SLS20 Chapter 12: Personality

Question 1

personality

Answer 1

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

Question 2

self-report

Answer 2

A series of answers to a questionnaire that asks people to indicate the extent to which sets of statements or adjectives accurately describe their own behavior or mental state

Question 3

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality test (MMPI-2)

Answer 3

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

Question 4

projective techniques

Answer 4

A standard series of ambiguous stimuli designed to elicit unique responses that reveal inner aspects of an individual’s personality

Question 5

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Answer 5

A projective personality test in which individual interpretations of the meaning of a set of unstructured inkblots are anlayzed to identify a respondent’s inner feelings and interpret his or her personality structure

Question 6

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Answer 6

A projective personality test in which respondents reveal underlying motives, concerns, and the way they see the social world through 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

Big Five (OCEAN)

Answer 8

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

Question 9

psychodynamic approach

Answer 9

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

Question 10

dynamic unconscious

Answer 10

An active system encompassing a lifetime of hidden memories, the person’s deepest instincts and desires, and the person’s inner struggle to control these forces

Question 11

id

Answer 11

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 12

ego

Answer 12

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

Question 13

superego

Answer 13

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

Question 14

defense mechanisms

Answer 14

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

Question 15

rationalization

Answer 15

A defense mechanism that involves supplying a reasonable-sounding explanation for unacceptable feelings and behavior to conceal (mostly from oneself) one’s underlying motives or feelings

Question 16

reaction formation

Answer 16

A defense mechanism that involves unconsciously replacing threatening inner wishes and fantasies with an exaggerated version of their opposite

Question 17

projection

Answer 17

A defense mechanism that involves attributing one’s own threatening feelings, motives, or impulses to another person or group

Question 18

regression

Answer 18

A defense mechanism in which the ego deals with internal conflict and perceived threat by reverting to an immature behavior or earlier stage of development

Question 19

displacement

Answer 19

A defense mechanism that involves shifting unacceptable wishes or drives to a neutral or less-threatening alternative

Question 20

identification

Answer 20

A defense mechanism that helps deal with feelings of threat and anxiety by enabling us unconsciously to take on the characteristics of another person who seems more powerful or better able to cope

Question 21

sublimation

Answer 21

A defense mechanism that involves channeling unacceptable sexual or aggressive drives into socially acceptable and culturally enhancing activities

Question 22

psychosexual stages

Answer 22

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

Question 23

fixation

Answer 23

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

Question 24

oral stage

Answer 24

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

Question 25

anal stage

Answer 25

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

Question 26

phallic stage

Answer 26

The third psychosexual stage, during 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, jealously, and conflict

Question 27

Oedipus conflict

Answer 27

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

Question 28

latency stage

Answer 28

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

Question 29

genital stage

Answer 29

The final psychosexual stage, a 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 30

self-actualizing tendency

Answer 30

The human motive toward realizing our inner potential

Question 31

existential approach

Answer 31

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 32

social cognitive approach

Answer 32

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

Question 33

person-situation controversy

Answer 33

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

Question 34

personal constructs

Answer 34

Dimensions people use in making sense of their experiences

Question 35

outcome expectancies

Answer 35

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

Question 36

locus of control

Answer 36

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

Question 37

self-concept

Answer 37

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

Question 38

self-verification

Answer 38

The tendency to seek evidence to confirm the self-concept

Question 39

self-esteem

Answer 39

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

Question 40

Self-serving bias

Answer 40

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

Question 41

narcissism

Answer 41

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