Chapter 10: Personality Flashcards
personality
The pattern of enduring characteristics that produce
consistency and individuality in a given person.
psychodynamic approaches to personality
Approaches that assume that personality is primarily unconscious and motivated by inner forces and conflicts about which people have little awareness.
psychoanalytic theory
Freud’s theory that unconscious forces act as determinants of personality.
unconscious
A part of the personality that contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, drives, and
instincts of which the individual is not aware
id
The instinctual and unorganized part of personality whose sole purpose is to reduce tension created by primitive drives related to hunger, sex, aggression, and irrational impulses.
ego
The part of personality that attempts to balance the desires of the id and the realities of the objective, outside world.
superego
The part of personality that harshly judges the morality of our behavior
psychosexual stages
Developmental periods that children pass through
during which they encounter conflicts between the demands of society and their own sexual urges.
fixations
Conflicts or concerns that persist beyond the developmental period in which they first occur
oral stage
According to Freud, a stage from birth to age 12 to 18 months, in which an infant’s center of pleasure is the mouth.
anal stage
According to Freud, a stage from age 12 to 18 months to 3 years of age, in which a child’s pleasure is centered on the anus
phallic stage
According to Freud, a period beginning around age 3 during which a child’s pleasure focuses on the genitals.
Oedipal conflict
A child’s intense, sexual interest in his or her opposite-sex parent.
identification
The process of wanting to be like another person as much as possible, imitating that person’s behavior and adopting similar beliefs and values.
latency period
According to Freud, the period between the phallic stage and puberty during which children’s sexual concerns are temporarily put aside
genital stage
According to Freud, the period from puberty until death,
marked by mature sexual behavior (that is, sexual intercourse)
defense mechanisms
In Freudian theory, unconscious strategies that people
use to reduce anxiety by distorting reality and concealing the source of the anxiety from themselves.
repression
The defense mechanism in which the ego pushes unacceptable or unpleasant thoughts and impulses out of consciousness but maintains them in the unconscious.
neo-Freudian psychoanalysts
Psychoanalysts who were trained in traditional Freudian theory but who later rejected some of its major points.
collective unconscious
According to Jung, an inherited set of ideas, feelings,
images, and symbols that are shared with all humans because of our common ancestral past.
archetypes
According to Jung, universal symbolic representations of particular types of people, objects, ideas, or experiences.
traits
Consistent, habitual personality characteristics and behaviors that are displayed across different situations.
trait theory
A model of personality that seeks to identify the basic traits necessary to describe personality.
social cognitive approaches to personality
Theories that emphasize the influence of a person’s cognitions— thoughts, feelings, expectations, and values— as well as observation of others’ behavior, in determining personality.
