Personality Psychology Final Review

Cluster A (Odd, Eccentric)

Paranoid, Schizoid, Schizotypal

Cluster B (Dramatic, Emotional, Erratic)

Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, Narcissistic

Cluster C (Anxious, Fearful)

Avoidant, Dependent, Obsessive-Compulsive

Cognition

Refers to all mental activities related to perceiving, interpreting, remembering, believing, and anticipating

Field Dependent

Relies on external cues; has difficulty distinguishing items from background in perception and problem-solving; often influenced by social context.

Field Independent

Relies on internal cues; better at focusing on details despite background distractions, it is characterized by a tendency to analyze information independently rather than being influenced by contextual elements.

Personal Constructs

Mental templates or frameworks we use to interpret and predict events

Constructive Alternativism

The idea that people can interpret the same event in different ways based on their constructs

Learned Helplessness (Seligman)

A condition in which a person or animal learns to believe they are helpless in situations, even when they have power to change them; linked to depression and lack of motivation due to repeated failures or uncontrollable outcomes.

Locus of Control (Rotter)

Internal: Belief that one controls their own fate. 

External: Belief that external forces (luck, fate) control outcomes. 

Explanatory Styles: Optimistic Style

Attributes bad events to external, unstable, and specific causes

Explanatory Styles Pessimistic Style

Attributes bad events to internal, stable, and global causes

Personal Projects (Brian Little)

Goals or tasks that are personally meaningful; how people pursue these reflects their personality and motivation. 

Emotional States

Temporary emotional reactions to specific events

Emotional Traits

Stable tendencies to experience certain emotions across time and situations

Research on Happiness 

Influenced by personality traits (especially extraversion and low neuroticism), relationships, work satisfaction, and sense of meaning. 

Hedonic: Focus on pleasure. 

Eudemonic: Focus on meaning and self-realization. Happiness can be influenced by diverse factors including one's personality, relationships, job satisfaction, and overall sense of purpose.

Interactional Model

Personality moderates the relationship between stress and illness

Transactional Model

Personality influences coping mechanisms

Health Behavior Model

Personality affects health behaviors that influence health

Predisposition Model

Personality and disease are both caused by a common predisposition

Illness Behavior Model

Personality influences how people respond to illness

Emotional Content

Refers to the feelings and emotional states that may influence an individual's health and behavioral responses. (Ex: sad, happy, angry)

Emotional Style

The characteristic way in which individuals express and experience emotions, influencing their behavior and health. (Intensity)

Self-esteem

One’s overall evaluation of their own worth

Implicit self-esteem

Unconscious, automatic self-assessment

Explicit self-esteem

Conscious self-evaluation

Contingent self-esteem

Self-worth dependent on external validation or specific outcomes

Self-Discrepancy Theory (Tory Higgins)

Discrepancies between actual, ideal, and ought selves lead to emotional vulnerabilities

Actual-Ideal Discrepancy

Linked to sadness and disappointment when one's real self falls short of their ideal self.

Actual-Ought Discrepancy

Linked to anxiety and guilt resulting from failing to meet obligations or standards.

Selection

Choosing environments or people based on personality and individual preferences that align with one's traits and goals.

When a person's behavior unintentionally elicits a certain response from another person, we observe

Evocation

Influencing other people's behavior intentionally is known as

Manipulation

Taxonomy 

In personality psychology specifically categorizes different personality traits and types to aid in analysis and understanding.

Gender Differences

Women tend to score higher on agreeableness, neuroticism, and empathy.

 Men tend to score higher on assertiveness and self-esteem. 

Cross-cultural studies show consistency in these differences, suggesting both biological and social influences. 

Femininity

Often associated with traits such as nurturing, sensitivity, and cooperativeness, reflecting societal expectations of women.

Masculinity

Typically linked to traits like assertiveness, competitiveness, and emotional restraint, reflecting societal expectations of men. .

Androgynous

A blend of both feminine and masculine traits, allowing for flexibility in gender expression and roles.

Evoked Culture

The phenomenon whereby cultural practices and norms are activated by specific situational contexts, influencing behavior in diverse groups.

Transmitted Culture

Cultural practices and values that are passed down through generations, influencing individual behaviors and social norms.

Cultural Universals

Traits or practices that are common to all human cultures, suggesting a shared human experience.

List of Cultural Universals 

includes language, customs, marriage rituals, and religious practices that can be found across all societies.

Is a general term that refers to awareness and thinking, as well as to specific mental acts such as perceiving, attending to, interpreting, remembering, believing, judging, deciding, and anticipating

Cognition

Herman Witkin introduced the idea of

Field dependence versus field independence

Which of the following statements is true about George Kelly's personal construct theory?

People's personal constructs serve to create each person's psychological reality.

Is a psychologist most commonly associated with research on theory of individual differences in tolerance for sensory stimulation

Aneseth Petrie

Is a concept that describes people's interpretation of responsibility for the events in their life and it more specifically refers to whether people tend to find out that responsibility internally, within themselves, or externally, in fate, luck, or chance

Locus of control

Is true about an external locus of control

It refers to a generalized expectancy that events are outside of one's control

Is observed when people passively endure an uncomfortable situation that is apparently outside of their control

Learned helplessness

Refers to a person's explanation of the reason of an event

Casual attributions

Refers to the specific kinds of emotion that a person experiences

Content

Identify an accurate statement about questionnaire measures of happiness

They correlate with measures of social desirability and appear to be valid

Studies of sex differences in happiness indicate that

Men and women are roughly equally happy

In the context of research by psychologists Paul Costa and Robert McCrae, which of the following is a true statement?

Extraversion was associated with more frequent positive emotion

Correlational studies have

Shown that high extraversion and low neuroticism are associated with happiness

According to the diathesis-stress model, depression results from

Stressful life events and a preexisting vulnerability

Is defined as a way of processing incoming information, a way of a way of organizing and interpreting the world

Cognitive Schema

A person who thinks he or she is a total failure will often act like a total failure and may even give up trying to do better, creating a

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Emotional Style

Affect intensity

The way you see, define, and understand yourself is known as your

Self-concept

Is defined as person's evaluation of their self-concept, how they feel (along a good-to-bad dimension

Self-esteem

The aspects of yourself that you present to others are referred to as your

Social identity

Our sense of self influences

How we evaluate life events.

How we interact with other people.

How others view us.

Refers to the specific knowledge structure, or cognitive representation, of the self-concept

Self-schema

The term "possible selves" describes the many ideas people have about who they

Hope to become, fear they will become, think they might become.

The international investigation of 10,047 individuals located on six continents and five islands from around the world revealed that one of these factors plays a central role in what people worldwide look for in a long-term mate. Identify the factor

Personality characteristics

Suggests that individuals are married to people who are similar to themselves

Assortative mating

According to Kelly and Conley (1987), ________ has been the most consistent personality predictor of marital volatility and divorce

Emotional instability

Identify a manipulation tactic that is exemplified by showing someone how much fun it will be to do an activity

Pleasure Induction

The term ________ is best defined as beliefs about how men and women differ or are supposed to differ, in contrast to what the actual differences are

Gender stereotypes

Which of the following is a belief held by evolutionary psychologists?

Men and women have confronted different adaptive problems in the domains of mating and sexuality

Stress is the ________ produced by events that are perceived to be uncontrollable or threatening to one's goals

Subjective feeling