AP Psychology: Personality

1. What is the difference between cardinal traits, central traits, and secondary traits according to Gordon Allport?

Cardinal traits are defining characteristics of a very small number of us that dominate and shape all of our behavior.

Central traits are general characteristics (5-10) that shape much of our behavior.

Secondary traits are characteristics only apparent in certain situations.

2. How many basic dimensions of personality did Raymond Cattell identify? How did he come up with this number?

16. 

Through factor analysis.

3. What are the 5 factors in the Big 5 and what does each one mean?

Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. 

Each factor describes a broad trait that is made up of several related and more specific traits called facets.

4. What are facets?

A specific and unique aspect of a broader personality trait.

5. Describe Eysenck’s biological trait theory.

Personality traits have three major dimensions: introversion/extraversion, emotional stability/instability and psychoticism.

6. What did Eysenck think was the cause of the behavioral differences between introverts and extraverts?

Differences in arousal levels. 

7. What are the two motivati onal functions that personality is rooted in?

To approach reward and avoid pain.

8. What is the behavioral approach system, the behavioral inhibition system, and the fight-flight-or freeze system? These three systems are part of what theory of personality?

Brain structures that lead organisms to approach stimuli in pursuit of rewards.

It inhibits/slows behavior when there are signs of danger/threat/pain.

It promotes behaviors that can protect an organism from harm.

The revised Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality (rRST).

9. What do humanistic approaches to personality emphasize? What is self-actualization?

They emphasize personal experience, belief systems, the uniqueness of each individual and the inherent goodness of each person.

People seek to fulfill their potential for personal growth through greater self-understanding. 

10. According to Carl Rogers, why do many people develop conditions of worth? What do these conditions cause them to lose touch with? What is unconditional positive regard?

Because most parents provide conditional love and support. 

They lose touch with their true feelings, dreams and desires to only accept the parts of them that elicit parental love and support.

Unconditional love and support of a parent towards their child.  

11. What are personal myths? What are three themes found in many of these myths?

Stories that we tell ourselves about where we come from and where we are going as part of understanding our own identity.

Redemption, contamination and meaning-making.

12. What did Julian Rotter mean by external locus of control or internal locus of control?

If you believe that a reinforcement or an outcome of our behavior is due to luck, fate, outside of your control or unpredictable. 

The degree to which we expect that a reinforcement or an outcome of our behavior is contingent upon our own behavior or our characteristics.

13. What were the three factors that influenced how a person acted according to Albert Bandura?

The environment, person factors (characteristics/expectations) and behavior.

14. What is self-efficacy?

A person factor that constitutes our belief that we can perform behaviors that are necessary to accomplish tasks and that we are competent.

15. What is Bandura’s theory called?

Reciprocal determinism. 

16. What is the need for cognition?

Person factor that reflects how much a person enjoys and tends to engage in complex thought.

17. What is situationism? What was the person-situation debate?

Behaviors are determined more by situations than by personality traits.

The debate between psychologists on whether personality or situations determine behavior.

18. What is self-monitoring?

Being sensitive to cues of situational appropriateness.

19. What is the cognitive-affective processing system?

People will exhibit stable behavior if they find themselves in similar situations.

20. What is the difference between strong and weak situations?

Strong situations hide personality differences. Weak situations reveal them.

21. What is interactionism?

Behavior is determined jointly by situational factors and underlying dispositions.

22. What is the self-concept? What is the objectified self? What is self-awareness?

Everything you know about yourself.

The knowledge one holds about oneself.

The sense of self as the object of attention. 

23. What is objective self-awareness?

Self-awareness leads people to act in accordance with values and beliefs they hold. 

24. What is self-discrepancy theory?

An individual’s awareness of differences between personal standards and goals leads to strong emotions.

25. What part of the brain is self-awareness highly dependent on?

The frontal lobes, particularly the medial prefrontal cortex.

26. What is a self-schema?

An integrated set of memories, beliefs and generalizations about the self that help us efficiently perceive, organize, interpret and use information related to ourselves. 

27. What is the working self-concept?

The part of the self-concept that is available during immediate experiences.

28. What is self-esteem? 

A person’s emotional response to contemplating personal characteristics.

29. What is reflected appraisal?

Our self-esteem is influenced by how we believe others see us.

30. What is the sociometer theory?

Self-esteem is a mechanism for monitoring the likelihood of social exclusion.

31. What are the three components of the dark triad and what do they mean?

Narcissism (one views oneself in grandiose terms, feels superior and entitled to special treatment, poor relationships with others, and becomes angry when challenged).

Psychopathy (a general lack of caring for the welfare of others, impulsivity, recklessness, low levels of fear).

Machiavellianism (especially manipulative of others, lack of concern with moral norms).

32. What are the three components of the light triad and what do they mean?

Humanism (valuing the worth and dignity of every individual).

Faith in humanity (believing in the inherent goodness of people).

Kantianism (high in honesty and feel uncomfortable manipulating others).

33. What is the better than average effect?

We rate ourselves better than average.

34. What are positive illusions and what benefit do they serve?

Overly favorable and unrealistic beliefs about ourselves. They can promote optimism in meeting life’s challenges.

35. What are downward and upward comparisons and when are they used?

Contrasting yourself with someone worse/better than you in some dimension.

Upward comparison can provide information on how to improve, but downward just makes you feel bad.

36. What is the psychological immune system?

Psychological resources that protect us from the harmful effects of stress.

37. What is the self-serving bias and how does its use differ across the world?

The tendency to attribute positive outcomes to internal factors and negative outcomes to external factors. More common in Western cultures that are more individualistic.

1. What is personality? What is a personality trait?

Personality is the characteristic thoughts, emotional responses, and behaviors that are relatively stable in an individual over time and across circumstances.

A personality trait is a dispositional tendency to act in a certain way over time and across circumstances.

2. What are dispositions?

Behavioral, mental, or emotional responses to a certain type of stimuli.

3. What are temperaments?

They are general tendencies to feel or act in certain ways.

4. Describe the temperaments of activity level, emotionality, and sociability

Activity level is the amount of energy and of action a person displays. 

Emotionality is the intensity of a person’s emotional reactions. 

Sociability is the general tendency to associate with others.

5. What similarities do psychodynamic theories of personality share?

They all characterize personality by a dynamic struggle, which is a clashing of inner forces. Our behavior, thoughts, and emotions all result from this struggle.

6. Describe the id, ego, and superego. What principle does each one follow and why?

The id is the physiological drive that is fully unconscious and is where conflicting emotions can coexist. The id follows the pleasure principle because it demands instant gratification regardless of law or custom.

The ego represents reason and good sense by curbing desires of the id that are inconsistent with social conventions. The ego follows the reality principle because it considers both what is practical and what is urged by the id.

The superego usually incorporates the moral standards of parents and important members of the community through identification. It follows the morality principle.

7. What aspect of the ego acts unconsciously?

The unconscious aspect of the ego screens the impulses of the id to decide whether or not to censor them.

8. Describe the Freudian defense mechanisms

Repression, which is keeping ideas that elicit anxiety away from awareness, that underlies all other defense mechanisms.

Regression, which is returning to a sort of behavior characteristic of an earlier developmental stage.

Rationalization, which is the unconscious use of self-deceiving justifications for unacceptable behavior.

Displacement, which is the transfer of sexual and aggressive impulses from threatening or unsuitable objects to less threatening objects.

Projection, which is placing one’s unacceptable impulses onto others so that others are assumed to harbor them.

Reaction formation, which is the unconscious assumption of behavior in opposition to one’s genuine impulses in order to keep those impulses repressed.

Denial, which is the refusal to accept the true nature of a threat.

Sublimation, which is the channeling of socially unacceptable impulses into positive efforts.

Intellectualization, which is using excessive reasoning to avoid confronting the difficult emotions associated with a situation.

9. What did Freud mean by the terms Eros, libido, and erogenous zones?

According to Freud, Eros is the sexual instinct that aims to preserve and perpetuate life.

Libido is a psychic energy that fuels Eros.

Erogenous zones are different parts of the body where sexual feelings are expressed.

10. Describe Freud’s oral stage. What is a fixation? What are the two types of oral fixation?

During the oral stage, an infant experiences the world through its mouth. This stage is marked by the conflict between oral gratification and the weaning process. Fixation is an attachment that occurs as a result of unresolved issues in previous psychological stages of personality development. There are oral-dependent traits that evoke optimism and dependency as a result of late weaning, and oral-aggressive traits that evoke sarcasm and pessimism that would result from early weaning.

11. Describe Freud’s anal stage. What is the difference between anal retentive and anal expulsive traits?

In this stage, sexual gratification is obtained through the contraction and relaxation of the anal muscles that control elimination. Anal retentive traits involve excessive use of self control (perfectionism, the need for control). Anal expulsive traits are forms of unregulated self-expression such as carelessness.

12. In the phallic stage, describe the Oedipus and Electra Complexes, castration anxiety, penis envy, and the identification process

The emotions aroused in a young child by an unconscious sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex and wish to exclude the parent of the same sex. The Oedipus complex describes this phenomenon for boys, while the Electra Complex describes it for girls.

Castration anxiety is the fear that the dominant rival, the father, will remove the boy’s genitals.

The desire for a protruding sex organ that a girl can share with her father.

Children repress their hostilities toward, and identify with, the parent of the same gender.

13. What happens during Freud’s latency stage?

Children repress all sexual urges and focus on schoolwork instead to consolidate their learning of gender roles. Kids at this stage will often prefer playing with kids of the same sex. 

14. In the genital stage, what is the incest taboo? What happens to a person’s feelings for the opposite sex parent?

The incest taboo is the repression of incestuous impulses and their displacement onto other adults or adolescents of the other gender. A person’s feelings for the opposite sex parent would arise again.

15. In Jung’s theory, describe the following: personal unconscious, complexes, collective unconscious, archetypes, individuation, and the Self

The personal unconscious is where all complexes, past memories, hidden instincts and unique urges and attitudes are stored. Complexes are groups of associated, emotional, unconscious thoughts that significantly influence our attitudes.

The powerful and influential system that contains universal memories and ideas that all people have inherited from our ancestors over the course of evolution. 

Inherited memories that are common themes found in all the cultures, religions, and literature (both ancient and modern) of the world.

The psychological process by which a person becomes an individual.

The middle of personality surrounded by all the other systems of personality.

16. For Adler, what was the inferiority complex and the drive for superiority?

A fear of inadequacy and inferiority that motivated people. The drive for superiority promotes altruism, cooperation, creativity, uniqueness, awareness, and interest in social welfare.

17. What did Horney mean by womb envy, basic anxiety, and basic hostility?

Womb envy is a male’s desire to carry a child. 

Basic anxiety is the feeling of being small, helpless and insignificant that arises from neglect. 

Basic hostility is the anger and resentment a child develops towards their parents or caregivers when they feel unloved.

18. Describe five criticisms of Freud’s theory

Development goes beyond just childhood. 

Underestimated peer influence while overestimating parental influence. 

Psychologists also doubt that conscience and gender identity form as a result of the Oedipus or Electra complexes. 

New studies of dreams also contradict Freud’s idea that dreams disguise the id’s wishes. 

Little to no testable hypotheses, basing his conclusions on subjective observations.

1. What is rank-order stability?

The extent to which individuals maintain a certain position on a certain trait relative to others over time.

2. What are mean-level changes?

Changes in personality that people tend to experience in the same stages of life.

3. In general, what aspects of personality change as we age?

As people age, they tend to get more conscientious, more pleasant, less neurotic, less open to new experiences, more introverted, more emotionally stable and have more self-control.

4. In general, when are many personality changes observed?

When expectations surrounding age-related roles also change, such as from adolescence to adulthood or when becoming a parent.

5. Give two examples of how certain major life events not experienced by all people can change personality

A person who has lost their spouse can prove to be more conscientious and sociable following the spouse’s death. Students who traveled abroad can become more extraverted and open to new experiences.

6. What evidence is there that personality can be altered intentionally?

Psychotherapy can be used to decrease neuroticism and increase extraversion. A study of older adults also found that exposing them to problem solving training and puzzles that they enjoyed made them more likely to be open to new experiences.

7. What is the difference between individualistic and collectivist/collectivistic cultures?

In individualistic cultures, the needs of individuals are considered more important than the needs of the group, whereas in collectivist cultures the needs of the group outrank the needs of individuals.

8. How can isolation created by ecological features influence personality?

It can cause certain traits to arise within the isolated group, causing the entire group to adopt their own behavioral norms. This is common in geographically isolated populations such as Japan and Inuit groups in North America.   

9. What is a culture of honor and what is it associated with?

A culture of honor is when any attack or threat to a group is met with hostility and aggression. It is associated with cultures that depend on cattle ranching, such as in the south of the United States. 

10. What are challenges in studying personality differences across cultures?

Some cultures can interpret questions differently than others: for example, Eastern cultures can associate personality questions as pertaining to a group, whereas more individualistic cultures would associate those questions with their own personality. Furthermore, some concepts do not exist in certain cultures, such as the Danish hygge. Finally, sampling may also be impractical due to cultural differences. 

11. What are convenience samples and why can they be problematic?

Convenience sampling occurs when researchers take samples from convenient locations, such as students taking their class. This sampling method may be affected by cultural or behavioral differences between the parts of the sample.

12. Describe the difference between idiographic and nomothetic approaches

The idiographic approach focuses on a person’s uniqueness by analyzing their personal central and secondary traits. The nomothetic approach analyzes the extent to which common traits are present within an individual to assess their personality.

13. What is phrenology?

A pseudoscience that studies the contour of the skull with the belief that skull shape can reveal an individual’s mental traits.

14. What is the difference between structured and unstructured interviews? What is the halo effect?

Unstructured interviews are informal conversations between the interviewer and interviewee that are centered around the interviewee. Structured interviews are when the interviewer asks the interviewee a series of questions they have planned ahead of time.

The halo effect is when one’s initial impression of a person influences how one feels about the person’s individual traits.

15. What is the general theory behind projective tests?

When individuals are presented with ambiguous stimuli, they will project their unconscious feelings or thoughts onto their interpretation of the stimuli.

16. Describe the Rorschach and TAT

The Rorschach test is an outdated test that aims to understand a person’s unconscious feelings by having them interpret and find meaning in an inkblot. 

The TAT is a valid psychological test that seeks to understand a person’s motives by having them tell a story about an ambiguous picture that they are presented with.

17. Describe the MMPI and the California Q-Sort

The MMPI is a questionnaire containing 567 questions with the aim of assessing personality and using 10 scales to detect psychological disorders by comparing an individual’s results with the average.

The California Q-Sort is when a person organizes 100 cards with descriptions of personality into 9 categories ordered by how well they describe an individual. 

18. Describe the Electronically Activated Ear Recorder

The EAR device records snippets of an individual’s daily interactions or conversations that are then analyzed to assess personality. The findings from this device have been shown to correlate with self-reports.

19. What are some theories as to why friends may predict a person’s behavior better than that person?

One theory is that our friends tend to actually observe our behavior, whereas we tend to focus on evaluating other aspects of our environment instead. Another theory claims that how people view themselves is not always consistent with how they actually behave.

20. What did Vazire observe about traits?

Traits that are easy to observe and very meaningful are often more accurately analyzed by friends than by individuals themselves, while more hidden traits are more accurately analyzed by individuals than by their friends.