Psychology Chapter 12

Question 1

Personality

Answer 1

An individual’s characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling

Question 2

Self-report

Answer 2

A method in which a person provides subjective information about his or her own thoughts, feelings, or behaviours, typically via questionnaire or interview

Question 3

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Answer 3

A well-researched clinical questionnaire used to assess personality and psychological problems

Question 4

Projective tests

Answer 4

Tests designed to reveal inner aspects of individuals’ personalities by analysis of their responses to a standard series of ambiguous stimuli

Question 5

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Answer 5

A projective technique in which respondents’ inner thoughts and feelings are believed to be revealed by analysis of their responses to a set of unstructured inkblots

Question 6

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Answer 6

A projective technique in which respondents’ underlying motives, concerns, and the way they see the social world are believed to be revealed through analysis of the stories they make up about ambiguous pictures of people

Question 7

Trait

Answer 7

A relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way

Question 8

Defense mechanisms

Answer 8

Unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce anxiety generated by threats from unacceptable impulses

Question 9

Psychosexual stages

Answer 9

Distinct early life stages through which personality if formed as children experience sexual pleasures from specific body areas and caregivers redirect or interfere with those pleasures

Question 10

Fixation

Answer 10

A phenomenon in which a person’s pleasure-seeking drive becomes psychologically stuck, or arrested, at a particular psychosexual stage

Question 11

Oral stage

Answer 11

The first psychosexual stage, in which experience centres on the pleasures and frustrations associated with the mouth, sucking, and being fedcenters

Question 12

Anal stage

Answer 12

The second psychosexual stage in which experience is dominated by the pleasures and frustrations associated with the anus, retention and expulsion of feces and urine, and toilet training

Question 13

Phallic stage

Answer 13

The third psychosexual stage in which experience is dominated by the pleasure, conflict, and frustration associated with the phallic-genital region as well as coping with powerful incestuous feelings of love, hate, jealousy, and conflict

Question 14

Oedipus conflict

Answer 14

A developmental experience in which a child’s conflicting feelings towards the opposite-sex parent are (usually) resolved by identifying with the same-sex parent (Elektra for girls)

Question 15

Latency stage

Answer 15

The fourth psychosexual stage, in which the primary focus is on the further development of intellectual, creative, interpersonal, and athletic skills

Question 16

Genital stage

Answer 16

The fifth and final psychosexual stage, the time for the coming together of the mature adult personality with a capacity to love, work, and relate to others in a mutually satisfying and reciprocal manner

Question 17

Self-actualizing tendency

Answer 17

The human motive towards realizing our inner potential

Question 18

Existential approach

Answer 18

A school of thought that regards personality as governed by an individual’s ongoing choices and decisions in the context of the realities of life and death

Question 19

Social-cognitive approach

Answer 19

An approach that views personality in terms of how the person thinks about the situations encountered in daily life and behaves in responses to them

Question 20

Person-situation controversy

Answer 20

The question of whether behaviour is caused more by personality or by situational factors

Question 21

Personal constructs

Answer 21

Dimensions people use in making sense of their experiences

Question 22

Outcome expecancies

Answer 22

A person’s assumptions about the likely consequences of a future behaviour

Question 23

Locus of control

Answer 23

A person’s tendency to perceive the control of rewards as internal to the self or external in the environment

Question 24

Self-concept

Answer 24

A person’s explicit knowledge of his or her own behaviours, traits, and other personal characteristics

Question 25

Self-verification

Answer 25

The tendency to seek evidence to confirm the self-concept

Question 26

Self-esteem

Answer 26

The extent to which an individual likes, values, and accepts the self

Question 27

Self-serving bias

Answer 27

People’s tendency to take credit for their successes but downplay responsibility for their failures

Question 28

Narcissism

Answer 28

A trait that reflects a grandiose view of the self combined with a tendency to seek admiration from and exploit others

Question 29

Big Five

Answer 29

The traits of the five-factor model: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism

Question 30

Psychodynamic approach

Answer 30

An approach that regards personality as formed by needs, strivings, and desires largely operating outside of awareness - motives that also can produce emotional disorders

Question 31

Id

Answer 31

The part of the mind containing the drives present at birth; it is the source of our bodily needs, wants, desires, and impulses, particularly our sexual and aggressive drives

Question 32

Superego

Answer 32

The mental system that reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly learned as parents exercise their authority

Question 33

Ego

Answer 33

The component of personality, developed through contact with the external world, that enables us to deal with life’s practical demands