AP Psychology Unit X: Personality

Personality

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

Free association

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

Psychoanalytic theory

Freud, emotional disorders come from unresolved childhood conflicts and fixation at different psychosexual stages. Personality consists of id, ego, and superego.

Unconscious

Reservoir of unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.

Id

Pleasure principle, reservoir of unconscious energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. Demands immediate gratification.

Ego

Largely conscious “executive” part of personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality.

Reality principle

Ego’s way of satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring long-term pleasure rather than pain.

Superego

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

Psychosexual stages

Childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) which id’s pleasure-seeking focuses on ergogenous pleasure zones.

Identification

Process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos.

Fixation

Basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Repression

Basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Psychodynamic theory

Adler, Horney, Jung; unconscious and conscious minds interact, childhood experiences and conflict are important. Personality is the dynamic interplay between unconscious motives and conflicts.

Alfred Adler

Neo-Freudian, believed social tensions are crucial for personality formation. Proposed the idea of the inferiority complex.

Karen Horney

Childhood anxiety triggers our desire for love and security → detected bias in Freud’s masculine views on psychology.

Carl Jung

Collective unconscious, archetypes.

Collective unconscious

Carl Jung’s concept of a shared and inherited reservoir of memory traces from our specie’s history.

Projective tests

Personality tests that provide ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.

Thematic appreciation test

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

Inkblot test

Most widely used projective test, 10 inkblots that seek to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.

False consensus effect

Tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors.

Terror-mangement theory

Theory of death-related anxiety; explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death.

Humanistic theory

View personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth. Studied people through their own self-reports. Abraham Maslow & Carl Rogers.

Self-actualization

According to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fufill one’s potential.

Growth-promoting climate

1. Acceptance/unconditional positive regard

2. Genuineness

3. Empathy

Self-concept

All our thoughts and feelings about oneself.

Trait

Characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer-reports.

Personality inventories

Questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits.

MMPI

Most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally used to help diagnose emotional disorders.

Empirically derived test

Tests developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups.

Big five traits

Conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, extraversion.

Social cognitive perspective

Proposed by Bandura; states that behavior is influenced by the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social context.

Behavioral approach

Focuses on effects of learning (punishment and reward) on our personality development.

Reciprocal determinism

Interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment.

Personal control

Whether we learn to see ourselves as controlling or as controlled by our environment.

Attributional style

Optimism or pessimism.

Self

Center of the personality, organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Spotlight effect

Overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearence, 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 perceive oneself favorably.

Narcissism

Excessive self-love or self-absorption.

Individualism

Giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identification.

Collectivism

Giving priority to the goals of one’s group(s) over the individual.

Positive psychology

The scientific study of optimal human functioning; aims to discover and promote strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.

Trait theory

Allport, Eysenk, McCrae, Costa; we have certain stable characteristics influenced by genetic predispositions. Personality is the scientific study of traits, which has isolated important dimensions of personality such as the Big 5.