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Personality
An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.
Psychodynamic Theories
Theories that view personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences.
Psychoanalysis
Freud's theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.
Unconscious
According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.
Free Association
in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.
Preconscious Mind
A region of the mind from which we temporarily store thoughts that can later be retrieved.
Id
A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.
Pleasure Principle
The tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification.
Ego
The partly conscious, "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.
Reality Principle
The tendency of the ego to postpone gratification until it can find an appropriate and realistic outlet.
Superego
The partly conscious, self-evaluative, moralistic component of personality that is formed through the internalization of parental and societal rules.
Defense Mechanisms
in psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
Repression
in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.
Denial
A defense mechanism in which one refuses to believe or perceive painful realities.
Displacement
A psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.
Projection
A psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.
Rationalization
A defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions.
Reaction Formation
A psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings.
Regression
A psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychological stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated.
Sublimation
A defense mechanism by which people redirect socially unacceptable impulses toward acceptable goals.
Collective Unconscious
Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history.
Terror-Management Theory
A theory of death-related anxiety; explores people's emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.
Projective Test
A personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics.
Rorschach Inkblot Test
The most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.
Humanism Theories
Theories that view personality with a focus on the potential for healthy potential growth.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow's level of human needs, beginning at physiological needs, viewed as a pyramid where progression requires prior levels to be completed.
Self-Actualization
According to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one's potential.
Unconditional Positive Regard
A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.
Self-Concept
All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "Who am I?".
Trait
A characteristic that an organism can pass on to its offspring through its genes.
Factor Analysis
A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test, usually used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person's total score.
Personality Iventory
A questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
The most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), this test is now used for many other screening purposes.
Big Five Factors
Five traits - conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, extraversion - that describe your personality.
Trait Theory
An approach that explains personality in terms of internal characteristics that are presumed to determine behavior.
Agreeableness
The tendency to act in a cooperative, unselfish manner.
Openness to Experience
The tendency to be open to new aesthetic, cultural, or intellectual experiences.
Extraversion
An orientation of one's interests and energies towards the outer world of people and things.
Conscientiousness
The tendency to be organized, responsible, and hardworking.
Emotional Stability (Neuroticism)
The measure of one's level of emotional stability.
Person-Situation Controversy
The cyclic influence where our environment makes us, and we make our environment.
Social-Cognitive Perspective
A view of behavior as influenced by the interaction between people's traits and their social content.
Behavioral Approaches
An approach that focuses on the study of personality development and behavior.
Reciprocal Determinism
The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment.
Self
In modern psychology, assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Spotlight Effect
Overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (imaginary audience).
Self-Esteem
Our feeling of high or low self-worth.
Self-Efficacy
Our sense of competence and effectiveness.
Narcissism
An excessive amount of self-love and self-absorption.
Individualism
A cultural value that focuses on the wellness of oneself.
Collectivism
A cultural value that focuses on the wellness of the group.
