Chapter 7,9,10

central tenets of Gestalt theory are:

(1) human beings seek meaning in their envi- ronments, (2) we organize the sensations we receive from the world around us into meaningful perceptions, and (3) complex stimuli are not reducible to the sum of their parts.

Q-sort.

-One assessment technique that is well suited to a Rogerian perspective -For example, a person might sort self-descriptions of a real self and an ideal self before psychotherapy or other well-being interventions and then again afterwards; one could then evaluate whether the therapy or intervention has led to a greater integration of personality

schema theory

-children progress through a series of cognitive stages as they mature.

Kurt Lewin

-field theory

Rollo May

-focused on anxiety bridges the gap between exis- tential and humanistic approaches to personality. Although he focuses on the anxiety that must accompany any attempt to live life to its fullest, May sees the human journey as a noble and dignifying one. The only way to have no anxiety would be to have no freedom.

Erich Fromm

-love is art -dialectical humanism

optimism and pessimism

-optimistic explanatory style tend to interpret events in their lives with an optimistic perspective, even perceiving neutral events as positive and seeing potential or eventual positive outcomes in negative events. -pessimistic style, on the other hand, tend to focus on the negative potential in a situation. For example, if a stu- dent with an optimistic explanatory style receives an uncharacteristically poor grade on an exam, she might con- sider that to be useful feedback, informing her that she needs to change her study or note-taking techniques.

Harry Stack Sullivan

-personality is not built around the unconscious impulses of the id, nor is it fixed in early childhood. Rather, it constantly changes as a function of relations with others. -believes in the idea of a social self, we actually become "different" people in different social situations!

carl rogers

A key postulate of existential-humanistic approaches is that each person is responsible for his or her own life and maturity. T

david meyers

American paradox

personal construct theory

Because its focus is on people's active endeavors to construe (understand) the world and construct their own versions of reality, this approach is (sensibly) called constructivism,

multiple intelligences

Howard Gardner, a prominent educational psychologist interested in educational implications of individual differences, devised a theory

victor frankl

If people choose to grow and develop, the challenge of the unknown produces anxiety, but this anxiety can lead to triumph and self-fulfillment. -choosing to find meaning in the suffering, and by adopting the responsibility to control the little bit of his life that was left to him. -logotherapy

emotional intelligence.

Individuals have specific emotional abilities to deal with other people

american paradox

On the one hand, we have material abundance, but, on the other hand, we have social recession and psychological depression.

Per- sonal Orientation Inventory, or POI

One scale that attempts to be more rigor- ous in its assessment of self-actualization

attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

People (especially school-aged children) who have atypical attentional processes

PERMA.

Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment.

Role Construct Repertory

Rather than asking people to rate or rank a set of traits or dimensions of personality that the test creator thinks are important, the goal of this instrument is to allow the person's own understanding of personality to emerge through the process of making comparisons.

Jean Piaget

Schema theory

situated social cognition

The fact that social-cognitive processes change with changes in the situation

social intelligence

The idea is fundamentally quite simple: Just as individuals vary in their knowledge and skills relevant to many aspects of their lives (for example, in mathematical ability, in musical aptitude, in reasoning skills, and so on), they also differ in their level of mastery of the particular cluster of knowledge and skills that are relevant to interpersonal situations

"maturity principle."

The idea that most adults move toward a better- functioning, more mature personality as they age has been confirmed in recent research.

stereotype.

The same informational efficiency that provides us with useful expectations and interpretations can lead us to premature judgments (prejudice).

internal locus of control vs. external locus of control

There is either the generalized expectancy that the individual's own actions lead to desired outcomes an internal locus of control; or, there is the belief that things outside of the individual, such as chance or powerful others, determine whether desired outcomes occur—an external locus of control.

rejection sensitivity.

This personality variable captures the extent to which an individual is overly sensitive to cues that he or she is being rejected by another.

thema.

a typical combination of needs and presse

Humanism

is a philosophical movement that emphasizes the personal worth of the individual and the centrality of human values.

schemas

build on the structures (schemas) acquired earlier. For example, we now know that human newborns have an innate preference to listen to human speech (more than to other sounds) and to focus their eyes on human faces (more than on other visual stimuli).

learned optimism

is achieved by training people to think differ- ently about themselves and the situations that arise in their lives, and to develop the healthier responses that characterize people who have an optimistic style

existentialism

is an area of philosophy concerned with the meaning of human existence.

George Kelly's theory

construct theory

Categorization

is omnipresent and occurs automaticall

Self-actualization

is the innate process by which a person tends to grow spiritually and realize his or her potential.

maslows hierarchy of need

deficiency needs physiological needs safety needs Belongingness and love needs esteem needs

Henry Murray

defined personality as the "branch of psychology which principally concerns itself with the study of human lives and the factors which influence their course, [and] which investigates individual differences" -personological system.

Systems

dynamic influences with feedback

field dependence vs field independence

field dependence -People who are highly field dependent are very influenced in their problem solving by aspects of the context (or field) in which the problem occurs that are salient (highly noticeable) but not directly relevant to the solution. - The field-dependent person, on the other hand, has a greater sensitivity to the context of a problem and tends to be more holistic and intuitive in problem solving. Field-dependent people also show greater sensitivity to their social and interpersonal con- texts. field independent -are not as influenced by contextual factors. -is more analytical and allows for more complex levels of restructuring in prob- lem solving. These individuals are more influenced in their behavior by internalized aspects of the problem- solving situation.

defensive pessimism

in which a person reduces anxiety and actually improves performance in a risky situation by anticipating a poorer outcome.

Martin Seligman

learned helplessness and learned optimism

julian's Rotters

locus of control

cognitive styles

of dealing with their everyday tasks of perception, prob- lem solving, and decision making

gestalt

pattern or configuration.

confirmation bias.

people are much more likely to notice information that supports their expectations than information that is contradictory to their expectations.

observational learning or vicarious learning

people can learn simply by watching others perform a behavior—learning without performing the behavior themselves and without being directly rewarded or punished for the behavior.

Explanatory style

refers to a set of cognitive personality var- iables that capture a person's habitual means of interpret- ing events in her or his life.

illusion of individuality.

single, fixed personality

albert bandwurm

social cognitive theory

emotion knowledge

the ability to recognize and interpret emotions in the self and others.

social cognition

the categorization and interpretation processes involved when a person interacts with another—

cognitive complexity

the extent to which a person comprehends, utilizes, and is comfortable with a greater number of distinctions or separate elements among which an entity or event is analyzed, and the extent to which the per- son can integrate these elements by drawing connections or relationships among them.

hedonic adaptation

the idea that individuals become accustomed to an emotional stimulus, and the feelings gradually fade over time

psychoanalytic theory

the lower, biologically based drives are shared with most animals. But in a depar- ture from psychoanalytic theory, the higher, uniquely human needs are seen as also biologically based but trans- cendent.

environmental press

the push of the situation.

Rogerian therapy,

the therapist is empathic, supportive, and nondirective.

learned helplessness

to describe a situation in which repeated exposure to unavoidable punishment leads an organism to accept later punishment even when it is avoidable.

dialectical humanism

tries to reconcile both the bio- logically driven and the societally pressured sides of human beings with the belief that people can rise above, or transcend, these forces and become spontaneous, creative, and loving.

Gestalt psychology

was an intellectual movement that became very influential in Germany in the 1920s, and it was brought to America in the 1930s as many of its fore- most thinkers fled fascism.

life space

—all the internal and external forces that act on an individual—and the structural relationships between the person and the environment. For example, a person's family life might be one region of the life space and religion another. For some people, the spaces are cleanly and clearly divided, with boundaries that keep issues and emotions from each region fully independent.

cognitive intervention

—teaching people to change their thought processes can affect subsequent behavior.

learning style

—the characteristic way in which an individual approaches a task or skill to be learned

teleology

—the idea that there is a grand design or purpose to one's life

logotherapy

—the search for the meaning of existence.

self system

—the set of cognitive processes by which a person perceives, evaluates, and regulates his or her own behavior so that it is appropriate to the environ- ment and effective in achieving the individual's goals