Unit Nine: Personality, Testing, and Individual Differences

Question 1

Free association

Answer 1

in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing (I say word, you say word)

Question 2

Psychoanalysis

Answer 2

(1) Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.
(2) Freud’s therapeutic technique. Freud believed the patient’s free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences—and the therapist’s interpretations of them—released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight.

Question 3

Unconscious

Answer 3

according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware (shape behavior)

Question 4

Repression

Answer 4

in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories

Question 5

Preconscious

Answer 5

an area where we store temporarily store thoughts, from which we can retrieve them into conscious awareness

mental process you are not currently aware of (tight shoes)

Question 6

Ego

Answer 6

the largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain
(bus driver) partially conscious thoughts, judgments and memories

Question 7

Superego

Answer 7

the part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations
(uses guilt and pride to control us)

Question 8

Id

Answer 8

a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification
(think about the present, animal)

Question 9

Manifest content

Answer 9

the remembered content of dreams

Question 10

Latent content

Answer 10

the dreamer’s unconscious wishes

Question 11

Psychosexual stages

Answer 11

the childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones

Question 12

Oedipus complex

Answer 12

during the phallic stage boys develop both unconscious sexual desires for their mother and jealousy and hatred for their father, whom they consider a rival. Given these feelings, thought boys also experience guilt and a lurking fear of punishment, perhaps by castration, from their father.

Question 13

Electra complex

Answer 13

the female version of the Oedipus complex

Question 14

Identification

Answer 14

the process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ (same-sex) values into their developing superegos, used to deal with Oedipus complex

Question 15

Gender identity

Answer 15

our sense of being male or female

Question 16

Defense mechanisms

Answer 16

in psychoanalytic theory, the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

Question 17

Defense mechanism-Regression

Answer 17

retreating to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated
(temper tantrums, thumb sucking)

Question 18

Defense mechanism-reaction formation

Answer 18

switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites

gay anti-gay crusader

Question 19

Defense mechanism-projection

Answer 19

disguising one’s own threatening impulses by attributing them to others, lowers anxiety
(stupid test)

Question 20

Defense mechanism-rationalization

Answer 20

offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one’s actions
(rational but false reasons, blame on somebody else)

Question 21

Defense mechanism-displacment

Answer 21

shifting sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person
(chopping wood, hard workout)

Question 22

Defense mechanism-sublimation

Answer 22

transferring of unacceptable impulses into socially values motives
(put frustrations into work)

Question 23

Defense mechanism-denial

Answer 23

refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities

most primitive, occurs with death, illness, drug problems

Question 24

Personality

Answer 24

a person’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting

Question 25

Psyche

Answer 25

Freud's term for personality (id, ego, superego)

Question 26

Libido

Answer 26

life energy, drive

Question 27

Eros

Answer 27

life instinct

Question 28

Thanatos

Answer 28

death instinct

Question 29

Paraphilia (Freud)

Answer 29

Freud-homosexuality, voyeurism, exhibitionism, sadism, masochisim are all caused by problems in the genital stage

Question 30

Psychodynamic theories of personality

Answer 30

view our behavior as emerging from the interaction between the conscious and unconscious mind, including associated motives and conflicts

Question 31

Collective unconscious (psychologist)

Answer 31

Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history

Question 32

Projective test

Answer 32

a personality test, such as the Rorschach, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics

Question 33

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Answer 33

a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes

Question 34

Rorschach inkblot test

Answer 34

the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

Question 35

False consensus effect (Freud's projection)

Answer 35

the tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and our behaviors (I am trustworthy, other people are too)

Question 36

Terror-management theory

Answer 36

a theory of death-related anxiety; explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death

Question 37

Alfred Adler

Answer 37

inferiority complex, much of our behavior is driven by efforts to conquer childhood inferiority feelings, creative self/we form our own personality, dream interpretation, birth order

Question 38

Karen Horney

Answer 38

childhood anxiety triggers our desire for love and security, women do not have weak superegos or penis envy, overcome helplessness

Question 39

Self-actualization

Answer 39

according to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one’s potential

Question 40

Self-transcendence

Answer 40

according to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to achieve meaning, purpose, and communion beyond the self

Question 41

Carl Rogers

Answer 41

people are basically good and are endowed with self-actualizing tendencies. Unless thwarted by an environment that inhibits growth, each of us is like an acorn, primed for growth and fulfillment, his person-centered perspective (also called clientcentered perspective) held that a growth-promoting climate required three conditions: Genuineness, Acceptance, and Empathy

Question 42

Unconditional positive regard

Answer 42

a caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance

Question 43

Self-concept

Answer 43

all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, “Who am I?”

Question 44

Carl Jung

Answer 44

collective unconscious, persona, analytic psychology (bring god into it), personal unconscious, individualism, shadow self, two forces-anima and animus (female and male principle)

Question 45

Archetypes

Answer 45

a universal idea, image, or pattern found in the collective unconscious (universal stories) (journey of the hero, big bad/little good, wise old man)

Question 46

Humanistic

Answer 46

strive for self-determination and self-realization, study through self-reported experiences and feelings

Question 47

Trait

Answer 47

a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports

Question 48

Gordon Allport

Answer 48

decided to describe personality in terms of traits and thought that people should look at manifest motives before moving to the unconscious

Question 49

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Answer 49

a personality test that offers choices, counts preferences and labels them as indicating, traits like 'feeling' or 'thinking'

Question 50

Hans Eysenck and Sybil Eysenck

Answer 50

we can reduce many of our normal individual variations to two or three dimensions, including extraversion–introversion and emotional stability–instability

Question 51

Autonomic nervous system reactivity

Answer 51

the extent or level to which an organism responds physiologically to a stimulus, such as a stressor in the environment; a pattern of autonomic nervous system responses that become characteristic of an individual throughout life

Question 52

Personality inventory

Answer 52

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

Question 53

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Answer 53

the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), this test is now used for many other screening purposes

Question 54

Barnum effect

Answer 54

acceptance of stock, positive descriptions

Question 55

Person-situation controversy

Answer 55

Our behavior is influenced by the interaction of our inner disposition with our environment. Still, the question lingers: Which is more important?

Question 56

Starke Hathaway

Answer 56

developed the MMPI, asked tons of true-false questions and kept those that differed between healthy and mentally ill people

Question 57

Costa and McGrae

Answer 57

developed the Big Five test: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, Extroversion (CANOE)

Question 58

Neuroticism

Answer 58

emotional stability vs instability

Question 59

Social-cognitive perspective (psychologist)

Answer 59

views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social context, Albert Bandura

Question 60

Behavioral approach

Answer 60

in personality theory, this perspective focuses on the effects of learning on our personality development

Question 61

Reciprocal determinism

Answer 61

the interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment

Question 62

Personal control

Answer 62

whether we learn to see ourselves as controlling, or as controlled by, our environment

Question 63

Attributional style

Answer 63

How do you characteristically explain negative and positive events? (pessimism and optimism)

Question 64

Positive psychology

Answer 64

the scientific study of human functioning, with the goals of discovering and promoting strengths and virtues that help individuals and communities to thrive

Question 65

Self

Answer 65

in contemporary psychology, assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions

Question 66

Spotlight effect

Answer 66

overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us)

Question 67

Self-esteem

Answer 67

one’s feelings of high or low self-worth

Question 68

Self-efficacy

Answer 68

our sense of competence on a task

Question 69

Self-serving bias

Answer 69

a readiness to perceive oneself favorably

Question 70

Narcissism

Answer 70

excessive self-love and self-absorption

Question 71

Individualism

Answer 71

giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications

Question 72

Defensive self-esteem

Answer 72

fragile, focuses on sustaining itself, which makes failures and criticism feel threatening. Such egotism exposes one to perceived threats, which feed anger and disorder

Question 73

Secure self-esteem

Answer 73

less fragile, because it is less contingent on external evaluations. To feel accepted for who we are, and not for our looks, wealth, or acclaim, relieves pressures to succeed and enables us to focus beyond ourselves. By losing ourselves in relationships and purposes larger than self, we may achieve a more secure self-esteem and greater quality of life

Question 74

What was the first organization to use simulations to test prospects?

Answer 74

Army-spies

Question 75

Intelligence

Answer 75

mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations

Question 76

Intelligence test

Answer 76

a method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores

Question 77

General intelligence (g) (psychologist)

Answer 77

a general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test

Question 78

Factor analysis

Answer 78

a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s total score, Spearman developed it

Question 79

Savant syndrome

Answer 79

a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing

Question 80

Grit

Answer 80

in psychology, grit is passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals

Question 81

10-year rule

Answer 81

a common ingredient of expert performance in chess, dancing, sports, computer programming, music, and medicine is “about 10 years of intense, daily practice"

Question 82

Social intelligence

Answer 82

the know--how involved in successfully comprehending social situations

Question 83

Emotional intelligence

Answer 83

the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions

Question 84

Masking image

Answer 84

an image that serves to override the lingering afterimage of an incomplete stimulus (as in speed of taking in perceptual information experiments)

Question 85

Mental age

Answer 85

a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance. Thus, a child who does as well as the average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8

Question 86

Stanford-Binet (psychologist)

Answer 86

the widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original intelligence test

Question 87

Intelligence quotient, or IQ (calculation and psychologist)

Answer 87

a person’s mental age divided by chronological age and multiplied by 100 to get rid of the decimal point, William Stern

Question 88

Achievement test

Answer 88

a test designed to assess what a person has learned

Question 89

Aptitude test

Answer 89

a test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn

Question 90

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

Answer 90

the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests

Question 91

Standardization

Answer 91

defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group

Question 92

Normal curve

Answer 92

(normal distribution) a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data; most scores fall near the mean (about 68 percent fall within one standard deviation of it) and fewer and fewer near the extremes

Question 93

Flynn effect

Answer 93

Amazingly—given that college entrance aptitude scores were dropping during the 1960s and 1970s—intelligence test performance was improving.

Question 94

Reliability

Answer 94

the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting

Question 95

Validity

Answer 95

the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to

Question 96

Content validity

Answer 96

the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest (criterion)

Question 97

Predictive validity

Answer 97

the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior. (Also called criterion-related validity.)

Question 98

Collectivism

Answer 98

identity comes from the group, raise up the group

Question 99

L.L Thurstone

Answer 99

seven clusters of primary mental abilities, critic of Spearman even though g was seen in his tests

Question 100

Howard Gardner

Answer 100

intelligence is multiple abilities that come in different packages: savant syndrome

Question 101

Sternberg

Answer 101

three intelligence components: analytical, creative, and practical

Question 102

Cohort

Answer 102

a group of people from a given time period

Question 103

Crystallized intelligence

Answer 103

our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age

Question 104

Fluid intelligence

Answer 104

our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood

Question 105

Intellectual disability

Answer 105

a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life. (Formerly referred to as mental retardation.)

Question 106

Down syndrome

Answer 106

a condition of mild to severe intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21

Question 107

Heritability

Answer 107

the proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied

Question 108

Gray matter

Answer 108

Neural cell bodies

Question 109

White matter

Answer 109

Axons

Question 110

Francis Galton

Answer 110

first "IQ" test, failed, he let us know that science is pure but individual scientists can be biased (Eugenics)

Question 111

Alfred Binet

Answer 111

identified French children in need of help, he related mental age and chronological age

Question 112

Stereotype threat

Answer 112

a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype

Question 113

Lewis Terman

Answer 113

studies children with scores over 135, most were professional and had high achievements, they were also not isolated (he also made the Standford-Binet)