| Personality |
Definition |
| personality | an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. Ex: distinctiveness and consistancy |
| free association | in psycoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or emarrassing. Ex: painful memories of childhood |
| psychoanalysis | 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. Ex: therapy |
| unconscious | a reservoir of mostly unaccceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. Ex: Information processing of which we are unaware. |
| id | contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. Ex: pleasure (non-realistic) |
| ego | the largely conscious "executive" part of personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality Ex: realistically satisfying id's (unrealistic pleasure) desires |
| superego | the part of personality that represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement and for future aspirations Ex:the ideal (a person who is virtuous but ironically guilt-ridden) |
| psychosexual stages | childhood stages of developmental (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which the id's pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous |
| Oedipus complex | a boy's sexual desires towards his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father EX: Greek legend Oedipus killed his father and married his mother |
| identification | the process by which children incorporate their parents' values into developing superegos EX: a daughter wanting to be just like Mom |
| fixation | a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved Ex: When a child is weaned too early he/she will experience fixation during oral stage |
| defense mechanism | the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality EX: Repression, Regression, Reaction Formation, Projection, Rationalization, Displacement |
| repression | the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness EX: Not remembering the lust for parent of the opposite sex |
| regression | a defense mechanism inwhich an indiviual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated EX: When a child goes to the first day of school may suck his/her thumb |
| reaction formation | defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. EX: "I hate him" becomes "I love him" |
| projection | defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening inpulses by attributing them to others EX: "He doesn't trust me" goes to "I don't trust myself" or "I don't trust him" |
| rationalization | defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions EX: heavy drinkers say they drink with their friends "to be sociable" |
| displacement | defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet EX: Children who fear expressing anger toward parent instead takes it out on a pet |
| collective unconscious | Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our secies' history. |
| projective test | a personality test that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics EX: Roshach, TAT tests |
| Rorsharch inkblot test | the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann roscharch; seeks to indentify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots |
| terror-management theory | proposes that faith in one's worldview and the pursuit of self-esteem provide protection against a deeply rooted fear of death EX: Writing an essay about dying and the emotions associated with it. |
| self-actualization | According to Maslow, the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic pysical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one's potential. EX: Hierarchy of Needs |
| unconditional positive regard | according to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person. EX: In a good marriage, a close family, we are free to be spontaneous without fearing the loss of others' esteem. |
| self-concept | all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves EX: "Who am I?" |
| trait | a characteristic pattern of behavior or a dispostion to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports EX: unemotional |
| personality inventory | a questionnaire (true-false or agree-disagree) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors |
| Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) | the most widely researched and clinically used of a lll personality tests. Developed to identify emotional disorders. |
| empirically derived test | a test developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups |
| social-cognitive perspective | views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons and their social context |
| reciprocal determinism | the interacting influences between personality and enviromental factors |
| personal control | our sense of controlling our enviroment rather than feeling helpless |
| external locus of control | the perception that chance or outside forces beyond one's personal control detirmine one's fate. |
| internal locus of control | the perception that one controls one's own fate |
| learned helplessness | the hoplessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events. |
| spotlight effect | overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance performance, and blunders EX: acting as though a spotlight is on you |
| self-esteem | one's feelings of high or low self-worth |
| self-serving bias | a readiness to percieve oneself favorably |
