Personality Terms Chapter 01

Front 1

Basic Approach

Back 1

A systematic, self-imposed limitation of observations viewed as important and worthy of study; accompanying ways of thinking about phenomena and patterns of behavior, and means for studying those phenomena (a.k.a., paradigm).

Front 2

Biological Approach

Back 2

The endeavor to understand the mind in terms of the body; addressing issues concerning basic biological mechanisms, such as anatomy, physiology, inheritance, and even evolution, and their relevance for personality.

Front 3

Classic Behaviorists

Back 3

Psychologists who focus on overt behavior and the ways it can be affected by rewards and punishments present in the environment.

Front 4

Cross-Cultural Psychology

Back 4

An emphasis on the degree to which psychology and the very experience of reality might vary across cultures.

Front 5

Funder's First Law

Back 5

Great strengths are usually great weaknesses, and surprisingly often the opposite is true as well.

Front 6

Humanistic Psychology

Back 6

The pursuit of how conscious awareness can produce such uniquely human attributes as existential anxiety, creativity, and free will, and tries to understand the meaning and basis of the experience of happiness.

Front 7

Individual Differences

Back 7

Refers to a range of differences between people on a given trait (e.g., scoring extraversion on a scale from 0-100; e.g., in terms of a physical feature, measuring height in terms of feet and inches).

Front 8

Learning

Back 8

The ways in which people change what they do as a result of the rewards, punishments, and other experiences in life.

Front 9

Learning and cognitive approaches

Back 9

Behaviorism, social learning theory, and cognitive personality psychology comprise this approach.

Front 10

OBT (One Big Theory)

Back 10

Dr. Funder's name for a theory that could explain everything now accounted for separately by trait—biological, psychoanalytic, humanistic, behavioral, and cognitive approaches.

Front 11

Personality

Back 11

An individual's characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms, hidden or not, behind those patterns

Front 12

Personality Psychology's Emphasis

Back 12

How individuals are different from one another

Front 13

Phenomenological Approach

Back 13

Practiced by psychologists who focus primarily on people's conscious experience of the world

Front 14

Pigeonholding

Back 14

Categorizing human beings (e.g., high extraversion or low extraversion; e.g., in terms of a physical feature, calling someone tall or short)

Front 15

Psychoanalytic Approach

Back 15

Practiced by psychologists who are concerned primarily with the workings of the unconscious mind and the nature and resolution of internal mental conflict

Front 16

Psychological Triad

Back 16

The combination of how people think, feel, and behave.

Front 17

Psychology

Back 17

The scientific study of the mind

Front 18

Social Learning Theorists

Back 18

Psychologists who attempt to draw inferences about how mental processes such as observation and self-evaluation determine how behaviors are learned and performed.

Front 19

Trait Approach

Back 19

Focuses efforts on the ways that people differ psychologically from one another and how these differences might be conceptualized and measured.