Self and Personality

Self

The totality of an individual's conscious experiences, ideas, thoughts, and feelings with regard to oneself.

Personality

The unique and relatively stable qualities that characterise an individual's behaviour across different situations over time.

Self-esteem

An individual's subjective value judgment about their own personal worth.

Self-efficacy

The belief in one's own ability to execute the behaviours necessary to achieve specific outcomes.

Self-regulation

The capacity to monitor, organise, and adapt one's own behaviour to meet external and internal demands.

Id

The instinctual, unconscious structure of personality that operates entirely on the pleasure principle, seeking immediate gratification.

Ego

The rational component of personality that operates on the reality principle to balance instinctual demands with external constraints.

Superego

The moral branch of personality that internalises parental authority and societal values to determine right from wrong.

Repression

The ego defence mechanism by which distressing or unacceptable thoughts and impulses are dismissed from conscious awareness.

Projection

The ego defence mechanism in which an individual attributes their own unacceptable feelings, traits, or motives to others.

Reaction formation

An ego defence mechanism where a person manages anxiety by adopting behaviours and attitudes opposite to their true desires.

Rationalisation

An ego defence mechanism in which logically plausible but incorrect explanations are generated to justify unacceptable actions.

Cardinal traits

Pervasive dispositions in Gordon Allport's theory around which an individual's entire life and identity seem to revolve.

Central traits

Major dispositions in Gordon Allport's theory that form the primary characteristics commonly used in testimonials or recommendations.

Secondary traits

Less consistent and peripheral characteristics in Gordon Allport's theory, such as personal preferences in food or fashion.

Collective unconscious

Carl Jung's concept of an inherited reservoir of ancestral memories and archetypes shared across humanity.