Comprehensive Psychology Review: Personality, Disorders, Therapy, and Social Psychology

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering personality perspectives, cultural self-construals, clinical criteria of disorders, therapeutic modalities, biomedical treatments, social influence experiments, and attribution dynamics.

Social-Cognitive Perspective

A theoretical approach to personality that emphasizes person-situation interaction, positing that behaviors are acquired through observation and that cognitive appraisal of a situation dictates behavioral responses.

Reciprocal Determinism

The interacting influences between personality, behavior, and environmental context, wherein individuals select their environments, their personalities shape interpretation of events, and personality constructs generate situations to which they subsequently react.

Dimensions of the Self

The multi-faceted structure of the active agent that interacts with the environment, classified into Private (inner traits, states, and behaviors: 'I am…'), Public (generalized others' perception: 'People think I am…'), and Collective (identity derived from group membership: 'My family thinks I am…').

Tajel's Identity Theory

A social identity framework stating that individuals strive for a positively valued identity; the self that is culturally valued becomes more complex, is sampled more frequently, activates related self-features, and serves as the primary unit of self-consciousness.

Independent View of Self

A self-construal distinct from social context characterized as bounded, unitary, and stable; its primary tasks are to express unique internal attributes, promote personal goals, and maintain direct communication.

Interdependent View of Self

A self-construal inherently connected to the social context characterized as flexible and variable; its primary tasks are to fit in, occupy one's assigned place, promote group goals, and maintain interpersonal harmony through indirect communication.

Humanist Perspective

A personality perspective founded by Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers asserting that human nature is innately good and emphasizing the fulfillment of individual human potential.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

A pyramid framework of human motivation stating that basic needs (physiological and safety) and psychological needs (love/belonging and esteem) must be met prior to reaching self-actualization.

Self-Actualization

The pinnacle of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, defined by the realization of one's full potential and characterized by morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem-solving, lack of prejudice, and acceptance of facts.

Unconditional Positive Regard

An attitude of total acceptance, non-judgment, and respect shown by a therapist toward a client, identified by Carl Rogers as essential for personal growth.

Trait

A distinguishable, relatively enduring pattern of behavior or disposition that differs across individuals and demonstrates consistency across situations and over time.

The Big Five

The foundational model of trait personality theory representing five broad dimensions abbreviated by CANOE or OCEAN: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

Person-Situation Controversy

The theoretical debate regarding whether human behavior is primarily determined by internal personality traits or the external situational context, formulated as $\text{Person} + \text{Situation} = \text{Behavior}$.

Personality

The unique, enduring pattern of individual behavioral, temperamental, emotional, and mental attributes that characterize how an individual interacts with the world.

Freud's Model of the Psyche

Sigmund Freud's structural conceptualization of the mind comprising the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious, divided dynamically among the Id, Ego, and Superego.

Id

The primal, completely unconscious structural component of personality governed by the pleasure principle, harboring raw instinctual sexual and aggressive psychic energy.

Ego

The largely conscious executive mediator of personality governed by the reality principle, which realistically reconciles demands between the instinctual id, moral superego, and the external world.

Superego

The personality structure representing internalized societal ideals, standards, and conscience, striving for moral perfection rather than reality or pleasure.

Free Association

A foundational psychoanalytic assessment method in which an individual relaxes and says aloud whatever enters their awareness, allowing the psychoanalyst to trace psychological resistance to the unconscious.

Defense Mechanism: Repression

The basic psychoanalytic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing or negative thoughts, feelings, and memories from conscious awareness.

Defense Mechanism: Regression

A psychoanalytic defense mechanism characterized by an individual retreating to an earlier, more infantile psychosexual developmental stage when confronting high anxiety.

Defense Mechanism: Reaction Formation

A psychoanalytic defense mechanism where the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their exact opposites, expressing the opposite emotion or drive.

Defense Mechanism: Projection

A psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual disguises threatening or unacceptable impulses by attributing them directly to other people.

Defense Mechanism: Displacement

A psychoanalytic defense mechanism that diverts aggressive or sexual impulses away from their original threatening source toward a less threatening or more acceptable substitute target.

Key Criteria for Psychological Disorders

The four definitive clinical dimensions: Deviant (atypical from social or developmental norms), Dysfunctional (impaired or maladaptive functioning), Distressing (marked personal unhappiness), and Danger (significant risk of harm to self or others).

Medical Model of Psychological Disorders

The framework viewing psychological disorders as analogous to physical medical illnesses possessing natural causes, wherein underlying pathology produces observable signs and symptoms requiring clinical diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)

The official classification manual published by the American Psychiatric Association describing approximately $350$ disorders, categorizing patients by matching clinical symptoms to defined diagnostic syndromes.

Stigma

An attribute, behavior, or reputation that is socially discrediting, leading society to classify and label an affected individual as undesirable or rejected.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

A psychological disorder characterized by recurrent intrusive thoughts and repetitive ritualistic behaviors that the individual acknowledges as irrational but cannot consciously control, with an onset of $6\text{--}15$ years for males and $20\text{--}29$ years for females.

Caudate Nucleus Dysfunction in OCD

A neurobiological impairment where the caudate nucleus fails to appropriately filter neural impulses directed to the thalamus, allowing repetitive behavioral impulses (e.g., contamination-washing cycles) to continuously pass.

Diathesis-Stress Model

A clinical model asserting that disorders emerge from an interaction between an underlying predisposition or vulnerability (diathesis) and environmental challenges that surpass adaptation thresholds (stress).

Transference

A critical phenomenon in psychoanalysis wherein a client transfers unconscious emotions—ranging from positive affection to negative hostility—derived from past childhood conflicts onto the therapist.

Catharsis

The psychological release and relief gained through the conscious expression and purging of previously repressed emotional trauma in psychoanalytic therapy.

Client-Centered Therapy

A non-directive humanistic therapy developed by Carl Rogers emphasizing active listening, empathy, and unconditional positive regard within a growth-promoting therapeutic atmosphere.

Behavioral Therapy

A therapeutic modality grounded in classical and operant conditioning principles aimed at restructuring stimulus-response ($\text{S-R}$) links to extinguish unwanted responses and establish missing behavioral repertoires.

Token Economy

An operant conditioning intervention in which individuals receive tokens for performing targeted desirable behaviors, utilizing an external locus of control to exchange tokens for rewards or privileges.

Rational Emotive Therapy (RET)

A cognitive therapy framework utilizing the ABCD sequence—Activating event ($\text{A}$), Beliefs ($\text{B}$), Consequences ($\text{C}$), and Disputing ($\text{D}$)—to replace irrational cognitions with rational alternatives.

Antipsychotics (Major Tranquilizers)

A class of pharmacotherapy that reduces dopamine activity to treat schizophrenia, which carries the risk of causing permanent central nervous system movement abnormalities.

Antidepressants

Medications that slow selective serotonin reuptake (SSRIs) to manage depression, anxiety, panic, and OCD, characterized by delayed therapeutic onset and side effects involving the peripheral nervous system.

Meta-Analysis

A statistical procedure aggregating findings across multiple clinical trials, demonstrating that psychotherapy yields greater improvement than control or waitlist conditions in $75\text{--}80\%$ of individuals.

Therapeutic Alliance

The collaborative, trusting interpersonal relationship established between therapist and client, recognized as a primary non-specific predictor of psychological treatment success.

Milgram Obedience Experiment

A landmark 1974 social psychology study by Stanley Milgram assessing compliance to destructive commands from an authority figure who ordered participants to deliver increasing electric shocks ranging from $15\,\text{volts}$ (Slight) to $450\,\text{volts}$ (XXX).

Asch Line Experiment

A 1955 study conducted by Solomon Asch examining conformity, where participants frequently conformed to unanimous, clearly incorrect group judgments when matching visual line lengths.

Normative Social Influence

The alteration of personal behavior or verbal agreement in response to perceived group standards driven primarily by an individual's desire to obtain social approval or avoid disapproval.

Attribution Theory

The social psychological theory that models how people explain behaviors and outcomes by attributing them to either internal dispositions (personality traits) or external situations (environmental pressures).

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

The cognitive bias where observers underestimate situational influences and overestimate internal dispositional factors when explaining others' behaviors, while doing the inverse for themselves.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

The theory asserting that psychological tension arises when beliefs, attitudes, or actions clash, compelling individuals to resolve this discomfort by adjusting their underlying beliefs to match their actions.