Clinical

State

A temporary element of personality.

Trait

A consistent element of personality.

Free association

A technique where someone speaks freely based on a given prompt to determine aspects of their personality.

Self-concept

An individual's perception of themselves.

Individualism

Trusting and acting on feelings of being true to oneself.

Person-situation controversy

The debate on whether understanding someone is more influenced by the person or the situation they are in.

Short term

The situation matters more in understanding someone.

Long term

The person matters more in understanding someone.

Narcissism

An inflated sense of importance and a tendency to manipulate or exploit others.

Pseudo Psychology

False or unsupported psychological theories or practices.

Physiognomy

The belief that physical shape reveals aspects of personality.

Phrenology

The belief that feeling someone's skull can reveal aspects of their personality.

Four humors

The belief that different proportions of bodily fluids determine different personalities.

Freud's ideas

The theories and concepts proposed by Sigmund Freud.

Conscious experience

What an individual is aware of.

Unconscious

Buried thoughts and desires that influence behavior.

Preconscious

Thoughts and memories that are not currently in awareness but can be brought into consciousness.

Id

The part of the personality that is driven by immediate desires and wants.

Ego

The part of the personality that interacts with the world and balances the desires of the id and superego.

Superego

The part of the personality that represents moral values and ideals.

Freud's Psychosexual

The stages of development that focus on resolving conflicts related to different areas of pleasure.

Oral

The stage focused on eating and soothing oneself.

Anal

The stage focused on potty training.

Phallic

The stage where a child becomes aware of their genitals and differences between sexes.

Oedipal complex

A desire for a child to kill their father and have a sexual relationship with their mother.

Electra complex

A desire for a female child to kill their mother and have a sexual relationship with their father.

Latency

The stage focused on creating same-sex peer relationships.

Genital

The stage focused on resolving sexual desires through romantic relationships.

Freud's defense mechanisms

Strategies used by the ego to protect itself from anxiety.

Regression

Retreating to an earlier stage of development to protect the ego.

Denial

Refusing to accept a threat to the ego or pretending it doesn't exist.

Projection

Disguising threatening impulses by attributing them to someone else.

Displacement

Redirecting negative feelings onto an external source.

Reaction formation

Swinging to the opposite end of the spectrum to avoid acknowledging inappropriate feelings.

Rationalization

Coming up with socially acceptable excuses for behavior.

Development

The process of growth and change over time.

Wrong about stuck in stages

Freud's belief that individuals can become stuck in specific stages of development.

Dream

A way for the brain to process thoughts, experiences, and exposures during sleep.

Repression

Burying a traumatic event deep in the unconscious.

Falsifiability

Freud's theory is difficult to test scientifically due to the nature of the unconscious.

Trajectory

Freud's theories are designed to explain past behavior rather than predict future behavior.

Sexist

Freud held beliefs that women were immoral and men were the only ones capable of morality.

Jung analytic theory

The theories proposed by Carl Jung.

Personal unconscious

Material or information that is not in conscious awareness.

Collective unconscious

Ancestral conscious memories passed down through lineage.

Anima/animus

Emotionally charged patterns of thought related to gender.

Shadow

Represents concepts of sex, death, and destruction, but different from Freud's interpretation.

Persona

How an individual presents themselves to the world.

Big Five

A model of personality traits.

Openness

Willingness to try new things.

Conscientiousness

Adherence to rules and social norms.

Extroversion

Ability to interact with others for extended periods.

Agreeableness

Ability to get along with others in social situations.

Neuroticism

Nervousness and anxiety.

Stability

Personality remains relatively stable as individuals age.

Brain structure

Higher extraversion is associated with lower levels of brain arousal.

Birth order

No correlation between birth order and personality traits.

Culture

Traits present in every culture, but their strength varies.

Prediction

High conscientiousness and agreeableness are

Dopamine

A neurotransmitter that, when released excessively, can be treated using an antagonist.

Personality Disorders

Disorders characterized by maladaptive patterns of behavior and thinking related to one's personality.

Clusters

Three different groups in which personality disorders are categorized.

Odd-Eccentric

A cluster of personality disorders characterized by feeling different from others and difficulty in relating to them.

Schizoid

A personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in forming relationships and a lack of emotional response.

Dramatic Emotional/Erratic

A cluster of personality disorders characterized by impulsive and attention-seeking behaviors.

Borderline

A personality disorder characterized by difficulty in regulating emotions, maintaining relationships, and having an inconsistent self-image (more common in women).

Antisocial

A personality disorder more commonly diagnosed in men, characterized by a disregard for social norms and expectations and a quick temper.

Anxious-Fearful

A cluster of personality disorders characterized by high levels of anxiety and restrictive behaviors.

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder

A personality disorder characterized by rigid patterns and rituals, with an absence of irrational thoughts about these behaviors.

Somatic Disorders

Disorders related to bodily awareness and illness.

Illness Anxiety Disorder

A disorder characterized by a preoccupation with illness symptoms and constant checking for those symptoms.

Factitious Disorder

A disorder in which an individual fakes being sick to gain attention.

Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another

A disorder in which an individual makes someone else sick to gain attention in the role of a caregiver.

Dissociative Disorders

Disorders marked by extreme issues with memory or identity.

DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder)

A disorder in which a person claims to have multiple personalities living within themselves.

Dissociative Amnesia

A disorder in which a person forgets important details about a specific event, often a traumatic one.

Dissociative Fugue

A disorder in which a person becomes confused about their identity and travels to a new place without memory of how they got there.

Roger’s person-centered theory

3 things that are critical for positive personal growth

Acceptance

 accept the person as a person of value and worth

Genuiness

must respond openly, honestly, and spontaneously to the person

Empathy

share and mirror another's thoughts in order to create a place for potential change

Eyesenicks Dimensional Theory

rather than have 5 unique individual traits we can plot neuroticism and intro/extroversion on a matrix

Allports Trait Types

 identified 4500 words in the English language that could be identified as personality traits (18000 words now)

Cardinal Traits

rules and behaviors on how you approach situations that you care about; likely to be shown in any given situation

Central Traits

traits found in virtually every person; central to being a human

Secondary Traits

 traits that are very context specific; only likely to be seen in specific contexts

Biological

genetics and gene expression are important for these traits; personality is encoded in your genes

Evolutionary

traits are important for survival and reproducing

Genes

 personality is in genes, but environmental factors can affect personalities (identical twins have different personalities)

Projective Tests

where you give someone a stimuli and you ask them to build a story related to that stimuli (commonly used in kids)

Thematic apperception test (TAT)

given a picture and asked to create a story form the picture 

Human Figure Drawings

have someone draw a person and look at what they did or didn’t include

Personality Inventories

 very long questionnaires that cover a large number of traits and situations

Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (MMPI)

developed to examine and help identify emotional disorders (original had 10 different scales, now there are 13) 

Myers Briggs

based on the ancestral archetype; failed the validity, reliability test

Social media

perceptions of you that you share with others; can be used to understand personality

Youyou, Kosinski & Stillwell

using likes and friends on Facebook is more predictive of the big 5 than most of the people close to them

Comorbidity

2 psychological disorders at the same time (depression & anxiety generally go hand in hand)