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Flashcards covering key vocabulary from the lecture notes on Personality and Psychological Disorders.
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Personality
An individual's unique and consistent set of behavioral traits.
Consistency (in personality)
Stable behavior patterns across time and situations.
Distinctiveness (in personality)
Explains why people behave differently in the same situation.
Personality Trait
A durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations.
Factor Analysis
A statistical tool used to group related traits under broader, underlying dimensions.
Extraversion
Sociable, upbeat, and friendly; characterized by a positive outlook and motivation for social contact.
Neuroticism
Anxious, hostile, and self-conscious; tendency to exhibit impulsiveness and emotional instability.
Openness to Experience
Curiosity, flexibility, and imaginativeness; tolerance of ambiguity.
Agreeableness
Warm, sympathetic, and trusting; correlated with empathy and helping behavior.
Conscientiousness
Diligent, well-organized, and punctual; associated with strong self-discipline.
Psychodynamic Perspectives
Explain personality by influence of early childhood, unconscious conflicts, and sexual urges.
Behavioral Perspectives
Focuses on observable behavior, and learned response tendencies shaped by environment.
Humanistic Perspectives
Emphasizes the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and potential for personal growth.
Biological Perspectives
Genetic factors contribute to behavior and personality traits.
Id
The primitive, instinctive component of personality that operates according to the pleasure principle and demands immediate gratification.
Ego
The decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle and mediates between id desires and social expectations.
Superego
The moral component of personality that incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong.
Conscious
What you are aware of right now and includes current thoughts, perceptions, and feelings.
Preconscious
Contains material just beneath the surface of awareness that can easily be retrieved.
Unconscious
Contains thoughts, memories, and desires that are well below the surface of conscious awareness but still have a great influence on behavior.
Defense Mechanisms
Largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and guilt.
Repression
Burying distressing thoughts in the unconscious.
Projection
Attributing your own thoughts/feelings to someone else.
Displacement
Shifting emotion to a safer target.
Reaction Formation
Acting in a way opposite to your true feelings.
Regression
Returning to immature behaviors.
Rationalization
Creating plausible excuses to justify bad behavior.
Identification
Boosting self-worth by aligning with others.
Sublimation
Redirecting unacceptable urges into positive outlets.
Fixation
A lingering focus on an earlier stage due to either too much or too little gratification, affecting adult behavior.
Oedipal Complex
Children manifest erotically tinged desires for their opposite-sex parent, accompanied by feelings of hostility toward their same-sex parent.
Personal Unconscious
Layer of unconscious that contains repressed or forgotten personal experiences.
Collective Unconscious
A deeper, universal layer of the unconscious shared by all humans that contains latent memory traces inherited from our ancestors.
Archetypes
Emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning.
Striving for Superiority
Desire to overcome challenges, improve oneself, and achieve mastery.
Compensation
Efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one’s abilities.
Inferiority Complex
Exaggerated feelings of inadequacy.
Overcompensation
Masking inferiority through outward displays of success.
Operant Conditioning
A form of learning where behaviour is influenced by its consequences – reinforcement strengthens behaviour, while punishment weakens it.
Response Tendencies
Learned patterns of behavior that are consistently triggered by specific situations.
Observational Learning
Occurs when an organism’s responding is influenced by the observation of others.
Self-Efficacy
A person’s belief in their own ability to perform behaviours that will lead to desired outcomes.
Reciprocal Determinism
The mutual influence between a person’s behaviour, their personal factors (like thoughts and beliefs), and their environment.
Self-Concept
A collection of beliefs about one’s own nature, unique qualities, and typical behaviour.
Incongruence
Gap between self-concept and reality.
Congruence
When your self-concept matches reality.
Hierarchy of Needs
A systematic arrangement of needs, according to priority, in which basic needs must be met before less basic needs are activated.
Self-Actualization
The need to realise one’s full potential; the drive to become what one can become.
Behavioural Genetics
The field that studies how genetic factors contribute to behaviour and personality traits.
Heritability
The proportion of trait variation in a population that can be attributed to genetic differences.
Narcissism
Personality trait marked by an inflated sense of importance, a need for attention and admiration, a sense of entitlement, and a tendency to exploit others.
Terror Management Theory (TMT)
Explains how humans manage the existential anxiety stemming from their awareness of death by adopting cultural worldviews that give meaning and purpose.
Mortality Salience
The degree to which subjects’ mortality is prominent in their minds.
National Character
The idea that various cultures have widely recognised prototype personalities.
Independent View of Self
People learn to define themselves in terms of their personal attributes, abilities, accomplishments and possessions.
Interdependent View of Self
Emphasises the fundamental connectedness of people to each other. Modesty and reliance on others are key features.
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory
Explains how a child develops within a complex system of relationships influenced by multiple layers of environment.
Microsystem
The child’s immediate surroundings (family, school, daycare).
Mesosystem
Interactions between different microsystems (home, neighbourhood, school).
Exosystem
The social setting surrounding the child (e.g., religious institutions, media, parent’s work environments).
Macrosystem
The broadest context, referring to cultures and subcultures with their own beliefs and value systems.
Medical Model
Proposes abnormal behavior is viewed as a disease terms such as: mental illness, psychological disorder and psychopathology.
Diagnosis
Distinguishing one illness from another.
Aetiology
Refers to the apparent causation and developmental history of an illness.
Prognosis
A forecast about the probable course of an illness.
Deviance
Behaviour differs from cultural norms.
Maladaptive Behavior
Interferes with daily life.
Personal Distress
Suffering is reported by the person.
Dimensional Approach
Rates individuals on continuums like anxiety, depression, paranoia, etc.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Marked by a chronic, high level of anxiety that is not tied by any specific threat.
Specific Phobia
A persistent and irrational fear of an object or situation that presents no realistic danger.
Panic Disorder
Characterised by recurrent attacks of overwhelming anxiety that usually occur suddenly and unexpectedly.
Agoraphobia
Fear of going out in public spaces.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Marked by persistent, uncontrollable intrusions of unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and urges to engage in senseless rituals (compulsions).
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Involves enduring psychological disturbance attributed to the experience of a major traumatic event.
Concordance Rates
The percentage of twin pairs or other pairs of relatives who exhibit the same disorder
Evolved Module for Fear Learning
Automatically activated by stimuli related to past survival threats in evolutionary history.
Executive Function
Basic cognitive processes that support self-regulation, planning and decision making.
Dissociative Amnesia
A sudden loss of memory for important personal information that is too extensive due to normal forgetting.
Dissociative Identity Disorder
Disruption of identity with two or more distinct personalities.
Major Depressive Disorder
Persistent sadness, despair, and loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities.
Anhedonia
Reduced ability to feel pleasure.
Bipolar Disorder
Marked by the experience of both depressed and manic periods.
Schizophrenia
A severe psychological disorder marked by delusions , hallucinations, disorganized thinking and speech and Deterioration in adaptive behavior .
Hallucinations
sensory perceptions that occur in the absence of real, external stimulus or are gross distortions of perceptual input .
Expressed Emotion
Critical, hostile, or overinvolved family interactions.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in social interaction and communication, and restricted, repetitive interests and activities.
Personality Disorders
Marked by extreme, inflexible personality traits that can cause subjective distress or impaired social or occupational functioning.
Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)
Marked by impulsive, callous, manipulative, aggressive, and irresponsible behaviour.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
Marked by instability in social relationships, self-image, and emotional functioning.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)
Marked by a grandiose sense of self-importance, a sense of entitlement, and an excessive need for attention and admiration.
Eating Disorders
Severe disturbances in eating behaviour characterised by preoccupation with weight concerns and unhealthy efforts to control weight.
Anorexia Nervosa
Intense fear of gaining weight, distorted body image, and refusal to maintain normal weight.
Bulimia Nervosa
Recurrent binge eating episodes with compensatory behaviours like vomiting, fasting, laxatives, and excessive exercise.
Binge-Eating Disorder
Distress-inducing eating binges that are not accompanied by the purging, fasting, and excessive exercise seen in bulimia.
Insight Therapies
Verbal interactions intended to enhance the client’s self-knowledge, and thus promote healthy changes in personality and behaviour.
Behaviour Therapies
Involves the application of the principles of learning and conditioning to direct efforts to change the clients’ maladaptive behaviours.
Biomedical Therapies
Physiological interventions intended to reduce symptoms associated with psychological disorders.
Psychoanalysis
An insight therapy that emphasises the recovery of unconscious conflicts, motives and defenses through techniques such as free association and transference.
Free association
Clients spontaneously express their thoughts and feelings exactly as they occur with as little censorship as possible.