Unit 1: Personality Theories, Defense Mechanisms, and Traits

Personality

An individual's characteristic, enduring pattern of thinking, feeling & acting across situations.

Psychodynamic Theories

Theories that view personality as shaped by the interplay of conscious & unconscious drives, conflicts, and childhood experiences.

Psychoanalytic Theory

Freud's theory that personality arises from unconscious conflicts between the id, ego & superego.

Psychoanalysis

Freud's therapeutic technique that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts.

Unconscious

According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings & memories outside of awareness.

Id

Unconscious reservoir of psychic energy seeking immediate pleasure (the pleasure principle).

Ego

The largely conscious "executive" that mediates between the id and reality (the reality principle).

Superego

Internalized ideals & moral standards that form our conscience.

Identification

The process by which a person incorporates another's values and standards into their own developing sense of right and wrong.

Fixation

A lingering focus of a person's energies at an earlier developmental stage, where a conflict was never fully resolved.

Defense Mechanisms

The ego's unconscious methods for reducing anxiety by distorting reality.

Neo-Freudian Theorists

Adler, Horney & Jung kept Freud's idea of unconscious motivation but stressed social & cultural influence.

Collective Unconscious

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

Inferiority Complex

Adler's term for feelings of inadequacy that can motivate people to overcompensate.

Repression

Banishing anxiety-arousing thoughts & feelings from consciousness.

Regression

Reverting to behavior from an earlier stage of development under stress.

Projection

Attributing your own threatening feelings or impulses to others.

Rationalization

Self-justifying explanations instead of the real, more threatening reasons for actions.

Displacement

Redirecting impulses toward a safer substitute target.

Reaction Formation

Switching an unacceptable impulse into its opposite.

Sublimation

Transforming unacceptable impulses into socially valued activities.

Humanistic Psychology

A movement stressing human growth potential, subjective experience & the drive toward self-actualization.

Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's pyramid of human needs, from basic physiological needs up through safety, belonging, esteem, to self-actualization at the top.

Self-Actualization

Maslow's need to fulfill one's own unique potential — the peak of his original hierarchy.

Self-Transcendence

Maslow's later addition above self-actualization — the need to find meaning, purpose & identity beyond the self.

Unconditional Positive Regard

Rogers' term for accepting & valuing a person without conditions or judgment.

Self-Concept

All our thoughts & feelings about ourselves, in answer to "Who am I?"

Trait

A characteristic, stable disposition to feel & act in certain ways.

Factor

A cluster of behaviors that tend to occur together, identified through the statistical technique of factor analysis.

Big Five Factors

The five broad trait dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism (OCEAN).

Openness

Imagination, curiosity & a preference for variety and novelty.

Conscientiousness

Being organized, careful, disciplined & goal-directed.

Extraversion

Sociability, assertiveness & positive emotional expressiveness.

Agreeableness

Being good-natured, cooperative & trusting.

Neuroticism

Emotional instability, anxiety & moodiness.

Social-Cognitive Perspective

Views behavior as shaped by the interaction of traits, learning & social context (Bandura).

Self-Efficacy

One's belief in their ability to succeed at a specific task.

Reciprocal Determinism

Environment, personal/cognitive factors & behavior all influence one another.

Locus of Control

The extent to which people see outcomes as internally vs. externally controlled.

Self-Report

A method of gathering information by having people report on their own thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, often through inventories or surveys.

Projective Test

Presents ambiguous stimuli & asks for interpretations, believed to reveal unconscious motives.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

A projective test using inkblots; people describe what they see.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A projective test where people tell stories about ambiguous scenes, revealing inner feelings.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

The most widely used self-report inventory, originally built to identify emotional disorders.

Personality Inventory

A questionnaire gauging a wide range of feelings & behaviors to assess traits.

Self

In contemporary psychology, assumed to be the organizer of our thoughts, feelings & actions — our sense of personal identity.

Self-Esteem

One's overall sense of self-worth, or feeling of high or low self-regard.

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency to perceive oneself favorably — taking credit for successes while blaming failures on outside factors.

Spotlight Effect

Overestimating how much others notice and evaluate our appearance, performance & mistakes.

Narcissism

Excessive self-love, self-absorption & an inflated sense of self-importance.

Individualism

Giving priority to one's own goals over group goals, and defining identity mainly in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications.

Identification

A defense mechanism in the psychodynamic perspective where an individual copes with anxiety by taking on the characteristics, behaviors, or values of another person or group (often a role model, parent, or authority figure).

Fixation

According to Freud's psychodynamic theory, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier stage where a conflict remained unresolved, causing the person to remain psychologically "stuck" in that developmental phase.