Theories of Personality Exam 1 Questions and Answers (Graded A)

Theories of Personality Exam 1 Questions and Answers (Graded A) goals of personality psychology - Answers-describe, explain, understand, predict .definition of psychology - Answers-refers to an individual's characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior together with the psychological mechanisms (hidden or not) behind those patterns .six perspectives of personality - Answers-psychoanalytic, psychoanalytic-social, trait, learning, cognitive social learning, humanistic .how can personality be described? - Answers-nomothetic or idiographic approach .nomothetic - Answers-groups of people .idiographic - Answers-focusing on one person .how do we understand personality dynamics? - Answers-motivation and adaptation .minnesota multi-phasic personality inventory (MMIP-2) - Answers-originally developed in late 1930; has 550 true/false statements .pyschoanalytic perspective: major assumptions - Answers-personality is dynamic, personality is determined, personality is organizational, focus is on development .three levels of consciousness (Freud) - Answers-conscious mind, preconscious mind, unconscious mind .unconscious mind - Answers-the dominant part of your mind (much of our behavior is due to forces within the unconscious) .preconscious mind - Answers-includes thoughts that you are not immediately aware of but can be brought to awareness fairly easily .conscious mind - Answers-includes what you are aware of at a given point in time and only a small part of your thoughts/memories are conscious .Freud's dream theory - Answers-Freud believed that dreams are the single, best source of information about the unconscious; dreams are highly sufficient, carefully constructed, and always contain a concealed meaning; dreams are not random .manifest content - Answers-what you remember from a dream; Freud believed that what you remembered is very deceptive and you should not take it at face value .latent content - Answers-the underlying meaning .the id and dreams - Answers-dreams are part of the primary processing of the id; the id gains strength while you are alseep .the ego and dreams - Answers-ego lessens the threat of the id's images through dream work .dream work - Answers-the process of modifying and distorting images in dreams .mechanisms of dream work - Answers-condensation, displacement, censorship, symbolic substitution .symbolic substitution - Answers-when the ego uses a symbol which substitutes for something more threatening (because the real thing would be threatening or inappropriate) .censorship - Answers-certain parts of a dream are censored, blocked out; this is why dreams are not alway sequential .displacement - Answers-involves shifting emphasis so that an important part of the dream is changed to something unimportant .condensation - Answers-when the ego combines and compresses separate thoughts into one thought .process of dream interpretation - Answers-a person reports the manifest content of the dream and then makes associations about the dream and the analysis interprets the latent content of the dream and associations (dream interpretations are alway subjective) .projects - Answers-refers to a standard set of vague stimuli, called projectives because the client is supposed to project themselves upon the stimulus and give a response that reveals something about themselves .categories of projectives - Answers-association, construction, completion, expression .projectives used for personality - Answers-projectives used to be used as primary sources of personality, now they are used more as secondary .strengths of projectives - Answers-allows clients great freedom and expression, the only assessment method that taps into the unconscious mind, still widely used today .weaknesses of projectives - Answers-reliability is only moderate, validity is generally poor, tend to be expensive to give, there are less expensive techniques that work just as well if not better .Id - Answers-represents your biological drives; only part of your personality when you are born; all about immediate gratification; lacks reason, reality and morality; works on the pleasure principle .Ego - Answers-develops within the first 2 years of life; task is to understand reality and to satisfy need appropriately in a way that promotes self-preservation; works on the reality principle; uses secondary processing (planning and decision making) .Superego - Answers-develops around age 4 or 5; the conscience (an internalization of your parent's and society's values and rules); main function is to prohibit and stop you from doing something; operates on the morality principle (doesn't take reality into account) .two domains of the superego - Answers-conscience (fosters morally correct behavior by inhibiting the id's impulses) and ego ideal (the part of your superego that promotes perfectionistic goals) .Freud's healthy personality has...? - Answers-a balance between your id, ego, and superego .Freud's anxiety theories - Answers-objective anxiety, neurotic anxiety, moral anxiety .objective anxiety - Answers-the ego's reaction to danger in your environment; functional because it serves as a warning .neurotic anxiety - Answers-comes from an id-ego conflict where the ego is trying to rain in the id and it is possible that the id is winning so the ego is starting to feel anxiety and sometimes the superego is stepping in and telling your ego that it is losing control over the id (no physical danger) .moral anxiety - Answers-results from an id-superego conflict where the superego is signaling the ego that the id is about to do something that is wrong and you can't do something that is morally incorrect .defense mechanism definition - Answers-unconscious processes that keep disturbing and unacceptable thoughts from .repression - Answers-"out of sight, out of mind"; the most important defense mechanism the ego uses; the ego pushes the threatening material into the unconscious mind where it is unavailable for recall as a way to protect it