Psych Chapter 10

Free association

A method of exploring the unconscious by having the person relax and say whatever comes to mind, regardless of its triviality or embarrassment.

Psychoanalysis

Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts, and uses techniques to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.

Unconscious

A reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories, according to Freud; in contemporary psychology, it refers to information processing of which we are unaware.

Id

Reservoir of unconscious psychic energy striving to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives, operating on the pleasure principle.

Ego

The conscious part of personality mediating between id, superego, and reality, operating on the reality principle.

Superego

Part of personality representing internalized ideals and standards for judgment and aspirations.

Psychosexual stages

Childhood stages of development where the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.

Oedipus complex

A boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father, according to Freud.

Identification

The process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into developing superegos, as described by Freud.

Fixation

A lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved, according to Freud.

Defense mechanisms

The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

• denial, where someone refuses to acknowledge a painful reality or uncomfortable situation, effectively blocking it from their awareness. 

Repression

The basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

• An example is someone who, despite suffering abuse as a child, has no memory of it but experiences difficulties in relationships and anxiety

Psychodynamic theories

Modern approaches focusing on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences in personality.

Collective unconscious

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

Projective test

A personality test providing ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.

• Rorschach Inkblot Test

Thematic Apperception Test

A projective test where individuals express feelings and interests through stories about ambiguous scenes.

Rorschach inkblot test

A widely used projective test consisting of a set of 10 inkblots to identify people’s inner feelings.

False consensus effect

The tendency to overestimate how much others share our beliefs and behaviors.

Terror-management theory

A theory that examines people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of death-related anxiety.

Humanistic theories

Perspectives focusing on healthy personal growth potential in understanding personality.

Self-actualization

The motivation to fulfill one’s potential after basic needs are met and self-esteem is achieved, as per Maslow.

Unconditional positive regard

An attitude of total acceptance toward another person, according to Rogers.

Self-concept

All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves in response to "Who am I?"

Trait

A characteristic pattern of behavior or disposition to feel and act, assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports.

Personality inventory

A questionnaire designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors to assess selected personality traits.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

The most widely researched and clinically used personality test, originally developed to identify emotional disorders.

Empirically derived test

A test developed by testing a pool of items and selecting those that discriminate between groups.

Social-cognitive perspective

Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits and their social context.

Behavioral approach

A personality perspective focusing on the effects of learning on personality development.

Reciprocal determinism

The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment.

Positive psychology

The scientific study of optimal human functioning aiming to discover and promote strengths and virtues.

Self

In contemporary psychology, assumed to be the center of personality, organizing thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Spotlight effect

Overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance and blunders, as if presuming a spotlight shines on us.

Self-esteem

One’s feelings of high or low self-worth and confidence.

Self-efficacy

One’s sense of competence and effectiveness.

Self-serving bias

A readiness to perceive oneself favorably.

Narcissism

Excessive self-love and self-absorption.

Individualism

Giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes.

Collectivism

Giving priority to the goals of one’s group and defining one’s identity accordingly.

Intelligence

Mental quality involving the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and adapt to new situations.

Intelligence test

A method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with others using numerical scores.

General intelligence

A general intelligence factor underlying specific mental abilities, measured by every task on an intelligence test.

Factor analysis

A statistical procedure identifying clusters of related items on a test, used to identify performance dimensions.

Savant syndrome

A condition where a person has exceptional specific skills despite overall mental limitations, such as in computation or drawing.

Grit

Passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals, as understood in psychology.

Emotional intelligence

The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.

Mental age

A measure of intelligence test performance corresponding to a given level of performance, devised by Binet.

Stanford-Binet

The widely used American revision of Binet’s original intelligence test.

Intelligence quotient

Originally defined as the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100; contemporary tests assign a score of 100 to average performance.

Achievement test

A test designed to assess what a person has learned.

Aptitude test

A test designed to predict a person’s future performance, assessing their capacity to learn.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

The most widely used intelligence test, containing verbal and performance subtests.

Standardization

Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with pretested group performance.

Normal curve

A symmetrical bell-shaped curve describing the distribution of physical and psychological attributes, with most scores near the average.

Reliability

The extent to which a test yields consistent results, measured by score consistency across various forms.

Validity

The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to measure.

Content validity

The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest.

Predictive validity

The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict, assessed by correlation with criterion behavior.