psych unit 4 p1

Empirically Derived Test

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

MMPI

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests, originally developed to identify emotional disorders.

Psychopathic deviancy

A scale on the MMPI that relates to disregard for social standards.

Psychasthenia

A scale on the MMPI associated with anxious, guilt feelings.

Hypomania

A state characterized by being overactive, excited, and impulsive, and is also a scale on the MMPI.

Social introversion

A tendency to be shy and inhibited in social situations, also a scale on the MMPI.

Projective Test

A personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

The most widely used projective test, consisting of a set of 10 inkblots designed to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.

TAT

Thematic Apperception Test, a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

Dispositional attribution

Attributing the cause of a behavior or outcome to internal factors.

Situational attribution

Assigning the cause of a behavior or outcome to the environment or external conditions.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate the role of dispositional attributes and underestimate the role of the situation when judging the behavior of others.

Rosenthal Effect

The phenomenon in education where teacher expectations of certain children lead those children to perform better.

Normative Social Influence

Influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval.

Informational Social Influence

Influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions about reality.

Social Loafing

The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable.

Deindividuation

Loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.

Group Polarization

The enhancement of a group’s prevailing attitudes through discussion within the group.

Groupthink

A mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives.

Humanistic Perspective

A perspective in psychology that focuses on the study of conscious experience, free will, and human potential.

Self-Actualization

The ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one’s potential.

Unconditional Positive Regard

An attitude of total acceptance toward another person.

Personality Inventory

A questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors, used to assess selected personality traits.

Reciprocal Determinism

The interacting influences between personality and environmental factors.

External Locus of Control

The perception that chance or outside forces beyond one’s personal control determine one’s fate.

Internal Locus of Control

The perception that one controls one’s own fate.

Learned Helplessness

The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.

Positive Psychology

The scientific study of optimal human functioning, aiming to discover and promote conditions that enable individuals and communities to thrive.

Terror-Management Theory

The idea that faith in one’s worldview and the pursuit of self-esteem provide protection against a deeply rooted fear of death.

Psychoanalysis

Freud’s theory of personality that attributes our thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts, and the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious conflicts & motives.

Free Association

In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious mind where the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.

Id

The Freudian component of personality that resides completely at the unconscious level and acts under the pleasure principle, seeking immediate gratification.

Pleasure principle

The driving force of the id that seeks immediate gratification of needs.

Superego

The Freudian component of personality that represents the moralist and idealistic part of the personality, operating on the “ideal principle”.

Ideal principle

The guiding force of the superego, representing internalized morals and striving for perfection.

Ego

The Freudian component of personality that resides in all levels of awareness and operates under the “reality principle,” attempting negotiation between the id and superego.

Reality principle

The guiding force of the ego that seeks to satisfy the id's desires in realistic and socially acceptable ways.

Defense Mechanisms

The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

Repression

The basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

Regression

A defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage.

Reaction Formation

A defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites.

Projection

A defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.

Rationalization

A defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions.

Displacement

A defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person.

Collective unconscious

Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history.

Jungian Archetypes

Universal themes or images in the collective unconscious.

Instinct

Early theories on motivation relied heavily on a “purely biological” explanation for behavior.

Arousal theory

A theory of motivation that suggests people are motivated to maintain an optimal level of alertness and physical and mental activation.

Drive-reduction theory

A theory of motivation that states physiological needs create aroused tension states (drives) that motivate an organism to satisfy the need.

Primary drives

Innate drives that are necessary for survival, such as hunger, thirst, and sex.

Secondary drives

Learned drives that are associated with primary drives.

Homeostasis

The maintenance of a stable internal environment.

Set point

A biologically determined standard around which body weight (or another physiological parameter) is regulated.

Hypothalamus

A brain region involved in regulating basic biological needs such as hunger, thirst, and body temperature.

Hierarchy of Human Needs

Maslow's pyramid of human needs, starting with physiological needs at the base and ascending to self-actualization at the top, suggesting that lower needs must be met before higher needs.

Intrinsic

Factors originating from within ourselves that motivate behavior.

Extrinsic

Factors coming from the outside world that motivate behavior.

Self-determination

The need to feel both competent and in control, an important intrinsic motivator.

Self-efficacy

The belief that we can or cannot attain a particular goal.

Cognitive dissonance

The tension produced by conflicting thoughts or choices, which motivates people to reduce this tension, often by changing their attitude to fit their behavior.

Approach-Approach

A type of motivational conflict where one has to decide between two desirable options.

Avoidance-Avoidance

A type of motivational conflict where people have to choose between two unappealing options.

Approach-Avoidance

A type of motivational conflict where only one choice is presented, but it carries both positive and negative aspects.

Multiple Approach-Avoidance

A type of motivational conflict where many options are available, but each has positives and negatives.