Personality Flashcards
Personality Type A
Competitive, hate failure, time conscious, super motivated, assertive, reactive.
Personality Type B
Patient, easygoing, steady, prefer the game itself, apathetic, disengaged.
Personality
Psychological qualities that bring continuity to an individual’s behavior in different situations and at different times.
Personality theory
An attempt to describe, explain and tie together all of the influences on an individual’s thoughts and behaviors.
» Cervone + Shoda 1999
Trait
Relatively stable and enduring characteristics that guide our actions and thoughts.
The Five-Factor Theory (OCEAN)
The most widely accepted personality theory that states the personality can be boiled down to five core factors, known by the acronym OCEAN.
On a scale continuum.
Openness (OCEAN)
Inquiring and curious - closed to new experiences
Conscientiousness (OCEAN)
Dependability, consciousness, perseverance - impulsiveness, carelessness, irresponsibility
Extraversion (OCEAN)
Assertiveness, sociability, boldness - introverted, reserved
Agreeableness (OCEAN)
Conformity, likability, helpful - suspicious, uncooperative, negativity
Neuroticism (OCEAN)
Anxious, emotional, pessimistic - calm, confident, emotional stability
MMPI-2: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
A 567 item true/false self-report measure of an adult’s psychological state. There are nine validity scales, assessing for lying, defensiveness, faking good/faking bad amongst other assessments.
Psychoanalytic Theory
Emphasizes the importance of early childhood experience and effects of conflict between conscious and unconscious forces using a personality structure.
ID
To pursue pleasure and satisfy biological drives of aggression and sexual desire.
(Libido driven; unconscious; stores repressed memories)
{Seeking pleasure, pleasure principle}
EGO
To find safe, acceptable ways of satisfying the ID and the superego.
(Executive, reasonable, logical, rational; conscious; peacekeeper)
{Functioning in the world, reality principle}
SUPEREGO
Applying moral values and standards.
(Storehouse 4 values and moral attitudes learned from parents and society; unconscious)
{Playing by the rules, conscious principle}
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development
Successive, instinctive patterns of associating pleasure with stimulation of specific bodily areas at different times in life in which develop fixated personality issues.
The Oral Stage
When: Birth to 1 year
Where: Pleasure seeking is centered on the mouth (sucking, chewing, spitting, babbling)
Challenge: Overcoming dependency
Fixated: Oral Receptive Personality
Oral Receptive Personality
Smoking, nail-biting, chewing, gluttony, obesity, gullible.
The Anal Stage
When: 1 to 3 years
Where: Pleasure seeking is focused on the anus and bladder; the function of elimination
Challenge: Self control
Fixated: Anal Retentive, Anal expulsive
Anal retentive
Excessive cleanliness, stinginess, aloofness
Anal expulsive
Messiness, temper tantrums, destructiveness
The Phallic Stage
When: 3 to 6 years
Where: Pleasure seeking is centered on the genitals
Challenge: To overcome the Oedipus/Electra Complex
Fixated: Jealous, problems with parents, sexual conquests, penis envy
Oedipus/Electra
The desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex.
The Latency Stage
When: 6 to 11 years
What: Repression of sexual thought, engaging in nonsexual activities
Challenge: Consciously learning modesty and shame; Unconsciously dealing with repressed Oedipus/Electra complex
Fixated: Excessively modest
The Genital Stage
When: 11 years through adulthood
What: Renewed sexual desires that we seek to fulfill through adult relationships with people who are NOT our parents.
Projection
The process of displacing one’s unacceptable impulses or feelings onto someone else
Denial
Avoidance by denying the problems existence
Rationalization
Supplying a logical or rational reason as opposed to the real reason for an action
Reaction formation
Acting an exact opposition of true feelings
Displacement
Taking out impulses on a less threatening target
Regression
Adopting immature behaviors that were effective coping skills when younger
Freudian Slip
Mistakes or slips of the tongue that we make an everyday speech; such mistakes are thought to reflect unconscious thoughts or wishes
Defense mechanisms
Unconscious mental strategies that reduce the experience of anxiety and conflicts. Aids in pushing extreme desires, and threatens memories into the unconscious
