HPS121-T2-Ch13-Personality

Question 1

Archetypes:

Answer 1

: in Jung’s theory, innate concepts and memories (e.g. God, the hero, the good mother); memories that reside in the collective unconscious.

Question 2

Behavioural assessment:

Answer 2

the measurement of behaviour through direct observation and application of a coding system.

Question 3

Behavioural signatures:

Answer 3

individually consistent ways of responding in particular classes of situations.

Question 4

Behaviour-outcome expectancy:

Answer 4

the subjective likelihood that a particular consequence will follow a particular behaviour in a given situation.

Question 5

Cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS):

Answer 5

a model that organises five ‘person variables’ that account for how a person might respond to a particular situation; the dynamic interplay among these five factors, together with the characteristics of the situation, accounts for individual differences between people, as well as differences in people’s behaviour across different situations.

Question 6

Collective unconscious:

Answer 6

Jung’s notion of an unconscious that consists of innate ancestral memories.

Question 7

Conditions of worth:

Answer 7

internalised standards for self-worth fostered by conditional positive regard from others.

Question 8

Congruence:

Answer 8

Consistency between self-perceptions and experience.

Question 9

Defence mechanisms:

Answer 9

unconscious processes that help us cope with anxiety and the pain of traumatic experiences. Defence mechanisms prevent the expression of anxiety-arousing impulses or allow them to appear in disguised form.

Question 10

Ego:

Answer 10

the ‘executive’ of the personality that is partly conscious and that mediates between the impulses of the id, the prohibitions of the superego and the dictates of reality.

Question 11

Electra complex:

Answer 11

the female version of the Oedipus complex in which a female child experiences erotic feelings toward her father, desires to possess him sexually and views her mother as a rival.

Question 12

Empirical approach:

Answer 12

an approach to test construction in which items (regardless of their content) are chosen that differentiate between two groups that are known to differ on a particular personality variable.

Question 13

Factor analysis:

Answer 13

a statistical technique that permits a researcher to reduce a large number of measures to a small number of clusters or factors; it identifies the clusters behaviour or test scores that are highly-correlated with one another.

Question 14

Fixation:

Answer 14

a state of arrested development due to unresolved conflicts at a particular earlier psychosexual stage.

Question 15

Fully functioning persons:

Answer 15

Rogers’s term for self-actualised people who are free from unrealistic conditions of worth and who exhibit congruence, spontaneity, creativity and a desire to develop still further.

Question 16

Gender schemas:

Answer 16

organised mental structures that contain our understanding of the attributes and behaviours that are appropriate and expected for males and females.

Question 17

Id:

Answer 17

the primitive and unconscious part of the personality that contains the instincts.

Question 18

Internal-external locus of control:

Answer 18

in Rotters’ theory, a generalised expectancy that one’s outcomes are under personal versus external control.

Question 19

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2):

Answer 19

a widely used personality test whose items were developed using the empirical approach of comparing various kinds of psychiatric patients with a non-psychiatric sample.

Question 20

Need for positive regard:

Answer 20

in Rogers’s personality theory, an innate need to be positively evaluated by significant others, which enhances survival potential and need satisfaction.

Question 21

Need for positive self-regard:

Answer 21

in Rogers’s personality theory, the psychological need to feel positively about oneself that underlies self-enhancement behaviours.

Question 22

Neoanalytic theorists:

Answer 22

former followers of Freud, such as Adler and Jung, who developed their own psychodynamic theories that generally de-emphasised psychosexual factors in favour of social ones and gave increased emphasis to ego functioning.

Question 23

NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI):

Answer 23

an objective personality test that measures the Big Five personality factors of extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness and openness to experience.

Question 24

Object relations theories:

Answer 24

the view that people form images or mental representations of themselves and other people as a result of early experiences with caregivers.

Question 25

Oedipus complex:

Answer 25

the male child experiences erotic feelings toward his mother, desires to possess her sexually and views his father as a rival.

Question 26

Personal constructs:

Answer 26

in George Kelly’s personality theory, the cognitive categories used to sort events and make comparisons among people and events.

Question 27

Personality:

Answer 27

those biologically and environmentally determined characteristics with the person that accounts for distinctive and accounts for distinctive and relatively enduring patterns of thinking, feeling and acting.

Question 28

Personality traits:

Answer 28

relatively stable cognitive, emotional and behavioural characteristics that help establish people’s individual identities.

Question 29

Personal unconscious:

Answer 29

according to Jung, those aspects of the unconscious that arise from the individual’s life experiences.

Question 30

Phenomenology:

Answer 30

a philosophical approach that focuses on immediate subjective experience.

Question 31

Pleasure principle:

Answer 31

the drive for instant need gratification that is characteristic of the id.

Question 32

Projective tests:

Answer 32

tests, such as the Rorschach and the Thematic Apperception Test, that present ambiguous stimuli to the subject, the responses are assumed to be based on a projection of internal characteristics of the person onto the stimuli.

Question 33

Psychosexual stages:

Answer 33

stages of development in which psychic energy is focused on certain body parts. The major childhood stages are the oral, anal and phallic stages; experiences during these stages are assumed to shape personality development.

Question 34

Rational-theoretical approach:

Answer 34

an approach to test construction in which test items are made up on the basis of a theorist’s conception of a construct.

Question 35

Reality principle:

Answer 35

the ego’s tendency to take reality factors into account and to act in a rational fashion in need satisfaction.

Question 36

Reciprocal determinism:

Answer 36

Bandura’s model of two-way causal relations between the person, behaviour and the environment.

Question 37

Regression:

Answer 37

a psychoanalytic defence mechanism in which a person retreats into an earlier stage of development in response to stress.

Question 38

Role construct Repertory (REP) Test:

Answer 38

the technique developed by personality psychologist Kelly to assess people’s personal constructs by asking them to describe the ways in which people resemble and differ from one another.

Question 39

Rorschach test:

Answer 39

a projective technique involving the interpretation of inkblots that is used by psychodynamic psychologists to assess perceptual and psychodynamic aspects of personality.

Question 40

Self:

Answer 40

in Rogers’s theory, an organised, consistent set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself.

Question 41

Self-actualisation:

Answer 41

in humanistic theories and inborn tendency to strive toward the realisation of one’s full potential.

Question 42

Self-consistency:

Answer 42

an absence of conflict among self-perceptions.

Question 43

Self-efficacy:

Answer 43

the conviction that we can perform the behaviours necessary to produce a desired outcome.

Question 44

Self-enhancement:

Answer 44

processes by which one enhances positive self-regard.

Question 45

Self-esteem:

Answer 45

how positively or negatively we feel about ourselves.

Question 46

Self-monitoring:

Answer 46

a personality trait that reflects people’s tendencies to regulate their social behaviour in accord with situational cues, as opposed to internal values, attitudes and needs.

Question 47

Self-regulation processes:

Answer 47

in social-cognitive theory, skills that allow for personal control over one’s thoughts, feelings or behaviours.

Question 48

Self-verification:

Answer 48

the tendency to try to verify or validate one’s existing self-concept (i.e. to satisfy congruence needs).

Question 49

Social-cognitive theory (social-learning theory):

Answer 49

a cognitive behavioural approach to personality developed by Bandura and Mischel that emphasises the role of social learning, cognitive processes and self-regulation.

Question 50

Structured interview:

Answer 50

a standardised interview protocol in which specific questions are asked.

Question 51

Sublimation:

Answer 51

the channelling of unacceptable impulses into socially accepted behaviours, as when aggressive drives are expressed in violent sports.

Question 52

Superego:

Answer 52

in psychoanalysis, the moral arm of the personality that internalises the standards of society and serves as the person’s conscience.

Question 53

Temperament:

Answer 53

a biologically based style of reacting emotionally and behaviourally to the environment.

Question 54

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT):

Answer 54

a projective personality test in which people make up stories in response to pictures.

Question 55

Threat:

Answer 55

in Rogers’s theory, any experience we have that is inconsistent with our self-concept, including our perceptions of our own behaviour. Threat evokes anxiety.

Question 56

Unconditional positive regard:

Answer 56

a communicated attitude of total and unconditional acceptance of another person that conveys the person’s intrinsic worth.