 | Term | Definition |
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personality |
individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting |
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free association |
in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing |
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psychoanalysis |
Freud's thory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts |
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unconscious |
according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories |
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id |
contains reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives |
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ego |
conscious "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality |
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superego |
part of the personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement and for future aspirations |
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psychosexual stages |
the childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id's pleasure-seeking energies focused on distinct erogenous zones |
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Oedipus |
according to Freud, a boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father |
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identification |
process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents' value into their developing superegos |
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fixation |
according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved |
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defense mechanism |
in psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective method of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distoring reality |
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repression |
basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness |
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regression |
defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated |
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reaction formation |
defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites; "I hate him" becomes "I love him" |
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projection |
defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others |
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rationalization |
defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions |
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displacement |
defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impluses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person |
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collective unconscious |
Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history |
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projective test |
personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics |
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Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) |
projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes |
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Rorschach inkblot test |
most widely used projective test, set of 10 inkblots, seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretation of the blots |
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terror-management theory |
proposes that faith in one's worldview and the pursuit of self-esteem provide protection against a deeply rooted fear of death |
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self-actualization |
according to Maslow, ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one's potential |
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unconditional positive regard |
according to Roger's, an attitude of toal acceptance toward another person |
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self-concept |
all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "Who am I?" |
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trait |
characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports |
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personality inventory |
questionnaire (often with true-false or agree-disagree) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors |
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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) |
most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests |
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empirically derived test |
a test (such as the MMPI) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups |
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social-cognitive perspective |
views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons (and their thinking) and their social context |
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reciprocal determinism |
interacting influences between personality and environmental factors |
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personal control |
our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless |
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external locus of control |
perception that chance or outside forces beyond one's personal control determine one's fate |
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internal locus of control |
perception that one control's one's own fate |
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learned helplessness |
hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events |
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spotlight effect |
overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders |
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self-esteem |
one's feeling of high or low self-worth |
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self-serving bias |
readiness to perceive oneself favorably |
