AP Psych Unit 4 (4.4-4.8)

Personality

an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting

Psychodynamic theories

focus on unconscious and childhood

Psychoanalysis

Freud’s theory of personality that focused on unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treatment 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

a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

Id

impulsive, a little selfish, and detached

Superego

wants order, devoted to duty, cool-headed

Ego

balances the other two, gentle, caretaker

Oedipus complex

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

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

Collective unconscious

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

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, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

Humanistic theories

view personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth (1960s)

Maslow’s theory

hierarchy of needs

What does a growth-promoting climate require?

genuineness, acceptance, and empathy

Unconditional positive regard

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

Self-concept

personal interviews for humanistic psychologists to learn more about clients

Traits

a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports (stable and enduring)

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

asks test-takers’ preferences and sorts them into categories like feeling vs. thinking

Factor analysis

a stastical procedure used to identify clusters of test items that tap basic components of intelligence or personality

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

Empirically dervied test

a test (such as the MMPI) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups

The Big Five

conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion

Person-situation controversy

our behavior is influenced by the interaction of our inner position and the environment

Social-cognitive perspective

views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s trait (including their thinking) and their social context

Behavioral approach

focuses on the effects of learning on our personality development

Reciprocal determinism

the interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and the environment

Self

in contemporary psychology, assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings and actions

Spotlight effect

overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating out appearance, performance, and blunders

Self-esteem

one’s feelings of high or low self-worth

Self-efficacy

one’s sense of competence and effectiveness

Self-serving bias

a readiness to percieve oneself favorably

Narcissism

excessive self-love and self-absorption

Motivation

a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior

Instinct

a complex behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species and is unlearned

Drive-reduction theory

the idea that a psychological need creates an aroused state that motivates an organism to satisfy the need

Homeostasis

a tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state

How do incentives affect us?

by helping us to decide what choices we make

Yerkes-Dodson law

the principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases

Big idea of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

we prioritize survival-based needs and then social needs more than the need for esteem and meaning by having five levels of needs

Affiliation need

the need to build and maintain relationships and to feel part of a group

Self-determination theory

the theory that we feel motivated to satisfy our needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness

Intrinsic motivation

the desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake

Extrinsic motivation

the desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment

Ostracism

deliberate social exclusion of individuals or groups

Achievement motivation

a desire for significant accomplishment, for mastery of skills or ideas, for control, and for attaining a high standard

Grit

passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals

Glucose

the form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for body tissues

Set point

the point at which the “weight thermostat” may be set; when the body falls below this weight, increased hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may combine to restore lost weight

Emotion

a response of the whole organism, involving physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and, most importantly, conscious experience resulting form one’s interpretations

James-Lange theory

emotions arise from our awareness of our specific bodily responses to emotion-arousing stimuli

Cannon-Bard theory

emotion-arousing stimuli trigger our bodily responses and simultaneous subjective experience

Schachter-Singer (two-factor) theory

our experience of emotion depends on general arousal and a conscious cognitive label

Zajonc/LeDoux theory

some embodied responses happen instantly, without conscious appraisal

Lazarus theory of emotion

cognitive appraisal-sometimes without our awareness-defines emotion

The five basic emotions

anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and happiness

Two things the sympathetic nervous system does with physiological/emotional arousal

pupils dilate and adrenal glands secrete stress hormones

Two things the parasympathetic nervous system does when calming back down

salivation increases and respiration decreases

Polygraph

an instrument that measures and records physiological responses like heart rate, blood pressure, and perspiration to determine if someone is lying

Facial feedback effect

the tendency of facial muscles states to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness

Behavior feedback effect

the tendency of behavior to influence our own and others’ thoughts, feelings, and actions