AP Psychology Chapter 12

Chapter 12 (Theories of Personality)

Reading Assignment: P.484-496 Stop @ end of 12.5

• Personality - The unique way an individual thinks, acts, and feels throughout life

• Character - The value judgements made of a person’s moral and ethical behavior

• Psychodynamic view on personality - The unconscious mind is involved in developing one’s personality

• ID - Part of the personality present at birth and is completely unconscious

• Ego - Part of the personality that develops out of the need to deal with reality

• Superego - Part of the personality that acts as a moral center

• Unconscious Mind - Levels of mind that are not easily or voluntarily brought into consciousness

• Pleasure Principle - The desire for immediate satisfaction of needs without regard to consequences

• Reality Principle - Need to satisfy demands of the id without negative consequences

• Psychosexual Stages - Five stages of personality development proposed by Freud and tied to sexual development of the child

• Defense Mechanisms - Unconscious distortions of perception of reality that reduces stress and anxiety

  • Compensation - Trying to make up for areas in which a deficit is perceived by becoming superior in other areas

  • Denial - Refusal to acknowledge or recognize a threatening situation

  • Displacement  - Expressing feelings that would be threatening to the real target onto a less threatening target

  • Identification - Trying to become like someone else to deal with one’s anxiety

  • Projection - Placing one’s own unacceptable thoughts onto others, as if the thoughts belong to them and not oneself

  • Rationalization - Making up acceptable excuses for unacceptable behavior

  • Reaction formation - Forming an emotional reaction or attitude that is the opposite of one’s threatening or unacceptable actual thoughts 

  • Regression - Falling back on childlike patterns as a way of coping with difficult situations

  • Repression - Pushing threatening or conflicting events out of conscious memory

  • Sublimation - Turning socially unacceptable urges into socially acceptable behavior

Reading Assignment: P.496-508 Stop @ end of 12.12

• Social Cognitive View on Personality - Emphasizes the importance of cognitive processes such as anticipating, judging, memory, and imitation

• Reciprocal Determinism - Describes how a person’s behavior, environment, and personal characteristics influence each other

• Self-Efficacy - Person’s expectancy of how effective their efforts to accomplish goals will be

• Positive Regard - Warmth, affection, love and respect that comes from significant others in one’s life

• Unconditional Positive Regard - Positive regard without strings attached

• Conditional Positive Regard - Positive regard that is only given when the receiver does what the giver wants

• Fully Functional Person - A person in the process of self actualization, exploring potentials and matching ideal self with real self

• Trait Theories - Theories that describe characteristics of personality to predict future behavior

• Trait - Consistent, enduring way of thinking, feeling, or behaving

• Surface Traits - Traits that can easily be seen by other people in outward actions of a person

• Source Traits - Basic traits under the surface that underline the core of personality

• Factor Analysis - Statistical analysis that looks for groupings and commonalities in numerical data

• Five Factor Model - Model of personality traits that describes 5 basic trait dimensions

• OCEAN - Acronym to remember the five traits: Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. 

Reading Assignment: P.508-525

• Behavioral genetics - Field of study devoted to discovering the genetic bases for personality characteristics

  • Twin Studies - Studies that use twins to find evidence of genetic influence on various personality traits

  • Adoptive Studies - Studies that use adopted siblings to find evidence of environment on various personality traits

• Halo effect - Tendency of an interviewer to allow positive characteristics of interviewee to influence assessments of behavior and statements

• Individualism - Communities that focus on looking after oneself and one’s immediate family

• Collectivism - Communities that focus on high commitments to one’s group

• Personality inventory - Questionnaire with standard set of questions and answers (yes, no, can't decide)

• Cattell’s 16PF - Questionnaire based on 16 source traits with two opposite sides of each trait

• Problems with personality inventories - People may modify their responses based on what they think is socially acceptable

• Projective tests - Personality assessments that present ambiguous visual stimuli and ask people what they see

• Rorschach inkblot test - A type of projective test that shows the subject 10 different inkblots of ambiguous stimuli

• Thematic apperception test -  Uses 20 pictures of people in ambiguous situations as stimuli

• Problems with projective tests - They are very subjective and not known for accuracy, reliability, or validity. 

Additional Vocabulary

• Iceberg Principle - The more obvious reasons for a behavior or opinion are almost never a complete explanation

  • Conscious - We are fully aware of the majority of our ego and a small portion of our superego.

  • Preconscious - Right below our conscious where memories reside. A small portion of the ego and superego are part of this section.

  • Unconscious - We are completely unaware of a small portion of our ego, the majority of our superego, and the entirety of our ID.

• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) - A projective test that involves having people explain what is happening in ambiguous scenes, portrayed in black and white.

• Flaws of Thematic Apperception Tests 

  • Highly subjective interpretation

  • Black and white: causes neurotic thinking

  • Lack of standardized scoring

  • Potential for cultural bias

  • Ambiguous nature of stimuli draw concerns for the reliability and validity which makes comparisons of results across different clinicians and situations