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Personality
An individual's pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.
Psychodynamic theories
Theories that see personality with a focus on the unconscious mind and the impact of childhood experiences.
Psychoanalysis
Freud's theory, with the idea that personality connects to one's thoughts, actions, unconscious motives, and conflicts, a technique used to treat psychological disorders by exposing and analyzing unconscious tensions.
Free association
A method linked to psychoanalysis in which a person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, allowing painful memories from one's childhood to be retrieved, reviewed, and released.
Id
A group of unconscious psychic energy that wants to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives, works off of the pleasure principle, seeks immediate gratification.
Libido
Defined by Freud as a 'life energy force that fuels our pleasure-seeking'.
Ego
The partially conscious, 'executive' part of one's personality that mediates between the id and the superego, working off of the reality principle.
Superego
The partially conscious part of personality that represents one's internalized ideals, providing standards for judgment (conscience) and for future goals.
Psychosexual stages
Stages in which the id's pleasure-seeking energies focus on more pleasure-sensitive areas of the body known as erogenous zones.
Oedipus complex
A concept in Freud's theory referring to a child's feelings of desire for their opposite-sex parent and jealousy toward their same-sex parent.
Freudian slips
Errors in speech that are believed to reveal unconscious thoughts or feelings.
Fixation
A persistent focus on an earlier psychosexual stage due to unresolved conflicts.
Erogenous zones
Areas of the body that are particularly sensitive to pleasure.
Unconscious mind
A part of the mind that contains thoughts and memories not accessible to conscious awareness.
Conscious awareness
The state of being aware of and able to think about one's own thoughts and feelings.
Pleasure principle
The driving force of the id that seeks immediate gratification of desires.
Reality principle
The governing principle of the ego that seeks to satisfy the id's desires in realistic and socially appropriate ways.
Defense Mechanisms
The ego's defensive methods of trying to reduce anxiety by unconsciously altering reality.
Repression
Part of the psychoanalytic theory where one's anxiety-arousing wishes and feelings are banished from one's consciousness.
Manifest Content
The content of dreams.
Latent Content
A hidden meaning in one's dreams.
Neo-Freudians
Psychoanalysts that adopted Freud's interviewing techniques and accepted many of his basic ideas.
Inferiority Complex
The idea that much of one's behavior is due to efforts of trying to control childhood inferiority feelings that enabled one's goals for superiority and power.
Childhood Anxiety
Triggers one's goals for love and security.
Collective Unconscious
A group of images or archetypes that is shared and inherited from our species' history.
Schemas
Cognitive frameworks that help organize and interpret information.
Priming
The activation of certain associations in memory just before carrying out an action or task.
Implicit Memories
Memories that are not consciously recalled but influence behavior.
Reaction Formation
[T]rading unacceptable impulses for their opposite.
Projection
Bringing one's own threatening impulses upon others.
False Consensus Effect
The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share the same beliefs and behaviors as us.
Terror-Management Theory
The idea of a death-related anxiety, studies people's emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their following death.
Projective Test
A personality test that shows ambiguous images made to trigger a projection of one's inner dynamics.
Apperception Test (TAT)
A projective test where people express their inner feelings and interests with stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.
Freud's psychoanalysis
A theory connecting personality to one's thoughts, actions, unconscious motives, and conflicts.
Defense mechanisms
Strategies used by individuals to prevent themselves from experiencing anxiety.
Abraham Maslow
A humanistic psychologist known for proposing the hierarchy of needs.
Hierarchy of needs
Maslow's ranking of human needs, starting with psychological needs like food and water.
Self-actualization
One of our main psychological needs that arises after basic needs are met and self-esteem is achieved.
Self-transcendence
The desire for identity, meaning, and purpose beyond oneself, as defined by Maslow.
Carl Rogers' person-centered perspective
The idea that people are inherently good and capable of growth unless inhibited by their environment.
Growth-promoting social climate
An environment that provides acceptance, genuineness, and empathy, according to Rogers.
Unconditional positive regard
[A] caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude that helps clients establish self-awareness and self-acceptance.
Self-concept
One's thoughts and feelings relating to the question 'Who am I?'
Life story approach
A method researchers believe shows an individual's identity through a detailed narrative of their life history.
Ideal self
What a person ideally wants to be like compared to their actual self.
Positive self-concept
When the ideal self and the actual self are similar, according to Rogers.
Individualism
Trusting and acting upon one's feelings and being genuine to oneself.
Deindividuation
A psychological state where individuals lose self-awareness in groups.
Groupthink
A phenomenon where the desire for harmony in a group results in irrational decision-making.
Group polarization
The tendency for group discussion to enhance the group's prevailing attitudes.
Person-centered perspective
A theory suggesting that people are technically good with self-actualizing tendencies.
Humanistic theories
Theories that highlight the capabilities of humans to do good and grow positively but are criticized for being unrealistic.
Traits
A pattern of behavior, one's disposition to act and feel in a certain way.
Allport's approach
Sought to describe individual traits over explaining individual traits.
Factor analysis
A statistical procedure involving clusters/factors of test items that involve basic elements of a trait.
Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
A tool developed by Hans Eysenck and Sybil Eysenck to reduce individual differences to extraversion-introversion and emotional stability-instability.
Extraverts
Individuals who typically have lower brain arousal levels but usually have higher dopamine levels.
Biology's influence on personality
Biology influences personality, temperament, and behavioral styles.
Personality inventories
A questionnaire for individuals that gathers information on different feelings and behaviors, typically used to study personality traits.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
A widely used personality test, originally established to study emotional disorders.
Empirically derived tests
Tests made by choosing from a group of items that usually discriminate between groups.
Big Five Factors
A set of five traits; openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism that define personality.
Robert McCrae and Paul Costa
Researchers who created the Big Five Factors model.
Person-situation controversy
The debate on whether personality traits are consistent over time and across situations.
Social psychology
Focuses on external influences on behavior.
Personality psychology
Focuses on inner influences on behavior.
Hidden traits
Some traits can often be hidden or disguised depending on social cues and situations.
Myers-Briggs personality test
A test used to study personality, alongside the MMPI.
Social-Cognitive Perspective
A perspective of behavior that is influenced by the interactions of people's traits (including thinking) to their social context.
Behavioral Approach
A focus on the effects of one's learning on the development of their personality.
Reciprocal Determinism
Behavior, internal cognition, and environment's influences interacting.
Gene-environment Interaction
The interaction between genetic predispositions and environmental factors in shaping behavior.
Self
Defined by modern psychology as the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Possible Selves
Dreams that often contribute to achievements.
Spotlight Effect
Overestimating the focus of others on oneself.
Self-esteem
Feelings of high or low self-worth.
Self-efficacy
One's sense of competence.
Dunning-Kruger Effect
The ignorance of one's own incompetence.
Self-serving Bias
Perceiving oneself more favorably, such as accepting more responsibility for good deeds than for bad.
Group-serving Bias
Favoring one's own group over others, seeing it as superior.
Narcissism
Overly high levels of self-love and self-absorption.
Defensive Self-esteem
A type of self-esteem characterized by a fragile sense of self-worth.
Secure Self-esteem
A type of self-esteem characterized by a stable and healthy sense of self-worth.
Individualist Culture
A culture that emphasizes personal goals and individual rights.
Collectivist Culture
A culture that emphasizes group goals and social harmony.
Behavioral Perspective
The view that behavior is learned through conditioning, observation, and imitation.
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