Personality Flashcards
Empirically derived test
A test developed by testing a pool of items then selecting those that discriminate between groups
Psychoanalysis
Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts
Learned helplessness
The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events
Self esteem
One’s feelings of high or low self-worth
Projection
A defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
Free association
A method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind
Projective test
A personality test that provide ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics
Collective unconscious
Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces for our species’ history
Self-actualization
The ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem in achieved
Self-concept
All our thoughts and feeling about ourselves
Personality inventory
A questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors
Self-serving bias
A readiness to perceive oneself favorably
Repression
The basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings and memories from conscious
External locus of control
The perception that chance or outside forces beyond one’s personal control determines one’s fate
Id
Contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives
Oedipus complex
A boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father
Spotlight effect
Overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance and blunders
Unconditional positive regard
An attitude of total acceptance toward another person
Displacement
A defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person (inappropriate sublimation)
Social cognitive perspective
Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons (and their thinking) and their social context
Identification
The process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos
Trait
A characteristic pattern of behavior or disposition to feel and act as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports
Ego
The largely conscious part of the personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality
Internal locus of control
The perception that one controls one’s own fate
Unconscious
A reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories
Psychosexual stages
Childhood stages of development during which the id’s pleasure seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
Fixation
A lingering focus of pleasure seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage in which conflicts were unresolved
Reaction formation
Defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites
Superego
The part of personality that represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment and for future aspirations
Positive psychology
The scientific study of optimal human functioning
Thematic Apperception Test
A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interest through the stories they make up about scenes
Rorschach Inkblot Test
The most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots seeks to identify people’s inner feeling by analyzing their interpretation of the inkblot
Terror management theory
Proposes that faith in one’s worldview and the pursuit of self-esteem provide protection against a deeply rooted fear of death
Reciprocal determinism
The interacting influences between personality and environmental factors
Regression
Defense mechanism in which a individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage
Personal control
Our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless
Rationalization
Defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real unconscious reasons for action
Defense mechanism
The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
The most widely used of all personality tests originally used to identify emotional disorders
Personality
An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting
