Personality Flashcards
An individuals characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting
Personality
Theories that view personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences
Psychodynamic theories
Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.
Psychoanalysis
According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.
Unconscious
In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.
Free association
A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.
Id
The partly conscious, “executive” part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, the superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.
Ego
The partly conscious part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations.
Superego
The childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.
Psychosexual stages
According to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.
Oedipus Complex
The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos.
Identification
In psychoanalytic theory, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.
Fixation
In psychoanalytic theory, the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
Defense Mechanisms
In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.
Collective unconscious: Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history.
Repression
A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
A personality test, such as the TAT or Rorschach, that provides ambiguous images designed to trigger projection of people’s inner dynamics.
Projective Test
A projective test designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing how they interpret 10 inkblots.
Rorschach Inkblot Test
Theories that view personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth.
Humanistic Theories
Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before people can fulfill their higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs.
Hierarchy of Needs
According to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one’s potential.
Self-actualization
A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help people develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.
Unconditional Positive Regard
All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, “Who am I?”
Self-concept
A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act in certain ways, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports.
Trait
A questionnaire (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits.
Personality Inventory
The most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), this test is now used for many other screening purposes.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
A test (such as the MMPI) created by selecting from a pool of items those that discriminate between groups.
Empirically Derived Test
Researchers identified five factors—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—that describe personality. (Also called the five-factor model.)
Big Five Factors
A view of behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social context.
Self-cognitive Perspective
The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment.
Reciprocal Determinism
In contemporary psychology, assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Self
Overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us).
Spotlight Effect
Our feelings of high or low self-worth
Self esteem
Our sense of competence and effectiveness
Self-efficacy
A readiness to perceive ourselves favorably
Self-serving bias
Excessive self-love and self-absorption
Narcissism
