Unit 4b: Personality, Motivation, and Emotion Vocabulary Definitions

These flashcards cover key vocabulary definitions related to personality, motivation, and emotion concepts.

Personality

An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Psychodynamic theories

Theories that view personality with a focus on the unconscious mind and the importance of childhood experiences.

Psychoanalysis

Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; techniques for treating psychological disorders by exposing and interpreting unconscious tensions.

Free association

A method of exploring the unconscious where a person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind.

Id

A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy according to Freud, striving to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives.

Ego

The partly conscious ‘executive’ part of personality mediating among the demands of the id, superego, and reality.

Superego

The partly conscious part of personality representing internalized ideals and providing standards for judgment.

Preconscious

The part of the mind that we are typically unaware of but can become aware of through focused thought.

Unconscious

A reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories, according to Freud.

Defense mechanisms

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

Denial

Refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities.

Displacement

Shifting sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable object or person.

Projection

Disguising one’s threatening impulses by attributing them to others.

Rationalization

Offering self-justifying explanations in place of real unconscious reasons for one’s actions.

Reaction formation

Switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites.

Regression

Retreating to an earlier psychosexual stage where some psychic energy remains fixated.

Sublimation

Transferring unacceptable impulses into socially valued motives.

Projective tests

Personality tests providing ambiguous images designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.

Humanistic psychology

A psychological perspective emphasizing the whole person and the uniqueness of each individual.

Unconditional positive regard

A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude toward others believed to help in developing self-awareness.

Self-actualizing tendency

The process of fulfilling one’s true potential.

Social-cognitive theory

A view of behavior influenced by the interaction between people’s traits and their social context.

Reciprocal determinism

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

Self-concept

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

Self-efficacy

Our sense of competence and effectiveness.

Self-esteem

Our feelings of high or low self-worth.

Traits

Characteristic patterns of behaviors or dispositions to feel and act in certain ways.

Big Five theory

A model using five traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) to describe personality.

Approach-approach conflict

A motivational conflict that occurs when an individual must choose between two equally attractive options.

Avoidance-avoidance conflict

A motivational conflict that occurs when an individual must choose between two equally unattractive options.

Emotion

A response involving physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience.

Facial feedback hypothesis

The tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings.

Polygraph

A machine used to attempt to detect lies by measuring emotion-linked changes in perspiration, heart rate, and breathing.

Universal emotions

Emotions that are expressed and recognized similarly across different cultures.

Display rules

Culturally determined norms about when and how much to display certain emotions.