Psychology 105 Chapter 14: Personality Flashcards

Overview of Personality

• Personality encompasses typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving of individuals.
• Traits are consistent influences on behavior across various situations.

Approaches to Personality

• The nomothetic approach seeks universal principles in understanding personality rather than focusing on individual specifics.
• The idiographic approach emphasizes the unique configuration of characteristics and life experiences of individuals.

Genetic Studies

• Molecular genetic studies help identify specific genes linked to particular personality traits.

Psychological Concepts

• Psychic determinism suggests all psychological events have specific causes.
• The id contains our most basic impulses, including desires related to sex and aggression.
• The pleasure principle drives the id to seek immediate gratification.
• The superego represents our moral compass and sense of right and wrong.
• The ego acts as the decision-maker, balancing the desires of the id and the morality of the superego.
• The reality principle enables the ego to delay gratification until a suitable outlet is found.

Defence Mechanisms

• Defence mechanisms are unconscious strategies to reduce anxiety, including:
  • Repression: forgetting threatening memories or impulses.
  • Denial: ignoring distressing external experiences.
  • Regression: reverting to a simpler, childlike state.
  • Reaction-formation: transforming negative emotions into their opposites.
  • Projection: attributing one's own negative traits onto others.
  • Displacement: redirecting impulses to safer targets.
  • Rationalization: justifying unreasonable actions.
  • Sublimation: channeling unacceptable impulses into socially approved goals.

Psychosexual Development Stages

• Erogenous zones are areas of the body that are sexually sensitive.
• Oral stage (birth to 12-18 months): focus on the mouth.
• Anal stage (18 months to 3 years): focus on toilet training.
• Phallic stage (3-6 years): focus on the genitals, leading to the Oedipus and Electra complexes.
  • Oedipus complex: boys' romantic feelings for their mothers, rivalry with fathers.
  • Electra complex: girls' romantic feelings for their fathers, rivalry with mothers.
• Latency stage (6-12 years): sexual impulses are repressed.
• Genital stage (around age 12): maturation of sexual impulses and romantic interests.

Theories Beyond Freud

• Non-Freudian theories place less focus on sexuality and promote optimism about personality growth.
• Style of life (Adler): each person's unique method of achieving personal superiority.
• Inferiority complex: feelings of inadequacy leading to overcompensation.
• Collective unconscious (Jung): shared ancestral memories across generations.
• Archetypes: universally recognizable symbols found in different cultures.

Learning and Personality

• Social learning theorists stress the role of cognitive processes in shaping personality.
• Reciprocal determinism: individuals mutually influence one another's behaviors.
• Self-actualization: the inherent drive to fulfill one's potential to the fullest.
• Condition of worth (Rogers): the standards we impose on ourselves for perceived worthiness.