Personality

Question 1

Empirically derived test

Answer 1

A test developed by testing a pool of items then selecting those that discriminate between groups

Question 2

Psychoanalysis

Answer 2

Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts

Question 3

Learned helplessness

Answer 3

The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events

Question 4

Self esteem

Answer 4

One’s feelings of high or low self-worth

Question 5

Projection

Answer 5

A defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others

Question 6

Free association

Answer 6

A method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind

Question 7

Projective test

Answer 7

A personality test that provide ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics

Question 8

Collective unconscious

Answer 8

Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces for our species’ history

Question 9

Self-actualization

Answer 9

The ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem in achieved

Question 10

Self-concept

Answer 10

All our thoughts and feeling about ourselves

Question 11

Personality inventory

Answer 11

A questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors

Question 12

Self-serving bias

Answer 12

A readiness to perceive oneself favorably

Question 13

Repression

Answer 13

The basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings and memories from conscious

Question 14

External locus of control

Answer 14

The perception that chance or outside forces beyond one’s personal control determines one’s fate

Question 15

Id

Answer 15

Contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives

Question 16

Oedipus complex

Answer 16

A boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father

Question 17

Spotlight effect

Answer 17

Overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance and blunders

Question 18

Unconditional positive regard

Answer 18

An attitude of total acceptance toward another person

Question 19

Displacement

Answer 19

A defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person (inappropriate sublimation)

Question 20

Social cognitive perspective

Answer 20

Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons (and their thinking) and their social context

Question 21

Identification

Answer 21

The process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos

Question 22

Trait

Answer 22

A characteristic pattern of behavior or disposition to feel and act as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports

Question 23

Ego

Answer 23

The largely conscious part of the personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality

Question 24

Internal locus of control

Answer 24

The perception that one controls one’s own fate

Question 25

Unconscious

Answer 25

A reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories

Question 26

Psychosexual stages

Answer 26

Childhood stages of development during which the id’s pleasure seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones

Question 27

Fixation

Answer 27

A lingering focus of pleasure seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage in which conflicts were unresolved

Question 28

Reaction formation

Answer 28

Defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites

Question 29

Superego

Answer 29

The part of personality that represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment and for future aspirations

Question 30

Positive psychology

Answer 30

The scientific study of optimal human functioning

Question 31

Thematic Apperception Test

Answer 31

A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interest through the stories they make up about scenes

Question 32

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Answer 32

The most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots seeks to identify people’s inner feeling by analyzing their interpretation of the inkblot

Question 33

Terror management theory

Answer 33

Proposes that faith in one’s worldview and the pursuit of self-esteem provide protection against a deeply rooted fear of death

Question 34

Reciprocal determinism

Answer 34

The interacting influences between personality and environmental factors

Question 35

Regression

Answer 35

Defense mechanism in which a individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage

Question 36

Personal control

Answer 36

Our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless

Question 37

Rationalization

Answer 37

Defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real unconscious reasons for action

Question 38

Defense mechanism

Answer 38

The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

Question 39

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Answer 39

The most widely used of all personality tests originally used to identify emotional disorders

Question 40

Personality

Answer 40

An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting