Personality Psychology Overview

These flashcards cover key concepts and definitions related to personality psychology, including psychoanalysis, traits, the Big Five model, and self-concept.

Personality

Patterns of thought and behavior that make a person react to certain situations in relatively consistent ways.

Psychoanalysis

A method of psychological therapy that emphasizes the influence of the unconscious mind on behavior and feelings.

Id

The part of the personality that contains our primal instincts and drives, operating according to the pleasure principle.

Ego

The part of personality that deals with reality, mediating between the desires of the id and the constraints of reality.

Superego

The part of personality that internalizes cultural rules and ideals to guide moral conscience.

Defense Mechanisms

Psychological strategies used by the ego to cope with conflict between the id's desires and societal constraints.

Displacement

The defense mechanism where the ego redirects aggressive impulses toward more defenseless targets.

Projection

A defense mechanism where individuals project their own undesirable traits onto others.

Repression

A defense mechanism that keeps unwanted feelings or memories out of conscious awareness.

Denial

A defense mechanism that prevents the perception of painful realities.

Cardinal Traits

Traits that dominate a person's personality and direct most of their behaviors.

Central Traits

General dispositions used to describe a person's typical behaviors.

Secondary Traits

Traits that are relevant only in specific contexts.

Lexical Hypothesis

The idea that traits are encoded in language and help differentiate among people's characteristics.

Factor Analysis

A statistical technique that reduces a large set of variables into smaller sets based on their correlations.

Big Five

A model in the trait approach, consisting of five key dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

behavioral genetics

The estimate of how much genetics contribute to personality traits based on comparisons of individuals with different degrees of genetic similarity.

Social Learning Theory

A theory that explains how people’s behaviors, cognitions, and dispositions are shaped by observing and imitating others.

Locus of Control

A person's belief about what controls their life outcomes, either internal or external.

Self-Actualization

The process of accepting oneself and others as they are, striving to fulfill one's potential.

Self-Concept

The broad network of mental representations that a person has of themselves.

Self-Esteem

A motivation to view oneself positively, often assessed through levels of social acceptance.

Collectivism

A cultural orientation that emphasizes the needs and goals of the group over individual desires.

Individualism

A cultural orientation that emphasizes personal independence and the importance of individual goals.

outcome efficacy

belief that is a person can perform a behavior, a desired outcome will result

self-efficacy

belief that one can successfully execute a behavior linked to a desired outcome

depressive realism

painful awareness of personal limitations that render outcomes uncontrollable, in contrast to a more commonly held illusion of control for those who aren’t depressed

self-serving attributions

tendency to attribute positive outcomes to personal factors and negative outcomes to external factors.

above-average effect

tendency for people to overestimate their own qualities and abilities in relation to others.

idiosyncratic trait definitions

maintaining positive views of oneself by defining traits in ways that seem true to us

independent self-construal

a notion of self as bounded and stable entity that is distinct from others

interdependent self-construal

a notion of self that emphasizes connectedness and relationships with others, viewing oneself in relation to social contexts.