Personality Psychology Test Exam 2

Id

The instinct-driven, pleasure-seeking part of the mind, focused on immediate gratification.

Superego

The moral conscience representing societal and parental standards, striving for ideal behavior.

Ego

The instinct-driven, pleasure-seeking part of the mind, focused on immediate gratification.

Libido

Sex drive: Creation, protection, and enjoyment of life. It has creativity, productivity, and growth.

Thanatos

Destruction drive: Chaos, randomness, disorder.

What do slips of the tongue reveal?

Private thoughts and feelings that individuals hold.

What is forgetting according to Freud?

It is the result of repression.

Why do unexpressed emotions require catharsis?

Catharsis can help release bottled-up tension, preventing emotional overload, physical symptoms, and potential breakdowns.

What is catharsis?

The process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.

What is altruism?

Managing emotional conflict by helping others in meaningful ways that provides indirect personal satisfaction.

Sublimation

Channeling unacceptable impulses into socially acceptable activities.

Humor

Expressing uncomfortable feelings in a way that is amusing/appropriate.

Suppression

Continuously deciding to postpone attention to distressing thoughts or feelings

Repression

Unconsciously blocking distressing thoughts, memories, or impulses from awareness.

Displacement

Redirecting an emotion from its original source to a safer substitute target.

Reaction formation

Behaving in a way that is opposite to one's true unacceptable feelings.

Somatization

Expressing psychological distress through physical symptoms.

Rationalization

Creating logical or socially acceptable explanations to justify unacceptable feelings.

Passive aggression

indirectly expressing hostility (e.g., procrastination, stubbornness, intentional inefficiency).

Acting out

Directly expressing unconscious emotional conflicts through impulsive actions rather than reflection.

Dissociation

Detaching from reality, identity, or experience to avoid psychological distress.

Splitting

Viewing people or situations in all-or-nothing terms (black and white thinking).

Projection

Attributing one's own unacceptable thoughts or feelings to someone else.

Denial

Refusing to acknowledge an aspect of reality that is distressing

How do defense mechanisms help reduce anxiety?

Largely unconscious psychological strategies used by the ego to reduce anxiety arising from unacceptable impulses, internal conflicts, or threatening realities.

Oral stage

- Birth - 18 months

- Physical focus: Mouth, lips, and tongue

- Psychological theme: Dependency, passivity

- Only id (pleasure) exists at this point

- Psychological theme: Overly independent versus overly dependent

Anal stage

- 18 months - 3 years

- Ego now forms

- Physical focus: Anus and organs of elimination

- Psychological theme: Self-control and obedience

Anal retentive

Orderly, rules, very neat, like conscientiousness.

Anal expulsive

More disorderly

Phallic

- From 3 1/2 years - 7 years

- Focus on sexual organs

- Basic task: Coming terms with physical sex differences and their implications

- Oedipal crisis: Feelings of desire for opposite gender parent and resentment towards same-sex parent

Fixation

When there is an obsessive focus on an unresolved stage of psychosexual development.

How does fixation influence personality traits?

- Oral: Nail-biting, smoking, gum chewing, frequently touching things with mouth

- Anal: Retentive likely leads to being overly obsessed with tidiness and rules. In contrast, anal expulsive leads to individuals likely being more messy.

- Phallic: Fixations here can lead to adult personalities that are overly vain, exhibitionistic, and sexually aggressive.

Regression

Occurs where people revert back to childlike behaviors to cope with stress, trauma, or overwhelming emotions.

How does regression affect personality?

Leads people to have less autonomy, extreme behavioral changes, and impaired functioning.

Electra Complex

The unconscious desire of girls to replace their mother and win their father's romantic love

Adler's views on personality

Viewed personality as a unified whole rather than parts competing together.

Adler's views on inferiority complex?

Feelings of inferiority drive people to compensate and strive for superiority.

Adler's views of birth order

- First born: More favorable and had more attention from parents.

- Second born: "Dethrones" first child and instills inferiority.

- Third born: Dethrones the first two but is overindulged.

Karen Horney's views on personality

- Said Oedipus complex was about anxiety as children struggle between hostility and dependence towards parents.

- Men can experience "womb envy" that is sublimated through achievement.

Jung's word association methods

Some associations were normal and others were "neurotic."

Freud's free association

Freud's free association focused more on how people could speak freely with the goal of finding unconscious thoughts.

Results from research about Adler's birth hypothesis:

Moderate research shows that moderate inferiority is associated with more success, confidence, and persistence and higher GPA.

How did neo-Freudians shifted emphasis from sexuality to social and cultural influences?

Neo-Freudians focused more on interpersonal relationships, conscious motivations, and environmental factors in personality development.

What are the methodological limitations of early psychodynamic assessment tools?

- Lots of complexities

- A lot of case study methods - not generalizable

- Vague definitions

- Not really untestable because they cannot be proven false

- "Just in denial"

- Lots of sexism - males were default here.

Existentialism

The philosophical belief we are each responsible for creating purpose or meaning in our own lives.

What is an existential crisis?

Existential crisis is a period of intense, deep questioning about the meaning, purpose, and value of one's life and existence, often causing significant anxiety and psychological discomfort. It stems from confronting fundamental, often unanswerable, questions about mortality, free will, and the legitimacy of one's life choices.

Construals

Defined as how we see the world around us.

How do construals play a role in existential psychology?

Existentialism is heavily grounded by subjective perspectives as a person uses their own free will along with thinking about the past and future.

What is terror management theory?

A theory of death-related anxiety; explores people's emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death

How does self-esteem function as a buffer against death-related anxiety?

By validating an individual's sense of personal value and meaning within a cultural worldview, mitigating the existential terror of mortality.

Symbolic immortality

The psychological need to feel that one's life has meaning and continues beyond physical death.

Mortality salience

When we are reminded about death

Behavioral and psychological effects of mortality salience

- Generates anxiety and makes us uncomfortable

- Increases our preference for ingroups

- Increases hostility towards outgroups

- Increases patriotism

- Increases conventional thoughts about gender roles

How can TMT account for health-promoting behaviors?

When people are consciously thinking about death, people are more likely to adopt strategies to be healthy such as exercising, eating healthier, or using sun protection.

How can TMT account for risk taking behaviors?

Sometimes people will be more likely to engage in risky behaviors that help boost their self-esteem or help support their construals.

Mortality salience/Big 5

- Openness: lower cognitive flexibility

- Conscientiousness -> Higher norm adherence, rule following, and structured defense

- Extraversion: mixed results

- Agreeableness: Higher aggressive responses towards outgroups

- Neuroticism: Higher levels of anxiety

Sociometer Theory

Self esteem is a gauge that tells us how we belong to others.

How does self-esteem function as a social belonging gauge?

Not belonging is upsetting, would lead to changing things when we feel bad about ourselves.

What is Meaning Maintainence Model?

MMM is when there's a violation of something we expect (ex. Fall but Starbucks is not selling pumpkin spice)

Carl Rogers theory

People have an inherent tendency to realize their full potential when supported by an environment that provides unconditional positive regard.

Abraham Maslow

Created "Hierarchy of Needs" describes a progression from basic physiological needs to self-actualization. Within this theory, fundamental needs like safety & belonging lays the groundwork for higher-level personal growth.

Five tenets of humanistic psychology

1. Personal responsibility/free will

2. Here and now:

3. Individual experience

4. Personal growth

5. Self-actualization

Personal responsibility/free will

We have personal choices

Here and now

Optimal experiences happen during the present moment

Individual experience

We understand ourselves and come up with our own experiences.

Personal growth

We have a desire to grow and "self-actualize"

Self actualization

The process by which people achieve their full potential

Characteristics of self actualization

- Care more about mastery of things rather than performance

- Growth is desirable

How does anxiety arises from disruptions to the self-concept?

- Anxiety results from disruption or things that contradicts the self-concept.

- Subliminal perception (subsception): We can process threatening information below conscious experience.

Conditional positive regard

Based on certain things or attributes happening to receive love. This can make a person feel like they are walking on a tightrope because they have to perform in a certain way to get regard.

Unconditional positive regard

This means that despite whatever you do, you still receive complete support and get acceptance.

Fully functioning person (Carl Rogers)

- "Someone who feels optimally satisfied with their lives."

- Staying in the present moment, feeling things actively rather than just "passing through life"

- Trust their feelings

- Having a higher amount of emotional affect and intensity

Hierarchy of needs levels:

5. Self-actualization (Desire to become the most that one can be)

4. Esteem (Respect, Self-esteem, status, recognition, strength, freedom)

3. Love and belonging (Friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection)

2. Safety needs (Personal security, employment, resources, health, property)

1. Physiological needs (Air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, reproduction)

Deficiency motive:

Resulting from a lack of a needed object

Growth motive:

Having the inherent motive to grow (similar to Rogers)

Define "flow"

- Doing something that requires skill, completely absorbed by the activity.

- No multitasking; is helpful for people to feel like they are reaching their goals.

Person-centered therapy

Using active listening skills and unconditional positive regard to help the client feel in charge and reach self-actualization

Q-sort method

- Tool where participants rank a set of statements, usually personality traits, into a forced-choice distribution.

- It assesses the gap between the "actual self" and "ideal self" by comparing two separate card sorts to measure the correlation or "congruence" between them.

(Remember the pyramid sorting thing we did in class.)

Behaviorism

Studying things through observable behavior, thinking is way less emphasized.

Classical conditioning

Pairs two stimuli to elicit an involuntary and reflexive response.

Operant conditioning

Associates voluntary behavior with consequences

Extinction

The gradual weakening and disappearance of a conditioned response (CR) when the conditioned stimulus (CS) is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus (US).

Spontaneous recovery

The sudden reappearance of a previously extinguished conditioned response (behavior or emotional reaction) after a rest period, without new training.

Positive punishment

Adding something to stop behavior. (Ex: Yelling at them)

Negative punishment

Removing something to stop behavior. (Ex: Take away a toy they like.)

Positive reinforcement

Rewarding behavior by giving something (ex. a candy)

Negative reinforcement

Remove something to reward behavior. (Ex: Take away homework.)

Reciprocal determinism

the interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment

Bandura's Bobo Doll Experiment

Children watched adults act aggressively towards an inflatable doll; later, when frustrated, these children largely imitated the same, or new, aggressive acts. This suggests that learning occurs through observation.

Expectancy Value Theory

Decisions are determined by the beliefs about the associations that we make. (Perceived value > objective value)

Behaviorist view of personality

Occurs through the amount of media we consume, socialization pressures, and our feedback from the environment.

Self regulation

Capacity to self-regulate our behaviors and reactions to emotions.

Why are self regulation skills important?

Having better regulation skills leads to more healthy behaviors, easier decision making, and less cognitive load.

How is classical conditioning linked to PTSD/phobias?

Pairing neutral stimuli with traumatic events to trigger fear perpetuates the development of phobias and PTSD symptoms.

How is operant conditioning linked to PTSD/phobias?

Repeatedly avoiding stimuli reinforces anxiety and is also an example of operant conditioning.

Does stimulus generalization play a role in PTSD symptoms/phobias?

If there are more stimuli that can prompt someone to become triggered, it can exacerbate synonyms.

How can gender roles be shaped through social learning and conditioning?

Most parents act towards their children as if they embody traits associated with the child's presumed gender.

Agency

When a person is capable of being independent and assertive.

Communality

Having warmth and connection to others.

Androgyny versus masculinity/femininity

Having both a mixture of masculine and feminine traits, aka androgynous, is linked to having healthier life outcomes.