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| An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. |
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| In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing. |
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| Freud’s theory of personality that attributes out thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions. |
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| According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware. |
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| Information that is not conscious but is retrievable into conscious awareness. |
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| Contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification. |
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| The largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain. |
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| The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations. |
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| The childhood stages of development (oral, anal phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones. |
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| According to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his other and feelings of jealous and hatred for the rival father. |
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| The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos. |
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| According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved. |
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| In psychoanalytic theory, the ego’s protective method of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. |
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| In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. |
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| Defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated. |
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| Defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. |
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| Defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions. |
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| A personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics. |
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| Thematic Apperception Test |
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| A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes. |
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| The most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots. |
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| Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history. |
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| A characteristic pattern of behavior of a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports. |
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| A questionnaire (often used with true-false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits. |
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| Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) |
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| The most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), this test is now used for many other screening purposes. |
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| A test (such as the MMPI) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups. |
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| According to Maslow, the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one’s potential. |
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| Unconditional positive regard |
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| According to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person. |
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| All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, “who am I?” |
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| One’s feelings of high or low self worth. |
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| A readiness to perceive oneself favorably. |
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| Giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals, and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications. |
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| Giving priority to the goals of one’s group (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly. |
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| The interacting influences between personality and environmental factors. |
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| Our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless. |
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| External locus of control |
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| The perception that chance or outside forces beyond one’s personal control determine one’s fate. |
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| Internal locus of control |
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| The perception that one controls one’s own fate. |
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| The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events. |
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| The scientific study of optimal human functioning; aims to discover and promote conditions that enable individuals and communities to thrive. |
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| A method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores. |
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| A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance. Thus, a child who does as well as the average 8-year old is said to have a mental age of 8. |
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| The widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original intelligence test. |
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| Intelligence quotient (IQ) |
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| Defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100. (thus, IQ=ma/ca*100). On comtemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100. |
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| Mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations. |
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| A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie one’s total score. |
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| A general intelligence factor that Spearman and others believed underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test. |
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| A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing. |
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| The ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions. |
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| A test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn. |
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| A test designed to assess what a person has learned. |
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| Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) |
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| The WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests. |
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| Defining meaningful; scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested “standardization group.” |
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| The symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes. |
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| The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting. |
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| The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. (See also content validity and predictive validity) |
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| The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest (such as a driving test that samples driving tasks). |
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| The behavior (such as college grades) that a test (such as the SAT) is designed to predict; thus, the measure used in defining whether the test has predictive validity. |
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| The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior. (Also called criterion-related validity). |
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| A condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score below 70 and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life; varies from mild to profound. |
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| A condition of retardation and associated physical disorders caused by an extra chromosome in one’s genetic makeup. |
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| The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas. |
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