AP Psych Unit 10 - Intelligence and Personality

personality

an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

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.

psychoanalysis

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

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.

id

a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. Operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.

ego

the largely conscious, "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. Operates on the reality principle.

superego

the part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations.

psychosexual stages

the childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id's pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.

Oedipus complex

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

fixation

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

defense mechanisms

in psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

repression

banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

regression

An individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated.

reaction formation

The ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings.

projection

People disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others

rationalization

Self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions.

displacement

Shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.

sublimation

People re-channel their unacceptable impulses into socially approved activities.

denial

People refuse to believe or even to perceive painful realities.

collective unconscious

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

projective test

a personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics.

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.

Rorschach inkblot test

the most widely used projective test, seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the …inkblots.

self-actualization

according to Maslow, the ultimate psychological need 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

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

self-concept

all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "Who am I?"

trait

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

personality inventory

a questionnaire (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) 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.

social-cognitive perspective

views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons (and their thinking) and their social context.

reciprocal determinism

Bandura - the interacting influences between personality, environmental factors, and behavior

external locus of control

the perception that chance or outside forces beyond one's personal control determine one's fate.

internal locus of control

the perception that one controls one's own fate.

spotlight effect

overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us).

self-esteem

one's feelings of high or low self-worth

self-serving bias

a readiness to perceive oneself favorably

individualism

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

collectivism

giving priority to the goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly.

intelligence

mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

factor analysis

a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie one's total score.

general intelligence (g)

According to Spearman, this underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.

savant syndrome

a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.

emotional intelligence

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

mental age

a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; combined with chronological age helps to determine IQ.

Stanford-Binet

the widely used American revision (by Terman) of Binet's original intelligence test.

intelligence quotient (IQ)

defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 [thus, IQ = (ma/ca) x 100]. On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.

achievement test

a test designed to assess what a person has learned.

aptitude test

a test designed to predict a person's future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

this is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.

standardization

defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested standardization group. - question piloted and falls on a normal distribution.

normal curve

the symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes.

reliability

the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting.

validity

the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. (examples are content and predictive.)

content validity

the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest (such as a driving test that samples driving tasks).

predictive validity

the success with which a test accurately anticipates your future performance or success.

Alfred Binet

the indvidual that published the first measure of intelligence in 1905. The purpose of his intelligence test was to correctly place students on academic tracks in the French school system.

Lewis Terman

professor at Stanford who revised the Binet test for Americans. The test then became the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. He is also known for his longitudinal research on gifted kids.

Charles Spearman

theorist who proposed that intelligence consisted of both general intelligence, ability to do complex work like problem solve and intelligence which included specific mental abilities, ability to do verbal or math skills

Howard Gardner

Harvard researcher that has identified at least eight types of intelligences: linguistic, logical/mathematical, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, spatial (visual), interpersonal (the ability to understand others), intrapersonal (the ability to understand oneself), and naturalist (the ability to recognize fine distinctions and patterns in the natural world).

Robert Sternberg

proposed the triarchic theory of intelligence

Triarchic Theory

theory proposed by Robert Sternberg that states that intelligence consists of three parts including Analytic = the ability to solve problems, Creative = the ability to deal with new situations, and Practical = the ability to adjust and cope with one's environment

Flynn effect

The rise in average IQ scores that has occurred over the decades in many nations

Concurrent validity

Test results match others that are designed to measure the same characteristics.

Interrater reliability

A measure of the test-scorers - those with high "this" will give similar scores

Split-Half Reliability

Two groups of test takers should receive similar scores when given different halves of the assessment that cover the same material.