Chapter 12

Question 1

What is personality?

Answer 1

It is an individual’s characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling. Differences are concerned with past and present events.

Question 2

Why is it important to understand personality?

Answer 2

it is used to explain differences in behaviour. And knowing someone’s personality can predict their actions.

Question 3

Describe some of the different ways that we measure personality.

Answer 3

Self-report (Like MMPI-2), and projective techniques.

Question 4

What is the self-report?

Answer 4

A method in which people provide subjective information about their own thoughts, feelings, or behaviours, typically via questionnaire or interview.

Question 5

What is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory?

Answer 5

A well-researched clinical questionnaire used to assess personality and psychological problems.

Question 6

What are projective tests?

Answer 6

Tests designed to reveal inner aspects of individuals’ personalities by analysis of their responses to a standard series of ambiguous stimuli.

Question 7

What is the Rorshach Inkblot Test?

Answer 7

A projective technique in which respondents’ inner thoughts and feelings are believed to be revealed by analysis of their responses to a set of unstructured inkblots.

Question 8

What is the Thematic Apperception Test?

Answer 8

A projective technique in which respondents’ underlying motives, concerns, and the way they see the social world are believed to be revealed through analysis of the stories they make up about ambiguous pictures of people.

Question 9

What are the limitations of personality tests? (Court example?)

Answer 9

Validity issues (are they actually measuring what they say they are?), exclusion of personality traits, assumption that traits are constant and unchanging, underestimating the importance of context, use of self-report data, cultural/sub-cultural biases,

Question 10

What is a trait?

Answer 10

A relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way. There are two definitions for it: A trait might be a preexisiting disposition that causes behaviour or it may be a motivation that guides behaviour.

Question 11

Describe the search for the core traits.

Answer 11

Traits can be classified using adjectives, which may be organized in a hierarchical pattern.
- Collect adjectives - statistically analyze for similarities/overlap (If you say one negative emotion fits you, you are likely to say that other negative emotions also fit you.) Then they grouped all the negative emotions together and put them under one label.

Question 12

Strengths and problems with the Big Five.

Answer 12

It accounts for variability without overlap, multiple observers agreed, and it is reliable across cultures. But, some have said that human traits should not be limited to just these five. (Missing humility??)

Question 13

Conscientiousness

Answer 13

To what degree are you diligent, industrious

Question 14

Agreeableness

Answer 14

The extent to which you like to avoid conflict; put others ahead, women are more agreeable than men

Question 15

Neuroticism

Answer 15

Negative emotion, anxious. (The extent to which the negative emotions fit you.)
Anxious, low self-esteem, moody (cries easily, sensitive to feedback, quick to anger), shy

Question 16

Openness to experience

Answer 16

Creative, often intelligent, like new experiences, novelty (things this trait correlates with)

Question 17

Extraversion

Answer 17

Energized by people, the world is an opportunity, like being with others

Question 18

Are our traits actually wired into us?

Answer 18

There have been some studies done that suggest this as people experience personality changes when they are exposed to pharmaceutical treatments or have brain damage.

Question 19

What is the psychodynamic approach?

Answer 19

An approach that regards personality as formed by needs, strivings, and desires largely operating outside of awareness - motives that can also produce emotional disorders

Question 20

What is the id?

Answer 20

The part of the mind containing the drives present at birth; it is the source of our bodily wants, needs, desires, and impulses, particularly our sexual and aggressive drives. (Hedonistic)

Question 21

What is the ego?

Answer 21

The component of personality , developed through contact with the external world, enables us to deal with life’s practical demands. (Mediator - helps us realize the world isn’t all about us. - Last cookie example)

Question 22

What is the superego?

Answer 22

The mental system that reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly as learned as parents exercise their authority.

Question 23

What are defence mechanisms?

Answer 23

Unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce the anxiety generated by threats from unacceptable impulses.

Question 24

What is rationalization?

Answer 24

Supplying a reasonable sounding explanation for unacceptable feelings and behaviour to conceal one’s underlying motives or feelings.

Question 25

What is reaction formation?

Answer 25

Unconsciously replacing threatening inner wishes and fantasies with an exaggerated version of their opposite. (You are sexually attracted to somebody so you are rude to them.)

Question 26

What is projection?

Answer 26

Attributing one's own threatening feelings, motives, or impulses to another person or group. (You are having an affair but then you accuse your partner of having one.)

Question 27

What is regression?

Answer 27

The ego deals with internal conflict and perceived threat by reverting to an immature behaviour or earlier stages of development. (You're going through something hard and then you curl into a ball.)

Question 28

What is displacement?

Answer 28

Shifting unacceptable wishes or drives to a neutral or less threatening alternative. (Yelling at someone other than the person you are mad at.)

Question 29

What is identification?

Answer 29

Helps deal with feelings of threat and anxiety by enabling us to unconsciously take on the characteristics of another person who seems more powerful or able to cope. (Stockholm Syndrome?)

Question 30

What is sublimation?

Answer 30

Channelling unacceptable sexual or aggressive drives into socially acceptable and culturally enhancing activities. (Becoming a firefighter.)

Question 31

What are the psycho-sexual stages?

Answer 31

Freud thought that we experience pleasure as sexuality.

Question 32

What is a fixation?

Answer 32

A phenomenon in which a person's pleasure seeking drives become stuck or arrested at a specific psychosexual stage.

Question 33

What happens in the oral stage of the psychosexual stages?

Answer 33

Experience centers on the pleasures and frustrations associated with the mouth, sucking, and being fed. You would be stuck in this stage if you eat too much food, you smoke, or you drink too much.

Question 34

What happens in the anal stage of the psychosexual stages?

Answer 34

Pleasures centers on the pleasures and frustrations associated with the anus, retention, and expulsion of feces and urine. (Toilet training brought pleasure.) Being fixated in this phase might show up as someone developing OCD, way too controlling

Question 35

What happens in the phallic stage of the psychosexual stages?

Answer 35

Experience centers on the pleasure, conflict, and frustration associated with the phallic-genital region as well as coping with powerful incestuous feelings of love, hate, jealousy, and conflict. (Oedipal complex)

Question 36

What happens in the latency stage of the psychosexual stages?

Answer 36

Primary focus is on the further development of intellectual, creative, interpersonal, and athletic skills.

Question 37

What happens in the genital stage of the psychosexual stages?

Answer 37

A time for coming together of the mature adult personality with a capacity to love, work, and realte to others in a mutually satisfying and reciprocal manner.

Question 38

What is the self-actualising tendency? (Humanism)

Answer 38

The human motive toward being the best person we can be When we are engaged in tasks that really suit our abilities, we experience “flow”.

Question 39

What is the existential approach?

Answer 39

Personality is connected to all the choices and decisions we make. Angst arises when we find meaning in life and death.

Question 40

What is the person-situation controversy?

Answer 40

the question of whether behaviour is more caused by personality or situational factors. Walter Mischel argued that personality traits do little to predict bheaviour (r= 0.30 on average) and behaviours may not transfer in different situations. Concept of personality is only useful to a certain extent, we must consider situations. Look at situation and a person’s past experiences and behaviours.

Question 41

Does your personality change according to what language you are speaking?

Answer 41

Coates argues that it doesn't , rather the demand characteristics is what changes and we react differently to them.

Question 42

What are personal constructs?

Answer 42

These are dimensions people use in making sense of their experiences, originally proposed by George Kelly. Our perspective is reflected by our personal goals.

Question 43

What are outcome expectancies?

Answer 43

A person’s assumptions about the likely consequences of a future behaviour

Question 44

What is the Locus of Control? (Julian Rotter)

Answer 44

It is the way that people perceive what controls their lives. It can be external or internal.

Question 45

What is self-concept?

Answer 45

It is how we think about ourselves, our traits, and our characteristics. - We use self-schemas to define ourselves. (I'm good at this, I have this trait.) - Self concept is stable and promotes consistency in behaviour. (I'm a Christian so it is my duty to act this way.)

Question 46

What is self-esteem?

Answer 46

The extent to which an individual likes, values, and accepts self.

Question 47

What is self-serving bias?

Answer 47

People’s tendency to take credit for their successes but downplay responsibility for their failures; to protect self-esteem.

Question 48

What is narcissism?

Answer 48

When people have a grandiose sense of self-esteem. Harmful because these people don’t feel bad exploiting other people. Strong self-esteem on its own isn’t that harmful. They are willing to be abusive to other people.

Question 49

What is implicit egotism?

Answer 49

Argues that people are generally unaware of their preference for things similar to themselves. (i.e, own name) The name letter effect suggests that people prefer letters that are the same as their own name.