PSY 200 Exam 3 Review - Chapter 11: Personality

Vocabulary flashcards covering personality definitions, assessment measures, major theoretical approaches, and psychodynamic defense mechanisms from the PSY 200 Chapter 11 review sheet.

Personality

An individual's characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling across different situations.

Self-Report Measures

A method of personality assessment in which individuals provide subjective information about their own thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, typically via questionnaires or interviews.

MMPI-2-RF

A clinical questionnaire used to assess personality and psychological problems that includes built-in validity scales to detect distorted or non-truthful responding.

Projective Tests

Assessments designed to reveal inner aspects of an individual's personality by analyzing their responses to a standard series of ambiguous stimuli.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

A projective technique in which respondents' inner thoughts and feelings are believed to be revealed through their descriptions of a set of unstructured inkblots.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A projective technique in which respondents' underlying motives and concerns are believed to be revealed through the stories they make up about ambiguous pictures of people.

Trait Approach

An approach to personality that seeks to identify, describe, and measure stable patterns of behavior and characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, and acting across situations.

Trait

A relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way.

Eysenck's Model

A trait model of personality that initially proposed two major dimensions: extraversion-introversion and neuroticism-emotional stability (later adding psychoticism).

The Big Five Factor Model

The dominant trait framework organizing personality into five broad dimensions: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

Psychodynamic Approach

An approach that regards personality as formed by needs, strivings, and desires largely operating outside of conscious awareness and shaped by unconscious conflicts.

Id

In psychodynamic theory, the part of the mind containing the basic drives present at birth, operating on the pleasure principle and seeking immediate gratification.

Ego

In psychodynamic theory, the component of personality developed through contact with the external world that operates on the reality principle to mediate between the id and superego.

Superego

In psychodynamic theory, the mental system that reflects the internalization of cultural rules and societal standards, functioning as a conscience.

Defense Mechanisms

Unconscious coping strategies that reduce anxiety generated by unwanted thoughts, feelings, or conflicts between the id and superego.

Rationalization

A defense mechanism that involves supplying a reasonable-sounding explanation for unacceptable feelings and behaviors to conceal underlying motives.

Reaction Formation

A defense mechanism that involves unconsciously replacing threatening inner wishes and fantasies with an exaggerated version of their opposite.

Projection

A defense mechanism that involves attributing one's own threatening feelings, impulses, or motives to another person or group.

Regression

A defense mechanism in which the ego deals with internal conflict and threat by reverting to an immature behavior or earlier developmental stage.

Displacement

A defense mechanism that involves shifting unacceptable wishes or drives to a neutral or less threatening alternative target.

Identification

A defense mechanism that helps deal with threat and anxiety by enabling a person unconsciously to take on the characteristics of another person who seems more powerful or better able to cope.

Sublimation

A defense mechanism that involves channeling unacceptable sexual or aggressive drives into socially acceptable and culturally enhancing activities.

Humanistic-Existential Approach

An approach integrating the humanistic focus on positive, optimistic views of human nature and personal growth with the existential focus on individual choices and coping with the realities of existence.

Social-Cognitive Approach

An approach that views personality in terms of how a person thinks about situations encountered in daily life and behaves in response to them.