Chapter 10: Personality

archetypes

according to Jung, it is a universal symbolic representations of particular kinds of people, objects, ideas, or experiences.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A projective test requiring subject to make up stories that explain ambiguous pictures. Consists of ambiguous pictures, for which respondents are instructed to generate a story that describes what the characters are doing, thinking, what led up to each event, and how each situation will end

Rorschach inkblot technique

A projective test requiring subjects to describe what they see in a series of ten inkblots. Looking up at the sky and describing what types of shapes the clouds create

thematic apperception test

A test consisting of a series of pictures about which a person is asked to write a story.

Five-factor theory

A trait perspective suggesting that personality is composed of five fundamental personality dimensions; openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Agreeableness and conscientiousness

MMPI-2

A widely used personality assessment instrument that gives scores on ten important clinical traits. Also called Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. "Sometimes I put off doing things I know I ought to do"

Oedipus complex

According to Freud, a largely unconscious process whereby boys displace an erotic attraction toward their mother to females of their own age and, at the same time, identify with their fathers. Story of Oedipus who had a sexual relationship with his mother

Repression

An unconscious process that excludes unacceptable thoughts and feelings from awareness and memory. Behavior of a student who suspects she failed an important test and "forgets" to attend class the day the graded tests are returned

collective unconscious

Carl Jung's theory that states, an inherited set of ideas, feelings, images, & symbols that are shared w/all humans bec. of our common ancestral past.

social cognitive theory

Emphasizes that the influence of a person's cognition, thoughts, feelings, expectations, & values- as well as observation of others' behavior, in determining personality.

Unconscious

In Freudian theory, this is the psychic domain of which the individual is not aware but that is the storehouse of repressed impulses, drives, and conflicts unavailable to consciousness. Dreaming

rationalization

People provide self-justifying explanations in place of the actual, but threatening, reason for their behavior. (Ex. A student who parties the night before the big test rationalizes that the test is not very important.)

denial

People refuse to accept of acknowledge an anxiety-producing piece of information. (Ex. A student refuses to believe that he has flunked a course.)

Projective tests

Personality assessment instruments such as the Rorschach and TAT, which are based on Freud's ego defense mechanism of projection. When people analyze and try to make sense of their dreams [meaning]

Psychosexual stages

Successive, instinctive patterns of associating pleasure with stimulation of specific bodily areas at different times of life. oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital stage.

Traits

Stable personality characteristics that are presumed to exist within the individual and guide his/her thoughts and actions under various conditions. Words that describe a person- brave, confident, sweet

Ego

The conscious, rational part of the personality, charged with keeping peace between the superego and the id. When you find out that you have given too much change at the grocery store , the ego will try to find a compromise, which might include returning the money and buying ice cream with your own money

displacement

The expression of an unwanted feeling or thought is redirected from a more threatening powerful person to a weaker one. (Ex. A brother yells at his younger sister after a teacher gives him a bad grade.)

Superego

The mind's storehouse of values, including moral attitudes learned from parents and from society; roughly the same as the common notion of the conscience. When a miniature devil and angel appears on a persons shoulder when they are trying to make a decision on what to do

Id

The primitive, unconscious portion of the personality that houses the most basic drives and stores repressed memories. Like a child, the id always acts on impulse and pushes for immediate gratification[sexual,physical, emotional]

Reciprocal determinism

The process in which cognitions, behavior and the environment mutually influence each other. Interaction of our behavior, our environment, and our cognitions

reaction formation

Unconscious impulses are expressed as their opposite in consciousness. (Ex. A mother who unconsciously resents her child acts in an overly loving way toward the child.)