Personality - Study Guide (Short & Simple)
1. What is personality?
A person’s unique pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
2. What is self-schema?
Beliefs and ideas people have about themselves.
3. What is working self-concept? How is it related to self-serving bias?
Your current thoughts about yourself. Self-serving bias = taking credit for success, blaming failure
on others.
4. What is self-esteem?
How much you value and feel confident about yourself.
5. What aspects of self are emphasized by individualist and collectivist cultures?
Individualist: personal goals. Collectivist: group goals.
6. How do different theoretical perspectives view personality?
Psychoanalytic: unconscious motives. Trait: stable traits. Humanistic: growth & self-actualization.
Social-cognitive: thoughts & environment.
7. What are the basic premises of Freud’s psychodynamic theory?
Behavior influenced by unconscious desires and childhood.
8. Describe the three levels of consciousness:
Conscious: current awareness. Preconscious: easily recalled. Unconscious: hidden desires.
9. Describe the three components of personality:
Id: pleasure. Ego: balance. Superego: morals.
10. What are the psychosexual stages? What does fixation mean?
Stages: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital. Fixation = stuck in a stage.
11. The purpose of defense mechanisms is to
Protect the ego and reduce anxiety.
12. Maslow’s theory?
People strive for self-actualization (best version of self).
13. Rogers’s person-centered theory?
People need unconditional positive regard (acceptance without judgment).
14. Rotter’s view & locus of control?
Behavior = expectations + control belief. Internal = you control. External = others control.
15. Bandura’s theory?
Personality = behavior + environment + thinking. Reciprocal determinism: person, behavior,
environment.
16. Eysenck’s traits?
E: Extraversion. N: Neuroticism. P: Psychoticism.
17. Big Five (OCEAN)?
O: Openness. C: Conscientiousness. E: Extraversion. A: Agreeableness. N: Neuroticism.
18. Rorschach & TAT tests?
Projective tests. Rorschach: inkblots. TAT: make up stories about pictures.
19. Other methods to assess personality?
Self-report tests, interviews, and observation.