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36 Cards in this Set

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Describe neuroticism in the Five-Factor Model of Personality Traits?
Anxious, insecure, guilt-prone, self-conscious.
Describe extraversion in the Five-Factor Model of Personality Traits
Talkative, sociable, fun-loving, affectionate
Describe Openness to Experience in the Five-Factor Model of Personality Traits
Daring, nonconforming, showing unusually broad interests, imaginative
Describe agreeableness in the Five-Factor Model of Personality Traits
sympathetic, warm, trusting, cooperative
Describe conscientiousness in the Five-Factor Model of Personality Traits
ethical, dependable, productive, purposeful
What is Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory?
What did Freud divide personality structure into?
The id, the ego, and the superego.
What is the id?
The raw biological urges (to eat, sleep, defecate, copulate...) that energize human behavior. It engages in primary-process thinking, which is primitive, illogical, irrational, and fantasy oriented.
What does the id operate according to?
the pleasure principle
What is the ego?
-forceful desires for immediate satisfaction.
-considers social realities--societ's norms, etiquette, rules, and customs--in deciding how to behave.
-often works to tame the unbridled desires of the id.
-engages in secondary-process thinking, which is relatively rational, realistic, and oriented toward problem solving.
-strives to avoid negative consequences from society by behaving "properly".
What does the ego operate according to?
the reality principle
What is the superego?
-emerges out of the ego around 3-5 years of age
-comes from the training people receive about what is good and bad behavior.
What are the levels of consciousness identified by Freud?
concious, preconscious, and unconscious.
What does Freud think compromises the bulk of our personality?
The unconscious
What do defense mechanisms do?
They protect a person from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and guilt.
What are the different types of defense mechanisms?
Rationalization, repression, projection, displacement, reaction formation, regression, and identification.
What are the psychosexual stages?
Oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital.
What is the key task for the oral stage?
Weaning (from breast or bottle).
What is the key task for the anal stage?
Toilet training.
What is the key task for the phallic stage?
Identifying with adult role models; coping with Oedipal crisis.
What is the key task for the latency stage?
Expanding social contacts.
What is the key task for the genital stage?
Establishing intimate relationships; contributing to society through working.
How does Skinner's operant conditioning principles relate to personality?
-people show some consistant patterns of behavior because they have some stable response tendancies that they have acquired through experience.
-skinner viewed an individual's personality as a collection of response tendancies that are tied to various stimulus situatios
-he maintained that environmental consequences--reinforcement, punishment, and extinction--determine people's patters of responding.
How does Bandura's observational learning concepts relate to personality?
-people's characteristic patterns of behavior are shaped by the models that they're exposed to.
-many response tendancies are the product of imitation.
What is the person-situation controversy?
-people will often behave differently in different situations.
-behavior is characterized more by situational specificity than by consistency.
What are some strengths of the behavioral perspective on personality?
-skinners ideas have shed light on how environmental consequences and conditioning mold people's characteristic behavior.
-bandura's social learning theory has expanded the horizons of behaviorism and increased its relevance to the study of personality.
-mischel increased psychology's awareness of how situational factors shape behavior.
What are some limitations of the behavioral perspective on personality?
-behaviorists have depended too much on animal research and have indiscriminately generalized from animal behavior to human behavior.
-they have made little effort to integrate biological factors into their theories.
-in carving personality into stimulus-response bonds, behaviorists have provided a fragmented view of personality.
What are some characteristics of humanistic perspectives on personality?
-they assume that people can rise above their primitive animal heritage and control their biological urges
-people are largly conscious and rational beings who are not dominated by unconscious, irrational needs and conflicts.
What causes incongruence when it comes to self-concept?
Conditional love from parents.
According to Rogers, what is needed for a person to grow into a healthy adult?
Unconditional love from parents.
Which needs must be satisfied in the hierarchy of needs before a person can become self-actualized?
The needs toward the bottom of the pyramid, such as physiological or security needs.
What are some strengths of the Humanistic Perspectives?
-it made the self-concept an important construct in psychology.
-it brought into account subjective personal factors such as beliefs and expectations.
-it focuses attention on the issue of what constitutes a healthy personality.
What are some limitations of the Humanistic Perspectives?
-many aspects of humanistic theory are difficult to put to a scientific test.
-humanists have been unrealistically optimistic in their assumptions about human nature and their descriptions of the healthy personality.
-more experimental research is needed to catch up with the theorizing in the humanistic camp.
How might evolution account for personality traits?
evolutionary theorists assert that personality has a biological basis because natural selection has favored certain traits over the course of human history.
What are some strengths of the biological perspectives?
Researchers have complied convincing evidence that biological factors help shape personality, and findings on the meager effects of shared family environment have launched intriguing new approaches to the investigation of personality development.
What are some limitaions of the biological perspectives?
-heritability ratios should be regarded as ballpark estimates that will vary depending on sampling procedures.
-there's no comprehensive biological theory of personality, so additional theoretical work is needed to catch up with recent emprical findings.