Psychology - Chapter 14 Personality - Key Words

People’s typical ways of thinking, feeling and behaving

Relatively enduring predisposition that influences our behaviour across many situations

Approach to personality that focuses on identifying general laws that govern the behaviour of all individuals

Approach to personality that focuses on identifying the unique configuration of characteristics and life history experiences within a person

investigation that allows researchers to pinpoint genes assocaited with specific personality traits

The assumption that all psychological events have a cause

reservoir of our most primitive impulses, including sex and aggression

Tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification

Psyche’s executive and principle decision maker

Tendency of the ego to postpone gratification untit it can find an appropriate outlet

our sense of morality

unconscious manbeuvers inteded to minimize anxiety

motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses

motivated forgetting of distressing external experienced

the act of returning psychologically to a younger, and typically simpler and safer, age

transformation of an anxiety-provoking emotion into its opposite

unconscious attribution of our negative characteristics to others

Directing an impulse from a socially unacceptable target onto a safer and more socially acceptable one

providing a reasonable-sounding explanation for unreasonable behaviours or failures

transforming a socially unacceptable impulse into an admired goal

sexually arousing zone of the body

psychosexual stage that focuses on the mouth

psychosexual stage that focuses on toilet training

psychosexual stage that focuses on the genitals

Conflict during the phallic stage in which boys supposedly love their mothers romantically and want to eliminate their fathers as rivals

Conflict during the phallic stage in which girls supposedly love their fathers romantically and want to eliminate their mothers as rivals

psychosexual stage in which sexual impulses are submerged into the unconscious

psychosexual stage in which seuxal impulses awaken and typically begin to mature into romantic attraction toward others

theories derived from Freud's model, but that placed less emphasis on sexuality as a driving force in personality and were more optimisitc regarding the prospects of long-term persoanlity growth

according to Adler, each person's distinctive way of achieving superiority

Feelings of low self-esteem taht can lead to overcompensation for such feelings

according to Jung, our shared storehouse of memories that ancestors have passed down to us across generations

cross-culturally universal symbols

theorists who emphasize thinking as a cause of personality

tendency for people to mutually influence each other's behaviour

extent to which people believve that reinforcers and punishers lie inside or outside of their control

drive to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent

according to Rogers, expectations we place on ourselves for appropriate and inappropriate behaviour

Transcedent moment of intense excitement and tranquility marked by a profound sense of connection to the world

statistical technique that anlyzes the correlations among responses on personality inventories and other measures

five traits taht have surfaced repeatedly in factor analyses of personality measures

Approach proposing that the most crucial features of personality are embedded in our language

paper-and-pencil test consisting of questions that respondents answer in one of a few fixed ways

widely used structured personality test designed to assess symptoms of mental disorders

Approach to building tests in which researchers begin with two or more criterion groups, and examine which items best distinguish them

Extent to which respondents can tell what the items are measuring

approach to building tests that requires test developers to begin with a clear-cut conceptualization of a trait and then write items to assess that conceptualization

test consisting of ambiguous stimuli that examinees must interpret or make sense of

hypothesis that in the process of interpreting ambiguous stimuli, examinees project aspects of tehir personality onto the stimulus

projective test consisting of ten symmetrical inkblots

Projective test requiring examinees to tell a story in response to ambiguous pictures

Psychological interpretation of handwriting

Tendency of people to accept high base rate descriptions as accurate