PSYC 1F90 Textbook: Lecture 4 & 5

Personality

A person's unique and relatively stable patterns of thinking, emotion, and behavior.

Temperament

General pattern of attention, arousal, and mood that is evident from birth.

Self-Concept

The perception of one’s own personality traits.

Self-Esteem

Regarding oneself as a worthwhile person; a positive evaluation of oneself.

Eastern Cultures

Based on personal success and outstanding performance—higher self-esteem lies in self-enhancement and belonging to a social group.

Western Cultures

Correcting faults to help those in the group.

Psychoanalytic Theory

Freudian theory of personality that emphasizes unconscious forces and conflicts.

Id

Containing primitive drives present at birth.

Ego

The decision-making part of personality that operates on the reality principle.

Superego

The part of personality that represents moral conscience.

Unconscious

Contents of the mind that are beyond awareness, especially impulses and desires.

Preconscious

An area of the mind containing information that can be voluntarily brought to awareness.

Conscious

The region of the mind that includes all mental contents that a person is aware of at any given moment.

Psychosexual Stage

Stages in Freud's theory (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital).

Erogenous Zone

An area of the body that produces a pleasurable sensation.

Fixation

A lasting conflict developed as a result of frustration or overindulgence.

Alfred Adler

Disagreed with Freud on unconscious drive and sexuality, emphasized social urges over biological.

Karen Horney

Resisted mechanistic, biological, and instinctive ideas.

Carl Jung

Introduced the concept of persona.

Behavioral Personality Theories

Any model of personality that emphasizes learning and observable behavior.

Habit

A deeply ingrained, learned pattern of behavior.

Drive

Moves a person to action (e.g., hunger, pain, lust).

Cue

Signals from the environment.

Response

Signals guide responses.

Reward

Responses bring a reward.

Social Learning Theory

A theory that combines learning principles with cognitive processes, socialization, and modeling to explain behavior, including personality.

Psychological Situation

A situation that is perceived and interpreted by an individual, not as it exists objectively.

Expectancy

Anticipation about the effect that a response will have, especially regarding reinforcement.

Reinforcement Value

The subjective value that a person attaches to a particular activity or reinforcer.

Humanism

An approach that focuses on human experience, problems, potentials, and ideals.

Free Will

The ability to freely make choices that are not controlled by genetics, learning, or unconscious forces.