Final Midterm Flashcards
What are the Big Five traits? Who primarily investigated them?
Warren Norman investigated the Big Five: extroversion, neuroticism (or emotional stability in reverse), agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience.
________ tried to encompass personality differences in a space defined by ___ independent dimensions. What are these dimensions?
Hans Eysenck; two.
Extroversion-Introversion, and Neuroticism.
About the Extroversion-Introversion dimension, what are both of these prone to?
Situational and dispositional influences, respectively.
There is _______________ that the factors extracted by factor analysis are “real” dimensions of ___________, since the end product depends on what is ____ into it.
No guarantee; personality; fed.
A survey of research literature led Walter Mischel to conclude what?
Explain how this relates to a child cheating on a test vs. an athletic contest.
People behave much less consistently from one situation to another.
A child may cheat on a test (academic dishonesty) but not be dishonest when cheating in athletics, i.e., another setting.
_______________ is the term for the notion that human behavior is largely determined by the characteristics of the ________ rather than those of the person.
This doesn’t mean that we deny the existence of __________ differences such as various demographic and __________________ factors.
Situationism; situation.
Individual; socioeconomic.
Why do people’s personalities seem to be stable?
What does this lead observers to do?
Because we tend to see them in the same social setting.
This leads observers to make errors of influence, such as the fundamental attribution error.
People will show strong situational consistency in some situations, and weak situational consistency in others.
_____ self-monitors care a great deal more about the appearance of self they project in a given social situation… they constantly adjust their behavior. Across situations, they’re _____________.
This means that ____ self-monitors are ____________.
High; inconsistent.
Low; consistent.
Temperaments that characterize our personalities have a basis in ____________. These are more closely shared by __________ twins than __________ twins and other siblings.
Our genes; identical; fraternal.
Example: genetic influences have been identified for TV watching, traditionalism, and divorce. They may reflect the operation of more general traits:
- ___________________ may underlie traditionalism.
- Extraversion may underlie ________________.
- Neuroticism may correlate with divorce.
Conscientiousness; TV watching.
____________ need external stimulation more than do naturally aroused ___________ for whom high levels of stimulation can be disturbing. This is consistent with ___________ having a lower tolerance to pain.
Extroverts; introverts; introverts.
Supporting evidence (from Zuckerman) shows that the level of norepinephrine (NE) in the spinal fluid was _______ in sensation seekers than in others. What does this suggest? What are sensation seekers at a risk of?
Lower.
This suggests that sensation seeking serves as compensation for lower arousal from too little NE.
This puts sensation seekers at the risk of abusing drugs.
Inhibited temperament is associated with _____________.
Introversion.
People with inhibited temperament also show a ________ activation threshold in the amydgala; this, associated with the arousal of more stress reactions and ___________ of social situations have a higher potential of ______________ associated with them.
Lower; avoidance; unfamiliarity.
People in _______________ cultures rate themselves as more extroverted than people in _____________ cultures.
Individualistic; collectivistic.
In terms of the hypothesis of between-family differences playing a role in determining personality traits, we can disprove that. Why is that?
Average correlation between adopted children and their siblings was very low, as well as adopted children and their parents.
Sulloway and other authors thought that ____________ may have a powerful influence on personality with first-borns being more conventional but more likely to _________ others into ___________ roles. More dictators are of this position in the birth order. Later-borns are more _____________ and more _____________________.
Most recently, ____-borns have been shown to have a 5-point IQ advantage.
Birth order; first; conformity; rebellious; open to new experiences.
First.
Read “From Hypnosis to the Talking Cure” on Handout 34.3.
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Freud believed all symptoms of hysteria, all without discernable physical causes, were what?
They were disguised means of keeping certain emotionally charged memories, often laid down in childhood, under mental lock & key.
What is catharsis?
An explosive release of previous dammed up emotions.
When Freud used free association, what did he conclude?
He concluded that emotionally charged “forgotten” memories would be evoked sooner or later.
Freud’s patients, however, did not fully comply with his request of free association because of a _________ that they didn’t know of: Freud saw this as what type of response by the unconscious?
Resistance.
Freud saw this as an anxiety-motivated attempt by the unconscious to keep repressed “forbidden” memories from surfacing to the conscious mind.
Freud eventually devised a threefold classification of conflicting tendencies within the individual, which he regarded as distinct __________ of the human ____________. What are these three?
Subsystems; personality.
Id, ego, superego.
The id is the most ___________ portion of human personality. It contains what urges? What are examples of these urges?
Primitive.
Basic biological urges, including to eat, drink, eliminate, be comfortably warm, and most importantly, to gain sexual pleasure.
What is the pleasure principle?
It is the idea of satisfaction now and not later, regardless of circumstances and whatever the cost.
The ego satisfies the ________ principle, trying to satisfy the id pragmatically—that is, within _____________________.
Reality; real world and its demands.
Because of the real world and its demands, the id learns two things. What are these two things?
1) Many gratifications come only after a delay between the cause and effect.
2) The ego must inhibit the id’s frustrations and impatience over needs not being immediately met (in essence, the delay).
The superego represents what?
Early-learned, blindly-internalized rules and admonitions of parents and society. In comparison to the ego, this too is viewed as largely unconscious and irrational.
Defense mechanisms are developed to _____ anxiety from _____________. To get rid of anxiety, the child must suppress what ______________, “the forbidden act.”
Hide; the conscious self; triggers it.
Name other types of defenses against anxiety over unacceptable thoughts.
Displacement, reaction formation, rationalization, projection, and isolation.
Freud’s theory of psychosexual development emphasizes different stages, each is built on achievements of those before. Name these stages, and describe an event that is linked to that stage.
1) Oral stage: breast feeding.
2) Anal stage: potty training.
3) Phallic stage: genital stimulation.
4) Genital stage: sex.
The frustrations of the ________ may have lasting consequences on development of one class of personality type, called the _____________.
Infant; oral character.
Sucking one’s thumb is an example of what?
Fixation of an infant, which weaning focuses on the infant’s attention rather than pleasures that could be obtained orally.
Read and memorize the Oedipus complex, summarized in detail on Handout 34.6.
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At the bottom, Freud assumed, every dream is what?
An attempt at wish fulfuillment of unresolved need and drives.
Anxiety is generated that activates some defenses to censor the dream’s true meaning (________________) such that it can only surface in symbolic disguise (_________________)
Latent content; manifest content.
Freud has been criticized by some of his own students and by the neo-Freudians… but why?
He based too many of his theories of emotional development on biology rather than on the specific cultural conditions in which the child is reared.
Read about Freud’s theory of repression on Handout 34.7.
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Contrary to Freud, the Oedipus complex probably centers around the prohibitions and control he is subjected to, by who?
The dominant, controlling force of the family.
What are key criticisms of Freud?
1) He never took notes during psychoanalytic sessions, making errors more likely.
2) Freud’s ‘theories’ cannot be theories if they are supported by either end of an outcome, without a falsification.
3) The analyst’s theory often determines whether a patient’s statement should or should not be accepted at face value.
Bowlby, a ______________ theorist, believed that a child was powerfully shaped by the experiences with her/his _________________ figure.
Object relations; primary attachment.
What does it mean to self-actualize?
Self-actualizing refers to the human realizing their potential rather than just searching for basic needs, like food, sex, etc.
What is phenomenology?
The study of the individual’s own unique first-person conscious experience and how the individual construes, that is, makes sense of the world around him.
Reviewing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the drive towards self-actualization can only become primary if what happens?
The lower-order needs are satisfied; however, there are exceptions where lower-order needs are sacrified for the higher.
For the best self-concept (think Carl Rogers), one should as a child experience ________________________—the sense of being loved and accepted without reservation.
Unconditional positive regard.
There is no ____________ of __________ toward which we “homeostatically” seem to center ourselves whether rich or poor.
Set point; happiness.
From Bandura’s perspective, personality is a reflection of what?
The situations a person has been exposed to in the past, with self-efficacies being gleaned from those situations.
Mischel, on the other hand, thinks the qualities that form personality are __________, composed in the CAPS. What does CAPS stand for?
Cognitive.
Cognitive-affective personality system.
What are the five qualities of the CAPS?
1) A person’s encodings.
2) His expectancies and beliefs.
3) His emotional responses to situations.
4) His goals and values, the set of outcomes that are considered desirable.
5) His compentencies and self-regulatory plans.
Across social-cognitive theorists, three concepts play a crucial role. What are these three concepts?
Control, attributional style, and self-control.
