Test 4 Flashcards
Personality
A pattern of enduring, distinctive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize the way an individual adapts to the world.
Id
The part of the person that Freud called the “it,” consisting of unconscious drives; the individuals reservoir of sexual energy; “WANT IT NOW”;no contact with reality; PLEASURE PRINCIPLE
Ego
The Freudian structure of personality that deals with the demands of reality; tries to bring a person pleasure within the norms of society; partly conscious but mostly unconscious; helps a person test reality to see how far they go before getting in trouble and/or hurt; REALITY PRINCIPLE
Superego
The Freudian structure of personality that serves as the harsh internal judge of our behavior; what we often call conscious; MORALITY PRINCIPLE
Defense Mechanisms
Tactics the ego uses to reduce anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality;
Repression
Most powerful of the ego’s defense mechanisms; pushes unacceptable id impulses back into the unconscious mind; foundation for ALL psychological defense mechanisms.
Oral Stage
1st psychosexual stage - First 18 months of life; Chewing, sucking, and biting are sources of pleasure that reduce tension in an infant.
Anal Stage
2nd psychosexual stage - 18 to 36 months old; pleasure in controlling bowels; child says “it’s mine!;
Phallic Stage
3rd psychosexual stage - 3 to 6 years old; pleasure is focused on the genitals and self-stimulation; triggers the Oedipus complex (replace the father and enjoy the affections of the mother)
Oedipus Complex
Freud’s theory of a boy’s intense desire to replace his father and enjoy the affections of his mother. Eventually the boy fears his father might punish him for these wishes by castration (castration anxiety). To reduce this conflict, boy identifies with his father, adopting the male gender role. Castration anxiety is repressed into the unconscious and serves as foundation for the development of the superego (morality principle). Girls were believed to be morally inferior to men due to not having a penis and therefore not being able to develop a supergo in the same way as boys. As a result, girls have “penis envy” which is the intense desire to have a penis by marrying and having a son.
Latency period
Not a developmental psychosexual stage, more of a “time-out” - 6 years old to puberty; After drama of the phallic stage, the child sets aside all interest in sexuality; Freud felt that this was a time in which NO psychosexual development occurred though modern science has proved this wrong.
Genital Stage
Sexual reawakening - adolescence and adulthood; a point when the source of sexual pleasure shifts to someone outside the family; 2 hallmarks of maturity: love and work.
Karen Horney
1st feminist critic of Freud; believed in the sociocultural approach to personality; “need for security, NOT SEX, is the prime motive for human existence; both genders envy the attributes of each other.
Collective Unconscious
Jung’s term for the impersonal, deepest layer of the unconscious mind, shared by all human beings because of their common ancestral past; contain “archetypes”.
Archetypes
Jung’s term for emotionally laden ideas and images in the collective unconscious that have rich and symbolic meaning for all people.Anima: passive feminine side, Animus: assertive masculine side, Persona: public mask all people wear in social interaction that keeps secret parts of ourselves hidden from others.
Adler
Believed people are motivated by purposes and goals (individual psychology) therefore perfection, not pleasure, is the key motivator in life; Coined the term “compensation”: making up for an inferiority by excelling somewhere else; Birth order influences a persons strive for superiority
Maslow’s Approach to humanistic psychology
Referred to humanistic psych as third force (behind psychodynamic and behaviorism); Self-actualization: motivation to develop one’s full potential as a human being and being able to maintain a capacity for peak experiences;
Roger’s approach to humanistic psychology
Believed all people are born with raw ingredients of a fulfilling life but we need the right conditions to thrive (sunflower planted but needs good soil/water/sun to thrive);
Unconditional Positive Regard
Roger’s view of people’s need to be accepted, valued, and treated positively regardless of his/her behavior. Not enough of this can lead to mental conditions.
Conditions of Worth
The standards that the individual must live up to in order to receive positive regard from others; As we grow up, people who are central to our lives condition us to move away from our general feelings and self-concepts and become someone that we are not supposed to become therefore leaving a person viewed as being well off but not happy on the inside.
Big 5 Factors of Personality
The 5 broad traits that are thought to describe the main dimensions of personality; O.C.E.A.N. (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism)
Social Cognitive Perspectives
Theoretical views emphasizing conscious awareness, beliefs, expectations, and goals.
Reciprocal Determinism
The way BEHAVIOR, ENVIRONMENT, and PERSON/COGNITIVE FACTORS interact to create personality.
Self-efficiency
The belief that one can master a situation and produce positive change; “all about you!”
Self-report Tests
Also called an “objective test” or an “inventory”, a method of measuring personality characteristics that directly asks people whether specific items describe their personality traits. “I am easily embarrassed, I love to go to parties, I like to watch cartoons on TV”; One problem is social desirability (not wanting to admit something; saying what makes them look good even if untrue)
MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory)
Most widely used and researched empirically keyed self-report personality test; objective test; made in the 40’s to assess abnormal personality tendencies. 567 items; tool for hiring, assessing criminal risk, and mental health.
Face Validity (tests)
The extent to which a test item appears to be a good fit to the characteristic it measures; Does it measure what it is supposed to measure?
Reliability (tests)
The test is reliable if it has consistency.
Projective Tests
A test in which the individual projects his/her thoughts onto the photograph/stimulus. Gets the person talking.
Social Psychology
The study of how people think about, influence, and relate to other people.
Stereotype
A generalization about a group’s characteristics that does not consider any variations from one individual to another; pre-judged/prejudice
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
Stereotypes cause individuals to act in ways that serve to make the expectations come true; “attractive people are treated better than unattractive people therefore creating better social skills for the attractive”.
Attribution
The process by which we come to understand the causes of others’ behavior and form an impression of them.
Attribution Theory
View that people are motivated to discover the underlying causes of behavior as part of their effort to make sense of the behavior.
Fundamental Attribution Error
Observers’ overestimation of the importance of INTERNAL traits and underestimation of the importance of EXTERNAL situations when they seek explanations of an actor’s behavior.
Self-serving Biased
The tendency to take credit for our successes and to deny responsibility for our failures.
Self-objectification
The tendency to see oneself primarily as an object in the eyes of others; many woman see themselves as objects in our society.
Social comparison
The process by which people evaluate their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and abilities in relation to other people.
Attitudes
Feelings, opinions, and beliefs about people, objects, and ideas.
Cognitive Dissonance
A person’s psychological discomfort (dissonance) caused by 2 inconsistant thoughts (a nurse smoking; a cop breaking the law); Can be changed in 1 of 2 ways: change our behavior to fit our attitudes or change our attitudes to fit our behavior. “thinking disagreement”
Altruism
An unselfish interest in helping another person.
Bystander Effect
The tendency of a person who observes an emergency to help less when other people are present than when the observer is alone. When alone, a person will help 75% of the time. With another person present, it drops to 50%. This is due to DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY - the tendency of people to look to the behaviors of others for cues as what to do.
Conformity
A change in a person’s behavior to coincide more closely with a group standard.
Obedience
Behavior that complies with the explicit demands of the individual in authority.
