lec 9 personality Flashcards
What is personality?
An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.
What are psychodynamic theories? who are the proponents?
Adler, Horney, Jung
view personality with a focus on the unconscious mind and the importance of childhood experiences.
What is psychoanalysis theory? Proponent?
Freud
-attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts.
What is the unconscious according to Freud?
a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.
What is free association?
A method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind.
What is the id?
strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives
What is the ego?
-partly conscious, ‘executive’
-mediates b/w demands of id, superego, and reality
What is the superego?
-partly conscious
-internalized ideals and standards for judgment
What are psychosexual stages?
The childhood stages of development during which the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.
What is the Oedipus complex?
A boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.
What is identification?
The process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos.
What is fixation?
lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage.
What are defense mechanisms?
The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
What is repression?
The basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.
What is the collective unconscious?
Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history.
What is terror-management theory?
A theory of death-related anxiety that explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death.
What is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)?
A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through stories about ambiguous scenes.
What is a projective test?
A personality test that provides ambiguous images designed to trigger projection of people’s inner dynamics.
What is the Rorschach inkblot test?
A projective test designed by Hermann Rorschach that seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretation of inkblots.
What are humanistic theories? who are the proponents?
-Rogers, Maslow
Theories that view personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth.
What is the hierarchy of needs?
Maslow’s five levels of human needs, beginning with physiological needs, often visualized as a pyramid.
What is self-actualization?
One of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic needs are met and self-esteem is achieved.
What is self-transcendence?
The striving for identity, meaning, and purpose beyond the self.
What is unconditional positive regard?
A caring, accepting, and nonjudgmental attitude believed to help clients develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.
What is self-concept?
All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, ‘Who am I?’
What is a trait?
A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act in certain ways.
What is a personality inventory?
A questionnaire designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors to assess selected personality traits.
What is self-report?
A method of recording participants’ descriptions of their personality traits using surveys or questionnaires.
What is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)?
The most widely researched and clinically used personality test, originally developed to identify emotional disorders.
What is an empirically derived test?
A test created by selecting from a pool of items those that discriminate between groups.
What are the Big Five factors?
Five factors—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—that describe personality.
What is the social-cognitive perspective? Who are the proponents?
-Bandura
A view of behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits and their social context.
What is reciprocal determinism?
The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment.
What is the self in contemporary psychology?
Assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions.
What is the spotlight effect?
Overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders.
What is self-esteem?
Our feelings of high or low self-worth.
What is self-efficacy?
Our sense of competence and effectiveness.
What is self-serving bias?
A readiness to perceive ourselves favorably.
What is narcissism?
Excessive self-love and self-absorption.
what is the personality triad?
feelings, thoughts and behavior
what is an inferiority complex?
feelings of inadequacy or inferiority, whether real or imagined
what is basic anxiety?
concept by Karen Horney;
feelings that arise in a child from being unloved, unvalued, or insecure
what is penis envy?
Freud proposed that young girls experience anxiety upon realization that they do not have a penis
what is womb envy?
Horney proposed males envy of women’s biological fxns and primary role in creating and sustaining life
which led men to claim their superiority in other fields
what is the normal ABC model of behaviour
A= antecedents (event before behaviour)
B= behavior
C= consequences
what is the trait perspective? Who are the proponents?
-Allport, Eyeseneck, McCrae, Costa
certain stable characteristics influenced by genetic predispositions
the big five
what is the concept of personal control? Who proposed it?
-Julian Rotter
External locus of control: forces beyond our personal control determine our fate.
Interal locus of control: control our own fate
