personality

Question 1

what is personality?

Answer 1

-characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving
-universal patterns
-individual differences

Question 2

what are the early (classical) approaches to personality?

Answer 2

-psychodynamic/freud
-neo-freudian
-behaviorist
-humanistic

Question 3

what does Freud’s psychodynamic approach propose?

Answer 3

-3 pieces to personality: Id, superego, ego
- also preconscious, conscious, and unconscious

Question 4

What is the Id, superego, and ego?

Answer 4

-Id: primitive drives; present at birth; more unconscious
-superego: internalized rules for right and wrong; conscious/preconscious
-ego: the self that others see; preconscious

Question 5

what are defense mechanisms?

Answer 5

-protective behaviors of the ego
-manage threats to the balance of id and superego

Question 6

what is denial?

Answer 6

refusing to acknowledge source of anxiety

Question 7

what is repression?

Answer 7

excluding source of anxiety from awareness

Question 8

what is projection?

Answer 8

attributing unacceptable qualities of the self to someone else

Question 9

what is reaction formation?

Answer 9

warding off an uncomfortable thought by overemphasizing its opposite

Question 10

what is rationalization?

Answer 10

concocting a seemingly logical reason or excuse for behavior that might otherwise be shameful

Question 11

what is displacement?

Answer 11

shifting the attention of emotion from one object to another

Question 12

what is sublimation?

Answer 12

channeling socially unacceptable impulses into constructive, even admirable, behavior

Question 13

what do freud’s psychosexual stages of development describe?

Answer 13

how developing personality deals with sexual impulses of Id

Question 14

what are the psychosexual stages of development?

Answer 14

1. oral: pleasure centers on the mouth (sucking, biting, chewing)
2. anal: pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination (coping w/demands for control)
3. phallic: pleasure zone in the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings
4. latency: dormant sexual feelings (identification process– gender identity
5. genital: maturation of sexual interests

Question 15

what is the oedipus complex?

Answer 15

boys falling secretly in love w/mom and want to kill dad

Question 16

what is a freudian slip?

Answer 16

verbal or memory mistake linked to the unconscious mind

Question 17

why is freud’s idea of psychosexual development no longer used?

Answer 17

too much emphasis on sexual issues as root of personality types and psychological problems

Question 18

what is the neo-freudian psychodynamic approach?

Answer 18

-social competence instead of sexuality as major motivation for behavior

Question 19

who were the 2 important people talked about for neofreudian approaches?

Answer 19

-carl jung: collective unconscious; introversion and extroversion
-Karen Horney: different views from Freud on men and women

Question 20

what is the behaviorist approach?

Answer 20

-learning as a major influence on personality
ex. learning to be conscientious through operant conditioning

Question 21

what is the humanistic approach?

Answer 21

-response to psychodynamic and learning approaches
-views behavior as basically good
-de-emphasize abnormal behavior; focus instead on successes

Question 22

what is Maslows Hierarchy of needs?

Answer 22

need to fulfill basic (lower) needs before the psychological needs above are met

Bottom to top:
physiological needs
safety needs
belongingness and love needs
esteem needs
self-actualisation

Question 23

what is trait theory? what is a trait?

Answer 23

-clusters of characteristics to help explain individual differences in personality
-factor analysis

trait: personality characteristic that meets 3 criteria
consistent
stable
varies from person to person

Question 24

what is Eysenck’s two factor model?

Answer 24

has 2 dimensions:
-introversion/extroversion
-neuroticism/stability

Question 25

what is the current dominant model?

Answer 25

the big five theory: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism

Question 26

what are the biological bases of personality?

Answer 26

-temperament
-genetics
-evolutionary approaches

Question 27

what is temperament?

Answer 27

-recall Kagan’s reactivity test
-individual differences in activity level, emotionality, sociability

Question 28

what is genetics?

Answer 28

-measures of heritability
-monozygotic (identical, MZ) vs. dizygotic (fraternal, DZ) twins
-adoption studies

Question 29

what is heritability?

Answer 29

-degree of variation in a personality trait in a population that is due to genetic variation between individuals in that population
-ranges between 0-100%

Question 30

what do adoption studies show?

Answer 30

-twins similar in traits regardless of whether they were raised together
-adopted siblings are no more alike in personality than randomly selected persons
-personalities of adopted children largely unrelated to those of adoptive parents

Question 31

what are evolutionary approaches to personality?

Answer 31

-view personality traits as adaptive
-roots of personality in animals temperaments

Question 32

what are the 3 types of personality assessments?

Answer 32

-direct observation
-self-report inventories
-projective tests

Question 33

direct observation has high reliability but is what?

Answer 33

1)time consuming and expensive
2)some aspects of personality can be concealed

Question 34

what are self-report inventories?

Answer 34

-must be tested for reliability and validity
-rely on self-report: problems with social desirability