Personality

Question 1

Personality

Answer 1

an individual’s consistent patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving

Question 2

Franz Joseph Gall

Answer 2

phrenology founder

Question 3

somatology

Answer 3

William Herbert Sheldon

the idea that we could determine personality from people’s body types

people with more body fat and a rounder physique (“endomorphs”) were more likely to be assertive and bold, whereas thinner people (“ectomorphs”) were more likely to be introverted and intellectual

Question 4

physiognomy

Answer 4

idea that it is possible to assess personality from facial characteristics

Question 5

traits

Answer 5

relatively enduring characteristics that influence our behavior across many situations

most popular way of measuring traits is by administering personality tests on which people self-report about their own characteristics

Gordon Allport (1897–1967), Raymond Cattell (1905–1998), and Hans Eysenck (1916–1997)

Question 6

Meyers Briggs reliability/validity

Answer 6

the measure itself is not psychologically useful because it is not reliable or valid

classifications change over time, and scores on the MBTI do not relate to other measures of personality or to behavior

Question 7

Allport

Answer 7

“cardinal traits” (the most important traits), “central traits” (the basic and most useful traits), and “secondary traits” (the less obvious and less consistent ones)

Question 8

Cattell

Answer 8

used a statistical procedure known as factor analysis to analyze the correlations among traits

“source” (more important) and “surface” (less important) traits, and he developed a measure that assessed 16 dimensions of traits based on personality adjectives taken from everyday language

Question 9

Hans Eysenck

Answer 9

fundamental personality trait: extraversion versus introversion

Question 10

Five-Factor (Big Five) Model of Personality

Answer 10

According to this model, there are five fundamental underlying trait dimensions that are stable across time, cross-culturally shared, and explain a substantial proportion of behavior

agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience. (You can remember them using the watery acronyms CANOE or OCEAN.)

Question 11

issue w trait personality theory

Answer 11

traits are not stable

Walter Mischel

showed that low correlation between traits that a person expressed in one situation and those that they expressed in other situations

personality not only comes from inside us but is also shaped by the situations that we are exposed to

Question 12

Barnum effect

Answer 12

the observation that people tend to believe in descriptions of their personality that supposedly are descriptive of them but could in fact describe almost anyone

Question 13

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Answer 13

a test used around the world to identify personality and psychological disorders

a list of more than 1,000 true-false questions and choosing those that best differentiated patients with different psychological disorders from other people

Question 14

Projective measures

Answer 14

measures of personality in which unstructured stimuli, such as inkblots, drawings of social situations, or incomplete sentences, are shown to participants, who are asked to freely list what comes to mind as they think about the stimuli

used to capture the non-conscious aspects of our personality

Question 15

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Answer 15

a projective measure of personality in which the respondent indicates his or her thoughts about a series of 10 symmetrical inkblots

Question 16

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Answer 16

a projective measure of personality in which the respondent is asked to create stories about sketches of ambiguous situations, most of them of people, either alone or with others

Question 17

issues w projective measures

Answer 17

The reliability of the measures is low because people often produce very different responses on different occasions. The construct validity of the measures is also suspect because there are very few consistent associations between Rorschach scores or TAT scores and most personality traits. The projective tests often fail to distinguish between people with psychological disorders and those without or to correlate with other measures of personality or with behavior.

Question 18

Charismatic leaders

Answer 18

leaders who are enthusiastic, committed, and self-confident; who tend to talk about the importance of group goals at a broad level; and who make personal sacrifices for the group

Question 19

transactional or transformational leadership styles

Answer 19

Transactional leaders are the more regular leaders, who work with their subordinates to help them understand what is required of them and to get the job done.

Transformational leaders, on the other hand, are more like charismatic leaders—they have a vision of where the group is going, and attempt to stimulate and inspire their workers to move beyond their present status and to create a new and better future.

Question 20

sources of personality

Answer 20

psychodynamic approach

humanistic approach

Question 21

psychodynamic approach/Freud

Answer 21

Freud did not believe that we were able to control our own behaviors

all behaviors are predetermined by motivations that lie outside our awareness, in the unconscious

Question 22

id

Answer 22

the component of personality that forms the basis of our most primitive impulses

driven by the pleasure principle—the desire for immediate gratification of our sexual and aggressive urges

Question 23

superego

Answer 23

our sense of morality and oughts. The superego tell us all the things that we shouldn’t do, or the duties and obligations of society

based on the reality principle—the idea that we must delay gratification of our basic motivations until the appropriate time with the appropriate outlet

Question 24

ego

Answer 24

the largely conscious controller or decision-maker of personality

the intermediary between the desires of the id and the constraints of society contained in the superego

Question 25

psychological disorders in Freudian theory

Answer 25

psychological disorders, and particularly the experience of anxiety, occur when there is conflict or imbalance among the motivations of the id, ego, and superego.

When the ego finds that the id is pressing too hard for immediate pleasure, it attempts to correct for this problem, often through the use of defense mechanisms

Question 26

defense mechanisms

Answer 26

unconscious psychological strategies used to cope with anxiety and to maintain a positive self-image

Question 27

major defense mechanisms

Answer 27

Displacement
Projection
Rationalization
Reaction formation (Making unacceptable motivations appear as their exact opposite)

Regression
Repression (or denial)

Sublimation (Channeling unacceptable sexual or aggressive desires into acceptable activities)

Question 28

development of personality in Freudian theory

Answer 28

based on psychosexual stages

Question 29

psychosexual stages

Answer 29

Oral
Anal
Phallic
Latency
Genital

Question 30

oral stage

Answer 30

begins at birth and lasts until about 18 months of age, the focus is on the mouth

too little or too much gratification become fixated or “locked” in the oral stage, and are likely to regress to these points of fixation under stress, even as adults

will become orally dependent as an adult and be likely to manipulate others to fulfill his or her needs rather than becoming independent. On the other hand, the child who was overfed or overly gratified will resist growing up and try to return to the prior state of dependency by acting helpless, demanding satisfaction from others, and acting in a needy way

Question 31

anal stage

Answer 31

lasting from about 18 months to 3 years of age is when children first experience psychological conflict

toilet training was either too harsh or too lenient, children would become fixated in the anal stage and become likely to regress to this stage under stress as adults

too little anal gratification (i.e., if the parents had been very harsh about toilet training), the adult personality will be anal retentive—stingy, with a compulsive seeking of order and tidiness. On the other hand, if the parents had been too lenient, the anal expulsive personality results, characterized by a lack of self-control and a tendency toward messiness and carelessness.

Question 32

phallic stage

Answer 32

age 3 to age 6 is when the penis (for boys) and clitoris (for girls) become the primary erogenous zone for sexual pleasure

children develop a powerful but unconscious attraction for the opposite-sex parent, as well as a desire to eliminate the same-sex parent as a rival

Oedipus and Electra Complex

penis envy

Question 33

latency stage

Answer 33

6 years to 12 years.

sexual impulses were repressed, leading boys and girls to have little or no interest in members of the opposite sex

Question 34

genital stage

Answer 34

12 years of age and lasts into adulthood

sexual impulses return

Question 35

neo-Freudian theories.

Answer 35

based on Freudian principles that emphasize the role of the unconscious and early experience in shaping personality but place less evidence on sexuality as the primary motivating force in personality and are more optimistic concerning the prospects for personality growth and change in personality in adults

Question 36

Alfred Adler

Answer 36

primary motivation in human personality was not sex or aggression, but rather the striving for superiority

Question 37

inferiority complex

Answer 37

Adler

a psychological state in which people feel that they are not living up to expectations, leading them to have low self-esteem, with a tendency to try to overcompensate for the negative feelings

most psychological disorders result from misguided attempts to compensate for the inferiority complex in order meet the goal of superiority

Question 38

Carl Jung

Answer 38

collective unconscious, self-realization, archetypes

Question 39

Karen Horney

Answer 39

underlying motivation that guides personality development is the desire for security, the ability to develop appropriate and supportive relationships with others

Question 40

Erich Fromm

Answer 40

focus was on the negative impact of technology, arguing that the increases in its use have led people to feel increasingly isolated from others

the independence that technology brings us also creates the need “escape from freedom,” that is, to become closer to others

the primary human motivation was to escape the fear of death

Question 41

Problems w Freudian theory

Answer 41

he predictions that it makes (particularly those regarding defense mechanisms) are often vague and unfalsifiable, and second, that the aspects of the theory that can be tested often have not received much empirical support

almost anything that conflicts with a prediction based in Freudian theory can be explained away in terms of the use of a defense mechanism.

Question 42

humanistic psychologists

Answer 42

embraced free will

underlying motivations that they believed drove personality, focusing on the nature of the self-concept, the set of beliefs about who we are, and self-esteem, our positive feelings about the self.

Question 43

Abraham Maslow

Answer 43

conceptualized personality in terms of a pyramid-shaped hierarchy of motives moving towards self actualization

Question 44

self-actualization

Answer 44

the motivation to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent

Question 45

Carl Rogers

Answer 45

most famous humanist

viewing people as primarily moral and helpful to others, and believed that we can achieve our full potential for emotional fulfillment if the self-concept is characterized by unconditional positive regard

Question 46

unconditional positive regard

Answer 46

a set of behaviors including being genuine, open to experience, transparent, able to listen to others, and self-disclosing and empathic

Question 47

Self-Discrepancies, Anxiety, and Depression

Answer 47

Tory Higgins

the emotions we experience are determined both by our perceptions of how well our own behaviors meet up to the standards and goals we have provided ourselves (our internal standards) and by our perceptions of how others think about us (our external standards).

Higgins argues that different types of self-discrepancies lead to different types of negative emotions

ideal, ought, and actual self-concepts

discrepancies between the ideal and the actual self lead us to experience sadness, dissatisfaction, and other depression-related emotions, whereas discrepancies between the actual and ought self are more likely to lead to fear, worry, tension, and other anxiety-related emotions

Question 48

gene

Answer 48

the basic biological unit that transmits characteristics from one generation to the next

Question 49

instincts

Answer 49

complex inborn patterns of behaviors that help ensure survival and reproduction

Question 50

genes in personality

Answer 50

the complex relationship among the various genes, as well as a variety of random factors, produces the final outcome influence personality, and as mixed with environment

Question 51

behavioral genetics

Answer 51

a variety of research techniques that scientists use to learn about the genetic and environmental influences on human behavior by comparing the traits of biologically and nonbiologically related family members

based on the results of family studies, twin studies, and adoptive studies

Question 52

family study

Answer 52

starts with one person who has a trait of interest—for instance, a developmental disorder such as autism—and examines the individual’s family tree to determine the extent to which other members of the family also have the trait

can reveal whether a trait runs in a family, it cannot explain why

Question 53

twin study

Answer 53

researchers study the personality characteristics of twins

the data from many pairs of twins are collected and the rates of similarity for identical and fraternal pairs are compare

correlation coefficient is calculated that assesses the extent to which the trait for one twin is associated with the trait in the other twin

Question 54

Heritability

Answer 54

indicated when the correlation coefficient for identical twins exceeds that for fraternal twins, indicating that shared DNA is an important determinant of personality.

Question 55

Shared environment determinants

Answer 55

indicated when the correlation coefficients for identical and fraternal twins are greater than zero and also very similar. These correlations indicate that both twins are having experiences in the family that make them alike.

Question 56

Nonshared environment

Answer 56

indicated when identical twins do not have similar traits

Question 57

adoption study

Answer 57

compares biologically related people, including twins, who have been reared either separately or apart.

Question 58

Influence of non-shared environment

Answer 58

although parents must provide a nourishing and stimulating environment for children, no matter how hard they try they are not likely to be able to turn their children into geniuses or into professional athletes, nor will they be able to turn them into criminals

Question 59

molecular genetics

Answer 59

the study of which genes are associated with which personality traits

novelty-seeking
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
smoking behavior

for most traits, genetics is more important than parental influence, BUT, the major influence on personality is nonshared environmental influences, which include all the things that occur to us that make us unique individuals, including variability in brain structure, nutrition, education, upbringing, and even interactions among the genes themselves.

Question 60

knockout study

Answer 60

for animals

researchers use specialized techniques to remove or modify the influence of a gene in a line of “knockout” mice

found that removing or changing genes in mice can affect their anxiety, aggression, learning, and socialization patterns.