Brainscape's Knowledge GenomeTM


Top Flashcards (Certified)
All Flashcards

PSYCO 105 > Personality > Flashcards

Personality Flashcards

(109 cards)

Start Studying
1
Q

What is personality?

A

A concept used to explain the consistency and distinctiveness of a person. Made up of personality traits.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

What is consistency as it pertains to personality?

A

The stability in a person’s behaviour over time and across different situations.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

What is distinctiveness as it pertains to personality?

A

The behavioural differences among people reacting to the same situation.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

What is a personality trait?

A

A durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

What are the supposedly 5 bipolar personality factors?

A
  • Openness to experience
  • Conscientiousness
  • Extraversion
  • Agreeableness
  • Neuroticism
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

What superficial traits do high scorers in openness to experience have?

A

Curiosity, flexibility, vivid fantasy, imaginativeness, artistic sensitivity, and unconventional attitudes. Tolerant of ambiguity, don’t need closure. Fosters liberalism. Key determinant of political views.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
7
Q

What superficial traits do high scorers in conscientiousness have?

A

Diligent, disciplined, well-organized, punctual, dependable. Fosters diligence and dependability, easy to resist temptation.

Riley.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
8
Q

What superficial traits do high scorers in extraversion have?

A

Outgoing, sociable, upbeat, friendly, assertive, gregarious. Happier than other people. Positive outlook on life. Scoring high on this and conscientiousness makes for success.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
9
Q

What superficial traits do high scorers in agreeableness have?

A

It’s kind of vague. Trusting, cooperative, modest, straightforward. Easy to talk to.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
10
Q

What superficial traits do high scorers in neuroticism have?

A

Anxious, hostile, self-conscious, insecure, vulnerable. High scores correlate with psychological disorders.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
11
Q

What are some life aspects that high scores often correlate with?

A

Specific aspects of behaviour, implicit life outcomes, success in relationships, career success, feelings of subjective well being, health and morality rates, socioeconomic status.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
12
Q

What are the two broad categories for measuring personality?

A

Personal inventories and projective techniques.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
13
Q

What are some examples of personal inventories?

A

Self reports, Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory version 2 (MMPI2), the 16 personality factor questionnaire, the NEO personality inventory.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
14
Q

What are self reports?

A

A series of answers to a questionnaire that asks people to indicate the extent to which sets of statements or adjectives accurately describe their own behaviour or mental state.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
15
Q

What does the Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory involve?

A

It measures 10 traits using over 500 statements, high scores indicate possibility of psychological disorders.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
16
Q

What was the MMPI designed for?

A

Detecting mental disorders.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
17
Q

What is the difference between NEO and 16PF?

A

NEO uses 5 traits instead of 16.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
18
Q

What are the advantages to self-reports?

A

They provide an objective and precise estimate of a person’s personality, and they are well grounded on extensive comparative data and info obtained from respondents.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
19
Q

What are the disadvantages to self-reports?

A

They are only as accurate as the information respondents provide, they are susceptible to deliberate deception, social desirability bias, and response sets (giving up on the test).

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
20
Q

What method is employed to get over the biases of self-reports?

A

Lie-scales, where one question is repeated in different ways in order to determine if they are lying.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
21
Q

What are projective tests?

A

Tests that ask participants to respond to vague, ambiguous stimuli in ways that may reveal the subject’s needs, feelings, and personality traits.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
22
Q

What is the Rorschach Test?

A

A series of 10 inkblots are given to respondents and they are asked to describe what they see.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
23
Q

What is the thematic apperception test?

A

A series of pictures of simple scenes are presented to individuals, who are then asked to tell stories about what is happening in the scenes, and what the characters are feeling.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
24
Q

What is the projective hypothesis?

A

The theory that ambiguous material can serve as a blank screen onto which people project their characteristic concerns, conflicts, and desires.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
25
What are the advantages of projective tests?
They are not transparent to respondents, and the indirect approach may reveal especially sensitive information about the unconscious.
26
What are the disadvantages of projective tests?
It is also susceptible to some forms of deception. The scientific evidence is also not impressive, as it is plagued by inconsistent scoring and subjective interpretation.
27
What are the advantages of internet personality tests?
Easy to complete, low labour costs, data can flow right into interpretive software, you can get additional data that you can't get from pen and paper tests (if they changed their answer).
28
What are some disadvantages of personality tests?
Cannot be used for hiring tests, security is an issue for tests with closely guarded questions.
29
What are the three main psychodynamic theories?
Freud's psychoanalytic, Jung analytical psychology, and Adler's individual psychology.
30
What are the three components of the unconscious according to Freud?
The id, the ego, and the superego.
31
What are the three levels of awareness according to Freud?
Unconscious, preconscious, and conscious.
32
At what age does the ego develop full control over the id?
Age 5.
33
What are defence mechanisms?
Largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and guilt.
34
What does repression involve?
Keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious.
35
What does projection involve?
Attributing one's own thoughts, feelings, or motives to another person. e.g., a woman who doesn't like her boss thinks she does, but also thinks he boss doesn't like her.
36
What does displacement involve?
Diverting emotions (usually anger) from it's original target to a substitute target.
37
What does reaction-formation involve?
Behaving in a way that is directly opposite of how you feel.
38
What does regression involve?
A reversion to immature patterns of behaviour. e.g., an adult throwing a temper tantrum when he doesn't get his way.
39
What does rationalization involve?
Creating false but plausible excuses to justify a behaviour.
40
What does identification involve?
Bolstering self-esteem by forming an imaginary alliance with some person or group.
41
What does sublimation involve?
When someone channels unconscious, unacceptable impulses into socially accepted, even admired, behaviour.
42
What does Freud believe the foundation of an individual's personality is?
The psychosexual stages and how we deal with fixations and urges.
43
What are the five psychosexual stages?
Oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital.
44
What is characteristic of the oral stage?
An erotic focus on the moth, sucking and biting, weaning from a breast or bottle takes you out of the stage.
45
What is characteristic of the anal stage?
Focus is the anus, the stage is about potty training and controlling bowels.
46
What is characteristic of the phallic stage?
Focus is the genitals, masturbation; to get out of this stage, you have to cope with the Oedipus complex.
47
What is characteristic of the latency stage?
No major erotic focus; feelings are sexually repressed. Here they develop social bonds to get through the stage.
48
What is characteristic of the genital stage?
Focus on the genitals becomes sexually intimate, establishment of intimate relationships; contributing to society is the main task.
49
Where do Jung and Freud's theories split?
Jung does not believe in the psychosexual stages.
50
What did Jung believe about the unconscious?
There were two kinds: a personal unconscious and a collective unconscious that stores memory traces from people's ancestral past.
51
What are archetypes?
Ancestral memories; emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meanings.
52
What did Jung use for evidence of archetypes?
Symbols in artwork from all over the world that bears a striking resemblance.
53
What did Jung use archetypes for?
Jung used them for dream analysis, as a window into the unconscious.
54
What was the foremost source of human motivation according to Adler?
Striving for superiority.
55
What is compensation?
The process of overcoming feelings of inferiority
56
What did Adler believe caused inferiority complexes?
Parental pampering, or neglect.
57
What is the basis of behavioural perspectives of personality?
Traditional learning theories, such as operant and classical conditioning.
58
What is personality according to Skinner?
A collection of response tendencies that are tied to various stimulus situations.
59
What are environmental consequences and what do they cause? (Skinner)
Reinforcement, punishment, and extinction all determine people's patterns of responding.
60
How does Skinner's theory of personality contrast with psychodynamic theories?
Skinner's approach assumes that personality development is a lifelong process. Skinner also places no special emphasis on childhood development.
61
What is Bandura's social-cognitive theory?
Another behaviourist approach, but Bandura contends that learning is not passive. Instead, people routinely attempt to influence their lives and demonstrate forward directed planning.
62
What is stressed reciprocal determinism? (Bandura)
The idea that while the environment can influence behaviour, behaviour can also influence the environment. i.e., personal factors determine and are determined by both behaviour and one's environment.
63
What is observational learning? (Bandura)
Learning that occurs when an organism's responding is influenced by the observation of others, who are called models.
64
What factors contribute to someone being used as a model?
The more attractive we find someone to be, the more we find to have in common with them.
65
What did Bandura believe personal/cognitive factors were explained by?
Human self-efficacy.
66
What is self-efficacy?
The belief that one has the ability to reach their goals.
67
What is the big difference between Bandura's social cognitive theory and Mischel's person-situation theory?
Mischel's theory stresses the importance of situational factors on personality and learning. All that matters are the specific factors of a situation that determines how someone will act.
68
Why does Mischel believe people make the choices they do?
Because they think it will lead to reinforcement of the situation at hand.
69
How does person-situation theory differ from most other personality theories?
Most theories suppose that people will react in predictable ways, based on their personalities. Mischel's theory says that the situation is all that can impact someone's response.
70
What situations does person-situation theory hold true? And when do the classical views of personality hold true?
In small chunks of behaviour, the situation is most predictive of behaviour. But in larger, macro chunks of behaviour, personality traits are most predictive of behaviour.
71
What are the main criticisms of behavioural perspectives?
- Theories tend to be overly deterministic (does not account for free-will). - Tend to ignore cognitive processes (not so much now after Bandura and Mischel)
72
Why were humanistic perspectives created?
As part of a backlash against psychodynamic and behavioural theories for being dehumanizing.
73
What does humanism emphasize?
The uniqueness of humans, especially their freedom and potential for growth.
74
What does humanism suppose about our reality?
That the subjective experience is more important than the objective reality.
75
Who was Carl Rogers?
A founder of the human potential movement.
76
What does the human potential movement emphasize?
Self-realization through sensitivity training, encounter groups, and other exercises to foster personal growth.
77
How did Rogers view personality structure?
As a single construct: the self, or self-concept.
78
What is the self-concept?
A fluid collection of beliefs about one's own nature, unique qualities, and typical behaviour.
79
What is incongruence?
The gap between self-concept and reality.
80
When is a person said to be congruent?
When their self-concept is relatively accurate.
81
What did Rogers believe congruence depended on?
How parents treated their children. Unconditional parental love resulted in congruence. Conditional love resulted in incongruence.
82
What happens when people experience something that clashes with their self-concept?
Anxiety.
83
How do people ward off the anxiety of incongruence?
People act defensively in order to reinterpret their experience to better fit their self-concept.
84
What was Maslow's key contribution?
His hierarchy of needs, and theory of self-actualization.
85
What is a hierarchy of needs?
A systematic arrangement of needs, according to hierarchy, according to priority, in which basic needs are met before less basic needs are aroused.
86
What was the order of Maslow's hierarchy of need?
Physiological needs, safety and security, love, esteem, cognitive needs, aesthetics/beauty, and finally the ultimate goal: self-actualization.
87
What was Maslow's famous quote, regarding self-actualization?
"What a man can be, a man must be"
88
What characterizes self-actualized individuals?
Exceptionally healthy personalities, marked by continuous growth. At peace and tuned into the world.
89
What is the estimate of the percentage of the population that are self-actualizing individuals?
Less than 1%. Maslow couldn't find any in his research though.
90
What is good about humanistic perspectives?
- The idea of subjective view trumping objective reality. - The introduction of the self-concept. - Humanism lays the groundwork for positive psychology.
91
What is bad about humanistic perspectives?
- Poor testability. - Unrealistic view of human nature. - Inadequate evidence.
92
What is the main question in the biological perspectives of personality?
How do genes interact with personality?
93
How did Eysenck view personality?
As a hierarchy of traits derived from a smaller number of basic traits, which are derived from a handful of fundamental traits.
94
What three fundamental traits did Eysenck believe in?
Extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism.
95
What is the result of twin studies on the big five traits?
There is a much higher correlation for the big five traits in identical twins than fraternal twins.
96
What is the heritability rate (%) for the big five traits?
About 50%.
97
What areas of the brain may be associated with extraversion?
Those that are associated with processing reward.
98
What areas of the brain may be associated with neuroticism?
Areas activated by treat, punishment, and negative emotion.
99
What areas of the brain may be associated with conscientiousness?
Areas correlated with planning and voluntary control.
100
In an evolutionary sense, what does extraversion confer?
The ability to bond with others.
101
In an evolutionary sense, what does agreeableness confer?
Willingness to cooperate and collaborate.
102
In an evolutionary sense, what does conscientiousness confer?
The tendency to be reliable and ethical.
103
In an evolutionary sense, what does openness to experience confer?
The capacity to be an innovative problem solver.
104
In an evolutionary sense, what does low neuroticism confer?
The ability to handle stress.
105
How do the core traits of personality hold up across cultures?
Their presence seems to be universal. Average trait scores across cultures tend to differ, however.
106
How do personalities of American vs. Asian people contrast?
American children are taught to be independent and excel in competitive endeavours. Asian children tend to be taught to be interdependent, and are encouraged to fit with others and avoid standing out.
107
What is individualism?
Involves putting personal goals ahead of group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group membership.
108
What is collectivism?
Involves putting group goals ahead of personal goals and defining one's identity in terms of the groups one belong to.
109
What is self enhancement? And where is it most pervasive?
Involves focusing on positive feedback from others, exaggerating one's strengths, and seeing oneself as above average. It is most prominent in individualist cultures.

PSYCO 105 (4 decks)

Brainscape helps you reach your goals faster, through stronger study habits.
© 2025 Bold Learning Solutions. Terms and Conditions