|
 Personality | characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting |
| Free Association | person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing |
| Psychoanalysis | Frued's theory of personality that attributes our thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts |
| Unconscious | reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories |
| Id | reservoir of unconscious psychic energy constantly striving to satisfy basic drives to survive, reproduce and progress |
| Pleasure principle | if not constrained by reality, it seeks immediate gratification |
| Ego | mediates among demands of id, superego, and reality |
| Reality principle | seeks to gratify the id's impulses in realistic ways that will bring long-term pleasure rather than pain or destruction |
| Superego | voice of conscience that forces the ego to consider not only the real but the ideal and that focuses solely on how one ought to behave |
| Psychosexual stages | id's pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones |
| Oral stage | (0 - 18 months) pleasure centers on the mouth |
| Anal stage | (18 - 36 months) pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control |
| Phallic stage | (3 - 6 years) pleasure zone in the genitals; coping with incest |
| Latency stage | (6 to puberty) dormant sexual feelings |
| Genital stage | (puberty on) motivation of sexual interests |
| Oedipus complex | boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father |
| Electra complex | same as oedipus complex but for girls |
| Identification | children incorporate their parents' values into their developing superegos |
| Fixation | lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved |
| Defense mechanisms | ego protects itself which reduces anxiety in various ways, but always by distorting reality |
| Repression | unconsciously banishes anxiety arousing thoughts and feelings from consciousness |
| Regression | retreating to an earlier, more infantile stage of development |
| Reaction formation | ego unconsciously makes unacceptable impulses look like their opposites |
| Projection | disguises threatening impulses by attributing them to others |
| Rationalization | unconsciously generate self-justifying explanations to hide from ourselves the real reason for our actions |
| Displacement | diverts one's sexual or aggressive impulses toward an object or person that is psychologically more acceptable than the one that aroused the feeling |
| Projective test | a personality test that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics |
| Thematic apperception test | a test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes |
| Rorschach inkblot test | a test that seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots |
| Collective unconscious | concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history |
| Self-actualization | process of fulfilling our potential |
| Unconditional positive regard | attitude of total acceptance toward another person |
| Self-concept | all out thoughts and feelings about ourselves in answer to the question, "Who am I?" |
| Traits | people's characteristic behaviors and conscious motives |
| Greek's four bodily fluids | melancholic (depressed), sanguine (cheerful), phlegmatic (unemotional), or choleric (irritable) |
| Endomorph | "chubby"; relaxed and jolly |
| Mesomorph | "buffed"; bold and physically happy |
| Ectomorph | "skinny"; high strung and solitary |
| factor analysis | statistical procedure described to identify cluster of test items that tap basic components of intelligence |
| Personality inventories | longer questionnaires on which people respond to items covering a wide range of feelings and behaviors |
| Empirically derived test | a test developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups |
| Emotional stability | calm---anxious; secure---insecure; self-satisfied---self-pitying |
| Extroversion | sociable---retiring; fun-loving---sober; affectionate---reserved |
| Openness | imaginative---practical; preference for variety---preference for routine; independent---conforming |
| Agreeableness | soft-hearted---ruthless; trusting---suspicious; helpful---uncooperative |
| Conscientiousness | organized---disorganized; careful---careless; disciplined---impulsive |
| Social-cognitive perspective | views behavior as influence by the interaction between persons (and their thinking) and their social content |
| Reciprocal determinism | process of interacting with our environment |
| Personal control | our sens of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless |
| External locus of control | perception that chance or outside forces determine their fate |
| Internal locus of control | control their own destiny |
| Self-control | ability to control impulses and delay gratification |
| Learned helplessness | hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events |
| Spotlight effect | overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunderness |
| Self-esteem | feeling of self-worth |
| Self-serving bias | readiness to perceive oneself favorably |
| Individualism | giving priority to one's own goals over group goals, and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identification |
| Collectivism | giving priority to the goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly |
| Terror-management theory | theory that proposes that faith in one's worldview and the pursuit of self-esteem provides protection against a deeply, rooted fear of death |