Personality

Stress: the process by which we perceive and respond to certain events that we perceive as threatening and challenging

Stress Reaction: Physical and emotional response to a threatning/challengging situation

Behavioral Medicine: The idea that the mind and body interact ~ psychological is physiological. 

General Adaption Syndrome: The concept that the body’s response to stress occurs in 3 phases

3 phases of the general adaption syndrome? Alarm, resistance, Execution

Telomeres: The DNA at the ends of chromosomes

What does stress cause to telomeres? Causes them to wear down/damage

Tend and Befriend: Under stress, people, especially women, provide support to others and build/seek support

Oxytocin: Stress modulating hormone  associated with social interaction (especially in women)

Health psychology: Psychological attempt to increase healthy behaviors

Psychoneuroimmunology: A branch of helath psych. that studies the interaction between psychological, neural, endocrine systems and this effect on the immune system/resulting health. 

B-lymphocytes: Antibodies that fight bacterial infection

T-lymphocytes: Attack cancer cells and foreign suubstances

Macrophage cell: Eat/ingest harmful invaders/cells

Natural Killer cells: Attack diseased cells

Stress can _____ immune systems ; weaken

Carcinogen: Cancer-causing agent

Coronary Heart Disease: Clogging of the vessels which nourish the heart muscle.. a leading cause of death.

Type A: Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard driving, impatient, aggressive, anger-prone people

Type B: Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easy going, relaxed, people

Which group of people, A or B, is more likely to get a heart attack? Type A

______, and ______ are toxic to health ; Pessimissim, Anger

Cope: Alleviate stress with emotional, cognitive, or  behavioral methods

Problem-Focused Coping: Attempt to alleviate stress directly, by changing  stressor, interaction.

Emotion-Focused Coping: Alleviate stress by avoiding, or ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs related to emotional reaction.

Personal Control: Sense of controlling ennvironment rather than feeling helpless 

Learned Helplessness: Hopeless, passive resignation of an animal or person t o avoid repeated aversive events

External Locus of Control: Perception that forces outside our control impact fate

Internal Locus of Control: Perception that individual has control over their own destiny

Free Will: Beleif of control over own life.

Self-Control: Ability to control impulses and delay short term gratification for long-term rewards.

Pessimists expect things to go ____?  badly 

Optimists expect things to ____? Better

Social support can foster stronger ______? Immune functfion

Personality: Individual characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting

Psychoanalytic theory: Proposes the idea that unresolved childhood trauma/sexual agressions impact personality

Humanistic Theories: Inner capacities for growth and self-fulfillment

Trait Theory:  Examine characteristic patterns of behavior

Social-Cognitive Thinking: Interaction between people’s traits.

Psychodynamic theory: Theorizes the view that personality with a focus on the unconscious & emphasis on importance of childhood experiences.

Psychoanalysis: Theory of personality and suggested psychological therapeutic treatment

Unconcious: Reservoir of unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories

Free association: Method of exploring the unconscious in which a person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

Concious awareness: What we acknowledge

Unconcious mind: Thoughts, feelings, wishes and memories

Preconcious: Temporarily store unconscious for later retrieval 

Repress: Block traumatic events

Id: Demands gratification to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives

Ego: Works to satisfy the demands of the id

Reality Principle: Ego operates on this; gratify id’s impulse in a realistic manner

Superego: The part of personality that represents morals

Defense Mechanisms: Ego’s protective methods to reduce anxiety by ditorting reality 

Repression: Defense mechanism that banishes feelngs of anxiety form conciousness

Regression: Retreat to earlier age

Reaction Formation: Switching unacceptable feelings to opposites

Projection: Disguising own traits as others.

Rationalization: Self-justifying reasons 

Displacement: Shift sexual urges to leas threatening object or person

Manifest Content: Remembered content of dreams

Latent content: Censored expression of unconscious wishes

Collective Unconscious: inherited reservoir of memory from species history 

Projective Tests: A personality test that provides ambiguous images to trigger projection of internal dynamics

Thematic Apperception Test: Test in which people express internal feelings and interests through stories they make up abt ambiguous scenes

Rorsach Inkblot test: inkblots to analyze inner feelings based on interpretation 

Terror Management Theory: Thinking abt terror, like death can provoke various terror management defenses 

Humanistic Theories: Focus on how healthy people develop and emphasizes an inherent aim towards self actualization

Self actualization: Process of resching potential

Self transcendence: Meaning, purpose snd identity beyond self

Person centered response: People are badically good and endowed with self actualizing tendencies 

Unconditional Positive Regard: A caring, accepting, non judgemental attitude 

Genuineness: Open with their own feelings and transparent

Empathy: Share and mirror others feelings and reflect on their meanings

Self-Concept: All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, to answer who am i?

Life Story Approach: Humanistic psychologists believe that interviews and intimate conversations would give a better idea of each person’s unique experiences

Traits: A characteristic pattern of behaviors as a disposition to feel and act ina certain way

Meyers Briggs Type Indicator: A personality test that uses 126 q’s  to attempt to classify peRSonality.

Factor Analysis: Statistical procedure that identifies clusters of test items to tap basic components of traits

Personality Inventories: A questionnaire (true or false) on which people respond to items designed to gauge feelings and benanors, assess personality

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory: Most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Developed to identify emotional disorders but used for screening purposes 

Empirically Derived:  a test created by screening from a pool of items that discriminate between groups 

Maturity Principle: We become more stable over time 

Social-Cognitive Perspective: Proposed and emphasizes the interaction of our traits and our environment

Reciprocal Detrminism: Interaction of behavior, cognition, environment

Gene-Environment Interaction: Genetically influenced traits evoke certain responses

Self: Center of personality, thoughts, feelings, actions

Possible Selves: Our ideal version of self/what we fear becoming

Spotlight Effect: Overestimatng how much others focus on us

Self Esteem: One’s feelings of high or low self worth

Self Efficacy: Sense of competence & effectiveness

Self-Serving Bias: Readiness to perceive ourselves favourably 

Narcissism: Excessive self-love and absorption

Subtly Strategic: Putting self-down for attention/preparation

Defensive Self-Esteem: Fragile self-view; turn aggressive

Secure Self-Esteem: Less fragile and not contingent on external.

Eustress: Normal/beneficial stress

Distress: Extreme anxiety

Adverse Childhood Experiences: Traumatic events occurring in childhood

Strategies for emotion-based coping? Deep breathing,

meditation, medication

Gratitude _____ subjective well being; Increases

Signature Strengths: Positive Psych goals of promoting the

character strengths and virtues that foster well-being, resilience,

and positive emotions

Wisdom: Cognitive strengths that involve acquiring and using knowledge.

Courage: Emotional strengths that involve the exercise of will to accomplish

goals in the face of opposition.

Humanity: Interpersonal strengths that involve tending and befriending

others.

Justice: Civic strengths that underlie healthy community life.

Temperance: Strengths that protect against excess.

Transcendence: Strengths that forge connections to the larger universe and

provide meaning

Sublimation: socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior