PERSONALITY

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering facial feedback, historical perspectives on personality, psychoanalysis, Neo-Freudians, learning models, humanistic and biological perspectives, trait theories, cultural contexts, and personality assessment methods.

Personality

The long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, and behave in specific ways.

Hippocrates' Four Temperaments

The theory that personality traits and human behaviors are based on four separate bodily fluids: choleric (yellow bile from the liver), melancholic (black bile from the kidneys), sanguine (red blood from the heart), and phlegmatic (white phlegm from the lungs).

Galen's Humoral Theory

The expansion of Hippocrates' view proposing that diseases and personality differences are caused by imbalances in the four humors, categorizing people as choleric (passionate, ambitious, bold), melancholic (reserved, anxious, unhappy), sanguine (joyful, eager, optimistic), or phlegmatic (calm, reliable, thoughtful).

Franz Gall's Phrenology (1780)

The proposal by German physician Franz Gall that the distances between bumps on the skull reveal a person's personality traits, character, and mental abilities.

Unconscious

Mental activity of which an individual is unaware and unable to access, which Freud compared to the submerged nine-tenths of an iceberg.

Freudian Slip

An unintentional slip of the tongue where an unintended word is substituted for the intended one, viewed by Freud as a reflection of unconscious desires.

Id

The personality structure present from birth that contains the most primitive drives or urges and operates on the pleasure principle, seeking instant gratification.

Ego

The rational aspect of personality that operates on the reality principle, balancing the demands of the id and superego within the context of reality.

Superego

The moral component of personality that operates on morality principles, acts as a moral compass or conscience, strives for perfection, and leads to feelings of pride or guilt.

Defense Mechanisms

Unconscious protective behaviors utilized by the ego to reduce anxiety when it is unable to mediate conflicts between the id and superego.

Denial

A defense mechanism involving the refusal to accept real events because they are unpleasant.

Displacement

A defense mechanism in which inappropriate urges or behaviors are transferred onto a more acceptable or less threatening target.

Projection

A defense mechanism wherein an individual attributes their own unacceptable desires to others.

Rationalization

A defense mechanism in which an individual justifies behaviors by substituting acceptable reasons for less-acceptable real reasons.

Reaction Formation

A defense mechanism that reduces anxiety by adopting beliefs and behaviors contrary to one's genuine beliefs.

Regression

A defense mechanism characterized by returning to coping strategies associated with less mature stages of development.

Repression

A defense mechanism that involves suppressing painful memories, unacceptable urges, and thoughts from conscious awareness.

Sublimation

A defense mechanism involving the redirection of unacceptable desires through socially acceptable channels.

Erogenous Zone

A specific area of the body where a child's pleasure-seeking urges from the id are focused during each psychosexual stage of development.

Oral Stage

The first psychosexual stage (birth to 1 year old), where pleasure is focused on the mouth via eating and sucking; improper weaning may lead to adult oral fixations like smoking or overeating.

Anal-Retentive Personality

An adult personality outcome resulting from harsh toilet training during the anal stage (1 to 3 years old), characterized by stinginess, stubbornness, perfectionism, and a compulsive need for order and neatness.

Anal-Expulsive Personality

An adult personality outcome of the anal stage characterized by messiness, carelessness, disorganization, and a tendency toward emotional outbursts.

Phallic Stage

The third psychosexual stage (3 to 6 years old), where pleasure is focused on the genitals and conflict arises from desire for the opposite-sex parent and jealousy toward the same-sex parent.

Oedipus Complex

A phallic stage conflict wherein a boy experiences desire for his mother and an urge to replace his father, who is viewed as a rival.

Electra Complex

A phallic stage conflict wherein a girl desires her father's attention, wishes to take her mother's place, and experiences penis envy toward the mother for not providing her with a penis.

Latency Period

A period from 6 years old to puberty where sexual feelings remain dormant while children focus on school, friendships, hobbies, and activities with same-sex peers.

Genital Stage

The final psychosexual stage occurring from puberty onwards, marked by a sexual reawakening where incestuous urges resurface and are redirected toward socially acceptable partners.

Individual Psychology

The school of psychology founded by Alfred Adler, which focuses on the human drive to compensate for feelings of inferiority.

Inferiority Complex

Alfred Adler's concept referring to a person's feelings that they lack worth and do not measure up to the standards of others or society.

Adler's Three Fundamental Social Tasks

Three core life tasks identified by Alfred Adler that every individual must experience: occupational tasks (careers), societal tasks (friendship), and love tasks (intimate relationships).

Psychosocial Theory of Development

Erik Erikson's theory identifying eight stages across the entire lifespan, each representing a specific conflict or developmental task necessary for healthy personality formation.

Analytical Psychology

Carl Jung's approach to psychology, which focuses on balancing opposing forces of conscious and unconscious thought and experience within one's personality.

Collective Unconscious

Carl Jung's concept of a universal layer of the unconscious shared by all humans, containing common mental patterns and ancestral memory traces.

Archetypes

Ancestral memories within the collective unconscious, manifested as universal themes in literature, art, and dreams across cultures.

Womb Envy

Karen Horney's proposition that men experience jealousy toward women because men cannot give birth.

Basic Anxiety

Karen Horney's term for unconscious anxiety resulting from unmet needs in childhood, such as experiences of loneliness and isolation.

Horney's Three Coping Styles

Strategies used to manage basic anxiety: moving toward people (affiliation and dependence), moving against people (aggression and assertiveness), and moving away from people (detachment and isolation).

Reciprocal Determinism

Albert Bandura's concept stating that cognitive processes, behavior, and environmental context all interact simultaneously, each influencing and being influenced by the others.

Observational Learning

Albert Bandura's concept that individuals learn behavior patterns by watching models and observing whether those models are reinforced or punished.

Self-Efficacy

An individual's level of confidence in their own abilities, developed through social experiences, which dictates how they approach challenges and goals.

Locus of Control

Julian Rotter's concept referring to beliefs regarding personal power over life events; categorized as internal (outcomes result from effort) or external (outcomes are beyond control).

Person-Situation Debate

A decades-long controversy triggered by Walter Mischel's findings that an individual's personality traits are not necessarily consistent across different situations.

Humanism

The 'third force' in psychology that emphasizes the depth of human experience, personal choice, and an innate capacity for self-directed change, reacting against psychoanalysis and behaviorism.

Heritability

The proportion of difference among people in a population that is attributed to genetics.

Temperament

Innate, biologically based personality tendencies appearing early in life; characterized by reactivity and self-regulation, or categorized by Thomas and Chess as easy, difficult, or slow to warm up.

Cardinal Trait

A rare personality trait that dominates an individual's entire personality and their whole life.

Central Traits

Core traits that make up our basic personality (such as loyal, kind, agreeable, friendly, sneaky, wild, and grouchy).

Secondary Traits

Traits that are less consistent or obvious than central traits, appearing only under specific circumstances (including preferences and attitudes).

Five Factor Model (Big Five)

A trait theory capturing five core dimensions of personality remembered by the mnemonic OCEAN: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

Selective Migration

The concept that individuals choose to move to geographic places that are compatible with their personalities and needs.

Cultural-Comparative Approach

An approach to studying personality across cultures that tests Western concepts in non-Western cultures to evaluate their generalizability and cultural validity.

Indigenous Approach

An approach to personality assessment that arose in reaction to the dominance of Western models, focusing on developing personality concepts native to non-Western settings.

Self-Report Inventories

Objective personality assessments utilizing numbered scales (such as 1 to 5 Likert scales) or multiple-choice questions to gather self-evaluations.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

A widely used self-report personality inventory first published in 1943 with 504 true/false questions, later updated to the MMPI-2 in 1989 with 567 questions.

Projective Tests

Personality tests relying on the defense mechanism of projection, presenting ambiguous stimuli to reveal unconscious feelings, impulses, and desires.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

A projective assessment where a psychologist presents a series of symmetrical inkblot cards and asks 'What might this be?' to reveal unconscious struggles.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A projective test where individuals view 8 to 12 ambiguous pictures and tell stories about them to reveal insights into their social world, hopes, fears, and goals.

Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank (RISB)

A projective test consisting of 40 incomplete sentence stems that participants complete as quickly as possible to reveal unconscious desires, fears, and struggles.

Contemporized-Themes Concerning Blacks Test (C-TCB)

A culturally relevant projective test containing 20 color images portraying scenes of African-American lifestyles.

TEMAS Multicultural Thematic Apperception Test

A projective test designed for minority groups, especially Hispanic youths, using culturally relevant images and storytelling cues ('temas' or 'Tell Me a Story').