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56 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
Personality
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People's typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
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Trait
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Relatively enduring predisposition that influences our behavior across many situations.
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Nomothetic Approach
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Approach to personality that focuses on identifying general laws that govern the behavior of all individuals.
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Idiographic Approach
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Approach to personality that focuses on identifying the unique configuration of characteristics and life history experiences within a person.
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Molecular Genetic Study
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Investigation that allows researchers to pinpoint genes associated with specific personality traits.
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Psychic Determinism
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The assumption that all psychological events have a cause.
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ID
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Reservoir of our most primitive impulses, including sex and aggression.
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Pleasure Principle
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Tendency of the ID to strive for immediate gratification.
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Ego
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Psyche's executive and principal decision maker.
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Reality Principle
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Tendency of the ego to postpone gratification until it can find an appropriate outlet.
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Superego
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Our sense of morality.
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Defense Mechanisms
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Unconscious maneuvers intended to minimize anxiety.
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Repression
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Motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses.
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Denial
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Motivated forgetting of distressing external experiences.
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Regression
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The act of returning psychologically to a younger, and typically simpler and safer, age.
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Reaction-formation
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Transformation of an anxiety-provoking emotion into its opposite.
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Projection
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Unconscious attribution of our negative characteristics to others.
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Displacement
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Directing an impulse from a socially unacceptable target onto a safer and more socially acceptable target.
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Rationalization
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Providing a reasonable-sounding explanation for unreasonable behaviors or for failures.
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Identification with the Aggressor
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Process of adopting the characteristics of individuals we find threatening.
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Sublimation
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Transforming a socially unacceptable impulse into an admired goal.
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Erogenous Zone
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Sexually arousing zone of the body.
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Oral Stage
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Psychosexual stage that focuses on the mouth.
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Anal Stage
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Psychosexual stage that focuses on toilet training.
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Phallic Stage
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Psychosexual stage that focuses on the genitals.
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Oedipus Complex
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Conflict during phallic stage in which boys supposedly love their mothers romantically and want to eliminate their fathers as rivals.
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Electra Complex
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Conflict during phallic stage in which girls supposedly love their fathers romantically and want t eliminate their mothers as rivals.
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Latency Stage
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Psychosexual stage in which sexual impulses are submerged into the unconscious.
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Genital Stage
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Psychosexual Stage in which sexual impulses awake and typically begin to mature into romantic attraction toward others.
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Neo-Freudian Theories
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Theories derived from Freud's model, but that placed less emphasis on sexuality as a driving force in personality and were more optimistic regarding the prospects for long term personality growth.
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Style of Life
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According to Adler, each person's distinctive way of achieving superiority.
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Inferiority Complex
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Feelings of low self-esteem that can lead to overcompensation for such feelings.
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Collective Unconscious
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According to Jung, our shared storehouse of memories that ancestors have passed down to us across generations.
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Archetype
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Cross-culturally universal symbols.
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Social Learning Theorists
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Theorists who emphasize thinking as a cause of personality.
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Reciprocal Determinism
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Tendency for people to mutually influence each other's behavior.
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Locus of Control
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Extent to which people believe that reinforcers and punishers lie inside or outside of their control.
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Self-Actualization
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Drive to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent.
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Conditions of Worth
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According to Rogers, expectations we place on ourselves for appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
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Incongruence
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Inconsistency between our personalities and innate dispositions.
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Peak Experience
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Transcendent moment of intense excitement and tranquility marked by a profound sense of connection to the world.
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Factor Analysis
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Statistical Technique that analyzes the correlations among responses on personality inventories and other measures.
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Big Five
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Five traits that have surfaced repeatedly in factor analyses of personality measures.
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Lexical Approach
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Approach proposing that the most crucial features of personality are embedded in our language.
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Structured Personality Test
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Paper-and-pencil test consisting of questions that respondents answer in one of a few fixed ways.
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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
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Widely used structured personality test designed to assess symptoms of mental disorders.
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Empirical Method of Test Construction
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Approach to building tests in which researchers begin with two or more criterion groups, and examine which items best distinguish them.
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Face Validity
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Extent to which respondents can tell what the items are measuring.
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Rational / Theoretical Method of Test Construction
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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.
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Projective Test
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Test consisting of ambiguous stimuli that examinees must interpret or make sense of.
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Projective Hypothesis
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Hypothesis that in the process of interpreting ambiguous stimuli, examinees project aspects of their personality onto the stimulus.
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Rorschach Inkblot Test
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Projective test consisting of ten symmetrical inkblots.
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Incremental Validity
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Extent to which a test contributes information beyond other, more easily collected measures.
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Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
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Projective test requiring examinees to tell a story in response to ambiguous pictures.
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Graphology
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Psychological interpretation of handwriting.
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P.T. Barnum Effect
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Tendency of people to accept high base rate descriptions as accurate.
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