Chapter 14, 15, 16 Flashcards
(96 cards)
personality
A distinctive and relatively stable pattern of behaviour, thoughts, motives, and emotions that characterizes an individual.
trait
a characteristic of an individual, describing a habitual way of behaving, thinking, or feeling.
psychoanalysis
a theory of personality and a method of psychotherapy developed by Sigmund Freud; it emphasizes unconscious motives and conflicts.
psychodynamic theories
theories that explain behaviour and personality in terms of unconscious energy dynamics within the individual.
Freud’s theory
personality consists of three major systems: the id, the ego, and the superego.
id
in psychoanalysis, the part of personality containing inherited psychic energy, particularly sexual and aggressive instincts.
libido
in psychoanalysis, the psychic energy that fuels the life or sexual instincts of the id.
ego
in psychoanalysis, the part of personality that represents reason, good sense, and rational self-control.
superego
in psychoanalysis, the part of personality that represents conscience, morality, and social standards.
defence mechanisms
methods used by the ego to prevent unconscious anxiety or threatening thoughts from entering consciousness.
Ego defence mechanisms
- Repression
- Projection
- Displacement
- Regression
- Denial
psychosexual stages
in Freud’s theory, the idea that sexual energy takes different forms as the child matures; the stages are oral, anal, and phallic (oedipal), latency, and genital.
Oedipus complex
in psychoanalysis, a conflict occurring in the phallic (Oedipal) stage, in which a child desires the parent of the other sex and views the same-sex parent as a rival.
collective unconscious
in Jungian theory, the universal memories and experiences of humankind, represented in the symbols, stories, and images (archetypes) that occur across all cultures.
archetypes
universal, symbolic images that appear in myths, art, stories, and dreams; to Jungians, they reflect the collective unconscious.
object-relations school
a psychodynamic approach that emphasizes the importance of the infant’s first two years of life and the baby’s formative relationships, especially with the mother.
objective test (inventories)
standardized questionnaires requiring written responses; they typically include scales on which people are asked to rate.
factor analysis
a statistical method for analyzing the intercorrelations among various measures or test scores; clusters of measures or scores that are highly correlated are assumed to measure the same underlying trait or ability (factor).
The five central ‘robust factors’ of personality
- Extroversion versus introversion
- Neuroticism (negative emotionality) versus emotional stability
- Agreeableness versus antagonism
- Conscientiousness versus impulsiveness
- Openness to experience versus resistance to new experience
temperaments
physiological dispositions to respond to the environment in certain ways; they are present in infancy and in many nonhuman species and are assumed to be innate.
heritability
a statistical estimate of the proportion of the total variance in some trait that is attributable to genetic differences among individuals within a group.
reciprocal determinism
in social-cognitive theories, the two-way interaction between aspects of the environment and aspects of the individual in the shaping of personality traits.
non-shared environment
unique aspects of a person’s environment and experience that are not shared with family members.
culture
a program of shared rules that governs the behaviour of members of a community or society and a set of values, beliefs, and attitudes shared by most members of that community.