Psych Chapter 10

Module 55

• Free association

  • In psycho-analysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

• Psychoanalysis

  • Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts

  • The techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions

• Unconscious

  • According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories

  • according to to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware

• Id

  •  Reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives

  • The id operates on the pleasure principle

    • Demands immediate gratification

• Ego

  • The largely conscious,, “executive” part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality

  • The ego operates on the reality principle

    • Satisfying the ids desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain

• Superego

  • The part of personality that according, to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement and for future aspirations

• Psychosexual stages

  • The childhood stages of development

    • During which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zoes

• Oedipus complex

  • According to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father

• Identification 

  • The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ values into developing superegos

• Fixation

  • According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved

• Defense mechanisms

  • The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

• Repression

  • In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories

Module 56

• Psychodynamic theories

  • Modern-day approaches that view personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences

• Collective unconscious

  • Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history

• Projective test

  • A personality test, such as the Rorschach, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics

• Thematic Apperception Test

  • A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes

• Rorschach inkblot test

  • The most widely used projective test

  • A set of 10 inkblots, seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

• False consensus effect

  • The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and our behaviors

• Terror-management theory

  • A theory of death-related anxiety

  • Explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death

Module 57

• Humanistic theories

  • View personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth

• Self-actualization

  • According to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved

    • The motivation to fill ones potential

• Unconditional positive regard

  • According to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person

• Self-concept 

  • All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the questions, “Who am I”

Module 58

• Trait

  • A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports

• Personality inventory

  • A questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors

    • Used to assess selected personality

• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

  • The most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests

  • Originally developed to identify emotional disorders, this test is now used for many other screening purposes

• Empirically deprived test

  • A test developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups

Module 59

• Social-cognitive perspective

  • Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits and their social context

  • An example of observational learning

    • Learning by watching and imitating the actions of others

• Behavioral approach

  • In personality theory, this perspective focuses on the effects of learning on our personality development

• Reciprocal determinism

  • The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment

• Positive psychology

  • The scientific study of optimal human functioning

  • Aims to discover and promote strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive

• 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

  • Confidence 

• 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

• Individualism

  • Giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group notifications

• Collectivism

  • Giving priority to the goals of one’s group and defining one’s identity according

Module 60

• Intelligence

  • Mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations

• Intelligence test

  • A method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores

• General intelligence

  • A general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman andd others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test

• Factor analysis

  • A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items on a test

  • Used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s total score

• Savant syndrome

  • A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill

    • Such as in computation or drawing

• Grit

  • In psychology, grit is passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals

• Emotional intelligence

  • The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions

Module 61

• Mental age

  • A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet

  • The chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance

    • Thus, a child who does as well as the average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8

• Stanford-Binet

  • The widely used American revision of Binet’s original intelligence test

• Intelligence quotient

  • Defined originally as the ratio of metal age to chronological age multiplied by 100

  • On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100, with scores assigned to relative performance above or below average

• Achievement test

  • A test designed to assess what a person has learned

• Aptitude test

  • A test designed to predict a person’ future performance

  • Aptitude is the capacity to learn

• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

  • The WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test

    • Contains verbal and performance subtests

• Standardization

  • Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group

• Normal curve

  • The symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. 

    • Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes

• Reliability

  • The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting

• Validity

  • The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to

• Content validity

  • The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest

• Predictive validity

  • The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict

  • Assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior