Psyo 121 - Chapter 12: Personality

Front 1

Personality

Back 1

An individual's characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling.

Front 2

Self-Report

Back 2

A method in which a person provides subjective information about their own thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, typically via questionnaire or interview.

Front 3

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Back 3

A well-researched, clinical questionnaire used to access personality and psychological problems.

Front 4

Projective Test

Back 4

Tests designed to reveal inner aspects of individuals' personalities by analysis of their responses to a standard series of ambiguous stimuli.

Front 5

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Back 5

A projective technique in which respondents' inner thoughts and feelings are believed to be revealed by analysis of their responses to a set of unstructured inkblots.

Front 6

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Back 6

A projective technique in which respondents' underlying motives, concersn, and the way they see the social world are believed to be revealed through analysis of the stories they make up about ambiguous pictures of people.

Front 7

Trait

Back 7

A relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way.

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The Big Five

Back 8

The traits of the five-factor personality model: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (or O.C.E.A.N. for short).

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Psychodynamic Approach

Back 9

An approach that regards personality as formed by needs, strivings, and desires largely operating outside awareness - motives that can produce emotional disorders.

Front 10

Dynamic Unconscious

Back 10

An active system encompassing a lifetime of hidden memories, the person's deepest instincts and desires, and the person's inner struggle to control those forces.

Front 11

Id

Back 11

The part of the mind containing the drives present at birth; it is the source of our bodily needs, wants, desires, and impulses, particularly our sexual and aggressive drives.

Front 12

Superego

Back 12

The mental system that reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly learned as parents exercise their authority.

Front 13

Ego

Back 13

The component of personality, developed through contact with the external world, that enables us to deal with life's practical demands.

Front 14

Defense Mechanisms

Back 14

Unconscious coping mechanisms

Front 15

Repression

Back 15

Removing painful experiences and unacceptable impulses from the conscious mind: "motivated forgetting".

Front 16

Rationalization

Back 16

Supplying a reasonable sounding explanation for unacceptable feelings and behavior to conceal (mostly from oneself) one's underlying motives or feelings.

Front 17

Reaction Formation

Back 17

Unconsciously replacing threatening inner wishes and fantasies with an exaggerated version of their opposite.

Front 18

Projection

Back 18

Attributing one's own threatening feelings, motives, or impulses to another person or group.

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Regression

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Reverting to an immature behavior or earlier stage of development, a time when things felt more secure, to deal with internal conflict and perceived threat.

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Displacement

Back 20

Shifting unacceptable wishes or drives to a neutral or less threatening alternative.

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Identification

Back 21

Dealing with feelings of threat and anxiety by unconsciously taking on characteristics of another person who seems more powerful or better able to cope.

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Sublimation

Back 22

Channeling unacceptable sexual or aggressive drives into socially acceptable and culturally enhancing activities.

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Psychosexual Stages

Back 23

Distinct early life stages through which personality is formed as children experience sexual pleasures from specific body areas and caregivers redirect or interfere with those pleasures.

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Fixation

Back 24

A phenomenon in which a person's pleasure-seeking drives become psychologically stuck, or arrested, at a particular psychosexual stage.

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Oral Stage

Back 25

The first psychosexual stage, in which experience centers on the pleasures and frustrations associated with the mouth, sucking, and being fed.

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Anal Stage

Back 26

The second psychosexual stage, in which experience is dominated by the pleasures and frustrations associated with the anus, retention and expulsion of feces and urine, and toilet training.

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Phallic Stage

Back 27

The third psychosexual stage, in which experience is dominated by the pleasure, conflict, and frustration associated with the phallic-genital region as well as coping with powerful incestuous feelings of love, hate, jealousy, and conflict. (Ex: Oedipus conflict).

Front 28

Oedipus Complex

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A developmental experience in which a child's conflicting feelings toward the opposite-sex parent are (usually) resolved by identifying with the same-sex parent.

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Latency Stage

Back 29

The fourth psychosexual stage, in which the primary focus is on the further development of intellectual, creative, interpersonal, and athletic skills.

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Genital Stage

Back 30

The fifth and final psychosexual stage, the time for the coming together of the mature adult personality with a capacity to love, work and relate to others in mutually satisfying and reciprocal manner.

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Self-Actualizing Tendency

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The human motive toward realizing our inner potential.

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Existential Approach

Back 32

A school of thought that regards personality as governed by an individual's ongoing choices and decisions in the context of the realities of life and death.

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Social-Cognitive Approach

Back 33

An approach that views personality in terms of how the person thinks about the situations encountered in daily life and behaves in response to them.

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Person-Situation Controversy

Back 34

The question of whether behavior is caused more by personality or by situational factors.

Front 35

Personal Constructs

Back 35

Dimensions people use in making sense of their experiences.

Front 36

Locus of Control

Back 36

A person's tendency to perceive the control of rewards as internal to the self or external to the environment.

Front 37

Self-Concept

Back 37

A person's explicit knowledge of his or her own behaviors, traits, and other personal characteristics.

Front 38

Self-Verification

Back 38

The tendency to seek evidence to confirm the self-concept.

Front 39

Self-Esteem

Back 39

The extent to which an individual likes, values, and accepts the self.

Front 40

Self-Serving Bias

Back 40

People's tendency to take credit for their successes but downplay responsibilities for their failures.

Front 41

Narcissism

Back 41

A grandiose view of the self combined with a tendency to seek admiration from an exploit others.