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Unit #10
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 | Freud's largely conscious, "executive" part of personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality; it operates on the "reality principle," satisfying the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure, not pain. |
| Superego | The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations. |
| Psychosexual stages | 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. |
| 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 psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were 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 | A psychoanalytic defense mechanism in 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 redirecting anger to a safer outlet |
| Sublimation | Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people re-channel their unacceptable impulses into socially approved activities |
| Denial | Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people refuse to believe or even to perceive painful realities |
| Collective unconscious | Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history |
| Projective test | A personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics |
| Thematic Apperception 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 inkblocks, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blocks |
| 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 (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 |
| Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) | the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests; originally developed to identify emotional disorders, this test is now used for many other screening purposes |
| empirically derived test | a test (such as the MMPI) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups |
| social-cognitive perspective | views behaviour as influenced by the interaction between persons (and their thinking) and their social context |
| reciprocal determinism | the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors |
| personal control | our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless |
| external locus of control | the perception that chance or outside forces beyond one's personal control determine one's fate |
| internal locus of control | the perception that one controls one's 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 | organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions |
| spotlight effect | overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders |
| self esteem | one's feelings of high or low self-worth |