PSYC 102: Personality Psychology - Theoretical Approaches, Trait Models, and Assessment

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering psychoanalysis, trait theory, the Five-Factor Model, social-cognitive theory, humanistic perspectives, self-concept, and empirical critiques of the MBTI.

Personality

An individual's consistent pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that explains differing reactions to situations and defines who they are.

Trait

A characteristic pattern of behaviour or disposition that is measurable and stable over time.

Unconscious

The hidden reservoir of feelings, thoughts, and urges below awareness that drives all human behaviour.

Preconscious

Mental contents located just beneath awareness that are not actively conscious but can easily surface if cued.

Id

The innate biological structure of the psyche driven by basic instincts and operating entirely on the pleasure principle.

Pleasure Principle

The operating rule demanding immediate gratification of instinctual needs regardless of reality or social rules.

Ego

The component developing in early infancy that operates on the reality principle to balance biological urges against the real world.

Reality Principle

The operating rule that satisfies instinctual desires in feasible, socially appropriate ways by weighing wants against consequences.

Superego

The moral conscience formed around age $5$ or $6$ from cultural rules that creates the capacity for guilt.

Free Association

A psychoanalytic method where the client speaks whatever comes to mind without self-censorship to uncover hidden thoughts.

Freudian Slips

Accidental verbal or behavioral errors that reveal suppressed hidden desires rather than being purely coincidental.

Defense Mechanisms

Unconscious protective strategies used by the ego to manage anxiety generated by intrapsychic conflicts.

Displacement

Redirecting unacceptable emotional urges or anger away from the original source onto a safer, less threatening target.

Projection

Attributing one's own unacceptable impulses, anxieties, or unwanted traits onto other people or groups.

Repression

Squashing down and blocking anxiety-provoking thoughts, impulses, or memories from entering conscious awareness.

Denial

Refusing to perceive or acknowledge painful realities, objective facts, or negative outcomes.

Sublimation

Channeling unacceptable instinctual urges into productive, constructive, and socially valued activities.

Reaction Formation

Transforming unacceptable instinctual urges into their exact opposite conscious feelings or behaviors.

Rationalization

Devising reassuring, logical justifications to explain away less-than-ideal behaviors or thoughts.

Regression

Coping with anxiety by reverting to habits and behaviors characteristic of an earlier developmental stage.

Identification (Psychodynamic)

Alleviating anxiety by modeling oneself after or pretending to be someone who does not show vulnerability or fear.

Psychosomatic Symptoms

Physical ailments, such as headaches or chest pain, directly caused or aggravated by psychological stress.

Talking Cure

Freud's foundational insight that verbally discussing problems, conflicts, and memories can relieve somatic and psychological distress.

Cardinal Trait

An overarching, rare disposition that thoroughly dominates a person's entire life and conduct.

Central Trait

A general, prominent disposition that reliably describes a person's core nature across most everyday settings.

Secondary Trait

A peripheral disposition that manifests only under specific circumstances or narrow social contexts.

Functional Equivalence

The phenomenon where enduring dispositions cause objectively diverse situations to be perceived and reacted to as functionally identical.

Lexical Hypothesis

The proposition that the most socially important, universal human differences become encoded as distinct words in natural language.

Factor Analysis

A statistical procedure that examines correlation patterns among test items to cluster them into fewer underlying dimensions.

Assessment

The systematic evaluation of psychological traits and behaviors using questionnaires, observations, and projective tests.

Five-Factor Model

The dominant taxonomy (OCEAN) classifying human personality into five broad, universal dimensions.

Open-Mindedness (Openness)

A Big Five dimension marked by intellectual curiosity, aesthetic sensitivity, creative imagination, and novelty-seeking.

Conscientiousness

A Big Five dimension characterized by organization, self-discipline, goal-directed effort, and dependability.

Extraversion

A Big Five dimension characterized by sociability, assertiveness, high physical energy, and sensitivity to rewards.

Agreeableness

A Big Five dimension marked by compassion, cooperativeness, trustworthiness, and warmth.

Neuroticism

A Big Five dimension marked by emotional instability, anxiety, depression, and high susceptibility to negative psychological states.

Honesty-Humility

A proposed sixth trait dimension evaluating moral integrity, sincerity, fairness, and lack of greed.

Interpersonal Relatedness

An indigenous trait dimension identified in Chinese lexical studies reflecting a strong focus on relational harmony and tradition.

Genetic Essentialism

The mistaken assumption that personality traits are permanently fixed by genetic inheritance without room for change.

Gene × Environment Interactions

The bidirectional dynamic whereby external life circumstances regulate and influence the biological expression of inherited traits.

Person-Situation Controversy

The debate over whether human behavior is primarily driven by stable internal traits or by changing external circumstances.

Reciprocal Determinism

Bandura's concept stating that internal personal factors, external environments, and behaviors continuously influence each other cyclically.

Locus of Control

Rotter's construct measuring whether individuals believe events are determined by their own choices or by outside forces and fate.

Outcome Efficacy

The belief that engaging in a specific behavior will consistently produce a specific target outcome.

Self-Efficacy

An individual's conviction in their own capability to successfully execute the behaviors needed to reach a goal.

Learned Helplessness

A state of passive resignation that develops when past unavoidable failures teach an individual that their efforts cannot influence outcomes.

Depressive Realism

The phenomenon in which depressed individuals lack the typical illusion of control and perceive reality and constraints with painful accuracy.

Agency

A self-oriented dimension of gender expression characterized by assertiveness, competitiveness, and independence.

Communion

An others-oriented dimension of gender expression emphasizing compassion, nurturing, cooperation, and emotional sensitivity.

Sexual Selection

An evolutionary mechanism in which differing parental investments lead males and females to develop distinct mating strategies.

Social Role Theory

The perspective arguing that behavioral differences between genders emerge from historical divisions of labor into provider and caregiver roles.

Self-Actualization

The humanistic growth process of fulfilling innate potential, living authentically, and pursuing meaningful purpose.

Unconditional Positive Regard

A therapist's nonjudgmental attitude of total warmth, respect, and acceptance toward a client.

Flow

An optimal state of complete absorption and engagement that emerges when a meaningful task's challenge closely matches one's competence.

Self-Determination Theory

A framework stating that intrinsic motivation and well-being rely on fulfilling three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Autonomy

The psychological need to experience one's behavior as originating from internal volition and authentic personal choice.

Self-Concept

The overarching cognitive schema of beliefs, perceptions, and self-knowledge a person holds about themselves.

Reflected Appraisals

The process of developing and modifying self-knowledge based on perceptions of how others view and treat us.

Working Self-Concept

The dynamic subset of self-knowledge activated by immediate situational cues to guide ongoing behavior.

Self-Verification

The tendency to seek out and attend to feedback that confirms one's preexisting self-views, even when negative.

Self-Serving Biases

Cognitive tendencies that protect self-esteem by taking credit for successes and blaming situations for failures.

Sociometer Theory

An evolutionary model suggesting that self-esteem operates as an internal gauge tracking social acceptance versus rejection.

Terror Management Theory

A theory proposing that cultural worldviews and self-esteem shield individuals from existential dread provoked by the awareness of mortality.

Narcissism

A personality trait characterized by grandiose self-inflation, an excessive craving for admiration, and fragile underlying security.

Independent Self-Construal

A conception of identity typical in individualistic cultures where the self is experienced as autonomous, distinct, and stable across situations.

Interdependent Self-Construal

A conception of identity typical in collectivistic cultures where the self is embedded within social relationships and adapts to different contexts.

Cultural Identity Clarity

The degree to which an individual experiences a confident, clear understanding of their cultural collective's values and norms.

Psychological Types Theory

Carl Jung's framework categorizing personality using introversion versus extraversion along with four cognitive functions.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

A $16$-type classification tool based on Jungian theory that adds a judging versus perceiving dimension, popular in corporate settings despite poor empirical validity.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A projective assessment in which an individual creates stories about ambiguous pictures to reveal unconscious motives and anxieties.

Bimodal Distribution Fallacy (MBTI)

The flawed theoretical assumption that personality divides into two discrete types rather than along a continuous normal distribution.

Test-Retest Reliability of MBTI

The consistency of categorical scores over time, which is low with about $50\%$ of respondents changing types after two months ($r = .42$).