Exam Review: Personality, Social Psychology, and Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering Personality Theories, Social Psychology, and Industrial-Organizational Psychology.

Personality

A pattern of enduring, distinctive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize the way an individual adapts to the world.

Conscious

Current awareness; present thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories.

Preconscious

Intermediate awareness; long-term memory of previous thoughts, feelings, and sensations that can be retrieved.

Unconscious

Lack of awareness; forgotten or "repressed" thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories, proposed as the primary motivating force behind how we think and behave.

Id

An unconscious system operating on the "pleasure principle" that acts on instincts and drives from birth to death to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and gain immediate gratification.

Ego

A preconscious and conscious system operating on the "reality principle" that acts in a logical, rational way to satisfy the id's desires and urges.

Superego

A conscious system operating on the "idealistic principle" that acts in a moral way to achieve the ego's ideal goal or outcome and serves as conscience.

Defense Mechanism

A technique used by the ego to defend against anxiety or fear and to maintain self-esteem.

Repression

A defense mechanism characterized by forgetting the unacceptable.

Denial

A defense mechanism characterized by disbelieving present reality.

Projection

A defense mechanism characterized by attributing one's own faults to others.

Displacement

A defense mechanism characterized by shifting feelings to a new object.

Reaction Formation

A defense mechanism characterized by experiencing the opposite of actual desires.

Sublimation

A defense mechanism characterized by transforming the vile into the valuable.

Roger's Theory of Personality

The perspective that personality originates from self-concept and develops through social interactions.

Trait

A relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way.

Reciprocal Determinism

The continuous interaction between behavior, personal characteristics, and the environment.

Person-Situation Controversy

The question of whether behavior is caused more by personality or by situational factors.

CAPS Model of Personality

A framework examining interconnections among the person, situation, and interaction between person and situation.

Temperament

Innate traits that influence how one thinks, behaves, and reacts with the environment.

Heritability

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

Personality Inventories

Self-report questionnaires that ask individuals to indicate how much or how little certain statements represent them.

Projective Techniques

Standardized sets of ambiguous stimuli designed to reveal inner aspects of an individual's personality, such as unconscious thoughts, feelings, and desires.

Social Psychology

A subfield of psychology that examines how people think about, influence, and relate to other people, also known as the study of the causes and consequences of sociality.

Social Cognition

The process of paying attention to, thinking about, and recalling bits and pieces of information about ourselves and others.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to attribute others' behavior to dispositional factors rather than situational factors.

Self-Serving Bias

An attribution pattern where one attributes successes to dispositional factors and failures to situational factors.

Actor-Observer Effect

An attribution pattern where one attributes others' successes to situational factors and others' failures to dispositional factors.

Just-World Hypothesis

The belief that people get the outcomes they deserve.

Social Roles

A pattern of behavior that is expected of a person given a specific setting or group.

Social Norms

A group's expectation of what is appropriate and acceptable behavior for its members.

Social Scripts

A person's knowledge about the sequence of events expected in a specific setting.

Conformity

The tendency to change one's behavior to be consistent with the social norms or expectations of others.

Obedience

Changing one's behavior to please an authority figure or avoid aversive consequences.

Social Loafing

The tendency to exert less effort when working in a group because individual performance cannot be evaluated.

Group Think

The tendency to prioritize group cohesion over critical thinking, which can lead to poor decision making.

Group Polarization

The strengthening of an original group attitude after discussing views within a group.

Deindividuation

A group situation in which a person experiences a sense of anonymity along with a reduction in accountability and sense of self.

Prosocial Behavior

Behavior that benefits others, such as helping and cooperation.

Intimacy

The emotional component of love involving feelings of closeness, warmth, bondedness, and sharing your inner world.

Passion

The motivational component of love driven by physical attraction, romance, and sexual desire.

Commitment

The cognitive component of love, divided into a short-term decision to love someone and a long-term commitment to maintain that love.

Aggression

The intentional infliction of physical or psychological harm to others.

Hostile Aggression

Aggression whose core motive is to cause pain, injury, or suffering to another person.

Instrumental Aggression

Aggression whose core motive is to achieve a specific goal, gain a resource, or obtain a reward, where harm is a means to an end.

Prejudice

Negative attitudes towards others based on their gender, religion, race, or membership in a particular group.

Discrimination

Negative behavior directed towards others based on their gender, religion, race, or membership in a particular group.

Stereotype Threat

A phenomenon that creates situational anxiety and depletes the cognitive resources needed to succeed on a task.

Industrial Psychology

A branch of psychology focusing on hiring practices and best practices for training and evaluating new employees.

Organizational Psychology

A branch of psychology studying how relationships at work impact employees and performance, as well as job satisfaction and work-life balance.

Human Factors

The field of designing tools used at work to optimize safety, productivity, and health, and studying how workers interact with tools on the job.

Humanitarian Factors

The effort to improve conditions for individuals facing serious disasters or who are underserved in the workforce, addressing labor relations, public health, and the effects of climate change, recession, and disease.

Occupational Health

The holistic well-being of employees and organizations.

Job Analysis

The process of accurately describing the task or job.

Candidate Testing and Analysis

The comparison of a candidate's skills, knowledge, and abilities to the job description.