Week 21- Personality

Question 0

What are the four different personality perspectives?

Answer 0

Trait
Psychodynamic
Humanistic
Social-cognitive

Question 1

What is Personality?

Answer 1

A particular pattern of behaviour and thinking that prevails across the time and situations and differentiates one person from another.

Question 2

Describe Freud’s psychodynamic theory of personality

Answer 2

Identifies three components of personality:
The Id
The Ego
The Super ego

Conflicts between the Id and Superego in the unconscious mind that are mediated by the ego and kept from conscious awareness by defence mechanisms.
Internal drives and forces.

conscious, preconscious, unconscious.

Question 3

Describe Skinner’s behavioural theory/ social cognitive

Answer 3

Personality is a group of learned habits and responses, which are the product of Operant and Classical conditioning
Operant + classical conditioning= personality
Behaviour patterns that are shaped and reinforced but the environment. Thoughts and cognition to not play a part in this view of personality

Question 4

Describe Rogers’s and Maslow’s Humanistic Theory of personality

Answer 4

Emphasized a role of Free Will and the development of self as critical to personality development.
Life long drive and to fulfil human potential.
Expectations put on us by others might prevent us from self actualization and can influence and distort our personality and behaviour.
-last empirical support because it isn’t as scientific.

Question 5

Describe Cattell’s Trait Theory of personality

Answer 5

Sixteen personality dimensions or factors
Each dimensions is a continuum with opposite traits at each end plotting where individuals fall in each dimension describes their personality.
More recently it has been reduced to five core traits.

Question 6

What are the five core traits that Trait theory has been reduced to?
Aka. THE BIG FIVE

Answer 6

Openness to experience
Conscientiousness 
Extraversion 
Agreeableness
Neuroticism

Question 7

What are three elements that make for a standardized test or a personality test ?

Answer 7

Standardization
Reliability
Validity

Question 8

What is a TAT?

Answer 8

Thematic Apperception Test is a productive test in which a person makes up stories based on ambiguous pictures

Question 9

What is factor analysis?

Answer 9

Statistical analysis that examines all of the correlations between all of the items and determines if any of them are highly coordinated

Question 10

What is the definition of “TheBig Five”?

Answer 10

Five personality dimensions derived from analysis of the natural language terms people use to describe themselves an others.
(Openness Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism)

Question 11

What are defence mechanisms ?

Answer 11

Mental systems that become active whenever unconscious instinctual drives of the Id come into conflict with the internalized prohibitions of the superego

Question 12

______ _______ is how each individual views his or her own world.

Answer 12

Phenomenological reality

Question 13

What is unconditioned positive regard?

Answer 13

Therapeutic approach that a persons worth as a human being does not depend on anything that he or she does says feels or thinks.

Question 14

What is Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs Theory?

Answer 14

Motivation for different activities passes through several levels of need , with enterence to subsequent levels dependent in first satisfying the needs of the previous levels.

Question 15

What is the first need that needs to be fulfilled in Maslow’s hierchy of needs?

Answer 15

Physiological needs (minimum essentials of life, Water food etc)

Question 16

Maslow’s second need?

Answer 16

Safety (protection from dangers in environment, shelter)

Question 17

Maslow’s third need?

Answer 17

Belonging (experience close relationships with others)

Question 18

Maslow’s fourth need?

Answer 18

Esteem (competence, self respect)

Question 19

Final / fifth need in Maslow’s theory?

Answer 19

Self actualization (discovering and enjoying meaning of life)

Question 20

What are cognitive constructs?

Answer 20

A general belief system that affects how a person understands events and selects appropriate behaviours

Question 21

What is Locus of Control?

Answer 21

People’s beliefs about whether the outcome of their actions depend on what they do or on events outside their personal control.

Question 22

What is internal locus of control?

Answer 22

Belief that an individual can control his or her own actions and results.

Question 23

What is external locus of control?

Answer 23

Belief that circumstances are beyond the control of the individual

Question 24

What is an individualistic culture?

Answer 24

Culture in which people give priority to their own goals and define their personal identities in terms if personal attributions rather than group attributes.

Question 25

What is a collectivist culture?

Answer 25

Culture in which people give priority to group goals and define their identities based on relational roles within the group.