Psychology: Personality
Terms
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- Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
- the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests
- social-cognitive perspective
- views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons and their social context
- Rorschach inkblot test
- the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots
- displacement
- psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet
- learned helplessness
- the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events
- projective test
- a personality test that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics
- reciprocal determinism
- the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors
- rationalization
- defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions
- regression
- defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated
- defense mechanisms
- in psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
- personality inventory
- a questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors
- self-actualization
- according to Maslow, the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one's potential
- personality
- an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting
- collective unconscious
- Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history
- self-esteem
- one's feelings of high or low self-worth
- 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 their developing superegos
- collectivism
- giving priority to the goals of one's group and defining one's identity accordingly
- psychoanalysis
- Freud's theory of personality that attributes our thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychology disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions
- fixation
- according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved
- empirically derived test
- a test developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups
- superego
- the part of the personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations
- id
- contains of a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives; operates on the pleasure principle
- personal control
- our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless
- repression
- in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness
- internal locus of control
- the perception that one control one's own fate
- unconscious
- according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories
- psychosexual stages
- the childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id's pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
- spotlight effect
- overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders
- individualism
- giving priority to one's own goals over group goals, and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications
- trait
- a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports
- external locus of control
- the perception that chance or outside forces beyond one's personal control determine one's fate
- unconditional positive regard
- according to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person
- free association
- in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing
- self-serving bias
- a readiness to perceive oneself favorably
- projection
- psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
- ego
- the largely conscious, "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality; operates on the reality principle
- reaction formation
- psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites
- self-concept
- all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "Who am I?"