem
less fragile, less contingent on external evaluations, accepting ourselves for who we are
