Ap Psychology Personality Vocabulary

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personality

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an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting

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free association

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in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarassing

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psychoanalysis

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

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unconscious

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according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware

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Id

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the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification

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ego

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mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The reality principle, satisfying the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.

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superego

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represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement (the conscious) and for future aspirations

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indentification

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the process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents' clues into their developing superegos.

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defense mechanisms

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the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

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repression

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the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness

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regression

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defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile stage

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reaction formation

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defense mechanism where the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. People may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings

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projection

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

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rationalization

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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

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defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.

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projective test

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a personality test, such as Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner synamics

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Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

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A 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

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the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

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collective unconscious

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Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history

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unconditional positive regard

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according to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person

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self-concept

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all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "Who am I?"

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trait

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a 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

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a questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to access selected personality traits

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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

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the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders, this test is now used for many other screening purposes

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empirically derived test

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

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social-cognitive perspective

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views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons and their social context

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reciprocal determinism

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the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors

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personal control

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our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless

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external locus of control

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the perception that chance or outside forces beyond one's personal control determine one's fate

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internal locus of control

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the perception that one controls one's own fate

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learned helplessness

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

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spotlight effect

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overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us)

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self-esteem

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one's feelings of high or low self-worth

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self-serving bias

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readiness to perceive oneself favorably

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individualism

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giving priority to one's own goals over group goals, and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications

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collectivism

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giving priority to the goals of one's group and defining one's identity accordingly

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terror-management theory

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