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Personality Theories
 Personality: The set of thoughts, feelings, traits, and behaviors that are
characteristic of a person and consistent over time and in different situations.
 Type theory: A kind of personality theory that organizes people into different
sorts of individuals.
 Trait theory: A kind of personality theory that lists classifiable characteristics
that add together in different combinations and to different degrees to make a
unique personality.
 Type-A: An ambitious and competitive person- ality, according to one type
theory.
 Type-B: A laid-back and relaxed personality, according to one type theory.
 PEN model: Trait theory that focuses on placing people on a continuum for each
of three personality traits: psychoticism, extraversion, and neuroticism.
 Psychoticism: PEN trait that corresponds to aggression and non-conformity.
 Extraversion: PEN trait that corresponds to thriving on external stimulation;
also a member of the Big Five.
 Neuroticism: PEN trait that corresponds to anxiety and fight-or-flight stress
response; also a member of the Big Five.
 Big Five: Trait theory that reorganizes and builds on the PEN traits, keeping
extraversion and neuroticism, and adding openness to experience,
conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Can be remembered using the mnemonic
OCEAN.
 Openness to experience: Big Five trait that corresponds to curiosity vs.
caution.
 Conscientiousness: Big Five trait that corre- sponds to organization vs.
carelessness.
 Agreeableness: Big Five trait that corresponds to friendliness vs. detachment.
 Biopsychological approach: Theory that maintains that personality is heavily
influenced by genes.
 Behaviorist approach: Theory that maintains that personality is heavily
influenced by environment and experience.
 Social cognitive perspective: Theory that maintains personality both shapes
and is shaped by environment.
 Reciprocal determinism: The idea from the social cognitive perspective that
thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and environment all influence each other in
determining a person’s actions in a given situation.
 Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic perspective: Personality theory that
explains behaviors by looking at unconscious drives and feelings.
 Structural model: Divides the conscious and unconscious mind into the id,
ego, and superego.
 Id: The part of the personality that consists of all of the basic, primal urges and
instincts to survive and reproduce.
 Pleasure principle: The drive for instant gratification and catharsis (the relief
of pent-up tension).

 Primary process: The style of thought generated by the id that is simple,
primal, and aimed at seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
 Wish fulfillment: The use of fantasy to imagine satisfying an urge that would
be unacceptable to act out.
 Superego: The part of the personality that is focused on creating the ideal self.
 Conscience: The part of the superego that causes feelings of guilt when you
succumb to the urges of the id.
 Ego-ideal: The part of the superego that responds with feelings of pride when
you over- come the urges of the id.
 Ego: The part of the personality that suppresses the needs of the id and
superego.
 Reality principle: The ego’s drive to put off instant gratification and fulfill
desires in socially acceptable ways.
 Secondary process: The style of thought generated by the ego that seeks to
relieve the tension caused by delaying gratification.
 Defense mechanism: The ego’s means of denying, distorting, or falsifying
reality to reduce the anxiety caused by the clash between the id and the superego.
 Repression: Defense mechanism marked by pushing an unwanted or socially
unacceptable feeling out of conscious awareness.
 Suppression: Defense mechanism marked by consciously setting aside
thoughts or feelings that would be unhelpful in the current situation.
 Regression: Defense mechanism marked by reverting to an earlier stage of
emotional or mental development in response to stress.
 Reaction formation: Defense mechanism marked by turning an unwanted
thought or feeling into its opposite.
 Projection: Defense mechanism marked by attributing your own unwanted
feelings to others.
 Rationalization: Defense mechanism marked by justifying unacceptable
behaviors to make them more acceptable to yourself or others and to hide your
true motivations.
 Displacement: Defense mechanism marked by redirecting an unwanted feeling
from one target to another.
 Sublimation: Defense mechanism marked by transforming an undesirable
feeling or drive into a socially acceptable one.
 Personal unconscious: Any part of the personality or memory that is not
currently conscious because it has been forgotten or repressed.
 Collective unconscious: The instincts and emotionally-charged symbols
shared among all people due to our common ancestry, according to Jung.
 Archetype: One of the emotional instincts or symbols that make up a person’s
personality.
 Persona: Archetype that represents the part of the personality that people
present to the outside world.
 Shadow: Archetype that represents the part of the personality that is socially
unacceptable and hidden away.
 Anima: Archetype that represents a man’s feminine qualities.
 Animus: Archetype that represents a woman’s masculine qualities.

 Inferiority complex: A person’s feelings of incompleteness or imperfection
that lead to striving for superiority.
 Basic anxiety: Feelings of anxiety or helplessness caused by inadequate
parenting.
 Basic hostility: Anger caused by parental neglect or rejection.
 Moving toward: Strategy to overcome basic anxiety or hostility marked by
attempts to gain others’ good will.
 Moving against: Strategy to overcome basic anxiety or hostility marked by
attempts to gain the upper hand on others.
 Moving away: Strategy to overcome basic anxiety or hostility marked by
attempts to withdraw from others.
 Humanistic perspective: Personality theory that focuses on the positive
aspects of personality and the ways in which healthy people strive toward self-
realization.
 Peak experience: Deeply moving events in a person’s life that have important
and long-lasting effects on the individual.
Personality Research and Assessments
 Objective test: Self-report questionnaires that tend to focus on types or traits.
 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): Objective test that sorts people into
personality types based on four continua: Extraversion (E) versus Introversion
(I), Sensing (S) versus Intuition (N), Thinking (T) versus Feeling (F), and Judging
(J) versus Perceiving (P).
 Keirsey Temperament Sorter: Objective test that uses metrics similar to the
MBTI but provides names and descriptions for each of the personality types.
 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2): Objective test
used to assess both personality traits and the presence of psychological
disorders.
 Projective test: Personality test based on the idea that people will interpret
ambiguous stimuli in ways that reflect their unconscious thoughts and feelings.
 Rorschach inkblot test: Projective test that asks participants to describe what
they see in abstract designs.
 Thematic Apperception Test: Projective test that presents participants with a
series of images and asks them to tell a story about what is happening.
Personality and Culture
 Individualistic culture: A culture that places an emphasis on individual goals
and personal achievement.
 Collectivist culture: A culture that sees people primarily as members of a
family or larger social group.
Important Contributors

 Alfred Adler: Psychoanalyst who disagreed with Freud over the importance of
sexual drives in personality; originated the concept of the inferiority complex.
 Gordon Allport: Trait theorist who identified three kinds of traits—cardinal,
central, and secondary—that carry different weights in making up an individual’s
personality.
 Albert Bandura: Social cognitive theorist who proposed reciprocal
determinism, the idea that thoughts, beliefs, and environment all interact with
and change each other.
 Paul Costa and Robert McCrae: Expanded and reorganized the PEN trait
model into the Big Five or OCEAN model of personality traits.
 Hans and Sybil Eysenck: Trait theorists who originated the PEN model of
personality.
 Sigmund Freud: Founder of psychoanalysis who developed the structural
model, which states that the mind is made up of the id, ego, and superego.
 Karen Horney: Sought to move psychoanalysis away from sexuality- and male-
focused ideas; maintained that inadequate parenting can lead to basic anxiety or
basic hostility.
 William James: Developed the James-Lange theory of emotion, along with
Carl Lange, which proposes that emotions occur because of phys- iological
reactions to events.
 Carl Jung: Psychoanalyst who stated that the unconscious mind can be divided
into the personal and collective unconscious, the latter of which contains
archetypes.
 Alfred Kinsey: Known for his systematic, scientific study of sexual behavior, he
developed the Kinsey Scale to describe sexual orientation.
 Abraham Maslow: Developed a theory of motivation called the hierarchy of
needs, made up of five levels of needs, and claimed that lower-level needs must
be satisfied before higher-level needs.
 William Masters and Virginia Johnson: Researched sexual arousal and
proposed a four-stage human sexual response cycle.
 Margaret Mead: Cultural anthropologist who studied children and adolescents
in Samoa and other island nations to demonstrate the relationship between
culture and personality.
 Stanley Schachter: Developed the two-factor theory of emotion, along with
Jerome Singer, which states that emotional experience requires conscious
interpretation of one’s physiological arousal.
 Hans Selye: Developed the general adaptation syndrome model to explain how
the body responds and adapts to stress.
William Sheldon: Type theorist who created the concept of somatotypes and
attempted to correlate body type to personality.
Social Psychology

1. Social phenomena can affect individuals in a variety of ways, including in the
attitudes they form, the attributions they make, the people they find attractive,
and the prosocial and antisocial behaviors they perform.
2. Being in a group influences members’ behavior in a variety of ways that are
caused by the presence of other group members, expectations within the group,
and the tendency for groups to be more extreme than their individual members.
3. Social and cultural categories such as gender, race, and ethnicity play important
psychological roles, both for individuals and groups.
4. Human beings often distinguish between in-groups and out-groups, which can
lead to the development of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. One
technique for counteracting these is the adoption of superordinate goals.
Key Terms: Social Psychology
Intrapersonal Social Phenomena
 Attitudes: Beliefs and feelings that predispose people to respond in particular
ways to situations and other people.
 Central route to persuasion: A method of persuasion in which you are
convinced by the content of the message.
 Peripheral route to persuasion: A method of persuasion in which you are
convinced by something other than the message’s content.
 Mere-exposure effect: The tendency to like new stimuli more when you
encounter it more frequently.
 Foot-in-the-door technique: A persuasive technique that begins with a small
request to encourage compliance with a larger request.
 Door-in-the-face technique: A persuasive technique that begins with an
outrageous request in order to increase the likelihood that a second, more
reasonable request is granted.
 Cognitive dissonance: An uncomfortable state of mind arising when you
recognize inconsistencies in your beliefs and/or behaviors.
 Attribution theory: A theory that describes how people explain their own and
others’ behavior.
 Dispositional attribution: A type of attribution in which you assign
responsibility for an event or action to the person involved.
 Situational attribution: A type of attribution in which you assign
responsibility for an event or action to the circumstances of the situation.
 Stable attribution: An attribution in which you believe a cause to be consistent
and relatively constant over time.
 Unstable attribution: An attribution that credits a one-time source as the
cause of an event.
 Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to make dispositional
attributions instead of situational attributions for other people’s behavior.
 Self-serving bias: The tendency to make dispositional attributions about your
successes and situational attributions about your failures.

 Just-world hypothesis: The belief that good things happen to good people and
bad things happen to bad people.
 Attraction: The ways in which you take interest in and feel positively towards
others (romantically or platonically).
 Physical attractiveness: The possession of outward physiological
characteristics deemed to be appealing.
 Matching hypothesis: The tendency for people to pick partners who are
roughly equal in level of attractiveness to themselves.
 Proximity: The tendency to like people geographically close to you.
 Similarity: The tendency to be attracted to people who share characteristics
with you.
 Reciprocal liking: The tendency to like people who like you.
 Altruism: Prosocial behaviors that benefit other people at a cost to yourself.
 Kin selection: An evolutionary explanation for altruism proposing that people
are altruistic to family members to ensure the continuation of their genes.
 Reciprocity: The tendency to help people who help you, which helps to explain
altruistic behavior towards non-family members.
 Sexual selection: The tendency for genes that increase reproductive fitness to
perpetuate. Altruism may be sexually selected because people find kindness
attractive.
 Aggression: Any type of behavior, physical or verbal, that is intended to harm
or destroy.
 Instrumental aggression: “Cold” aggressive behaviors that are carried out to
attain a certain goal.
 Hostile aggression: “Hot” aggressive behaviors that aim to inflict pain or
harm.
 Frustration-aggression model: Proposes that, when a desired goal is unmet,
a person becomes frustrated, which can lead to aggressive behaviors.
Group Psychology
 Group: Two or more people who interact in some way. Members of groups may
share a common worldview, purpose, or identity, or simply a common location.
 Norms: Expectations about how group members behave.
 Roles: Specific positions within a group governed by particular norms, including
privileges or responsibilities.
 Relations: Specific patterns of interactions between group members.
 Social facilitation: The tendency for people to perform simple tasks and tasks
they’ve extensively practiced better in front of an audience.
 Kitty Genovese: A young woman who was brutally murdered outside of her
New York City apartment in 1964. Due to inaccurate initial reports, her murder is
used as an example of the bystander effect.
 Bystander effect: The tendency not to intervene while in a crowd, related to
diffusion of responsibility.