Personality Psychology

Question 1

Nomothetic approach

Answer 1

Approach to personality that focuses on identifying general laws that govern the behaviour of all individuals

Question 2

Idiographic approach

Answer 2

Approach to personality that focuses on identifying the unique configuration of characteristics and life history experiences within a person

Question 3

Three broad influences on personality

Answer 3

• Genetic factors
• Shared environmental factors (experiences that are common to family
  members)
• Non-shared environmental factors

Question 4

Core assumptions of psychoanalytic theory

Answer 4

• Psychic determinism (all psychological events have a cause)
• Symbolic meaning (All actions are attributable to preceding mental causes)
• Unconscious motivation

Question 5

Freud’s structure of personality

Answer 5

• Id (basic instincts - reservoir of our most primitive impulses, including sex and aggression)
• Ego (Psyche’s executive and principal decision maker)
• Superego (sense of morality)

Question 6

Pleasure principle

Answer 6

Tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification

Question 7

Reality principle

Answer 7

Tendency of the ego to postpone gratification until it can find an appropriate outlet

Question 8

Function of dreams according to Freud

Answer 8

Wish fulfillments — expressions of the id’s impulses

Question 9

Defence mechanism

Answer 9

Unconscious manoeuvres intended to minimise anxiety

Question 10

Repression

Answer 10

Motivated inhibition of emotionally threatening memories or impulses. Triggered by anxiety due to a sense that satisfying the wishes would be dangerous, physically or morally

Question 11

Denial

Answer 11

Motivated failure to acknowledge distressing external experiences

Question 12

Regresssion

Answer 12

The act of returning psychologically to a younger and typically safer and simpler age

Question 13

Reaction-formation

Answer 13

Transformation of an anxiety provoking emotion into its opposite

Question 14

Projection

Answer 14

Unconscious attribution of our negative characteristics to others

Question 15

Displacement

Answer 15

Directing an impulse from a socially unacceptable target onto a safer and more socially acceptable target

Question 16

Rationalisation

Answer 16

Providing a reasonable-sounding explanation for unreasonable behaviours or failures

Question 17

Sublimation

Answer 17

Transforming a socially unacceptable desire into an admired goal

Question 18

Freud’s stages of psychosexual development

Answer 18

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)

Question 19

Alfred Adler (1870–1937) theories

Answer 19

• Style of life (each person’s distinctive way of achieving superiority)
• Inferiority complex (feelings of low self-esteem that can lead to overcompensation for such feelings)

Question 20

Carl Jung (1875–1961) theories

Answer 20

• Collective unconscious (our shared storehouse of memories that ancestors have passed down to us across generations)
• Archetypes (cross-culturally universal emotional symbols e.g. mother, goddess, hero, mandala)