Unit 10: Personality

Personality

A person's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. e.g- Type A or B personality, determines whether you are more competitive, self-critical, hostile, etc. or more relaxed, non-competitive, etc.

Projective Test

A personality test, that asks one to describe an ambiguous stimulus, designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics. e.g- A Rorschach or TAT test.

Social-Cognitive Perspective

A perspective that views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people's traits and their social context. e.g- Much as nature and nurture always work together, so do individuals and their situations.

TAT

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

Sublimation

A psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people transform their unacceptable impulses into socially approved and valued activities or motivations.

Displacement

A psychoanalytic defense mechanism that diverts sexual or aggressive impulses toward an object or person that is psychologically more acceptable than the one that aroused the feelings. e.g- If we are angered we are more likely to take it out on a less threatening person or object such as a dog or a child rather than someone like a parent or a boss.

Myers-Briggs Indicator

A questionnaire asking questions that are labeled under the broad categories, it was designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions.

Personality Inventory

A questionnaire covering a wide range of feelings and behaviors, that people respond to in order to assess several personality traits at once.

Eysenck Personality Questionnaire

A questionnaire that studied extraversion and introversion, as well as emotional stability and instability. It then showed that extraversion and emotionality factors inevitably emerged as basic personality dimensions; that these factors are genetically influenced.

Self-Serving Bias

A readiness to perceive oneself favorably.

Empirically Derived Test

A test developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups.

Terror-Management Theory

A theory of death-related anxiety that shows that thinking about one's morality can provoke terror management defenses; explores people's emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death. e.g- Death anxiety and being reminded of one's death can increase prejudice, which is contempt for others and esteem for oneself.

Manifest v. Latent Content

Manifest content according to Freud is the remembered story line of a dream, while the Latent content is the underlying meaning of the dream. e.g- Someone may dream of a needle and thread, while the manifest content would be sewing, and the latent content would have a underlying sexual meaning of the needle and thread representing sex organs.

The BFI: CANOE (or OCEAN)

The Big Five Inventory. CANOE or CANOE being acronyms for the big five factors or personality traits which are as follows: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Personal Control

The extent to which people perceive ourselves as controlling, or as controlled by their environment and than feeling helpless.

Reciprocal Determinism

The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment. Because Bandura believed that behavior, internal personal factors, and environmental influences all operate as interlocking determinants of each other. e.g- Children's TV-viewing habits may be the past behavior, which would influence their viewing preferences, which would then be the internal factor, in which would influence how television affects their current behavior, which would be the environmental factor. The influences are mutual.

External Locus of Control

The perception that chance or outside forces beyond your personal control and/or determine your fate.

Internal Locus of Control

The perception that you control your own fate and destiny.

Identification

The process by which, according to Freud, children's superegos gain strength as they incorporate their parents' values. e.g- If a child grows up with parents that are honest, they may grow up to value honesty and realize the importance of honesty.

Positive Psychology

The psychology concerned with optimal human functioning; aims to study not only weakness and damage but also promote strength and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.

Psychosexual Stages

The stages that children pass through during which the id's pleasure seeking energies focus on erogenous zones. These stages are Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, and Genital. e.g- In the oral stage, libido is focused on actions associated with the mouth. An example of a fixation in this stage is an eating disorder resulting from a problem in the oral stage.

False-Consensus Effect

The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors.

Reaction Formation

When the ego unconsciously makes unacceptable impulses look like their opposites. e.g- Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings.

Collective Unconscious

A concept by Carl Jung that consists of a common reservoir of images derived from our species' universal experiences. e.g- In most cultures a mother is a symbol of nurturance.

Denial

A defense mechanism by which people refuse to believe or even to perceive painful realities. e.g- If someone dies, a close friend or relative may deny it for a certain amount of time before they can accept it.

Rationalization

A defense mechanism that causes us to unconsciously generate self-justifying explanations to hide from ourselves the real, and/or more threatening reasons for our actions.

Freeassociation

A method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing. Free --> Not restrained or under control. Freeassociation, talking without being restrained to what is morally accepted.

Fixation

According to Freud, there is a lingering focus of energies on a strong, unresolved conflict in an earlier psychosexual stages that can lock, or fixate the person's pleasure-seeking energies in that stage. e.g- Someone who was not properly satisfied in the oral stage of development be over-dependent on things like smoking, drinking, and/or eating.

Self-Concept

All the thoughts and feelings we have in response to the question, "Who am I?"

Unconditional Positive Regard

An attitude of grace, an attitude that values us even knowing our failings; a profound relief to drop our pretenses, confess our worst feelings, and discover that we are still accepted. Carl Rogers believed this would help clients develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Albert Bandura

Bandura viewed the personal-environmental interaction as reciprocal determinism, that people and their environments operate as interlocking determinants of each other.

Client-Centered Perspective

Carl Rogers developed this, where the therapist listens to a persons conscious self-perceptions without judging, interpreting, or directing the client towards certain insights.

Julian Rotter

Developed the external and internal locus of control. Studied people who differ on their perceptions of control. Found that "internals" achieve more in school and work, act more independently, enjoy better health, and feel less depressed than do "externals" Moreover, they are better at delaying gratification and coping with various stressors, including marital problems.

Erogeneous Zones

Distinct pleasure-sensitive areas of the body that are focused on in the psychosexual stages of development. e.g- Aside from genitals, other examples of erogeneous zones may be eyelids, eyebrows, temples, shoulders, hands, etc.

Oedipus Complex

Freud's belief of a boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father; occurs during the phallic stage. e.g- Named from the story of Oedipus, who was given a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother. This goes along with the Oedipus complex because of the feeling of passion towards his mother and hatred towards his father.

Psychoanalysis

Freud's theory of personality and associated treatment technique that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. He believed the therapists interpretations of the patients free associations, dreams, etc. would release previously repressed feelings allowing for self-insight. Analysis--> Examination. (Examination of psychological concepts)

Collectivism

Giving priority to goals of one's group and defining one's identity accordingly. e.g- Someone's extended family or work group.

Individualism

Giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications.

Rorschach Inkblot

Hermann Rorschach designed a set of 10 inkblots, that seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.

Defense Mechanisms

In psychoanalytic theory, tactics or protective methods that reduce or redirect anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. e.g- Denial is a common defense mechanism, used as a way to reduce anxiety.

Repression

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. e.g- If someone was abused in early life they may repress those memories but later have a hard time forming trusting relationships.

Projection

In the psychoanalytic theory, a defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. e.g- If you have a strong dislike for someone, you might instead start to believe that he or she does not like you.

Self-Actualization

One of the ultimate psychological needs, the process or motivation to fulfill one's potential- according to Maslow.

Self-Esteem

One's feelings of high or low self-worth. e.g- Someone with high self-esteem feel good about themselves, and may say things like "I am fun to be with" Someone with lower self-steem may by shy, anxious, lonely, and less happy in general.

Spotlight Effect

Overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders. e.g- At Cornell University, students had certain T-shirts that with a feeling of unconsciousness, they guessed more people would notice it than did in reality.

MMPI

Personality test developed to identify emotional disorders, and can now be used for other screening purposes. Most widely researched and clinically used personality test.

Regression

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage of development, where some psychic energy remains fixated. e.g- If someone is fixated at an earlier developmental stage, they may cry or sulk upon hearing unpleasant news that reminds them of the stage in which they are fixated.