AP Psychology Personality Vocab

Personality

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

Psychodynamic Perspective

How behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts.

Ego

The largely conscious, 'executive' part of personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality, operating on the reality principle.

Defense Mechanisms

The ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

Denial

Refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities.

Displacement

A defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person.

Projection

A defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.

Rationalization

A defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions.

Reaction Formation

A defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites.

Regression

A defense mechanism in which an individual retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage when faced with anxiety.

Repression

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

Sublimation

A defense mechanism that channels unacceptable urges into something more acceptable.

Preconscious

The level of consciousness in Freud's theory where thoughts and feelings are not conscious but are readily retrieveable.

Unconscious

According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.

Humanistic Psychology

A perspective that emphasized the growth potential of healthy people and the individual's potential for personal growth.

Unconditional Positive Regard

A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude believed to help clients develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Self-Actualizing Tendency

The human motive toward realizing our inner potential.

Social-Cognitive Theory

The use of cognitive processes in relation to understanding the social world.

Reciprocal Determinism

The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment.

Self-Concept

All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, 'Who am I?'

Self-Efficacy

One's sense of competence and effectiveness.

Self-Esteem

How much you value, respect, and feel confident about yourself.

Trait Theories

Theories that describe the characteristics that make up human personality and predict future behavior.

Personality Inventories

Questionnaires designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors used to assess selected personality traits.

Factor Analysis

A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items on a test.

The Big Five Theory

A trait theory identifying five main characteristics that account for most individual differences in personality.

Conscientiousness

The care a person gives to organization and thoughtfulness of others; dependability.

Agreeableness

How trusting, good-natured, cooperative, and soft-hearted one is.

Neuroticism

Degree of emotional instability or stability.

Openness to Experience

How intellectual, imaginative, curious, and broad-minded one is.

Extraversion

A personality dimension describing someone who is sociable, gregarious, and assertive.