Unit 8: Personality
Personality - an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting
psychoanalytic theory - freud, childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality
Humanistic theories - focused on our inner capacities for growth and self- fulfillment
Psychodynamic theories - theories that view personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences
Psychoanalysis - personality attributes thoughts and actions and treatment techniques
Unconscious - a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories information processing of which we are unaware
Free association - method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial and embarrassing
Id- reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. Operates on pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification
Ego - “executive” part of personality, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality
Superego - represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement and for future aspirations
Psychosexual stages - childhood stages of development the id’s pleasure seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
Oedipus complex - boys sexual desires toward his mom and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival dad
Identification - kids incorporate values into develop superegos
Fixate - lingering focus of pleasure seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved
Defense mechanisms - ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
Repression - the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories
Collective unconscious - Carl Jung’s concept of a shared inherited reservoir of memory traces from species history
Reaction formation - Switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites
Projection - Disguising one’s own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
Rationalization - Offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one’s actions
Displacement - Shifting sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person
Denial - Refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities
Projective tests - personality test (like the Rorschach) that provides ambiguous images designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) - projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes
Rorschach inkblot test - set of 10 inkblots, designed by Herman Rorschach; seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots
False consensus effect - tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors
Terror-management theory - theory of death related anxiety; explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to remainders of their impending death
Humanistic theories - theories that view personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth
Self-actualization - process of fulfilling our potential
Self-transcendence - striving for identity, meaning, and purpose beyond the self
Unconditional positive regard - caring, accepting, non judgmental attitude, Rogers believed would help people develop self-awareness and self-acceptance
Self concept - all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, “Who am I?”
Individualism - trusting and acting on one’s feelings being true to oneself, fulfilling yourself
Traits - characteristic pattern of behavior or disposition to feel and act in certain ways, as assessed by self reporting inventories and peer reports
Factor analysis - statistics procedure that identifies factors of test items that tap basic components of a trait
Personality inventories - long questionnaire covering a wide range of feelings and behaviors - access several traits at once
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) - widely researched and clinically used for all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders, now used for others
Empirically derived - a test created by selecting from a pool of items those that discriminate between groups
Social cognitive perspective - views behaviors as influenced by the interactions between people’s traits (plus thinking) and their social context (Albert Bandura)
Reciprocal determinism - the interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment
Self - in contemporary psychology, assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions
Spotlight Effect - overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us)
Self-Esteem - one’s feelings of high or low self-worth
Self-efficacy - one’s sense of competence and effectiveness
Self - serving bias - a readiness to perceive oneself favorably
Narcissism - excessive self-love and self-absorption
Psychosexual stages- frued
Psychosexual stage Oral - (0-18 months) pleasure centers in mouth, suck, bite, chew
Psychosexual stage Anal - (18-36 months) pleasure on bowel and bladder elimination
Psychosexual stage Phallic - (3-6 years) pleasure one is genitals; cope with incestous sexual feelings
Psychosexual stage Latency - (6 years-puberty) dormant sexual feelings
Psychosexual stage Genital - (puberty on) maturation of sexual interests