Personality Flashcards
What are traits?
Relatively enduring predispositions that influence our behaviour across many situations
What are the two approaches to studying personality?
Nomothetic approach
Idiographic approach
What is the nomothetic approach?
An approach to personality that focuses on identifying general laws that govern the behaviour of all individuals
What is the idiographic approach?
An approach to personality that focuses on identifying the unique configuration of characteristics and life history experiences within a person
What are the causes of personality differences?
Genetic factors
Shared environment
Non-shared environment
True or False: identical twins reared together tend to be about as similar in their personality traits as identical twins reared apart
True
True or False: environmental factors shared among members of the same family play an important role in the causes of most personality traits in adulthood
False
True or False: birth order is weakly related to most personality traits
True
Who propose the psychoanalytic theory of personality?
Sigmund Freud
What is a catharsis?
The feeling of relief following a dramatic outpouring of emotion
Freudians believe in psychic determinism; what is it?
The assumption that all psychological events have a cause
According to Freud, what components make up a personality?
Id
Ego
Superego
What is an id?
An unconscious reservoir of our most primitive impulses, including sex and aggression, that influences our behaviour
What is the pleasure principle?
The tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification
What is the ego?
The psyche’s executive and principal decision maker. The ego’s primary tasks are interacting with the real world and finding ways to resolve the competing demands of the other two psychic agencies.
What is the reality principle?
The tendency for the ego to postpone gratification until it can find an appropriate outlet
What is the superego?
Our sense of morality; our idea of right and wrong that we have internalised from out interactions with society
What is a defence mechanism?
An unconscious manoeuvre intended to minimise anxiety
What are the major Freudian defence mechanisms?
Repression Denial Regression Reaction-formation Projection Displacement Rationalisation Sublimation
What is repression?
The motivated unconscious inhibition of emotionally threatening memories or impulses
What is denial?
The motivated failure to acknowledge distressing external experiences
What is regression?
The act of returning psychologically to a younger, and typically safer and simpler age
What is reaction-formation?
The transformation of an anxiety-provoking emotion into its opposite
What is projection?
the unconscious attribution of our negative characteristics to others
What is displacement?
Directing an impulse from a socially unacceptable target onto a safer and more socially acceptable target
What is rationalisation?
Providing a reasonable-sounding explanation doe unreasonable behaviours or failure
What is sublimation?
The transforming of a socially unacceptable impulse into an admired goal
What are the stages, and approximate ages, of Freud’s psychosexual development?
Oral - birth to 12-18 months Anal - 18 months to 3 years Phallic - 3 years to 6 years Latency - 6 years to 12 years Genital - 12 years and beyond
What is the oral stage? How do orally fixated people tend to act?
A psychosexual stage that focuses on the mouth (sucking and drinking). Orally fixated people tend to react to stress by becoming intensely dependent on others for reassurance
What is the anal stage? How do anally fixated people tend to act?
A psychosexual stage that focuses on toilet training. Anally fixated people are prone to excessive neatness, stinginess and stubbornness in adulthood
What is the phallic stage?
A psychosexual stage that focuses on the genitals
What is the Oedipus complex?
Conflict during the phallic stage in which boys supposedly love their mothers romantically and want to eliminate their fathers as rivals
What is the Electra complex?
Conflict during the phallic stage in which girls supposedly love their fathers romantically and want to eliminate their mothers as rivals
What is the latency stage?
A psychosexual stage in which sexual impulses are submerged into the unconscious
What is the genital stage?
A psychosexual stage in which sexual impulses reawaken and typically begin to mature into romantic attraction towards others
What is a neo-Freudian theory?
Theories derived from Freud’s model, it that placed less emphasis on sexuality as a driving force in personality and were more optimistic regarding the prospects for long-term personality growth
What did Alfred Adler believe about personality?
The principal motive in human personality is not sex or aggression, but the striving for superiority
What is the style of life?
According to Adler, it is each person’s distinctive way of achieving superiority
What is an inferiority complex?
Feelings of low self-esteem that can lead to overcompensation for such feeling (I.e. Bullies)
Who put forward the idea of the collective unconscious?
Carl Jung
What is the collective unconscious?
Our shared storehouse of memories that ancestors have passed down to us across generations
What are archetypes?
Cross-culturally universal emotional symbols contained in the collective unconscious
True or False: Freud believed that sex was the only important drive in personality
False
True or False: Freudians would say that most persons with very high opinions of themselves have overdeveloped egos
False
True or False: according to Freudians, a given Dream symbol (such as a snake) does not have the same underlying meaning for every dreamer
True
According to Freud, a person who is orally fixated would be likely to drink excessively
True
True or False: one strength of Freudian theory is that many of its predictions are hard to disprove
False
True or False: most neo-Freudian theorists, such as Adler, place less emphasis on social influences on personality development than did Freud
False
What are social learning theorists?
Theorists who emphasised thinking as a cause of personality
What is a locus of control?
The extent to which people believe that reinforcers and punishes lie inside or outside of their control
True or False: for radical behaviourists, our personalities are bundles of habits influenced by learning
True
True or False: radical behaviourists argue that we are sometimes ‘unconscious’ of the true causes of our behaviour
True
True or False: social learning theorists believe that observational learning is a key form of learning in addition to classical and operant conditioning
True
True or False: according to social learning theorists, individual’s with an internal locus of control are more prone to depression than individuals with an external locus of control
False
What is self-actualisation?
A core motive in personality that drive us to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent
According to Rogers, what are the main components of our personalities?
Organism - genetic blueprint
Self - belief of who we are
Conditions of worth - expectations we place on ourselves for appropriate and inappropriate behaviour
What is incongruence?
The inconsistency between our personalities and innate dispositions
What are peak experiences?
Transcendent moments of intense excitement and tranquility marked by a profound sense of connection to the world
True or False: according to Rogers, human nature is inherently positive
True
True or False: Rogers believe that only severely disturbed individuals acquire conditions of worth
False
True or False: Maslow claimed that almost all self-actualised individual’s are sociable an easy to get along with
False
True or False: many claims of humanistic models are difficult to test
True
What is factor analysis?
A statistical technique that analyses the correlations among responses on personality inventories and other measures
What is the Big Five?
Five traits that have surfaced repeatedly in factor analyses of personality measures
What makes up the Big Five?
Openness to experience Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism
What is the lexical approach?
An approach proposing that the most crucial features of personality are embedded in our language
True or False: one limitation of the Big Five model is that researchers have identified these traits only in American culture
False
True or False: research demonstrates that after late childhood, the levels of most personality traits virtually never change over the life span
False
True or False: personality traits typically predict behaviour in a single situation with high levels of accuracy
False
True or False: according to Eysenck, extroverts tend to be less aroused that introverts
True
What are structure personality tests?
Paper-and-pencil tests consisting of questions that respondents answer in one of a few fixed ways
What does MMPI stand for?
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
What is the MMPI?
A widely used structured test designed to assess symptoms of mental disorders
What is a empirical method of test construction?
An approach to building tests in which researchers begin with two or more criterion groups, and examine which items best distinguish them
What is face validity?
The extent to which respondents can tell what the items are measuring
What is impression management?
Making ourselves look better than we really are
What is malingering?
Making ourselves appear psychologically disturbed
What is a rational/theoretical method of test construction?
An approach to building tests that requires test developers to begin with a clear-cut conceptualisation of a trait and then write items to assess that conceptualisation
What is a projective test?
Tests consisting of ambiguous stimuli that examines must interpret or make sense of
What is the projective hypothesis?
A hypothesis that in the process of interpreting ambiguous stimuli, examinees project aspects of their personality onto the stimulus
What is the Rorschach Inkblot Test
A projective test consisting of 10 symmetrical inkblots
What is incremental validity?
The extent to which a test contributes information beyond other, more easily collected measures
What is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)?
A projective test requiring examinees to tell a story in response to ambiguous pictures
What is graphology?
A projective test involving the psychological interpretation of handwriting
What is the P. T. Barnum effect?
The tendency for people to accept high base-rate descriptions as accurate (I.e. Horoscopes)
True or False: items with low face validity tend to be especially easy for respondents to fake
False
True or False: simple formulas that can be programmed into computers yield MMPI-2 interpretations equal or superior to those of experienced clinicians
True
True or False: adding the Rorschach Inkblot Test to other measures in a test battery sometimes produces significant decreases in validity
True
True or False: the more detailed and specific an astrological horoscope is about someone’s personality traits, the more likely that person will perceive it as accurate
False
True or False: research suggests that although students sometimes fall victim to illusory correlation, experienced clinicians do not
False
