unit eight and nine: personality and development Flashcards
(8) trait
a characteristic pattern or behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports.
(8) personality inventory
- assessment techniques: psychoanalyst method
- esentially questionarres that ask people to provide information about themselves.
- a questionnaire (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits.
(8) minnesota multiphasic personality inventory
(mmpi or mmpi-2) the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. originally designed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), this test is now used for many other screening purposes.
(8) empirically derived test
a test (such as the mmpi) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups.
(8) social cognitive-perspective
views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons (and their thinking) and their social context.
(8) reciprocal determinism
the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors.
(8) personal control
our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless.
(8) external locus of control
-social cognitive theory
the perception that change or outside forces beyond one’s personal control determine one’s fate.
-julian rotter
(8) internal locus of control
-social cognitive theory
the perception that one controls one’s own fate.
-julian rotter
(8) learned helplessness
the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.
(8) positive psychology
the scientific study of optimal human functioning; aims to discover and promote strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.
(8) spotlight effect
overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us).
(8) self-esteem
one’s feelings of high or low self-worth.
(8) self-serving bias
a readiness to perceive oneself favorably.
(8) nomothetic versus idiographic
- trait theories
nomothetic: theorists believe that the same basic set of traits can be used to describe all people’s personalities. - > HANS EYESNCK: believed that classifying all people along an introversion-extroversion scale and stable-unstable scale we can describe their personalities.
- > RAYMOND CATTELL: developed the 16 pf (personality factor) test to measure what he believed were the 16 basic traits present in all people.
idiographic: theorists, assert that using the same set of terms to classify all people is impossible.
(8) paul costa and robert mccrae
-trait theorist
proposed that personality can be described using the BIG FIVE
-> C: conscientiousness
A: agreeableness
N: neuroticism (emotional stability)
O: openess
E: experience(8) factor analysis
-trait theory
how psychologists can reduce the vast number of different terms we use to describe people to 16 or five basic traits.
researchers use correlations between traits.
(8) gordon allport
-trait theorist
believed that although there were common traits useful in describing all people. differentiated between three different types of personal traits. suggested a small number of people are so profoundly influenced by one trait that plays a role in everything they do.
referred to
- > CARDINAL DISPOSITIONS:
- > CENTRAL DISPOSITIONS: larger influence on personality.
- > SECONDARY DISPOSITIONS:
(8) heritability
-biological theory
measure of the amount of variation in a trait in a given population that is due to genetics.
(8) temperaments
-biological theory
people’s emotional style and characteristic way of dealing of the world. new stimuli.
(8) hippocrates
- biological theory
- > one of the earliest theories of personality.
- > these theorists believed that personality was determined by relative levels of four humors (fluids) in the body. (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm).
(8) william sheldon’s somatype
-biological theory
identified three body types: endomorphs (fat), mesomorphs (muscular), and ectomorphs (thin).
(8) radical behaviorists
- > b.f. skinner
- > argue that behavior is personality and that the way most people think of the term personality is meaningless. personality is determined by the environment.
(8) albert bandura
- social cognitive theorist
- > personality is created b an interaction between the person (traits), the environment, and the person’s behavior.
- TRIADIC RECIPROCALITY/RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM: means that each of these factors (personality, environment and behavior) influence both of the other two in a constant loop.
ex: brad is social. this trait influences his behavior in that he talks to a lot of people. it influences the environment which brad puts himself in like parties and get togethers.
-SELF EFFICACY: people with high self-efficacy are optimistic about their own ability to get things done whereas those with low self-efficacy feel a sense of powerlessness.
(8) george kelly
-social cognitive theorist
PERSONAL-CONSTRUCT THEORY: argued people in their attempts to understand their world develop their own individual systems of personal constructs. opposites like unfair and fair. bad and good.
FUNDAMENTAL POSTULATE: previous theory based on this. people’s behavior is influenced by their cognitions and that by knowing how people have behaved in the past, we can predict how they will act in the future.
(8) determinism
-humanist theory
the belief that what happens is dictated by what has happened in the past.
(8) free will/third force
- humanist theory
- not supported by psychoanalysts (personality determined by childhood) and behaviorists (personality by environment)
- individual’s ability to choose his or her own destiny
(8) self-concept
- humanist theory
- a person’s global feeling about himself or herself. develops through a person’s involvement with other, especially parents. someone with a high self-concept is more likely to have a high self-esteem.
(8) self-esteem
- humanist theory
- an individual’s subjective evaluation of their own worth. self-esteem encompasses beliefs about oneself as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame.
(8) abraham maslow and carl rogers
- humanist theorists
- both believed that people are motivated to reach their full potential or SELF-ACTUALIZE: the motivation to fufill one’s potential.
MASLOW AND HIERARCHY OF NEEDS: 1/top) self-actualization, 2) esteem, 3)love/belonging, 4) safety, 5/bottom) psychological
ROGERS AND SELF-THEORY: he believed that although people are innately good, they require certain things from their interactions with others, most importantly
-> UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD: in order to self-actualize. blanket acceptance. love no matter what. if a parent makes their child feel as if they’ll only be loved if they are successful they are sending the message that their love is conditional to their child.
(8) reliability versus validity
- assessment techniques
- reliability: likened to consistency. similar results. ex: the sat
- validity: accuracy. measures what its supposed to measure. ex: not like the sat and college-readiness.
- protective tests: used psychoanalysts. involve asking people to interpret imbiguous stimuli.
ex: rorschach inkblot test,and thematic apperception test.
(8) rorschach inkblot test
- assessment techniques: psychoanalyst method
- involves showing people a series of inkblots and asking them to describe what they see.
ex: seeing a inkblot and saying you see a dead person can help psychologists understand more about patient.
(8) thematic appreception test (tat)
- assessment techniques: psychoanalyst method
- consists of a number of cards, each of which contains a picture of a person or people in an ambiguous stimulation. people are asked to describe what is happening in the pictures.
(8) barnum effect
- research has demonstrated that people have the tendency to see themselves in vague, stock description of personality.
- named after famous circus owner p.t. barnum, who once said “there’s a sucker born every minute”
- be skeptical of people who offer you a quick description of your life and future. personality is difficult to measure.
(9) maturation
- biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.
- like a flower growing from seed to bloom
- human being a baby to adult
(9) schema
a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
(9) assimilation
interpreting one’s new experience in terms of one’s existing schemas.
(9) acommodation
adapting one’s current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.
(9) cognition
all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
(9) sensorimotor stage
in piaget’s theory, the theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.
(9) object permanence
the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.
(9) preoperational stage
in piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.
(9) conservation
the principle (which piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in forms of objects.
(9) egocentrism
in piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view.
(9) theory of mind
people’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states– about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts and the behavior these might predict.
(9) autism
a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others’ states of mind.
(9) concrete operational stage
in piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations the enable them to think logically about concrete events.
(9) formal operational stage
in piagtet’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.
(9) stranger anxiety
the fear of strangers the infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age.
(9) attachment
an emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation.
(9) critical period
an optimal period shortly after birth when an organism’s exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development.
(9) imprinting
the process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life.
(9) basic trust
according to erik erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.
(9) self-concept
a sense of one’s identity and personal worth.
(9) adolescence
the transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence.
(9) puberty
the period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing.
(9) primary sex characteristics
the body structures (ovaries, testes, external genitalia) that make sexual reproduction possible.
(9) secondary sex characteristics
non-reproductive sexual characteristics, such as female breasts and hips, male voice quality and body hair.
(9) menarche
[meh-NAR-key] the first menustural period.
(9) identity
one’s sense of self; according to erikson, the adolescent’s task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles.
(9) intimacy
in erikson’s theory, the ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in late adolescence and early adulthood.
(9) language
our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.
(9) phoneme
in a language the smallest distinctive sound sound unit.
(9) morpheme
in a language the smallest unit that cries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix).
(9) grammar
in a language a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others.
