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Unit 10 Terms
Personality
Question | Answer |
---|---|
Personality | An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. |
Free association | 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. |
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. |
Unconscious | According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware. |
ID | 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. |
Ego | 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. |
Superego | The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement and for future aspirations. |
Psycho sexual stages | The childhood stages of development during which, according to Freud, the ID's pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones. |
Oedipus complex | According to Freud, a boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father. |
Identification | The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents' values into their developing superegos. |
Fixation | According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psycho sexual stage, in which conflicts are unresolved. |
Defense Mechanisms | In psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. |
Repression | In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. |
Regression | Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated. |
Reaction Formation | Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings. |
Projection | Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. |
Rationalization | Psychoanalytic defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions |
Displacement | Psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirection anger toward a safer outlet. |
Sublimation | Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people re-channel their unacceptable impulses into socially acceptable approved activities. |
Denial | Defense mechanism in which people refuse to believe or even to perceive painful truths. |
Collective Unconscious | Carl Jung's concept of a shared. inherited reservoir of memory traces from our specie's history. |
Archetypes | A very typical/original example of a certain person or thing. |
Projective Tests | A personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics. |
Thematic Appreciation Test (TAT) | A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes. |
Rorschach inkblot test | 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. |
Terror Management theory | A theory of death-related anxiety; explores people's emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death. |
Self-Actualization | 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. |
Unconditional positive regard | According to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person. |
Self-Concept | All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "who am I?" |
Trait | A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports. |
Personality Inventory | A questionnaire (true-false) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide-range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits. |
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory | The most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Developed to identify emotional disorders. This test is now used for many other screening purposes. |
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 interactions between people's traits and their social context. |
Reciprocal Determinism | The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment. |
Personal Control | The extent to which people perceive control over their environment rather than feeling helpless. |
External Locus of Control | The perception that chance or outside forces beyond your personal control determine your fate. |
Internal Locus of Control | The perception that you control your own fate. |
Positive Psychology | The scientific study of optimal human functioning; aims to discover and promote strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive. |
Self | Assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. |
Spotlight effect | Overestimating others' noticing and evaluating out appearance, performance, and blunders. |
Self-esteem | One's feelings of high or low self-worth |
Self-serving Bias | A readiness to perceive oneself favorably. |
Individualism | Giving priority to one's own goals over group goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications. |
Collectivism | Giving priority to the goals of one's group and defining one's identity accordingly. |
Learned Helplessness | The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events. |
Conscientiousness | Traits such as being careful, organized, and disciplined. Opposites include being: disorganizzed, careless, and impulsive. |
Agreeableness | Traits such as being soft-hearted, trusting, and helpful. Opposites include being: Ruthless, suspicious, and uncooperative. |
Neurotiscism | Traits such as being calm, secure, self-satisfied. Opposites include being: anxious, insecure, and self-pitying. |
Openness | Traits such as being imaginative, independent and having a preference for variety. Opposites include being: practical, having preference for routine, and being conformist. |
Extroversion | Traits such as being sociable, fun-loving, and affectionate. Opposites include being: retiring, sober, and reserved. |
Big Five | This tests where you are on the five dimensions. |
Inferiority Complex | An unrealistic feeling of general inadequacy caused by actual or supposed lesser in one sphere, sometimes marked by aggressive behavior in compensation |
Anal Expulsive | A personality trait present in people fixated in the anal stage of psychosexual development. |