Personality Psychology Final Review

A comprehensive set of vocabulary flashcards covering the core concepts of personality psychology, ranging from historical theories and the Big Five to cultural influences, biological foundations, and assessment methods.

Personality

A term that describes an individual's usual pattern of behaviour, feelings, and thoughts across time and situations.

Consistency

A core requirement of personality stating that a reaction or trait must be fairly stable to be considered part of one's personality.

Individual Differences

The measurement of how people differ from one another, which is a fundamental aspect of personality study.

Plato's Chariot Metaphor

An early psychological framework where the chariot driver represents reason and is tasked with managing two horses: one driven by base appetites (passion) and another by higher aspirations.

The Humours

An ancient personality theory by Hippocrates and Galen suggesting that personality is based on bodily fluids such as Blood, Black Bile, Yellow Bile, and Phlegm.

Mental Tests

Quantitative assessments proposed by James Cattell in the $1890s$ to turn personality into a measurable science.

Personal Data Sheet

The first formal personality test, created by Woodworth in $1917$, used to measure resilience in the military.

Lexical Hypothesis

The idea that descriptive units of psychological personality are found in language, originally researched by Sir Francis Galton using a thesaurus.

Psychodynamics

A psychological focus on the whole person, internal impulses, fears, and the unconscious, associated with figures like Freud, Jung, and Murray.

Hub Field

The concept that personality psychology is central to, and connects with, many other branches of psychology.

Extroversion

A primary personality trait characterizing individuals as outgoing and assertive.

Introversion

A primary personality trait characterizing individuals as reserved.

Stanley Milgram's Obedience Study

A famous study finding that most people would obey authority to the point of administering dangerous electric shocks, highlighting the power of the situation.

Walter Mischel's Critique (1968)

An argument stating that personality traits are too weak to reliably predict specific behaviours.

The Person-Situation Debate

The conflict regarding whether stable internal traits or external situations determine human behaviour.

Strong Situations

Events so powerful that personality differences are minimized and almost everyone reacts the same way.

Effect Size

The finding that personality and situations predict behaviour roughly equally.

Aggregation

The principle that personality is a better predictor of average behaviour over a long period than behaviour in an isolated moment.

Lewin's Grand Truism

A framework represented by the formula $B = f(P, E)$, stating that behaviour is a function of the Person and the Environment.

Psychological Environment

The environment as it is perceived by the individual, which Lewin argued primarily consists of social aspects.

Personality Trait (Allport)

A neuropsychic system defined by Allport that allows a person to perceive different stimuli as functionally equivalent and guides consistent forms of adaptive behaviour.

Biophysical View

Allport's perspective that traits are real, physical entities represented in the nervous system.

Power of the Situation

The principle that situations exert a powerful force over individual actions, regardless of personality.

Automaticity

A mechanism where mental processes triggered by environmental features operate outside of conscious awareness.

Doctrine of Interactionism

A view that denies the primacy of either traits or situations, suggesting they are multiplicative and interdependent ($B = f(P \times E)$).

Statistical Interactionism (ANOVA)

A model where the effect of a personality variable depends on the specific situation, and the effect of the situation depends on the person.

SR Inventory

A technique used to measure how specific situations elicit specific responses to estimate variance accounted for by persons, situations, and interactions.

Personality Coefficient

A value ($r = .30$) used by Mischel to describe the typical correlation between personality test scores and actual behaviour.

Reciprocal Determinism

Bandura's doctrine stating that the person, environment, and behaviour exist in an interlocking relationship with bidirectional causality.

Evocation

The process by which a person's mere presence or physical appearance unintentionally evokes behaviour from others, changing the situation.

Selection

The process by which individuals actively choose to enter certain environments over others based on their preferences and personalities.

Expectancy Confirmation

A form of manipulation where a perceiver's expectations cause them to behave in ways that elicit confirming behaviour from a target.

Thomas Theorem

The principle that if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

Personal Construct Theory

George Kelly's theory that personality is a system of personal constructs used to understand and anticipate events.

Social Learning Theory (Rotter)

A theory combining drive reduction with cognitive learning, focusing on expectations regarding outcomes and the values placed on them.

The Big Five

A five-factor system used to explain individual variation consisting of Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Openness, and Agreeableness.

Sex

Biological categories based on chromosomes and genitalia assigned at birth.

Gender

Socially constructed roles, behaviours, and identities.

Social Role Theory

The theory that sex differences arise because society assigns different roles to men and women based on physical attributes.

The WEIRD Bias

A limitation in psychological research caused by reliance on participants who are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.

Individualism

A cultural system favoring the needs of the self over the group, common in Canada, the U.S., and Western Europe.

Collectivism

A cultural system placing the needs of others and society first, emphasizing mutual interdependence.

Self-Report Questionnaires

The most common method of personality assessment where individuals rate themselves using adjectives or statements, often on Likert Scales.

Acquiescence Response Set

The tendency for some people to agree with every item in a questionnaire regardless of content.

Socially Desirable Responding

The tendency for participants to exaggerate good qualities and downplay bad ones to look better.

Internal Reliability

A measure (typically reported using Cronbach's alpha above $.70$) that ensures all questions in a scale measure the same thing.

Triangulation

The gold standard of research which involves using multiple different sources and methods to study a concept.

Monozygotic Twins

Identical twins who share $100\%$ of their DNA, often used in studies to distinguish the effects of genetics from environment.

Epigenetics

The study of gene expression changes caused by the environment, where the change is in the expression rather than the actual DNA sequence.

Larks

Morning people who tend to be higher in conscientiousness and agreeableness.

Owls

Evening people who tend to be higher in extraversion and openness to experience.

Self-Monitoring

The extent to which individuals adapt their behaviour to fit a situation; high monitors adapt, while low monitors act consistently.

Sociometer Theory

The theory that self-esteem acts as a gauge for social belonging and inclusion.

Defense Mechanisms

Psychological strategies like Denial, Projection, and Sublimation used to keep troubling impulses out of conscious awareness.

Biopsychosocial Model

A framework arguing that biological, psychological, and social factors must be combined to explain health and disease.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

Hans Selye's three-phase response to stress: Alarm, Resistance, and Exhaustion.

Operant Conditioning

A learning mechanism involving positive and negative reinforcement and punishment to increase or decrease behaviours.

The Maturity Principle

The trend from young adulthood to age $65$ where individuals generally experience an increase in conscientiousness and agreeableness and a decrease in neuroticism.