Midterm Flashcards
1
Q
What is personality?
A
the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that make a person unique
2
Q
What is personality psychology?
A
studies the individual differences in basic traits, motives, and other personality variables as they are expressed in the lives of adults
3
Q
What is developmental psychology?
A
rare use of the term “personality” and instead examine what they call “temperament” and “socioemotional development”
4
Q
What is an agent?
A
to articulate and pursue goals in life that instantiate what you want and what you value
- to be an agent is to make decisions about where you want your life to go in the future
5
Q
What is extraversion?
A
tendency to be outgoing, sociable, and assertive
6
Q
What is neuroticism?
A
tendency to experience negative emotions
7
Q
What is openness to experience?
A
tendency to be receptive to new ideas, approaches and experiences
8
Q
What is agreeableness?
A
kind, cooperative, sympathetic
- the tendency toward doing one’s work well and thoroughly
9
Q
What are homo erectus?
A
Learned how to control fire for domestic use, which ultimately transformed the nature of hominid social relations
10
Q
What are homo habilis?
A
Characterized by a less protruding face than their ancestors and a significantly enhanced cranial capacity, used their hands (and brains) to fashion primitive stone tools for scavenging and scraping meat off dead animals.
11
Q
What is bipedalism?
A
The australopithecine species that inhabited Africa between 4 and 2 million years ago had evolved to the point that they could walk on their two hind legs, freeing their hands to reach for and carry fruits, vegetables, and nuts, and to handle objects with ease and skill.
12
Q
What is different about homo sapiens?
A
They developed disproportionate expansion in the prefrontal cortex and the temporal lobes
13
Q
What is group identification?
A
People naturally identify with social groups—nearly any social group—and experience the group’s triumphs and setbacks as if they were their own.
14
Q
What is group selection?
A
Even though cooperative individuals are often appreciated in their groups, they may still lose out in the battle with their more selfish counterparts to obtain maximal resources in the group.
15
Q
What is kin selection?
A
The idea that individuals may show altruism toward those with whom they share a significant allotment of genes
16
Q
What is mother-infant attachment?
A
A bond of love that forms in the first year of the infant’s life in order to serve the evolutionary demand of protecting the helpless infant from predators and other dangers in the environment
17
Q
What is reciprocal altruism?
A
In that human beings evolved to live in well-coordinated social groups, helping other individual human beings typically meant helping other members of your group.
18
Q
What is shared intentionality?
A
To the extent that we can share with each other what we each are planning to do, we will be able to work together more efficiently to accomplish a joint task.
19
Q
What is social identity?
A
Encompasses your own thoughts and feelings regarding how you fit into the group, your role and function in the group, and what membership in the group means more generally for your life.
20
Q
What is the need to belong?
A
A relentless desire for attachment to families, clans, teams, tribes, and all sorts of social groupings
21
Q
Describe the neurotic cascade
A
Highly neurotic actors (1) are more reactive to signs of threat and negative emotion in the social world, and thereby (2) are exposed to more negative events, which (3) reinforces their tendency to appraise objectively neutral or even positive events in negative terms. Heightened reactivity, exposure, and negative appraisals tend to precipitate (4) mood spillover, whereby negative feelings in one area of life spill over into others, and negative moods from one day carry over to ruin the next day as well.
22
Q
What is responsivity?
A
Actors respond favorably to those features of a social scene that are consistent with their preexisting tendencies, which reinforces those tendencies.
23
Q
What are externalizing behaviours?
A
When the young social actor is acting out against the external world
24
Q
What are spindle cells?
A
Spindle cells are well designed to address difficult cognitive problems, especially those that involve the detection of errors in a stimulus array and the adjudication of conflicting cognitions
25
What are the fundamentals of extraversion?
(1) seeking and (2) enjoying rewards, especially social rewards.
26
What is a sociopath?
When certain adults prove to be hardened and express absolutely no empathy for other human beings and no remorse for their antisocial behavior
27
What is effortful control?
Exerted effort to control impulses, developing a course of action that keeps one focused on a long-term goal in the presence of an alluring short-term distraction.
28
What is ego depletion?
Happens when people use up their available willpower on one task. As a result, they are unable to exert the same level of self-control
29
What is evocation?
Actors evoke responses from their audiences that are consistent with or reinforce preexisting tendencies.
30
What is extraversion associated with?
(1) social behavior, (2) emotion regulation, (3) learning and memory, (4) vocational interests and identity, and (5) various indices of risk and psychopathology.
31
What is mean-level change in personality?
the extent to which members of the group, on the average, tend to increase or decrease on a given dispositional trait as it is tracked over time
32
What is objective self-awareness?
whereby the actor becomes explicitly aware of the self as an object of perception
33
What is performance of emotion?
how the infant expresses and regulates the feelings that well up inside.
34
What is positive emotionality?
the basic temperament tendency to feel positive affect such as joy, excitement, and pleasure, and to act in such a way as to suggest a positive emotional engagement with the social world
35
What is rank-order stability?
the extent to which individual differences in a given trait hold steady over time
36
What is role selection?
Actors select and are selected into social roles that are consistent with their preexisting tendencies, serving to reinforce those tendencies.
37
What is serotonin centrally implicated in?
Serotonin may be centrally implicated in the development of effortful control and the broader psychological challenge of self-regulation itself
38
What is temperament?
Differences in the overall quality of the baby’s mood, the baby’s energy level, behavioral tempo, and alertness appear early on in human development, reflective of inborn differences in physiological makeup.
39
What is the behavioural approach system (BAS)?
the BAS motivates the individual to approach potentially rewarding situations, which themselves are often social in nature, and to experience the positive emotion that is associated with the pursuit and attainment of rewards
40
What is the behavioural inhibition system (BIS)?
The BIS functions to alert the actor to potential threats associated with uncertainty and conflict in the environment, especially conflict about whether to approach or to avoid particular stimuli, situations, people, and events.
41
What is the executive attention network?
The network is activated in situations in which a person needs to:
- detect errors in the environment
- cope with conflicting cognitive appraisals
- overcome habitual or automatic response patterns
- monitor his or her own behavior in the face of competing demands
42
What is the fight–flight–freeze system (FFFS)?
The FFFS serves as the brain’s control center for behavioral responses to imminent threat, motivated mainly by fear, but sometimes also anger. It plays an important role in the development and expression of negative emotionality.
43
What is the function of the anterior cingulate cortex?
Plays important roles in a wide range of functions, including:
- regulation of blood pressure and heart rate
- mediation of reward-seeking behavior
- control of empathy and other social emotions
- governing certain kinds of conscious
- rational decisions
44
What is the function of the prefrontal cortex?
The brain region most implicated in planning complex social behavior.
45
What is the internalized working model of attachment?
The working model details the infant’s emotional history of attachment and sets forth expectations about how experiences of love and trust may transpire in the future.
46
What is the opioid system?
The opioid system releases endogenous neuropeptides such as beta-endorphin when the organism achieves rewards, producing feelings of joy and pleasure
47
What is the HEXECO model?
* Humility/honesty
* Emotionality
* Xtraversion
* Agreeableness
* Conscientiousness
* Openness
48
What is Miller's argument on trait theories?
• Helpful in 3 ways:
- Can anticipate and understand the client’s private experience
- Can anticipate the problems presented in treatment
- Helps you formulate a practical treatment plan and anticipate opportunities and pitfalls of it
49
How do the traits influence the therapy process?
* N: intensity and duration of client’s distress
* E: energy and enthusiasm for therapy
* O: reactions to the therapist’s interventions
* A: subjective reaction to the person of the therapist (theraputic alliance)
* C: willingness to do the work of therapy
50
What are the advantages of having introverts?
* Promotes diversity of approaches
* Discourages groupthink (ex: trolls online)
* Willingness to fight for what is right
* Adaptive in competitive contexts
51
Who conducted the personality and marital compatibility study?
Kelly and Conley
52
Who conducted the Personality trait similarity between spouses in 4 cultures study?
McCrae and Costa
| - Assortative mating
53
What is assortative mating?
we choose people that are like ourselves, which increases the chances that our kids will look similar
54
Who conducted the Big 5 personality dimensions and job performance study?
Barrick and Mount
- Which big 5 traits do well in which jobs:
• Conscientiousness is the #1 predictor of job success
• Extraverts tend to do better in sales and as managers
• Openness was predictive of training proficiency
55
Who conducted the Work-team personality composition and job performance of teams study?
Neuman et al
- Team personality elevation: groups high on C, O and A performed better
- Team personality diversity: groups with N and E performed better
56
What. is grit (as described by Duckworth)?
working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress
57
What is a personality disorder?
Lasting, stable maladaptive pattern of behaviour and inner experience that markedly deviates from a person’s inner culture and is manifested in areas such as inappropriate emotions and cognitions, lack of impulse control, and chronic deficiencies in interpersonal functioning
58
What is cluster A of personality disorders?
Paranoid, Schizoid, Schizotypal
| - Behaviour: odd, eccentric
59
What is cluster B of personality disorders?
Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, Narcissistic
| - Behaviour: dramatic, erratic
60
What is cluster C of personality disorders?
Avoidant, Dependent, Obsessive-Compulsive
| - Behaviour: anxious, fearful
61
What are the traits associated with narcissism?
* Reacts to criticism badly
* May take advantage of others
* Tends to exaggerate their own importance, achievements and talents
* Requires constant attention and positive reinforcement
* Lacks empathy
* Obsessed with oneself
* Mainly pursues selfish goals and/or unrealistic goals
62
Who classified personality disorders in terms of the big 5 factors?
McCrae and Costa
| - ex: Schizoid disorders are closely related to introversion
63
What are the criterion in the Alternative DSM 5 model?
Criterion A: sense of self and self-direction, interpersonal experiences
Criterion B: pathological personality traits
64
What are high self-monitors? (Snyder)
People willing and able to project images desired by others
- quickly assesses situations and responds accordingly
- low consistency between trait scores and behaviour
65
What are low self-monitors? (Snyder)
People not only unwilling but unable to change in different social situations
- less sensitive to nuances of situation and less likely to alter behaviour
- high consistency between traits scores and behaviour
66
Who conducted the cross role variation in big 5 traits study?
Sheldon et al
67
What combinations involve personality disorders?
dispositional traits (level 1), personal concerns (level 2) and internalized life stories (level 3)
68
What study did Bem conduct?
Measured friendliness and how relevant and meaningful the trait was to different people
- The extent you which you find consistency of self-report and other indicators of friendliness depended very much on whether it was a relevant trait or not
69
What is the heritability quotient?
An estimate of the proportion of how well differences in people's genes account for differences in their traits
70
What is the difference between shared environment and non-shared environment?
* Shared environment: influences that operate to make family members alike
* Non-shared environment: influences that operate to make family members unalike
71
Who conducted the study on categories of non-shared family effects?
Rowe
- First born: IQ (fairly accurate), conservative, high achieving, conscientious
- Laterborns: agreeableness, rebellious, open to new ideas, sense of humour
• Except for IQ, the others aren’t true at all
72
Who conducted the study on significant life events?
Riese et al
- Stability of N is high, and exposure to significant life events modestly increased N
- Exposure affected identical twins distinctly
73
What is rank order stability?
the degree to which the relative ordering of individuals on a given trait is maintained over time
74
What is normative stability?
changes in mean level over time
75
What is the social investment principle?
we become more socially mature as time goes on, so there is more positive change as we get older
76
What is the Pithy conclusion?
people become more confident, warm, responsible, and calm with age
77
Why are we more likely to change between 20 and 30?
- Separate from family
- Establish relationship
- Establish a career track
78
What specific events can change us?
* First job – conscientiousness is positively associated with finding your career
* First love
* Success in your occupation
* Substance abuse
* Psychotherapy
79
What did Oh and Kilduff find in their study?
High SM had the largest social network and were better at building bridges
- the ripple effect
80
Which study discovered the social investment principle?
Roberts
81
What is shyness?
A form of anxiety characterized by inhibited behaviour
| - Also implies a fear of social judgement that can be crippling
82
What is behavioural inhibition?
marked timidity in the face of new events and people
83
What is the key to encouraging kids to be less shy is sensitive?
Empathic encouragement
84
What is the free trait theory? (Little)
the idea that while we have certain fixed bits of personality, we can act out of character in the service of core personal goals
85
What are the 3 identities of free trait theory?
- Biogenic: our mostly inborn personality
- Sociogenic: personality expected by our culture, family, religion
- Ideogenic: our personal desires and sense of what matters in our life
86
What is painful shyness?
A noticeable shyness characterized by:
- few or no friends
- loved ones concerned
- cancelling and avoiding social events
87
What is the 3 level model of personality?
```
• Traits
• Personal concerns
- Big 3 motives attachment styles
- Self-regulatory style
- Developmental stages
• Life narrative
- Internalized and evolving narratives of the self that people construct to integrate the past, present, and future and provide life with a sense of meaning and purpose
```
88
What is a motive?
Something that causes a person to act in a certain way, to do a certain things, etc.
- The goal of a person’s actions
89
What is the achievement motive?
a recurrent preference for experience of doing well and being successful
90
What is the power motive?
a recurrent preference of having impact on others
91
What is the intimacy motive?
a recurrent preference for experiences of warm, close, and communicative interactions with others
92
What are the needs for the big 3 motives and occupation preferences?
nAch: moderate challenge, personal responsibility
- Occupation preference: small business owner, research scientist, salesperson
nPow: exerting influence and being noticed
- Occupation preference: manager, clergy
nInt: conversing with people in warm, reciprocal manner
- Occupation preference: counsellor, mediator
93
What are the big 3 motive needs in interpersonal relationships?
* nInt: interactions with close friends
* nPow: agentic, assertive style in relations
* nAch: shared activities that are goal-oriented
94
Who argued that by the time we're teenagers, our traits are like cement?
Costa and McCrae
95
Who conducted the study on Change in N and Confidence by new relationship?
Neyer and Lenhart
96
Who studied the inhibited-shy child?
Kagan
97
Who created the free-trait theory?
Little
98
Explain McClelland's Model?
States you have to look at multiple indicators and multiple correlations (person and environment) to draw conclusions about personality
- Person: motives, traits, schemas, values, skills
- Environment: opportunities, incentives, constraints
99
What are the personal qualities needed to be an effective clinician?
* Motives: intimacy and power
* Traits: agreeableness, extraversion
* Value: helping people in distress
* Skills: empathy, decoding emotional expressions, listening skills
100
What are the 4 points of Schwartz theory of basic values?
- openness to change
- self-transcendence
- self-enhancement
- conservation
101
What is the interpersonal perception task?
• Presented with 40 photographs, and you have to figure out what the person is doing
102
What are implicit motives?
Recurrent, non-conscious desires for certain goal states
- develops in early, pre-verbal childhood
- incentive: activity - naturally occurring behaviour that is valued for its own sake
103
What are explicit motives?
Conscious, cognitively elaborated images of the self as oriented toward specific goal states
- develops in middle childhood
- incentive: social - motive is related to behaviour that is in keeping with social norms and interactions
104
Who conducted the achievement and sports participation study?
Gropel et al
| • The only thing that predicted how much people did their sport over the long-term was the implicit need for achievement
105
What are the personal qualities needed to be an effective scientific researcher?
* Motives: achievement
* Traits: conscientiousness, introversion (data/people)
* Value: importance of advancement in knowledge
* Skills: divergent thinking, identifying problems
106
Why are there only 3 motives?
- Can be identified in young children
- Can be seen in all cultures
- Can be linked with a natural incentive
107
What is self-efficacy?
the person’s belief that he or she can execute goal-directed behavior in a successful manner, especially under challenging or stressful circumstances.
108
What is joint attention?
the shared focus of two individuals on an object
109
What is theory of mind?
the capacity to understand other people by attributing mental states to them
110
How do children develop theory of mind more quickly?
- if they show high levels of EC and EF
- if they have parents who engage them in conversations that make repeated reference to mental and emotional states
- if they have older siblings with whom they have presumably gained experience in figuring out other minds
- if they have more experience with children’s storybooks, through which they learn about characters’ minds
- if they are rated by their teachers as more sociable and less agressive
111
What is Piaget's stage of concrete operations?
marks the ability to think about the concrete world as a logically organized, rule-governed reality
112
What is Kohlberg's theory of moral development?
the emergence of concrete operations helps to catalyze the transition from the pre-conventional to the conventional stages of moral reasoning
113
Explain Erikson's model of psychosocial development
middle childhood comprises the fourth of eight stages in the life cycle, the stage that pits industry (working hard) against inferiority (falling behind)
114
What are social development goals?
aim at improving relationships and social skills
115
What are demonstration-approach goals?
aim at attaining status and garnering positive feedback from others
116
What are demonstration-avoid goals?
involve avoiding negative judgments from others
117
Describe the developmental steps in becoming a motivated agent
0: goal directedness
1: intentionality, joint attention
2: agency projection
3-4: theory of mind
5-7: schooling and socialization
7-8: concrete operations
8-9: self-esteem
118
What are the two central features of narcissism?
Grandiosity and a sense of self-entitlement
119
Explain Campbell's agency model of narcissism?
Depicts narcissism as resulting from a strong and abiding motivational emphasis on pursuing goals of power, status, personal perfection, and the like, to the exclusion of communal concerns, and a relentless focus on enhancing self-esteem
120
What is Hagan's socioanalytic theory of personality?
Humans are wired to live in social groups organized into status hierarchies
