Personality Psychology

Question 1

Psychic determinism

Answer 1

Everything that happens in person’s mind, including everything a person thinks and does has a specific cause.

Question 2

Mind

Answer 2

The psychological result of what the brain and the rest of the body do. ( ID, Ego, Superego)

Question 3

Libido

Answer 3

The mental and psychic energy used by the mind ( refers to sexual energy). The amount of energy is fixed and finite.

Question 4

Doctrine of opposites

Answer 4

Everything implies and even requires its opposite.

Question 5

Transference

Answer 5

Tendency to bring ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that developed in response to one important relationship into a relationship with a different person ( therapist)

Question 6

Criticisms

Answer 6

Low cure rate and length of treatment

Question 7

Id, ego, superego

Answer 7

Ruled by pleasure principle/ demanding child/ locus of sexual and aggressive drives.
“Reality principle” deals with realities of the world. Balances the id, superego and external world.
Moralistic and idealistic principles

Question 8

Psychoanalysis said there are 2 fundamental motives

Answer 8

Libido ( sex or life drive) & Thanatos ( drive to death)

Question 9

Stage theory of development

Answer 9

(1) oral stage
(2) anal stage
(3) phallic stage
(4) latency stage
(5) genital stage

Question 10

Personality

Answer 10

An individual’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior together with the psychological mechanism hidden or not behind those patterns.

Question 11

Goals of personality theory

Answer 11

Explain the whole person in his or her daily environment
Think of important behavior that you performed recently and all of those reasons for that behavior.
Many different theories and perspectives.

Question 12

Freud’s theory critisims

Answer 12

• excessive complexity
• dependence on case study
• vague definition
• untestibility
• sexism

Question 13

Psychic anxiety

Answer 13

Defense mechanisms techniques that the ego uses to keep certain thoughts and impulses hidden in order to avoid anxiety. (NOT USED CONSCIOUSLY)

Question 14

Paraparexes

Answer 14

Leakage from the unconscious mind that manifest as mistakes, accidents, omissions, or memory lapses.

Question 15

Neo-freudian psychology

Answer 15

A general term for psychoanalytically oriented work of many theorists and researchers who are influenced by Freud’s theory.
Less emphasis on and interoperation of libido. Less emphasis on unconscious mental processes and more on conscious.

Question 16

Archetypes

Answer 16

Core ideas of how people think about the world consciously.

Question 17

What is trait approach?

Answer 17

Predominant approach in research today.
Focused on “normal” personality.

Individual differences.
It has two main types: typological, trait- single,many, essential

Question 18

Explain single trait approach.

Answer 18

They research on what traits could change the world?
Consider:
Social injustice
War
Crime
Dangerous behavior
Also this particular trait was thought to describe why some people are more submissive to rising leaders.
3 types: authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, conventionalism

Question 19

Explain the many trait approach.

Answer 19

An opposing approach to the single trait approach.
Delay of gratification: denying oneself immediate pleasure for long-term gain. Such as sex differences, ego control: self control or inhibition, ego resiliency: psychological judgment.
Other behaviors: drug abuse, depression, political orientation

Question 20

How can we identify the essential traits?

Answer 20

Unfortunately this results in a list of way too many traits to be useful. 
3 major approaches:
Theoretical approach
Lexical approach
Factor-analytic approach

Question 21

Lexical approach

Answer 21

Analysis of the natural language will yield a list of the most important trait terms.
Important individual differences in personality have become encoded within the natural language.
Two indications of importance:
Synonym frequency
Cross-cultural universality

Question 22

Factor analysis

Answer 22

By Raymond Cattell
Statistical technique that analyzes the patter of intercorrelations among item in a data set.
Factor analysis allows us to identify group of items on a personality test that have some common, underlying property.
This approach was the key to developing an objective, empirically-derived taxonomy of personality.

Question 23

The big five personality trait

Answer 23

Factor analysis of trait terms in the English language has yielded the “big five” personality traits.
Extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience (intellect)
This model hypothesis is that almost every personality trait is substantially related to one or more of the five factors, and that any remaining trait from a miscellaneous category rather than covarying to define a sixth or subsequent factor.

Question 24

Neuroticism characterisitcs

Answer 24

Anxiety
Angry hostility
Depression
Self-consiousness
Impulsiveness
Vulnerability

Question 25

Extraversion characteristics

Answer 25

Warmth 
Gregariousness
Assertiveness activity
Excitement seeking
Positive emotions

Question 26

Openness to experience (intellect)

Answer 26

Fantasy
Aesthetics
Feelings
Actions
Ideas
Values

Question 27

Agreeablness

Answer 27

Trust
Straightforwardness
Altruism
Compliance
Modesty
Tender-mindedness

Question 28

Conscientiousness

Answer 28

Competence
Order
Dutifulness
Achievement striving 
Self-discipline
Deliberation

Question 29

List the criticisms of the big 5

Answer 29

Empirically derived, atheoretical
Some traits are not captured
Factors are not completely orthogonal
Some traits are a combination of factors
Factors are "messy" 
What is the fifth factor?