Psychology of Personality FINAL EXAM Questions and Answers

Psychology of Personality FINAL EXAM Questions and Answers Understand how priming works. - Answers-Part of our personalities Difference people have a predisposition to be primed for certain concepts Ex. If you are primed for social rejection, then you will perceive every social situation as an opportunity for social rejection - this is an example of a chronic accessibility May come from evolution, temperament, or experience .Know how chronic accessibility affects dimensions of personality - Answers-*Rejection Sensitivity* -Interpret ambiguous signals as rejection -Often creates a self-fulfilling prophecy (clinginess drives people away) -Anxious-ambivalent attachment *Aggression* -Interpret ambiguous signals as hostile -Slowing down/mindfulness helps .Know what characteristics a person might show if they have high rejection sensitivity. - Answers-Clinginess .Know what defensive pessimism is and how a person might use it. - Answers-Strategy Constantly expecting the worst to happen Find relief when the worst outcome doesn't happen; able to deal with the complications because you're happy the worst case scenario didn't happen Optimists tend to be happier, but there are advantages and disadvantages to both strategies .Understand how goals and strategies relate to motivation - Answers-*What do you want?* Our goals drive our behavior by influencing what you attend to, think about, and do *How will you try to get it?* Our strategies are the means to that end .Goals across the lifespan - Answers-Young: preparation for the future Old (70+): emotional well-being and connections with people (happiness and enjoyment) .Approach motivation - Answers-*Anticipating rewards for success* Approach-oriented people: -Tend to be high in extraversion -Are more likely to fight for rewards -More successful .Avoidance motivation - Answers-*Worrying about the negative consequences of failure* Avoidance-oriented people: -Tend to be high in neuroticism -Are more likely to take flight from negative consequences -Tend to be lower in self-esteem and have lower life satisfaction -Students who just want to avoid failing actually perform worse on class exams -Thinking about failure tends to hinder performance on difficult tasks .Understand what Dr. Neta's research shows about how people interpret surprised faces correlates to how they interpret other situations - Answers-Some people interpret surprise as negative, others as positive Bias represents a trait-like difference .Know different factors that do or do not increase happiness. - Answers-...? .What contributes more to happiness than gender, ethnicity, age, and all other demographics? - Answers-High extraversion and low neuroticism .Understand affect intensity and its relationship with physiological arousal. - Answers-High affect intensity: experience emotions strongly, more reactive, more variable Low affect intensity: experience emotions only mildly, gradual fluctuations, minor reactions .Understand the self-reference effect - Answers-Increased accessibility of information when we can associate it with ourselves It will be easier to remember because it is easily activated We have lots of associations with ourselves, so we remember new information better when we put it into our web of personal associations .Understand the difference between procedural self-knowledge and declarative self-knowledge. Be able to identify examples of each. Know how we acquire these types of knowledge. - Answers-*Procedural Self Knowledge:* actions, things we do, patterns of behavior, impossible to explain, learned by watching others *Declarative Self Knowledge:* you can declare/report on these .Understand the relationship between the brain anatomy associated with the default mode network and the brain anatomy associated with self-focused thoughts. - Answers-The regions of the brain that are active when you are mind wandering (Default Mode Network) are the same parts that are active when you are thinking about yourself .Know how self-knowledge affects how people perceive their own behavior. - Answers-We don't always recognize our behaviors because they're so automatic and ingrained There are a lot of things that go into our behavior (decisions, priorities, self-regulating) - we see so much more information than others, so we can't objectively see our behavior from the outside Other people only see our behavior and nothing else We tend to think that what we do is the normal, natural, and common response even when no one else is behaving in that way Accurate self-knowledge is a hallmark of mental health I know my emotions and internal experiences best Others know my behaviors best .Know what self-efficacy is. - Answers-Your belief about the degree to which you will be able to accomplish a goal if you try .Know the best way to raise low self-esteem. - Answers-Self-esteem: overall opinion of yourself Trying to increase self-esteem makes you painfully aware of how bad you feel *To legitimately increase self-esteem, you can do something that you are good at and makes you feel proud of yourself - set a goal and accomplish it* .Know the self-serving bias. - Answers-We take credit for our successes and deny