Personality

Question 1

Personality

Answer 1

• characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting

Question 2

Traits

Answer 2

• relatively stable predisposition to behave a certain way
• trait theory: describes personality by describing a small number of traits

Question 3

Big Five Inventory

Answer 3

• the five major measures of personality
• conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, extraversion

Question 4

Situationism

Answer 4

• belief that personalities and dispositions do not determine what someone will do, rather situation does
• supported by Hartshorne and May Experiment

Question 5

Reciprocal Influence

Answer 5

• personality is shaped by interaction of traits, environments, and behaviors
• we choose environments to fit our personalities
• we interpret and react to events based on our personalities
• we create situations to which we react

Question 6

Locus of Control

Answer 6

• internal locus of control: belief that you have personal control over consequences of your actions
• external locus of control: belief that others are in control or it is random

Question 7

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Answer 7

• basic needs: physiological and security needs
• psychological needs: belongingness, love, and esteem needs
• self fulfillment needs: self-actualization (achieving one’s full potential)

Question 8

Freudian Psychology

Answer 8

• focus on conscious vs unconscious
• believed that unconscious is dynamic and determines your behavior
• id: primitive part of mind that seeks things that give pleasure (pleasure principle)
• ego: forces you to be realistic and understand what you need to get it (reality principle)
• superego: interprets rules of society and tells you whether it is right

Question 9

Unconscious Conflicts

Answer 9

• dreams are about wish fulfillment (attempt by unconscious to express its desires)
• latent: hidden underlying dream
• manifest: what we actually dream about

Question 10

Defense Mechanisms to Reduce Internal Conflict

Answer 10

• repression: revert to infantile stage of behavior
• reaction formation: switching unacceptable impulses to their opposites
• projection: disguising your own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
• displacement: acting out your impulses on a more acceptable object or person
• rationalization: justify behaviors with explanations
• isolation: thoughts remain unconscious

Question 11

Freud’s Psychosexual Theory of Development

Answer 11

• oral: pleasure centers on mouth
• anal: pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination
• phallic: pleasure focuses on genitals and unconscious sexual desire for parent of opposite sex
• latency: dormant sexual feelings
• genital: maturation of sexual interests
• fixation: id gets focused on one of the stages and conflicts occur during that stage of development
• both boys and girls have a complex where they resent their parent of the same sex during their phallic stage and can only get out of the stage once they resolve it