Personality Psychology Vocabulary

Flashcards covering key vocabulary terms and concepts related to personality, including psychodynamic, humanistic, trait, and social-cognitive theories.

Personality

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

Psychodynamic Theories

View human behavior as a dynamic interaction between the conscious mind and unconscious mind, including associated motives and conflicts.

Psychoanalysis

Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts, using techniques to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.

Humanistic Theories

Focused on our inner capacities for growth and self-fulfillment.

Trait Theories

Examine characteristic patterns of behavior (traits).

Social-Cognitive Theories

Explore the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social context.

Unconscious (Freud's View)

Reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories; according to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.

Free Association

Method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind.

Id

Strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives; operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.

Ego

Operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.

Superego

Represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations.

Oral Stage

Pleasure centers on the mouth—sucking, biting, chewing.

Anal Stage

Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control.

Phallic Stage

Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings; Oedipus complex, Electra complex.

Latency Stage

A phase of dormant sexual feelings.

Genital Stage

Maturation of sexual interests.

Identification Process

Children’s superegos gain strength as they incorporate many of their parents’ values.

Gender Identity

Sense of being male, female, neither, or some combination of male and female.

Defense Mechanisms

Tactics that reduce and redirect anxiety by reality distortion; functions indirectly and unconsciously.

Repression

Underlies all other defense mechanisms; is sometimes incomplete and may be manifested as symbols in dreams or slips of the tongue.

Regression

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

Reaction Formation

Switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites.

Projection

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

Rationalization

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

Displacement

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

Denial

Refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities.

Projective Test

Personality test that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger the projection of one’s inner dynamics and reveal unconscious motives.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Projective test designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing how they interpret 10 inkblots.

Abraham Maslow’s Self-Actualizing Person

Maslow focused on the potential for healthy personal growth and people’s striving for self-determination and self-realization.

Carl Rogers’s Person-Centered Perspective

Roger posited that characteristics of growth-promoting environment include genuineness, acceptance, and empathy.

Gordon Allport

Described personality in terms of fundamental traits (people’s characteristic behaviors and conscious motives).

Factor Analysis

Statistical procedure used to identify clusters (factors) of test items to tap basic components of a trait.

Eysenck's Two Dimensions of Personality

Extraversion–introversion and emotional stability–instability.

Big Five Factors (CANOE)

Most widely accepted test of personality; specifies place on five dimensions: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, Extraversion.

Social-Cognitive Perspective

Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social context; emphasizes interaction of traits with situations.

Self-Esteem

Feeling of self-worth.

Self-Efficacy

Sense of competence on a task.

Defensive Self-Esteem

Is fragile, threatened by failure and criticism, and more vulnerable to perceived threats.

Secure Self-Esteem

Is less fragile and less contingent on external evaluations.