Personality Flashcards
Which aspect of personality operates outside a person’s awareness?
The unconscious.
(Freud believed the unconscious operated completely outside a person’s awareness.)
What is a characteristic of PERSONALITY TYPES as an approach to describing personality?
Personality types use qualitative groupings to categorize people with similar characteristics.
(The type approach proposes that there are a limited number of distinct categories of personality.)
What does VALIDITY measure in a research study?
Whether a study assesses the intended outcomes.
(Validity means intended outcomes can be measured and studied.)
What does a correlational study examine?
The potential relationship (aka correlation) between factors.
(A correlational study is one in which a relationship is developed among multiple factors.)
What is a characteristic of the scientific culture of psychology?
Laboratory research settings.
(Laboratory research provides information about individuals through an objective, scientific lens.)
Which cognitive component significantly affects personality dynamics (according to modern theories)?
How people label their experiences.
What is a common theme among modern personality theories related to culture?
Motivations that direct personality are related to culture.
(Cultural factors, such as individualistic and collectivistic cultural differences, shape the motivations that are related to personality dynamics.)
What is the difference between verifiability and disconfirmation?
They are opposites.
Verifiability refers to the ability to find supporting evidence for a theory.
Disconfirmation involves finding evidence to refute or contradict a theory.
What kind of approach to personality development does the following question correspond with?
“Can personality change in adulthood?”
An experiential approach.
(This explores how experiences can be related to personality changes.)
What is a major focus of personality development theories?
How life experiences influence personality.
What is one factor related to personality development?
How personality is influenced by heredity.
(Heredity, or genetics, can influence personality traits by passing down physiological and psychological traits from parents to their children through genes. These traits include behaviors, cognition, emotional patterns, and body parts’ shape.)
What is a common theme among modern theories of personality dynamics?
How a person thinks is an important aspect of personality.
(Personality involves both inborn traits and the development of cognitive and behavioral patterns that influence how we think and act.)
What is a characteristic of experimentation as a method for researching personality?
Experimentation puts cause-effect relationships to a direct test amongst personality variables.
What term refers to the sum of observed characteristics, according to biological theories of personality?
Phenotype.
Which factor plays the largest role in personality heritability, according to theories of gene-environment interaction?
Evolution.
(Theories of evolution are within the biological perspective but do not discuss the interaction between genes and contemporary environmental factors.)
