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Glossary of Personality Psychology Chapter 7

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According to Cognitive Psychologists, what is at the CORE of personality?
Perception and cognition.

How we see things and come to think of things influences our personalities.
What is at the root of cognitive approaches?
Darwin's law of evolution which showed the brain as influential to our behavior.
Cognitive theory suggests that our thought process can be changed by what three factors:
-As an individual develops

-Situational circumstances

-by our culture
WHAT IS THE CENTRAL TENET of GESTALT theory?
HUMAN BEINGS SEEK MEANING IN THEIR ENVIRONMENTS.
What do Gestaltists believe of complex stimuli?
We take in complex sensations into a individually meaningful perception THAT IS MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS.
GESTALT THEORY CENTERS AROUND
CONTEXT!

a person's perception is everything.
Who was the father of social psychology and why are we studying him?
Kurt Lewin for his Field Theory
What is Lewin's "Life-space":
the idea that all internal and external forces act on an individual and our retaliation to these forces is our outward behavior.
What is lewin's definition of personality?
Contemporaneous causation- momentary condition of the individual (VERY FLUID)
What is Lewin's field dependence?
The extent to which an individual is influenced by context.
How is field dependence measured?
Rod and frame test

- do you turn the rod to make it parallel or do you turn the whole frame including the rod.
What are the results of the rod-frame test? Why are they important?
Field-dependent vs independent

The results are reliable and consistent throughout lifetime.

Predicts many INTERPERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.
What INTERPERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS does the result of rod-field test predict?
Children's play preferences
Socialization patterns
Career choices
Interpersonal distance
eye contact
What gender differences and culture differences, if any do we see with field rod test results?
Gender difference: females tend to be more field dependent

Culture differences:
Hunter-gatherer societies are more field independent (Eastern cultures= field dependent)
Cognitive complexity

-what are the two levels of cognitive complexity
High cognitive complexity- more comfortable with uncertainty.

Low cognitive complexity- view the world in simple absolute terms.
What is the natural shift in cognitive complexity?

-what is the debate associated with cognitive complexity?
A person usually tends to shift from low cognitive complexity to higher cognitive complexity as their age increases.

Whether or not this is really a personality characteristics since its shift is so predictable.
What is categorization and who proposed it?
Jean Piaget proposed categorization as the tendency to organize our experience by assigning the events, objects, and people we encounter into categories
What did Jean Piaget mean when he said categorization is omnipresent and automatic?
It always happens and does not require conscious effort.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of a person's categorizations?
Advantage:
-makes understanding complex stimuli easier and quicker by comparison to simpler scenarios.

Disadvantages:
-premature judgements
-feeds stereotypes
*recall people are more likely to see what they believe.
How do we control our attention?
We notice salient environmental features and combine these with our current goals to decide where to direct or attention
What is ADHD?
The inability to switch one's attention from one spatial location to another.
What two things did Kelly believe about personality?
-preception of the event is far more important than the event itself.

-present personality NEED NOT BE tied to his/her past.
KELLY'S personal construct theory

-aka
-focus is on...
People as scientists

Each of us tries to understand the world in our own ways. We construct our own versions of reality.
What is the main goal of KELLY'S personal construct theory?
To reduce uncertainty.
According to the theory of personal constructs, what is personality?
the collection of construct (mini-scientific theories) that allow us to deal with the world.
How did kelly postulate we create our constructs? then what?
Kelly believed we are free to create constructs but then we are controlled by them (as some are inflexible)
What is Gardener's theory of multiple intelligences?
Everyone has at least seven different intelligences.

we all vary in the amount of each

Skills are also included in intelligence.
What are the seven intelligences and what do they mean?
-Language
-logical-mathematical
-Spatial represenation
-Musical thinking
-Bodily-kinesthetic
-Understanding the self (intrinsic)
-Understanding others (extrinsic)
Why does Gardner reject IQ tests?
he believes they are too narrow for one they do not measure any social intelligence measures.
What are explanatory types?What are the two types of explanatory types?
A set of cognitive personality variables which exemplify an individual’s habitual way of interpreting events

Optimism and pessemism
What is the result of execessive optimism? What is the result of defensive pessemism?
excessive optimism may be detrimental to sucess (overlooking or downplaying legitimate problems)

Defensive pessemism- when the chance for failure is high, lowered expectations are adaptive (Self-handicapping)
What do we expect on a graph plotting level of arousal vs. test performance?
As arousal goes up, test performance seems to increase to a point where too much stress actually hinders performance.
What is attributional style?

-example
-what are the two types?
-how does attribution style effect future behavior?
locus of control.

INTERNAL- assigns causality to theindividual
EXTERNAL- assigns causality to an outside agent or force.

We are more likely to try when we assign an internal attribution style.
What is attribution error?
the tendancy to make internal attributions to our successes and other's failures, while making external attributions for others' successes and our failures.
Repeated exposure to unavoidable punishment leads an organism to accept later punishment even when it is avoidable.
learned helplessness
Which psychologist believed that personality represents an interaction of the individual with his or her environment.
Julian Rotter
Rotter suggested a person's behavior is determined by what two factors?
Outcome expectancy and reinforcement value
A person's expectation that they will be rewarded for their behavior
Outcome expectancy
a VERY PERSONAL expectation of the reinforcement's value
Reinforcement value
the likelihood that a particular behavior will occur in a specific situation
behavior potential
expecting a certain reward to follow a behavior in a particular situation
Specific expectancies
expectancies that are related to a group of situations
generalized expectancies
When are each general expectancies and specific expectancies used?
Generalized expectancies used in new situations.

Specific expectancies used in familiar situations.
Who proposed the theory of locus of control?
JULIAN ROTTER NOT gardner
what is the healthiest combination of locus of control?
To have internal locus of control for things for which we can control and have an external locus of control for things which we cannot control.
What is ALBERT BANDURA's greatest contribution?
Social modeling- Reinforcement does not influence learning, only performance.
What study did Bandura perform to study social modeling?
Bobo doll study- where adults acted aggressively toward a bobo doll in the presence of a child, when the children were alone, they MODELED the adults behavior.
Bandura's study also confirmed which of Roter's theoris?
behavior is dependent on outcome expectancy. The children did what they saw because they believed they would be rewarded for emulating the adults.
What are the factors that influence social modeling?

-outcome expectancy
-characteristics of the model
-characteristics of the behavior
-Attributes of the observer
outcome expectancy- more likely to intimate behaviors that they believe will lead to positive reinforcements.

Characteristics of the model- age, gender, status, competence and power all effect influence to imitate.

Characteristics of the behavior: Simple and salient behaviors are more likely imitated.

Attributes of the observer: hisotry of reinforcement, self-esteem, and physical ablity may influence what beahviors are emulated.
What is self-efficacy? What is it NOT?
NOT SELF ESTEEM- which is a more global

A belief abut how competently one will be able to perform a behavior in a PARTICULAR SITUATION!

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