Chapter 2- Personality, Self-Esteem, and Emotions

regression

returning to immature behaviors to express emotions

rationalization

making excuses for actions or feelings

What did Erickson say about how your personality develops throughout your life?

According to Erick Erickson, personality develops throughout life as people meet a series of challenges.

What did Maslow claim must happen before a person can achieve self-actualization?

According to Maslow, before people can achieve self-actualization, their basic needs must be met. These needs are physical needs, the need to feel safe, and the need to belong, and the need for esteem.

How do healthful and harmful coping strategies differ?

Coping strategies are helpful when they improve a situation or allow a person to handle a situation in a better way. Whereas coping strategies are harmful when they make a situation worse or a person is less able to handle a situation.

Explain the effects that high and low self-esteem may have on health.

Many psychologists think that high self-esteem has a positive effect on health, while low self-esteem has a negative effect on health.

What five central traits can be used to define personality?

Many researchers use five central traits to describe how people behave, relate to others, and react to change. These traits are extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experiences.

In general, what happens to self-esteem during adolescence? Explain why this change occurs.

On average, self-esteem drops in early adolescence. It increases gradually during adulthood and decreases again toward the end of life. This change occurs because teens are critical of their appearance, abilities, interests, and shortcomings, while some are overly self-conscious and judge themselves too harshly.

What is the difference between primary emotions and learned emotions?

Primary emotions are emotions that every culture and everyone shares. Happiness, sadness, anger, and fear are examples of primary emotions. Whereas learned emotions are what someone has to learn to have, you are not born with them. Love, guilt, and shame are examples of learned emotions.

Explain the importance of being able to recognize your emotions?

Recognizing your emotions is the important first step toward dealing with them in healthful ways.

self-esteem

how much you respect yourself and like yourself

compensation

making up for weaknesses in one area by excelling in another area

denial

refusing to recognize an emotion or problem

learned emotions

social emotions; emotions not expressed in the same way by all people

psychologist

someone who studies how people think, feel, and behave

self-actualization

the process by which people achieve their full potential

What two general factors combine to influence your personality?

Personality can be influenced by a combination of heredity and environment.

grief

a period of deep sorrow when you're sad of the death of a loved one

hierarchy of needs

an arrangement of human needs in a pyramid with physical needs at the base and self-actualization at the top

reaction formation

behaving in a way opposite to the way you feel

defense mechanisms

copying strategies that help you to protect yourself from difficult feelings

modeling

copying the behavior of others

What are some common defense mechanisms?

denial, compensation, rationalization, reaction formation, projection, and regression

primary emotions

emotions that are expressed by people in all cultures

peer group

friends who are about the same age and share similar interests

projection

putting your own faults onto another person

Why is it important to recognize your emotions? What are 3 steps you can take to help you recognize your emotions?

Recognizing your emotions is important because it is the first step toward dealing with them in healthy ways. Three steps you can take to help you recognize your emotions is to name the emotion you're feeling, determine what triggered the emotion, and think back to past times that you felt the same way.

Identify three things you should focus on if you want to improve your self-esteem.

You can improve your self-esteem if you focus on three things: don't base your self-esteem solely on other people's opinions of you, focus on your accomplishments, your talents, and your contributions to your family and community.

personality

consists of the behaviors, attitudes, feelings, and aways of thinking that make you an individual

When do defense mechanisms stop being helpful.

Defense mechanisms stop being helpful when they are overused, you can't express your true feelings, and you can't develop skills that are important for your mental and emotional health.

Identify and decide 2 steps you can take to boost your self-esteem.

Do not focus too much on appearance, make sure you are well groomed. However, you don't need to have the latest trendy clothes. Do not be too hard on yourself, when you make a mistake or experience a defeat try to figure out what went wrong, learn something positive from that experience and do better next time.

emotion

a reaction to a situation that involves your mind, body, and behavior

identity

a sense of self

copying strategy

a way of dealing with an uncomfortable or unbearable feeling or situation