Personality Psychology 6e by Larsen, Buss

Personality Psychology 6e by Larsen, Buss is the 6th edition of the Personality Psychology: Domains of Knowledge about Human Nature textbook authored by Randy J. Larsen, Washington University in St. Louis, and David M. Buss, University of Texas at Austin, and published by McGraw-Hill Education, New York, NY in 2018.

Abnormal. Broadly defined, the term abnormal is based on current levels of societal tolerance. In this sense, behaviors that society deems unacceptable would be labeled as abnormal (e.g., incest and child abuse). Because tolerance levels (e.g., toward homosexuality) can change over time, psychologists have started directing their attention toward people's subjective views and experiences. Anxiety, depression, and feelings of loneliness may be linked to disorganized thought patterns, disruptive perceptions, or unusual beliefs. These may inhibit a person's ability to work or socialize, and may all be considered abnormal.
Abnormal psychology. The study of the various mental disorders, including thought disorders (such as schizophrenia), emotional disorders (such as depression), and personality disorders (such as the antisocial personality).
Acculturation. The process of, after arriving in a new culture, adapting to the ways of life and beliefs common in that new culture.
Achievement view of intelligence. The achievement view of intelligence is associated with educational attainment -- how much knowledge a person has acquired relative to others in his or her age cohort.
Acquiescence (also known as yea saying). A response set that refers to the tendency to agree with questionnaire items regardless of the content of those items.
Action tendencies. Increases in the probabilities of certain behaviors that accompany emotions. The activity, or action tendency, associated with fear, for example, is to flee or to fight.
Active genotype-environment correlation. Occurs when a person with a particular genotype creates or seeks out a particular environment.
Actometer. A mechanical motionrecording device, often in the form of a watch attached to the wrist. It has been used, for example, in research on the activity level of children during several play periods. Motoric movement activates the recording device.
Acute stress. Results from the sudden onset of demands or events that seem to be beyond the control of the individual. This type of stress is often experienced as tension headaches, emotional upsets, gastrointestinal disturbances, and feelings of agitation and pressure.
Adaptations. Inherited solutions to the survival and reproductive problems posed by the hostile forces of nature. Adaptations are the primary product of the selective process. An adaptation is a "reliably developing structure in the organism, which, because it meshes with the recurrent structure of the world, causes the solution to an adaptive problem" (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992).
Adaptive problem. Anything that impedes survival or reproduction. All adaptations must contribute to fitness during the period of time in which they evolve by helping an organism survive, reproduce, or facilitate the reproductive success of genetic relatives. Adaptations emerge from and interact with recurrent structures of the world in a manner that solves adaptive problems and hence aids in reproductive success.
Additive effects. The effects of different kinds of stress that add up and accumulate in a person over time.
Adjacency. In Wiggins circumplex model, adjacency indicates how close the traits are to each other on the circumference of the circumplex. Those variables that are adjacent or next to each other within the model are positively correlated.
Adjustment domain. Personality plays a key role in how we cope, adapt, and adjust to the ebb and flow of events in our day-to-day lives. In addition to health consequences of adjusting to stress, certain personality features are related to poor social or emotional adjustment and have been designated as personality disorders.
Adoption studies. Studies that examine the correlations between adopted children and their adoptive parents, with whom they share no genes. These correlations are then compared to the correlations between the adopted children and their genetic parents, who had no influence on the environments of the children. Differences in these correlations can indicate the relative magnitude of genetic and environment contributions to personality traits.
Affect intensity. Larsen and Diener (1987) describe high affect intensity individuals as people who typically experience their emotions strongly and are emotionally reactive and variable. Low affect intensity individuals typically experience their emotions only mildly and with only gradual fluctuations and minor reactions.
Aggregation. Adding up or averaging several single observations, resulting in a better (i.e., more reliable) measure of a personality trait than a single observation of behavior. This approach implies that personality traits refer to average tendencies in behavior, how people behave on average.
Agreeableness. Agreeableness is the second of the personality traits in the five-factor model, a model which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers for Agreeableness are "good natured," "cooperative," "mild/gentle," "not jealous."
Alarm stage. The first stage in Selye's general adaptation syndrome (GAS). The alarm stage consists of the flightor-fight response of the sympathetic nervous system and the associated peripheral nervous system reactions. These include the release of hormones, which prepare our bodies for challenge.
Alpha and beta press. Murray introduced the notion that there is a real environment (what he called alpha press or objective reality) and a perceived environment (called beta press or reality as it is perceived). In any situation, what one person "sees" may be different from what another "sees." If two people walk down a street and a third person smiles at each of them, one person might "see" the smile as a sign of friendliness while the other person might "see" the smile as a smirk. Objectively (alpha press), it is the same smile; subjectively (beta press), it may be a different event for the two people.
Alpha wave. A particular type of brain wave that oscillates 8 to 12 times a second. The amount of alpha wave present in a given time period is an inverse indicator of brain activity during that time period. The alpha wave is given off when the person is calm and relaxed. In a given time period of brain wave recording, the more alpha wave activity present the more we can assume that part of the brain was less active.
Ambivalently attached. Ambivalently attached infants, as determined by Ainsworth's strange situation paradigm, are very anxious about the mother leaving. They often start crying and protesting vigorously before the mother even gets out of the room. While the mother is gone, these infants are difficult to calm. Upon her return, however, these infants behave ambivalently. Their behavior shows both anger and the desire to be close to the mother; they approach her but then resist by squirming and fighting against being held.
Ambivalent relationship style. In Hazan and Shaver's ambivalent relationship style, adults are vulnerable and uncertain about relationships. Ambivalent adults become overly dependant and demanding on their partners and friends. They display high levels of neediness in their relationships. They are high maintenance partners in the sense that they need constant reassurance and attention.
Americans with Disability Act (ADA). The ADA states that an employer cannot conduct a medical examination, or even make inquiries as to whether an applicant has a disability, during the selection process. Moreover, even if a disability is obvious, the employer cannot ask about the nature or severity of that disability.
Amygdala. A section of the limbic or emotional system of the brain that is responsible for fear.
Anal stage. The second stage in Freud's psychosexual stages of development. The anal stage typically occurs between the ages of 18 months and three years. At this stage, the anal sphincter is the source of sexual pleasure, and the child obtains pleasure from first expelling feces and then, during toilet training, from retaining feces. Adults who are compulsive, overly neat, rigid, and never messy are, according to psychoanalytic theory, likely to be fixated at the anal stage.
Analytic. To describe something analytically is to explain the event with the object detached from its context, attributes of objects or people assigned to categories, and a reliance on rules about the categories to explain behavior.
Androgynous. In certain personality instruments, the masculinity dimension contains items reflecting assertiveness, boldness, dominance, self-sufficiency, and instrumentality. The femininity dimension contains items that reflect nurturance, expression of emotions, and empathy. Those persons who scored high on both dimensions are labeled androgynous, to reflect the notion that a single person can possess both masculine and feminine characteristics.
Anterior cingulate. Located deep toward the center of the brain, the anterior cingulate cortex most likely evolved early in the evolution of the nervous system. In experiments utilizing fMRI to trace increased activation of parts of the brain, the anterior cingulate cortex seems to be an area of the brain associated with affect, including social rejection.
Antisocial personality disorder. A person suffering from antisocial personality disorder has a general disregard for others and cares very little about the rights, feelings, or happiness of other people. Also referred to as a sociopath or psychopath, a person suffering from antisocial personality disorder is easily irritated, assaultive, reckless, irresponsible, glib or superficially charming, impulsive, callous, and indifferent to the suffering of others.
Anxiety. An unpleasant, high-arousal emotional state associated with perceived threat. In the psychoanalytic tradition, anxiety is seen as a signal that the control of the ego is being threatened by reality, impulses from the id, or harsh controls exerted by the superego. Freud identified three different types of anxiety: neurotic anxiety, moral anxiety, and objective anxiety. According to Rogers, the unpleasant emotional state of anxiety is the result of having an experience that does not fit with one's self-conception.
Apperception. The notion that a person's needs influence how he or she perceives the environment, especially when the environment is ambiguous. The act of interpreting the environment and perceiving the meaning of what is going on in a situation.
Aptitude view of intelligence. The aptitude view of intelligence sees intelligence less as the product of education and more as an ability to become educated, as the ability or aptitude to learn.
Arousal level and arousability. In Eysenck's original theory of extraversion, he held that extraverts had lower levels of cortical or brain arousal than introverts. More recent research suggests that the difference between introverts and extraverts lies more in the arousability of their nervous systems, with extraverts showing less arousability or reactivity than introverts to the same levels of sensory stimulation.
Arteriosclerosis. Hardening or blocking of the arteries. When the arteries that feed the heart muscle itself become blocked, the subsequent shortage of blood to the heart is called a heart attack.
Ascending reticular activating system (ARAS). A structure in the brain stem thought to control overall cortical arousal; the structure Eysenck originally thought was responsible for differences between introverts and extraverts.
Assortative mating. The phenomenon whereby people marry people similar to themselves. In addition to personality, people also show assortative mating on a number of physical characteristics, such as height and weight.
Attachment. Begins in the human infant when he or she develops a preference for people over objects. Then the preference begins to narrow to familiar persons so that the child prefers to see people he or she has seen before, compared to strangers. Finally the preference narrows even further so that the child prefers the mother or primary caretaker over anyone else.
Attraction similarity theory. States that individuals are attracted to those whose personalities are similar to their own. In other words, "birds of a feather flock together" or "like attracts like." As of 2003, attraction similarity has been proven to be the dominant attraction theory except in biological sex choices (i.e., women tend to be attracted to men and vice versa).
Autonomic nervous system (ANS). That part of the peripheral nervous system that connects to vital bodily structures associated with maintaining life and responding to emergencies (e.g., storing and releasing energy), such as the beating of the heart, respiration, and controlling blood pressure. There are two divisions of the ANS: the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches.
Average tendencies. Tendency to display a certain psychological trait with regularity. For example, on average, a high-talkative person will start more conversations than a lowtalkative person. This idea explains why the principle of aggregation works when measuring personality.
Avoidantly attached. Avoidantly attached infants in Ainsworth' strange situation avoided the mother when she returned. Infants in this group typically seemed unfazed when the mother left and did not give her much attention when she returned. Avoidant children seem to be aloof from their mothers. Approximately 20 percent of infants fall into this category.
Avoidant personality disorder. The major feature is a pervasive feeling of inadequacy and sensitivity to criticism from others. The avoidant personality will go to great lengths to avoid situations in which others may have opportunities to criticize his or her performance or character, such as school or work or other group settings. Such a person may avoid making new friends or going to new places because of fear of criticism or disapproval.
Avoidant relationship style. In Hazan and Shaver's avoidant relationship style, the adult has difficulty learning to trust others. Avoidant adults remain suspicious of the motives of others, and they are afraid of making commitments. They are afraid of depending on others because they anticipate being disappointed, let down, abandoned, or separated.
Balancing selection. When genetic variation is maintained by selection because different levels of a personality trait are adaptive in different environments.
Balkanization. Social resegregation following a time of peaceful integration and social diversity. The term is derived from the breakup of Yugoslavia on the Balkan peninsula during the 1990s, in which national groups split apart and resegregated the formerly integrated countries in the Balkans.
Barnum statements. Generalities or statements that could apply to anyone. A good example is the astrology column published in daily newspapers.
Behavioral activation system (BAS). In Gray's reinforcement sensitivity theory, the system that is responsive to incentives, such as cues for reward, and regulates approach behavior. When some stimulus is recognized as potentially rewarding, the BAS triggers approach behavior. This system is highly correlated with the trait of extraversion.
Behavioral inhibition system (BIS). In Gray's reinforcement sensitivity theory, the system responsive to cues for punishment, frustration, and uncertainty. The effect of BIS activation is to cease or inhibit behavior or to bring about avoidance behavior. This system is highly correlated with the trait of neuroticism.
Beliefs. See Theories and Beliefs.
Belongingness needs. The third level of Maslow's motivation hierarchy. Humans are a very social species, and most people possess a strong need to belong to groups. Being accepted by others and welcomed into a group represents a somewhat more psychological need than the physiological needs or the need for safety.
Beta press. See alpha and beta press.
Biological domain. The core assumption of biological approaches to personality is that humans are, first and foremost, collections of biological systems, and these systems provide the building blocks (e.g., brain, nervous system) for behavior, thought, and emotion. Biological approaches typically refers to three areas of research within this general domain: the genetics of personality, the psychophysiology of personality, and the evolution of personality.
Bipolarity. In Wiggins circumplex model, traits located at opposite sides of the circle and negatively correlated with each other. Specifying this bipolarity is useful because nearly every interpersonal trait within the personality sphere has another trait that is its opposite.
Blindsight. Following an injury or stroke that damages the primary vision center in the brain, a person may lose some or all of his or her ability to see. In this blindness the eyes still bring information into the brain, but the brain center responsible for object recognition fails. People who suffer this "cortical" blindness often display an interesting capacity to make judgments about objects that they truly cannot see.
Borderline personality disorder. The life of the borderline personality is marked by instability. Their relationships are unstable, their emotions are unstable, their behavior is unstable, and even their image of themselves is unstable. Persons with borderline personality disorder, compared to those without, have a higher incidence rate of childhood physical or sexual abuse, neglect, or early parental loss.
Byproducts of adaptations. Evolutionary mechanisms that are not adaptations, but rather are byproducts of other adaptations. Our nose, for example, is clearly an adaptation designed for smelling. But the fact that we use our nose to hold up our eyeglasses is an incidental byproduct.
Cardiac reactivity. The increase in blood pressure and heart rate during times of stress. Evidence suggests that chronic cardiac reactivity contributes to coronary artery disease.
Case study method. Examining the life of one person in particular depth, which can give researchers insights into personality that can then be used to formulate a more general theory that is tested in a larger population. They can also provide in-depth knowledge of a particularly outstanding individual. Case studies are useful when studying rare phenomena, such as a person with a photographic memory or a person with multiple personalities -- cases for which large samples would be difficult or impossible to obtain.
Castration anxiety. Freud argued that little boys come to believe that their fathers might make a preemptive Oedipal strike and take away what is at the root of the Oedipal conflict: the boy's penis. This fear of losing his penis is called castration anxiety; it drives the little boy into giving up his sexual desire for his mother.
Categorical approach. Researchers who suggest emotions are best thought of as a small number of primary and distinct emotions (anger, joy, anxiety, sadness) are said to take the categorical approach. Emotion researchers who take the categorical approach have tried to reduce the complexity of emotions by searching for the primary emotions that underlie the great variety of emotion terms. An example of a categorical approach to emotion is that of Paul Ekman, who applies criteria of distinct and universal facial expressions, and whose list of primary emotions contains disgust, sadness, joy, surprise, anger, and fear.
Categorical view. In psychiatry and clinical psychology today, the dominant approach to viewing personality disorders in distinct categories. There is a qualitative distinction made in which people who have a disorder are in one category, whereas people who do not have the disorder are in another category.
Causal attribution. A person's explanation of the cause of some event.
Chronic stress. Stress that does not end, like an abusive relationship that grinds the individual down until his or her resistance is eroded. Chronic stress can result in serious systemic diseases such as diabetes, decreased immune system functioning, or cardiovascular disease.
Circadian rhythm. Many biological processes fluctuate around an approximate 24- to 25-hour cycle. These are called circadian rhythms (circa = around; dia = day). Circadian rhythms in temporal isolation studies have been found to be as short as 16 hours in one person, and as long as 50 hours in another person (Wehr & Goodwin, 1981).
Client-centered therapy. In Rogers's client-centered therapy, clients are never given interpretations of their problem. Nor are clients given any direction about what course of action to take to solve their problem. The therapist makes no attempts to change the client directly. Instead, the therapist tries to create an atmosphere in which the client may change him- or herself.
Cognition. A general term referring to awareness and thinking as well as to specific mental acts such as perceiving, interpreting, remembering, believing, and anticipating.
Cognitive approaches. Differences in how people think form the focus of cognitive approaches to personality. Psychologists working in this approach focus on the components of cognition, such as how people perceive, interpret, remember, and plan, in their efforts to understand how and why people are different from each other.
Cognitive-experiential domain. This domain focuses on cognition and subjective experience, such as conscious thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and desires about oneself and others. This domain includes our feelings of self, identity, self-esteem, our goals and plans, and our emotions.
Cognitive schema. A schema is a way of processing incoming information and of organizing and interpreting the facts of daily life. The cognitive schema involved in depression, according to Beck, distorts the incoming information in a negative way that makes the person depressed.
Cognitive social learning approach. A number of modern personality theories have expanded on the notion that personality is expressed in goals and in how people think about themselves relative to their goals. Collectively these theories form an approach that emphasizes the cognitive and social processes whereby people learn to value and strive for certain goals over others.
Cognitive triad. According to Beck, there are three important areas of life that are most influenced by the depressive cognitive schema. This cognitive triad refers to information about the self, about the world, and about the future.
Cognitive unconscious. In the cognitive view of the unconscious, the content of the unconscious mind is assumed to operate just like thoughts in consciousness. Thoughts are unconscious because they are not in conscious awareness, not because they have been repressed or because they represent unacceptable urges or wishes.
Cohort effects. Personality change over time as a reflection of the social times in which an individual or group of individuals live. For example, American women's trait scores on assertiveness have risen and fallen depending on the social and historical cohort in which they have lived. Jean Twenge has posited that individuals internalize social change and absorb the cultural messages they receive from their culture, all of which, in turn, can affect their personalities.
Combinations of Big Five variables. Traits are often examined in combinations. For example, two people high in extraversion would be very different if one was an extraverted neurotic and the other was extraverted but emotionally stable.
Comorbidity. The presence of two or more disorders of any type in one person.
Compatibility and integration across domains and levels. A theory that takes into account the principles and laws of other scientific domains that may affect the study's main subject. For example, a theory of biology that violated known principles of chemistry would be judged fatally flawed.
Competitive achievement motivation. Also referred to as the need for achievement, it is a subtrait in the Type A behavior pattern. Type A people like to work hard and achieve goals. They like recognition and overcoming obstacles and feel they are at their best when competing with others.
Complementary needs theory. Theory of attraction that postulates that people are attracted to people whose personality dispositions differ from theirs. In other words, "opposites attract." This is especially true in biological sex choices (i.e., women tend to be attracted to men and vice versa). Other than biological sex choices, the complementary needs theory of attraction has not received any empirical support.
Comprehensiveness . One of the five scientific standards used in evaluating personality theories. Theories that explain more empirical data within a domain are generally superior to those that explain fewer findings.
Conditional positive regard. According to Rogers, people behave in specific ways to earn the love and respect and positive regard of parents and other significant people in their lives. Positive regard, when it must be earned by meeting certain conditions, is called conditional positive regard.
Conditions of worth. According to Rogers, the requirements set forth by parents or significant others for earning their positive regard are called conditions of worth. Children may become preoccupied with living up to these conditions of worth rather than discovering what makes them happy.
Confirmatory bias. The tendency to look only for evidence that confirms a previous hunch, and not to look for evidence that might disconfirm a belief.
Conscientiousness. The third of the personality traits in the five-factor model, which has proven to be replicable in studies using English language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers for Conscientiousness are "responsible," "scrupulous," "persevering," "fussy/tidy."
Conscious. That part of the mind that contains all the thoughts, feelings, and images that a person is presently aware of. Whatever a person is currently thinking about is in his or her conscious mind.
Conscious goals. A person's awareness of what he or she desires and believes is valuable and worth pursuing.
Consistency. Trait theories assume there is some degree of consistency in personality over time. If someone is highly extraverted during one period of observation, trait psychologists tend to assume that she will be extraverted tomorrow, next week, a year from now, or even decades from now.
Construct. A concept or provable hypothesis that summarizes a set of observations and conveys the meaning of those observations (e.g., gravity).
Construct validity. A test that measures what it claims to measure, correlates with what it is supposed to correlate with, and does not correlate with what it is not supposed to correlate with.
Constructive memory. It is accepted as fact that humans have a constructive memory; that is, memory contributes to or influences in various ways (adds to, subtracts from, etc.) what is recalled. Recalled memories are rarely distortion-free, mirror images of the facts.
Content. The content of emotional life refers to the characteristic or typical emotions a person is likely to experience over time. Someone whose emotional life contains a lot of pleasant emotions is someone who might be characterized as happy, cheerful, and enthusiastic. Thus the notion of content leads us to consider the kinds of emotions that people are likely to experience over time and across situations in their lives.
Continuity. Identity has an element of continuity because many of its aspects, such as gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, educational level, and occupation, are constant. Having an identity means that others can count on you to be reliable in who you are and how you act.
Contrast. Identity contrast means that a person's social identity differentiates that person from other people. An identity is the combination of characteristics that makes a person unique in the eyes of others.
Convergent validity. Whether a test correlates with other measures that it should correlate with.
Core conditions. According to Carl Rogers, in client-centered therapy three core conditions must be present in order for progress to occur: (1) an atmosphere of genuine acceptance on the part of the therapist; (2) the therapist must express unconditional positive regard for the client; and (3) the client must feel that the therapist understands him or her (empathic understanding).
Correlation coefficient (its direction and magnitude). Researchers are interested in the direction (positive or negative) and the magnitude (size) of the correlation coefficient. Correlations around .10 are considered small; those around .30 are considered medium; and those around .50 or greater are considered large (Cohen & Cohen, 1975).
Correlational method. A statistical procedure for determining whether there is a relationship between two variables. In correlational research designs, the researcher is attempting to directly identify the relationships between two or more variables, without imposing the sorts of manipulations seen in experimental designs.
Cortisol. A stress hormone that prepares the body to flee or fight. Increases in cortisol in the blood indicate that the animal has recently experienced stress.
Counterbalancing. In some experiments, manipulation is within a single group. For example, participants might get a drug and have their memory tested, then later take a sugar pill and have their memory tested again. In this kind of experiment, equivalence is obtained by counterbalancing the order of the conditions, with half the participants getting the drug first and sugar pill second, and the other half getting the sugar pill first and the drug second.
Creating positive events. Creating a positive time-out from stress. Folkman and Moskowitz note that humor can have the added benefit of generating positive emotional moments even during the darkest periods of stress.
Criterion validity. Whether a test predicts criteria external to the test.
Cross-cultural universality. In the lexical approach, cross-cultural universality states that if a trait is sufficiently important in all cultures so that its members have codified terms within their own languages to describe the trait, then the trait must be universally important in human affairs. In contrast, if a trait term exists in only one or a few languages but is entirely missing from most, then it may be of only local relevance.
Cultural context of intelligence. Looks at how the definition of intelligent behavior varies across different cultures. Because of these considerations, intelligence can be viewed as referring to those skills valued in a particular culture.
Cultural personality psychology. Cultural personality psychology generally has three key goals: (1) to discover the principles underlying the cultural diversity; (2) to discover how human psychology shapes culture; and (3) to discover how cultural understandings in turn shape our psychology (Fiske et al., 1997).
Cultural universals. Features of personality that are common to everyone in all cultures. These universals constitute the human nature level of analyzing personality and define the elements of personality we share with all or most other people.
Cultural variations. Within-group similarities and between-group differences can be of any sort -- physical, psychological, behavioral, or attitudinal. These phenomena are often referred to as cultural variations. Two ingredients are necessary to explain cultural variations: (1) a universal underlying mechanism and (2) environmental differences in the degree to which the underlying mechanism is activated.
Culture. A set of shared standards for many behaviors. It might contain different standards for males and females, such that girls should be ashamed if they engage in promiscuous sex, whereas boys might be proud of such behavior, with it being culturally acceptable for them to even brag about such behavior.
Culture of honor. Nisbett proposed that the economic means of subsistence of a culture affects the degree to which the group develops what he calls "a culture of honor." In cultures of honor, insults are viewed as highly offensive public challenges that must be met with direct confrontation and physical aggression. The theory is that differences in the degree to which honor becomes a central part of the culture rests ultimately with economics, and specifically with the manner in which food is obtained.
Daily hassles. The major sources of stress in most people's lives. Although minor, daily hassles can be chronic and repetitive, such as having too much to do all the time, having to fight the crowds while shopping, or having to worry over money. Such daily hassles can be chronically irritating though they do not initiate the same general adaptation syndrome evoked by some major life events.
Deductive reasoning approach. The top-down, theory-driven method of empirical research.
Defense mechanisms. Strategies for coping with anxiety and threats to self-esteem.
Defensive pessimism. Individuals who use a defensive pessimism strategy have usually done well on important tasks but lack selfconfidence in their ability to handle new challenges. A defensive pessimist controls anxiety by preparing for failure ahead of time; they set low expectations for their performance and often focus on worse-case outcomes. This strategy overcomes anticipatory anxiety and transforms it into motivation.
Deliberation-without-awareness. The notion that, when confronted with a decision, if a person can put it out of their conscious mind for a period of time, then the "unconscious mind" will continue to deliberate on it, helping the person to arrive at a "sudden" and often correct decision some time later.
Denial. When the reality of a particular situation is extremely anxiety provoking, a person may resort to the defense mechanism of denial. A person in denial insists that things are not the way they seem. Denial can also be less extreme, as when someone reappraises an anxietyprovoking situation so that it seems less daunting. Denial often shows up in people's daydreams and fantasies.
Density distribution of states. Refers to the idea that traits are distributions of states in a person's life over time, and the mean of that distribution is the person's level of the trait.
Dependent personality disorder. The dependent personality seeks out others to an extreme. The hallmark of the dependent personality is an excessive need to be taken care of, to be nurtured, coddled, and told what to do. Dependent persons act in submissive ways so as to encourage others to take care of them or take charge of the situation. Such individuals need lots of encouragement and advice from others and would much rather turn over responsibility for their decisions to someone else.
Depression. A psychological disorder whose symptoms include a depressed mood most of the day; diminished interest in activities; change in weight, sleep patterns, and movement; fatigue or loss of energy; feelings of worthlessness; inability to concentrate; and recurrent thoughts of death and suicide. It is estimated that 20 percent of Americans are afflicted with depression at some time in their lives (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).
Developmental crisis. Erikson believed that each stage in personality development represented a conflict, or a developmental crisis, that needed to be resolved before the person advanced to the next stage of development.
Diathesis-stress model of depression. Suggests that a preexisting vulnerability, or diathesis, is present among people who become depressed. In addition to this vulnerability, a stressful life event must occur in order to trigger the depression, such as the loss of a loved one or some other major negative life event. The events must occur together -- something bad or stressful has to happen to a person who has a particular vulnerability to depression -- in order for depression to occur.
Differences among groups. See group differences.
Differential diagnosis. A differential diagnosis is arrived at when, out of two or more possible diagnoses, the clinician searches for evidence in support of one diagnostic category over all the others.
Differential gene reproduction. Reproductive success relative to others. The genes of organisms who reproduce more than others get passed down to future generations at a relatively greater frequency than the genes of those who reproduce less. Because survival is usually critical for reproductive success, characteristics that lead to greater survival get passed along. Because success in mate competition is also critical for reproductive success, qualities that lead to success in samesex competition or to success at being chosen as a mate get passed along. Successful survival and successful mate competition, therefore, are both part of differential gene reproduction.
Differential psychology. Due to its emphasis on the study of differences between people, trait psychology has sometimes been called differential psychology in the interest of distinguishing this subfield from other branches of personality psychology (Anastasi, 1976). Differential psychology includes the study of other forms of individual differences in addition to personality traits, such as abilities, aptitudes, and intelligence.
Dimensional approach. Researchers gather data by having subjects rate themselves on a wide variety of emotions, then apply statistical techniques (mostly factor analysis) to identify the basic dimensions underlying the ratings. Almost all the studies suggest that subjects categorize emotions using just two primary dimensions: how pleasant or unpleasant the emotion is, and how high or low on arousal the emotion is.
Dimensional view. The dimensional view approaches a personality disorder as a continuum that ranges from normality at one end to severe disability and disturbance at the other end. According to this view, people with and without the disorder differ in degree only.
Directionality problem . One reason correlations can never prove causality. If A and B are correlated, we do not know if A is the cause of B, or if B is the cause of A, or if some third, unknown variable is causing both B and A.
Disclosure. Telling someone about some private aspect of ourselves. Many theorists have suggested that keeping things to ourselves may be a source of stress and ultimately may lead to psychological distress and physical disease.
Discriminant validity. What a measure should not correlate with.
Disorder. A pattern of behavior or experience that is distressing and painful to the person, leads to some disability or impairment in important life domains (e.g., work, marriage, or relationship difficulties), and is associated with increased risk for further suffering, loss of function, death, or confinement.
Disparate impact. Any employment practice that disadvantages people from a protected group. The Supreme Court has not defined the size of the disparity necessary to prove disparate impact. Most courts define disparity as a difference that is sufficiently large that it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. Some courts, however, prefer the 80 percent rule contained in the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. Under this rule, adverse impact is established if the selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group is less than four-fifths (or 80 percent) of the rate for the group with the highest selection rate.
Displacement. An unconscious defense mechanism that involves avoiding the recognition that one has certain inappropriate urges or unacceptable feelings (e.g., anger, sexual attraction) toward a specific other. Those feelings then get displaced onto another person or object that is more appropriate or acceptable.
Dispositional domain. Deals centrally with the ways in which individuals differ from one another. As such, the dispositional domain connects with all the other domains. In the dispositional domain, psychologists are primarily interested in the number and nature of fundamental dispositions, taxonomies of traits, measurement issues, and questions of stability over time and consistency over situations.
Dispositional optimism. The expectation that in the future good events will be plentiful and bad events will be rare.
Distortion. A defense mechanism in Roger's theory of personality; distortion refers to modifying the meaning of experiences to make them less threatening to the self-image.
Dizygotic twins (also called fraternal twins). Twins who are not genetically identical. They come from two eggs that were separately fertilized ("di" means two; so dizygotic means "coming from two fertilized eggs"). Such twins share only 50 percent of their genes with their co-twin, the same amount as ordinary brothers and sisters. Fraternal twins can be of the same sex or of the opposite sex.
Domain of knowledge. A specialty area of science and scholarship, where psychologists have focused on learning about some specific and limited aspect of human nature, often with preferred tools of investigation.
Domain specific. Adaptations are presumed to be domain specific in the sense that they are "designed" by the evolutionary process to solve a specialized adaptive problem. Domain specificity implies that selection tends to fashion specific mechanisms for each specific adaptive problem.
Dopamine. A neurotransmitter that appears to be associated with pleasure. Dopamine appears to function something like the "reward system" and has even been called the "feeling good" chemical (Hamer, 1997).
DRD4 gene. A gene located on the short arm of chromosome 11 that codes for a protein called a dopamine receptor. The function of this dopamine receptor is to respond to the presence of dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter. When the dopamine receptor encounters dopamine from other neurons in the brain, it discharges an electrical signal, activating other neurons.
Dream analysis. A technique Freud taught for uncovering the unconscious material in a dream by interpreting the content of a dream. Freud called dreams "the royal road to the unconscious."
Dynamic. The interaction of forces within a person.
Effect size. How large a particular difference is, or how strong a particular correlation is, as averaged over several experiments or studies.
Effective polygyny. Because female mammals bear the physical burden of gestation and lactation, there is a considerable sex difference in minimum obligatory parental investment. This difference leads to differences in the variances in reproduction between the sexes: most females will have some offspring, whereas a few males will sire many offspring, and some will have none at all. This is known as effective polygyny.
Egalitarianism. How much a particular group displays equal treatment of all individuals within that group.
Ego. The part of the mind that constrains the id to reality. According to Freud, it develops within the first two or three years of life. The ego operates according to the reality principle. The ego understands that the urges of the id are often in conflict with social and physical reality, and that direct expression of id impulses must therefore be redirected or postponed.
Ego depletion. When exertion of selfcontrol results in a decrease of psychic energy.
Ego psychology. Post-Freudian psychoanalysts felt that the ego deserved more attention and that it performed many constructive functions. Erikson emphasized the ego as a powerful and independent part of personality, involved in mastering the environment, achieving one's goals, and hence in establishing one's identity. The approach to psychoanalysis started by Erikson was called ego psychology.
Electra complex. Within the psychoanalytic theory of personality development, the female counterpart to the Oedipal complex; both refer to the phallic stage of development.
Electrode. A sensor usually placed on the surface of the skin and linked to a physiological recording machine (often called a polygraph) to measure physiological variables.
Electrodermal activity (also known as galvanic skin response or skin conductance). Electricity will flow across the skin with less resistance if that skin is made damp with sweat. Sweating on the palms of the hands is activated by the sympathetic nervous system, and so electrodermal activity is a way to directly measure changes in the sympathetic nervous system.
Electroencephalograph (EEG). The brain spontaneously produces small amounts of electricity, which can be measured by electrodes placed on the scalp. EEGs can provide useful information about patterns of activation in different regions of the brain that may be associated with different types of information processing tasks.
Emotions. Emotions can be defined by their three components: (1) emotions have distinct subjective feelings or affects associated with them; (2) emotions are accompanied by bodily changes, mostly in the nervous system, and these produce associated changes in breathing, heart rate, muscle tension, blood chemistry, and facial and bodily expressions; (3) emotions are accompanied by distinct action tendencies or increases in the probabilities of certain behaviors.
Emotional inhibition. Suppression of emotional expressions; often thought of as a trait (e.g., some people chronically suppress their emotions).
Emotional intelligence. An adaptive form of intelligence consisting of the ability to (1) know one's own emotions; (2) regulate those emotions; (3) motivate oneself; (4) know how others are feeling; and (5) influence how others are feeling. Goleman posited that emotional intelligence is more strongly predictive of professional status, marital quality, and salary than traditional measures of intelligence and aptitude.
Emotional stability. The fourth of the personality traits in the five-factor model, which has proven to be replicable in studies using Englishlanguage trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers for Emotional Stability are "calm," "composed," "not hypochondriacal," "poised."
Emotional states. Transitory states that depend more on the situation or circumstances a person is in than on the specific person. Emotions as states have a specific cause, and that cause is typically outside of the person (something happens in the environment).
Emotional traits. Stable personality traits that are primarily characterized by specific emotions. For example, the trait of neuroticism is primarily characterized by the emotions of anxiety and worry.
Empathizing. Tuning in to other people's thoughts and feelings.
Empathy. In Rogers's client-centered therapy, empathy is understanding the person from his or her point of view. Instead of interpreting the meaning behind what the client says (e.g., "You have a harsh superego that is punishing you for the actions of your id."), the client-centered therapist simply listens to what the client says and reflects it back.
Enduring. When psychological traits are stable over time.
Environment. Environments can be physical, social, and intrapsychic (within the mind). Which aspect of the environment is important at any moment in time is frequently determined by the personality of the person in that environment.
Environmentalist view. Environmentalists believe that personality is determined by socialization practices, such as parenting style and other agents of society.
Environmentality. The percentage of observed variance in a group of individuals that can be attributed to environmental (nongenetic) differences. Generally speaking, the larger the heritability, the smaller the environmentality. And vice versa, the smaller the heritability, the larger the environmentality.
Episodic acute stress. Repeated episodes of acute stress, such as having to work at more than one job every day, having to spend time with a difficult inlaw, or needing to meet a recurring monthly deadline.
Equal environments assumption. The assumption that the environments experienced by identical twins are no more similar to each other than are the environments experienced by fraternal twins. If they are more similar, then the greater similarity of the identical twins could plausibly be due to the fact that they experience more similar environments rather than the fact that they have more genes in common.
Erikson's eight stages of development. According to Erikson, there are eight stages of development: trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame and doubt, initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, identity versus role confusion, intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus stagnation, and integrity versus despair.
Esteem needs. The fourth level of Maslow's motivation hierarchy. There are two types of esteem: esteem from others and self-esteem, the latter often depending on the former. People want to be seen by others as competent, as strong, and as able to achieve. They want to be respected by others for their achievements or abilities. People also want to feel good about themselves. Much of the activity of adult daily life is geared toward achieving recognition and esteem from others and bolstering one's own self-confidence.
Eugenics. The notion that the future of the human race can be influenced by fostering the reproduction of persons with certain traits, and discouraging reproduction among persons without those traits or who have undesirable traits.
Evocation. A form of person-situation interaction discussed by Buss. It is based on the idea that certain personality traits may evoke consistent responses from the environment, particularly the social environment.
Evoked culture. A way of considering culture that concentrates on phenomena that are triggered in different ways by different environmental conditions.
Evolutionary byproduct. Incidental effects evolved changes that are not properly considered adaptations. For example, our noses hold up glasses, but that is not what the nose evolved for.
Evolutionary noise. Random variations that are neutral with respect to selection.
Evolutionary-predicted sex differences. Evolutionary psychology predicts that males and females will be the same or similar in all those domains where the sexes have faced the same or similar adaptive problems (e.g., both sexes have sweat glands because both sexes have faced the adaptive problem of thermal regulation) and different when men and women have faced substantially different adaptive problems (e.g., in the physical realm, women have faced the problem of childbirth and have therefore evolved adaptations that are lacking in men, such as mechanisms for producing labor contractions through the release of oxytocin into the bloodstream).
Exhaustion stage. The third stage in Selye's general adaptation syndrome (GAS). Selye felt that this was the stage where we are most susceptible to illness and disease, as our physiological resources are depleted.
Expectancy confirmation. A phenomenon whereby people's beliefs about the personality characteristics of others cause them to evoke in others actions that are consistent with the initial beliefs. The phenomenon of expectancy confirmation has also been called self-fulfilling prophecy and behavioral confirmation.
Experience sampling. People answer some questions, for example, about their mood or physical symptoms, every day for several weeks or longer. People are usually contacted electronically ("beeped") one or more times a day at random intervals to complete the measures. Although experience sampling uses self-report as the data source, it differs from more traditional self-report methods in being able to detect patterns of behavior over time.
Experimental methods. Typically used to determine causality -- to find out whether one variable influences another variable. Experiments involve the manipulation of one variable (the independent variable) and random assignment of subjects to conditions defined by the independent variable.
Explanatory style. Whenever someone offers a cause for some event, that cause can be analyzed in terms of the three categories of attributions: internal-external, stable-unstable, and global-specific. The tendency a person has to employ certain combinations of attributions in explaining events (e.g., internal, stable, and global causes) is called their explanatory style.
Expressiveness. The ease with which one can express emotions, such as crying, showing empathy for the troubles of others, and showing nurturance to those in need.
External locus of control. Generalized expectancies that events are outside of one's control.
Extraversion. The first fundamental personality trait in the five-factor model, a taxonomy which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers for Extraversion are "talkative," "extraverted" or "extraverted," "gregarious," "assertive," "adventurous," "open," "sociable," "forward," and "outspoken."
Extreme responding. A response set that refers to the tendency to give endpoint responses, such as "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree" and avoid the middle part of response scales, such as "slightly agree," "slightly disagree," or "am indifferent."
Eye-blink startle method. People typically blink their eyes when they are startled by a loud noise. Moreover, a person who is in an anxious or fearful state will blink faster and harder when startled than a person in a normal emotional state. This means that eyeblink speed when startled may be an objective physiological measure of how anxious or fearful a person is feeling. The eye-blink startle method may allow researchers to measure how anxious persons are without actually having to ask them.
Face validity. Whether the test, on the surface, measures what it appears to measure.
Factor analysis. A commonly used statistical procedure for identifying underlying structure in personality ratings or items. Factor analysis essentially identifies groups of items that covary (i.e., go together or correlate) with each other, but tend not to covary with other groups of items. This provides a means for determining which personality variables share some common underlying property or belong together within the same group.
Factor loadings. Indexes of how much of the variation in an item is "explained" by the factor. Factor loadings indicate the degree to which the item correlates with or "loads on" the underlying factor.
Faking. The motivated distortion of answers on a questionnaire. Some people may be motivated to "fake good" in order to appear to be better off or better adjusted than they really are. Others may be motivated to "fake bad" in order to appear to be worse off or more maladjusted than they really are.
False consensus effect. The tendency many people have to assume that others are similar to them (i.e., extraverts think that many other people are as extraverted as they are). Thinking that many other people share your own traits, preferences, or motivations.
False memories. Memories that have been "implanted" by well-meaning therapists or others interrogating a subject about some event.
False negative and false positive. There are two ways for psychologists to make a mistake when making decisions about persons based on personality tests (e.g., when deciding whether or not to hire a person, to parole a person, or that the person was lying). When trying to decide whether a person's answers are genuine or faked, the psychologist might decide that a person who was faking was actually telling the truth (called a false positive). Or they might conclude that a truthful person was faking. This is called a false negative.
Family studies. Family studies correlate the degree of genetic overlap among family members with the degree of personality similarity. They capitalize on the fact that there are known degrees of genetic overlap between different members of a family in terms of degree of relationship.
Fear of success. Horney coined this phrase to highlight a gender difference in response to competition and achievement situations. Many women, she argued, feel that if they succeed, they will lose their friends. Consequently, many women, she thought, harbor an unconscious fear of success. She held that men, on the other hand, feel that they will actually gain friends by being successful and hence are not at all afraid to strive and pursue achievement.
Female underprediction effect. On average, college entrance exam scores underpredict grade point average for women relative to men. Women tend to do better in college than one would predict from their entrance exam scores.
Feminine. Traits or roles typically associated with being female in a particular culture.
Femininity. A psychological dimension containing traits such as nurturance, empathy, and expression of emotions (e.g., crying when sad). Femininity traits refer to gender roles, as distinct from biological sex.
Field dependent and field independent. In Witkin's rod and frame test, if a participant adjusts the rod so that it is leaning in the direction of the tilted frame, that person is said to be dependent of the visual field, or field dependent. If a participant disregards the external cues and instead uses information from his body in adjusting the rod to upright, he is said to be independent of the field, or field independent; appearing to rely on his own sensations, not the perception of the field, to make the judgment. This individual difference may have implications in situations where people must extract information from complex sensory fields, such as in multimedia education.
Five-factor model. A trait taxonomy that has its roots in the lexical hypothesis. The first psychologist to use the terms "five-factor model" and "Big Five" was Warren Norman, based on his replications of the factor structure suggesting the following five traits: Surgency (or extraversion), Neuroticism (or emotional instability), Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Intellect-Openness to Experience (or intellect). The model has been criticized by some for not being comprehensive and for failing to provide a theoretical understanding of the underlying psychological processes that generate the five traits. Nonetheless, it remains heavily endorsed by many personality psychologists and continues to be used in a variety of research studies and applied settings.
Fixation. According to Erikson, if a developmental crisis is not successfully and adaptively resolved, personality development could become arrested and the person would continue to have a fixation on that crisis in development. According to Freud, if a child fails to fully resolve a conflict at a particular stage of development, he or she may get stuck in that stage. If a child is fixated at a particular stage, he or she exhibits a less mature approach to obtaining sexual gratification.
Flow. A subjective state that people report when they are completely involved in an activity to the point of forgetting time, fatigue, and everything else but the activity itself. While flow experiences are somewhat rare, they occur under specific conditions; there is a balance between the person's skills and the challenges of the situation, there is a clear goal, and there is immediate feedback on how one is doing.
Forced-choice questionnaire. Test takers are confronted with pairs of statements and are asked to indicate which statement in the pair is more true of them. Each statement in the pair is selected to be similar to the other in social desirability, forcing participants to choose between statements that are equivalently socially desirable (or undesirable), and differ in content.
Free association. Patients relax, let their minds wander, and say whatever comes into their minds. Patients often say things that surprise or embarrass them. By relaxing the censor that screens everyday thoughts, free association allows potentially important material into conscious awareness.
Free running. A condition in studies of circadian rhythms in which participants are deprived from knowing what time it is (e.g., meals are served when the participant asks for them, not at prescheduled times). When a person is free running in time, there are no time cues to influence behavior or biology.
Frequency-dependent selection. In some contexts, two or more heritable variants can evolve within a population. The most obvious example is biological sex itself. Within sexually reproducing species, the two sexes exist in roughly equal numbers because of frequency-dependent selection. If one sex becomes rare relative to the other, evolution will produce an increase in the numbers of the rarer sex. Frequency-dependent selection, in this example, causes the frequency of men and women to remain roughly equal. Different personality extremes (e.g., introversion and extraversion) may be the result of frequency dependent selection.
Frontal brain asymmetry. Asymmetry in the amount of activity in the left and right part of the frontal hemispheres of the brain. Studies using EEG measures have linked more relative left brain activity with pleasant emotions and more relative right brain activity with negative emotions.
Frustration. The high-arousal unpleasant subjective feeling that comes when a person is blocked from attaining an important goal. For example, a thirsty person who just lost his last bit of money in a malfunctioning soda machine would most likely feel frustration.
Fully functioning person. According to Rogers, a fully functioning person is on his or her way toward selfactualization. Fully functioning persons may not actually be self-actualized yet, but they are not blocked or sidetracked in moving toward this goal. Such persons are open to new experiences and are not afraid of new ideas. They embrace life to its fullest. Fully functioning individuals are also centered in the present. They do not dwell on the past or their regrets. Fully functioning individuals also trust themselves, their feelings, and their own judgments.
Functional analysis. In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin proposed a functional analysis of emotions and emotional expressions focusing on the "why" of emotions and expressions. Darwin concluded that emotional expressions communicate information from one animal to another about what is likely to happen. For instance, a dog baring its teeth, growling, and bristling the fur on its back is communicating to others that he is likely to attack. If others recognize the dog's communication, they may choose to back away to safety.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A noninvasive imaging technique used to identify specific areas of brain activity. As parts of the brain are stimulated, oxygenated blood rushes to the activated area, resulting in increased iron concentrations in the blood. The fMRI detects these elevated concentrations of iron and prints out colorful images indicating which part of the brain is used to perform certain tasks.
Functionality. The notion that our psychological mechanisms are designed to accomplish particular adaptive goals.
Fundamental attribution error. When bad events happen to others, people have a tendency to attribute blame to some characteristic of the person, whereas when bad events happen to oneself, people have the tendency to blame the situation.
Gender. Social interpretations of what it means to be a man or a woman.
Gender differences. The distinction between gender and sex can be traced back to Horney. Horney stressed the point that, while biology determines sex, cultural norms determine what is acceptable for typical males and females in that culture. Today we use the terms masculine and feminine to refer to traits or roles typically associated with being male or female in a particular culture, and we refer to differences in such culturally ascribed roles and traits as gender differences. Differences that are ascribed to being a man or a woman per se are, however, called sex differences.
Gender schemata. Cognitive orientations that lead individuals to process social information on the basis of sex-linked associations (Hoyenga & Hoyenga, 1993).
Gender stereotypes. Beliefs that we hold about how men and women differ or are supposed to differ, which are not necessarily based on reality. Gender stereotypes can have important real-life consequences for men and women. These consequences can damage people where it most counts -- in their health, their jobs, their odds of advancement, and their social reputations.
General adaptation syndrome (GAS). GAS has three stages: When a stressor first appears, people experience the alarm stage. If the stressor continues, the stage of resistance begins. If the stressor remains constant, the person eventually enters the third stage, the stage of exhaustion.
General intelligence. Early on in the study of intelligence, many psychologists thought of intelligence in traitlike terms, as a property of the individual. Individuals were thought to differ from each other in how much intelligence they possessed. Moreover, intelligence was thought of as a single broad factor, often called "g" for general intelligence. This stands in contrast to those views of intelligence as consisting of many discrete factors, such as social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and academic intelligence.
Generalizability. The degree to which a measure retains its validity across different contexts.
Generalized expectancies. A person's expectations for reinforcement that hold across a variety of situations (Rotter, 1971, 1990). When people encounter a new situation, they base their expectancies about what will happen on their generalized expectancies about whether they have the abilities to influence events.
Genes. Packets of DNA that are inherited by children from their parents in distinct chunks. They are the smallest discrete unit that is inherited by offspring intact, without being broken up.
Genetic junk. The 98 percent of the DNA in human chromosomes that are not protein-coding genes; scientists believed that these parts were functionless residue. Recent studies have shown that these portions of DNA may affect everything from a person's physical size to personality, thus adding to the complexity of the human genome.
Genital stage. The final stage in Freud's psychosexual stage theory of development. This stage begins around age 12 and lasts through one's adult life. Here the libido is focused on the genitals, but not in the manner of selfmanipulation associated with the phallic stage. People reach the genital stage with full psychic energy if they have resolved the conflicts at the prior stages.
Genome. The complete set of genes an organism possesses. The human genome contains somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 genes.
Genotype-environment correlation. The differential exposure of individuals with different genotypes to differen environments.
Genotype-environment interaction. The differential response of individuals with different genotypes to the same environments.
Genotypic variance. Genetic variance that is responsible for individual differences in the phenotypic expression of specific traits.
Global self-esteem. By far the most frequently measured component of selfesteem; defined as "the level of global regard that one has for the self as a person" (Harter, 1993). Global self-esteem can range from highly positive to highly negative, and reflects an overall evaluation of the self at the broadest level (Kling et al., 1999). Global self-esteem is linked with many aspects of functioning and is commonly thought to be central to mental health.
Good theory. A theory that serves as a useful guide for researchers, organizes known facts, and makes predictions about future observations.
Griggs v. Duke Power. Prior to 1964, Duke Power Company had used discriminatory practices in hiring and work assignment, including barring blacks from certain jobs. After passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Duke Power instituted various requirements for such jobs, including passing certain aptitude tests. The effect was to perpetuate discrimination. In 1971 the Supreme Court ruled that the seemingly neutral testing practices used by Duke Power were unacceptable because they operated to maintain discrimination. This was the first legal case where the Supreme Court ruled that any selection procedure could not produce disparate impact for a group protected by the Act (e.g., racial groups, women).
Happiness. Researchers conceive of happiness in two complementary ways: in terms of a judgment that life is satisfying, as well as in terms of the predominance of positive compared to negative, emotions in one's life (Diener, 2000). It turns out, however, that people's emotional lives and their judgments of how satisfied they are with their lives are highly correlated. People who have a lot of pleasant emotions relative to unpleasant emotions in their lives tend also to judge their lives as satisfying, and vice versa.
Harm avoidance. In Cloninger's tridimensional personality model, the personality trait of harm avoidance is associated with low levels of serotonin. People low in serotonin are sensitive to unpleasant stimuli or to stimuli or events that have been associated with punishment or pain. Consequently, people low in serotonin seem to expect that harmful and unpleasant events will happen to them, and they are constantly vigilant for signs of such threatening events.
Health behavior model. Personality does not directly influence the relation between stress and illness. Instead, personality affects health indirectly, through health-promoting or healthdegrading behaviors. This model suggests that personality influences the degree to which a person engages in various health-promoting or healthdemoting behaviors.
Health psychology. Researchers in the area of health psychology study relations between the mind and the body, and how these two components respond to challenges from the environment (e.g., stressful events, germs) to produce illness or health.
Heritability. A statistic that refers to the proportion of observed variance in a group of individuals that can be explained or "accounted for" by genetic variance (Plomin, DeFries, & McClearn, 1990). It describes the degree to which genetic differences between individuals cause differences in some observed property, such as height, extraversion, or sensation seeking. The formal definition of heritability is the proportion of phenotypic variance that is attributable to genotypic variance.
Heuristic value. An evaluative scientific standard for assessing personality theories. Theories that steer scientists to important new discoveries about personality are superior to those that fail to provide this guidance.
Hierarchy of needs. Murray believed that each person has a unique combination of needs. An individual's various needs can be thought of as existing at a different level of strength. A person might have a high need for dominance, an average need for intimacy, and a low need for achievement. High levels of some needs interact with the amounts of various other needs within each person.
High-variance conditions . One key variable triggering communal food sharing is the degree of variability in food resources. Specifically, under high-variance conditions, there are substantial benefits to sharing.
Historical era . One type of intracultural variation pertains to the effects of historical era on personality. (People who grew up during the great economic depression of the 1930s, for example, might be more anxious about job security or adopt a more conservative spending style.) Disentangling the effects of historical era on personality is an extremely difficult endeavor because most current personality measures were not in use in earlier eras.
Histrionic personality disorder. The hallmark of the histrionic personality is excessive attention seeking and emotionality. Often such persons are overly dramatic and draw attention to themselves, preferring to be the center of attention or the life of the party. They may appear charming or even flirtatious. Often they can be inappropriately seductive or provocative.
Hogan. Personality Inventory (HPI) A questionnaire measure of personality based on the Big Five model but modified to emphasize the assessment of traits important in the business world, including the motive to get along with others and the motive to get ahead of others.
Holistic. A way of processing information that involves attention to relationships, contexts, and links between the focal objects and the field as a whole.
Hormonal theories. Hormonal theories of sex differences argue that men and women differ not because of the external social environment but because the sexes have different amounts of specific hormones. It is these physiological differences, not differential social treatment, that causes boys and girls to diverge over development.
Hostile attributional bias. The tendency to infer hostile intent on the part of others in the face of uncertain or unclear behavior from others. Essentially, people who are aggressive expect that others will be hostile toward them.
Hostile forces of nature. Hostile forces of nature are what Darwin called any event that impedes survival. Hostile forces of nature include food shortages, diseases, parasites, predators, and extremes of weather.
Hostility. A tendency to respond to everyday frustrations with anger and aggression, to become irritable easily, to feel frequent resentment, and to act in a rude, critical, antagonistic, and uncooperative manner in everyday interactions (Dembrowski & Costa, 1987). Hostility is a subtrait in the Type A behavior pattern.
Human nature. The traits and mechanisms of personality that are typical of our species and are possessed by everyone or nearly everyone.
Humanistic tradition. Humanistic psychologists emphasize the role of choice in human life, and the influence of responsibility on creating a meaningful and satisfying life. The meaning of any person's life, according to the humanistic approach, is found in the choices that people make and the responsibility they take for those choices. The humanistic tradition also emphasizes the human need for growth and realizing one's full potential. In the humanistic tradition it is assumed that, if left to their own devices, humans will grow and develop in positive and satisfying directions.
Id. The most primitive part of the human mind. Freud saw the id as something we are born with and as the source of all drives and urges. The id is like a spoiled child: selfish, impulsive, and pleasure loving. According to Freud, the id operates strictly according to the pleasure principle, which is the desire for immediate gratification.
Id psychology. Freud's version of psychoanalysis focused on the id, especially the twin instincts of sex and aggression, and how the ego and superego respond to the demands of the id. Freudian psychoanalysis can thus be called id psychology, to distinguish it from later developments that focused on the functions of the ego.
Ideal self. The self that a person wants to be.
Identification. A developmental process in children. It consists of wanting to become like the same-sex parent. In classic psychoanalysis, it marks the beginning of the resolution of the Oedipal or Electra conflicts and the successful resolution of the phallic stage of psychosexual development. Freud believed that the resolution of the phallic stage was both the beginning of the superego and morality and the start of the adult gender role.
Identity conflict. According to Baumeister, an identity conflict involves an incompatibility between two or more aspects of identity. This kind of crisis often occurs when a person is forced to make an important and difficult life decision. Identity conflicts are "approach-approach" conflicts, in that the person wants to reach two mutually contradictory goals. Although these conflicts involve wanting two desirable identities, identity conflicts usually involve intense feelings of guilt or remorse over perceived unfaithfulness to an important aspect of the person's identity.
Identity confusion. A period when a person does not have a strong sense of who she or he really is in terms of values, careers, relationships, and ideologies.
Identity crisis. Erikson's term refers to the desperation, anxiety, and confusion a person feels when he or she has not developed a strong sense of identity. A period of identity crisis is a common experience during adolescence, but for some people it occurs later in life, or lasts for a longer period. Baumeister suggests that there are two distinct types of identity crises, which he terms identity deficit and identity conflict.
Identity deficit. According to Baumeister, an identity deficit arises when a person has not formed an adequate identity and thus has trouble making major decisions. When people who have an identity deficit look toward their social identity for guidance in making decisions (e.g., "What would a person like me do in this situation?"), they find little in the way of a foundation upon which to base such life choices. Identity deficits often occur when a person discards old values or goals.
Identity foreclosure. A person does not emerge from a crisis with a firm sense of commitment to values, relationships, or career but forms an identity without exploring alternatives. An example would be young people who accept the values of their parents or their cultural or religious group without question.
Idiographic. The study of single individuals, with an effort to observe general principles as they are manifest in a single life over time.
If ... then ... propositions. A component of Walter Mischel's theory referring to the notion that, if situation A, the person does X, but if situation B, then the person does Y. Personality leaves its signature, Mischel argues, in terms of the specific situational ingredients that prompt behavior from the person.
Illness behavior model. Personality influences the degree to which a person perceives and pays attention to bodily sensations, and the degree to which a person will interpret and label those sensations as an illness.
Imagination inflation effect. A memory is elaborated upon in the imagination, leading the person to confuse the imagined event with events that actually happened.
Implicit motivation. Motives as they are measured in fantasy-based (i.e., TAT) techniques, as opposed to direct self-report measures. The implied motives of persons scored, for example, from TAT stories, is thought to reveal their unconscious desires and aspirations, their unspoken needs and wants. McClelland has argued that implicit motives predict long-term behavioral trends over time, such as implicit need for achievement predicting long-term business success.
Impulsivity. A personality trait that refers to lowered self-control, especially in the presence of potentially rewarding activities, the tendency to act before one thinks, and a lowered ability to anticipate the consequences of one's behavior.
Inclusive fitness theory. Modern evolutionary theory based on differential gene reproduction (Hamilton, 1964). The "inclusive" part refers to the fact that the characteristics that affect reproduction need not affect the personal production of offspring; they can affect the survival and reproduction of genetic relatives as well.
Independence. Markus and Kitayama propose that each person has two fundamental "cultural tasks" that have to be confronted. One such task, agency or independence, involves how you differentiate yourself from the larger group. Independence includes your unique abilities, your personal internal motives and personality dispositions, and the ways in which you separate yourself from the larger group.
Independence training. McClelland believes that certain parental behaviors can promote high achievement motivation, autonomy, and independence in their children. One of these parenting practices is placing an emphasis on independence training. Training a child to be independent in different tasks promotes a sense of mastery and confidence in the child.
Individual differences. Every individual has personal and unique qualities that make him or her different from others. The study of all the ways in which individuals can differ from others, the number, origin, and meaning of such differences, is the study of individual differences.
Inductive reasoning approach. The bottom-up, data-driven method of empirical research.
Influential forces. Personality traits and mechanisms are influential forces in people's lives in that they influence our actions, how we view ourselves, how we think about the world, how we interact with others, how we feel, our selection of environments (particularly our social environment), what goals and desires we pursue in life, and how we react to our circumstances. Other influential forces include sociological and economic influences, as well as physical and biological forces.
Information processing. The transformation of sensory input into mental representations and the manipulation of such representations.
Infrequency scale. A common method for detecting measurement technique problems within a set of questionnaire items. The infrequency scale contains items that most or all people would answer in a particular way. If a participant answered more than one or two of these unlike the rest of the majority of the participants, a researcher could begin to suspect that the participant's answers do not represent valid information. Such a participant may be answering randomly, may have difficulty reading, or may be marking his or her answer sheet incorrectly.
Inhibitory control. The ability to control inappropriate responses or behaviors.
Insight. In psychoanalysis, through many interpretations, a patient is gradually led to an understanding of the unconscious source of his or her problems. This understanding is called insight.
Inspection time. A variable in intelligence research; the time it takes a person to make a simple discrimination between two displayed objects or two auditory intervals that differ by only a few milliseconds. This variable suggests that brain mechanisms specifically involved in discriminations of extremely brief time intervals represent a sensitive indicator of general intelligence.
Instincts. Freud believed that strong innate forces provided all the energy in the psychic system. He called these forces instincts. In Freud's initial formulation there were two fundamental categories of instincts: self-preservation instincts and sexual instincts. In his later formulations, Freud collapsed the self-preservation and sexual instincts into one, which he called the life instinct.
Instrumentality. Personality traits that involve working with objects, getting tasks completed in a direct fashion, showing independence from others, and displaying self-sufficiency.
Integrity tests. Because the private sector cannot legally use polygraphs to screen employees, some companies have developed and promoted questionnaire measures to use in place of the polygraph. These questionnaires, called integrity tests, are designed to assess whether a person is generally honest or dishonest.
Intellect-Openness. The fifth personality trait in the five-factor model, which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers for Openness are "creative," "imaginative," "intellectual." Those who rate high on Openness tend to remember their dreams more and have vivid, prophetic, or problem-solving dreams.
Interactional model. Objective events happen to a person, but personality factors determine the impact of those events by influencing the person's ability to cope. This is called the interactional model because personality is assumed to moderate (that is, influence) the relation between stress and illness.
Interdependence. Markus and Kitayama propose that each person has two fundamental "cultural tasks" that have to be confronted. The first is communion or interdependence. This cultural task involves how you are affiliated with, attached to, or engaged in the larger group of which you are a member. Interdependence includes your relationships with other members of the group and your embeddedness within the group.
Internal locus of control. The generalized expectancy that reinforcing events are under one's control, and that one is responsible for the major outcomes in life.
Internalized. In object relations theory, a child will create an unconscious mental representation of his or her mother. This allows the child to have a relationship with this internalized "object" even in the absence of the "real" mother. The relationship object internalized by the child is based on his or her developing relationship with the mother. This image then forms the fundamentals for how children come to view others with whom they develop subsequent relationships.
Interpersonal traits. What people do to and with each other. They include temperament traits, such as nervous, gloomy, sluggish, and excitable; character traits, such as moral, principled, and dishonest; material traits, such as miserly or stingy; attitude traits, such as pious or spiritual; mental traits, such as clever, logical, and perceptive; and physical traits, such as healthy and tough.
Interpretation . One of the three levels of cognition that are of interest to personality psychologists. Interpretation is the making sense of, or explaining, various events in the world. Psychoanalysts offer patients interpretations of the psychodynamic causes of their problems. Through many interpretations, patients are gradually led to an understanding of the unconscious source of their problems.
Inter-rater reliability. Multiple observers gather information about a person's personality, then investigators evaluate the degree of consensus among the observers. When different observers agree with one another, the degree of inter-rater reliability increases. When different raters fail to agree, the measure is said to have low inter-rater reliability.
Intersexual selection. In Darwin's intersexual selection, members of one sex choose a mate based on their preferences for particular qualities in that mate. These characteristics evolve because animals that possess them are chosen more often as mates, and their genes thrive. Animals that lack the desired characteristics are excluded from mating, and their genes perish.
Intrapsychic domain. This domain deals with mental mechanisms of personality, many of which operate outside the realm of conscious awareness. The predominant theory in this domain is Freud's theory of psychoanalysis. This theory begins with fundamental assumptions about the instinctual system -- the sexual and aggressive forces that are presumed to drive and energize much of human activity. The intrapsychic domain also includes defense mechanisms such as repression, denial, and projection.
Intrasexual competition. In Darwin's intrasexual competition, members of the same sex compete with each other, and the outcome of their contest gives the winner greater sexual access to members of the opposite sex. Two stags locking horns in combat is the prototypical image of this. The characteristics that lead to success in contests of this kind, such as greater strength, intelligence, or attractiveness to allies, evolve because the victors are able to mate more often and hence pass on more genes.
Job analysis. When assisting a business in hiring for a particular job, a psychologist typically starts by analyzing the requirements of the job. The psychologist might interview employees who work in the job or supervisors who are involved in managing the particular job. The psychologist might observe workers in the job, noting any particular oral, written, performance, or social skills needed. He or she may also take into account both the physical and social aspects of the work environment in an effort to identify any special pressures or responsibilities associated with the job. Based on this job analysis, the psychologist develops some hypotheses about the kinds of abilities and personality traits that might best equip a person to perform well in that job.
Latency stage. The fourth stage in Freud's psychosexual stages of development. This stage occurs from around the age of six until puberty. Freud believed few specific sexual conflicts existed during this time, and was thus a period of psychological rest or latency. Subsequent psychoanalysts have argued that much development occurs during this time, such as learning to make decisions for oneself, interacting and making friends with others, developing an identity, and learning the meaning of work. The latency period ends with the sexual awakening brought about by puberty.
Latent content. The latent content of a dream is, according to Freud, what the elements of the dream actually represent.
Learned helplessness. Animals (including humans), when subjected to unpleasant and inescapable circumstances, often become passive and accepting of their situation, in effect learning to be helpless. Researchers surmised that if people were in an unpleasant or painful situation, they would attempt to change the situation. However, if repeated attempts to change the situation failed, they would resign themselves to being helpless. Then, even if the situation did improve so that they could escape the discomfort, they would continue to act helpless.
Leukocyte. A white blood cell. When there is an infection or injury to the body, or a systematic inflammation of the body occurs, there is an elevation in white blood cell counts. Surtees et al., in a 2003 study, established a direct link between hostility and elevated white blood cell counts.
Lexical approach. The approach to determining the fundamental personality traits by analyzing language. For example, a trait adjective that has many synonyms probably represents a more fundamental trait than a trait adjective with few synonyms.
Lexical hypothesis. The lexical hypothesis -- on which the lexical approach is based -- states that important individual differences have become encoded within the natural language. Over ancestral time, the differences between people that were important were noticed and words were invented to communicate about those differences.
Libido. Freud postulated that humans have a fundamental instinct toward destruction and that this instinct is often manifest in aggression toward others. The two instincts were usually referred to as libido, for the life instinct, and thanatos, for the death instinct. While the libido was generally considered sexual in nature, Freud also used this term to refer to any need-satisfying, life-sustaining, or pleasure-oriented urge.
Life-outcome data (L-data). Information that can be gleaned from the events, activities, and outcomes in a person's life that are available to public scrutiny. For example, marriages and divorces are a matter of public record. Personality psychologists can sometimes secure information about the clubs, if any, a person joins; how many speeding tickets a person has received in the last few years; whether the person owns a handgun. These can all serve as sources of information about personality.
Likert rating scale. A common rating scale that provides numbers that are attached to descriptive phrases, such as 0 = disagree strongly, 1 = disagree slightly, 2 = neither agree nor disagree, 3 = agree slightly, 4 = strongly agree.
Limbic system. The part of the brain responsible for emotion and the "flight-fight" reaction. If individuals have a limbic system that is easily activated, we might expect them to have frequent episodes of emotion, particularly those emotions associated with flight (such as anxiety, fear, worry) and those associated with fight (such as anger, irritation, annoyance). Eysenck postulated that the limbic system was the source of the trait of neuroticism.
Locus of control. A person's perception of responsibility for the events in his or her life. It refers to whether people tend to locate that responsibility internally, within themselves, or externally, in fate, luck, or chance. Locus of control research started in the mid-1950s when Rotter was developing his social learning theory.
Longitudinal study. Examines individuals over time. Longitudinal studies have been conducted that have spanned as many as four and five decades of life and have examined many different age brackets. These studies are costly and difficult to conduct, but the information gained about personality development is valuable.
Machiavellianism. A manipulative strategy of social interaction referring to the tendency to use other people as tools for personal gain. "High Mach" persons tend to tell people what they want to hear, use flattery to get what they want, and rely heavily on lying and deception to achieve their own ends.
Major life events. According to Holmes and Rahe, major life events require that people make major adjustments in their lives. Death or loss of a spouse through divorce or separation are the most stressful events, followed closely by being jailed, losing a close family member in death, or being severely injured.
Manifest content. The manifest content of a dream is, according to Freud, what the dream actually contains.
Manipulation in Person-Situation Interaction. A form of personsituation interaction in which the person intentionally behaves in ways to influence those around them. Common tactics of manipulation include coercion, the silent treatment, and charm or flattery.
Manipulation. Researchers conducting experiments use manipulation in order to evaluate the influence of one variable (the manipulated or independent variable) on another (the dependent variable).
Masculine. Traits or roles typically associated with being male in a particular culture.
Masculinity. Traits that define the cultural roles associated with being male. Two major personality instruments were published in 1974 to assess people using this new conception of gender roles (Bem, 1974; Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1974). The masculinity scales contain items reflecting assertiveness, boldness, dominance, self-sufficiency, and instrumentality. Masculinity traits refer to gender roles, as distinct from biological sex.
Maximalist. Those who describe sex differences as comparable in magnitude to effect sizes in other areas of psychology, important to consider, and recommend that they should not be trivialized.
Mean level change. Within a single group that has been tested on two separate occasions, any difference in group averages across the two occasions is considered a mean level change.
Mean level stability. A population that maintains a consistent average level of a trait or characteristic over time. If the average level of liberalism or conservatism in a population remains the same with increasing age, we say that the population exhibits high mean level stability on that characteristic. If the average degree of political orientation changes, then we say that the population is displaying mean level change.
Mediation. Describes a situation whereby the effects of one variable on another "go through" a third variable (the mediator). For example, we know that conscientiousness in correlated with longevity. However, it is not conscientiousness in itself that causes a longer life. Instead, researchers have determined that, in this relation to longevity, the effects of conscientiousness go through (are mediated by) various health behaviors such as exercising regularly and eating a sensible diet.
Minimalist. Those who describe sex differences as small and inconsequential.
Modeling. By seeing another person engage in a particular behavior with positive results, the observer is more likely to imitate that behavior. It is a form of learning whereby the consequences for a particular behavior are observed, and thus the new behavior is learned.
Moderation. Describes a situation whereby one variable (the moderator) influences the degree or correlation between two other variables. For example, if people high in neuroticism showed a strong correlation between stress and illness, and people low in neuroticism showed a weak or no correlation between stress and illness, then we would say that neuroticism is a moderator of the stress-illness relationship.
Molecular genetics. Techniques designed to identify the specific genes associated with specific traits, such as personality traits. The most common method, called the association method, identifies whether individuals with a particular gene (or allele) have higher or lower scores on a particular trait measure.
Monoamine oxidase (MAO). An enzyme found in the blood that is known to regulate neurotransmitters, those chemicals that carry messages between nerve cells. MAO may be a causal factor in the personality trait of sensation seeking.
Monozygotic twins. Identical twins that come from a single fertilized egg (or zygote, hence monozygotic) that divides into two at some point during gestation. Identical twins are always the same sex because they are genetically identical.
Mood induction. In experimental studies of mood, mood inductions are employed as manipulations in order to determine whether the mood differences (e.g., pleasant versus unpleasant) effect some dependent variable. In studies of personality, mood effects might interact with personality variables. For example, positive mood effects might be stronger for persons high on extraversion, and negative mood effects might be stronger for persons high on neuroticism.
Mood variability. Frequent fluctuations in a person's emotional life over time.
Moral anxiety. Caused by a conflict between the id or the ego and the superego. For example, a person who suffers from chronic shame or feelings of guilt over not living up to "proper" standards, even though such standards might not be attainable, is experiencing moral anxiety.
Moratorium. The time taken to explore options before making a commitment to an identity. College can be considered a "time out" from life, in which students may explore a variety of roles, relationships, and responsibilities before having to commit to any single life path.
Morningness-eveningness. The stable differences between persons in preferences for being active at different times of the day. The term was coined to refer to this dimension (Horne & Osterberg, 1976). Differences between morning- and evening-types of persons appear to be due to differences in the length of their underlying circadian biological rhythms.
Motivated unconscious. The psychoanalytic idea that information that is unconscious (e.g., a repressed wish) can actually motivate or influence subsequent behavior. This notion was promoted by Freud and formed the basis for his ideas about the unconscious sources of mental disorders and other problems with living. Many psychologists agree with the idea of the unconscious, but there is less agreement today about whether information that is unconscious can have much of an influence on actual behavior.
Motives. Internal states that arouse and direct behavior toward specific objects or goals. A motive is often caused by a deficit, by the lack of something. Motives differ from each other in type, amount, and intensity, depending on the person and his or her circumstances. Motives are based on needs and propel people to perceive, think, and act in specific ways that serve to satisfy those needs.
Multi-motive grid. Designed to assess motives, it uses 14 pictures representing achievement, power, or intimacy and a series of questions about important motivational states to elicit answers from test subjects. In theory, the motives elicited from the photographs would influence how the subject answers the test questions.
Multiple intelligences. Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences includes several forms: interpersonal intelligence (social skills, ability to communicate and get along with others), intrapersonal intelligence (insight into oneself, one's emotions and motives), kinesthetic intelligence (the abilities of athletes, dancers, and acrobats), and musical intelligence. There are several other theories proposing multiple forms of intelligence. This position is in contrast to the theory of "g," or general intelligence, which holds that there is only one form of intelligence.
Multiple social personalities. Each of us displays different sides of ourselves to different people -- we may be kind to our friends, ruthless to our enemies, loving toward a spouse, and conflicted toward our parents. Our social personalities vary from one setting to another, depending on the nature of relationships we have with other individuals.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). One of the most widely used personality tests in the business world. It was developed by a mother-daughter team, Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers, based on Jungian concepts. The test provides information about personality types by testing for eight fundamental preferences using questions in a "forced-choice" or either/or format. Individuals must respond in one way or another, even if their preferences might be somewhere in the middle. Although the test is not without criticism, it has great intuitive appeal.
Narcissism. A style of inflated selfadmiration and the constant attempt to draw attention to the self and to keep others focused on oneself. Although narcissism can be carried to extremes, narcissistic tendencies can be found in normal range levels.
Narcissistic paradox. The fact that, although narcissistic people appear to have high self-esteem, they actually have doubts about their self-worth. While they appear to have a grandiose sense of self-importance, narcissists are nevertheless very fragile and vulnerable to blows to their self-esteem and cannot handle criticism well. They need constant praise, reassurance, and attention from others, whereas a person with truly high self-esteem would not need such constant praise and attention from others.
Narcissistic personality disorder. The calling card of the narcissistic personality is a strong need to be admired, a strong sense of selfimportance, and a lack of insight into other people's feelings. Narcissists see themselves in a very favorable light, inflating their accomplishments and undervaluing the work of others. Narcissists daydream about prosperity, victory, influence, adoration from others, and power. They routinely expect adulation from others, believing that homage is generally long overdue. They exhibit feelings of entitlement, even though they have done nothing in particular to earn that special treatment.
Natural selection. Darwin reasoned that variants that better enabled an organism to survive and reproduce would lead to more descendants. The descendants, therefore, would inherit the variants that led to their ancestors' survival and reproduction. Through this process, the successful variants were selected, and unsuccessful variants weeded out. Natural selection, therefore, results in gradual changes in a species over time, as successful variants increase in frequency and eventually spread throughout the gene pool, replacing the less successful variants.
Naturalistic observation. Observers witness and record events that occur in the normal course of the lives of their participants. For example, a child might be followed throughout an entire day, or an observer may record behavior in the home of the participant. Naturalistic observation offers researchers the advantage of being able to secure information in the realistic context of a person's everyday life, but at the cost of not being able to control the events and behavioral samples witnessed.
Nature-nurture debate. The ongoing debate as to whether genes or environment are more important determinants of personality.
Need for achievement. According to McClelland, the desire to do better, to be successful, and to feel competent. People with a high need for achievement obtains satisfaction from accomplishing a task or from the anticipation of accomplishing a task. They cherish the process of being engaged in a challenging task.
Need for intimacy. McAdams defines the need for intimacy as the "recurrent preference or readiness for warm, close, and communicative interaction with others" (1990). People with a high need for intimacy want more intimacy and meaningful human contact in their day-to-day lives than do those with a low need for intimacy.
Need for power. A preference for having an impact on other people. Individuals with a high need for power are interested in controlling situations and other people.
Needs. States of tension within a person; as a need is satisfied, the state of tension is reduced. Usually the state of tension is caused by the lack of something (e.g., a lack of food causes a need to eat).
Negative affectivity. Includes components such as anger, sadness, difficulty, and amount of distress.
Negative identity. Identities founded on undesirable social roles, such as "gangstas," girlfriends of street toughs, or members of street gangs.
Negligent hiring. A charge sometimes brought against an employer for hiring someone who is unstable or prone to violence. Employers are defending themselves against such suits, which often seek compensation for crimes committed by their employees. Such cases hinge on whether the employer should have discovered dangerous traits ahead of time, before hiring such a person into a position where he or she posed a threat to others. Personality testing may provide evidence that the employer did in fact try to reasonably investigate an applicant's fitness for the workplace.
Neurotic anxiety. Occurs when there is a direct conflict between the id and the ego. The danger is that the ego may lose control over some unacceptable desire of the id. For example, a man who worries excessively that he might blurt out some unacceptable thought or desire in public is beset by neurotic anxiety.
Neurotic paradox. The fact that people with disorders or other problems with living often exhibit behaviors that exacerbate, rather than lessen, their problems. For example, borderline personality disordered persons, who are generally concerned with being abandoned by friends and intimate others, may throw temper tantrums or otherwise express anger and rage in a manner that drives people away. The paradox refers to doing behaviors that make their situation worse.
Neuroticism. A dimension of personality present, in some form, in every major trait theory of personality. Different researchers have used different terms for neuroticism, such as emotional instability, anxietyproneness, and negative affectivity. Adjectives useful for describing persons high on the trait of neuroticism include moody, touchy, irritable, anxious, unstable, pessimistic, and complaining.
Neurotransmitters. Chemicals in the nerve cells that are responsible for the transmission of a nerve impulse from one cell to another. Some theories of personality are based directly on different amounts of neurotransmitters found in the nervous system.
Neurotransmitter theory of depression. According to this theory, an imbalance of the neurotransmitters at the synapses of the nervous system causes depression. Some medications used to treat depression target these specific neurotransmitters. Not all people with depression are treated successfully with drugs. That suggests that there may be varieties of depression; some are biologically based, while others are more reactive to stress, physical exercise, or cognitive therapy.
Nomothetic. The study of general characters of people as they are distributed in the population, typically involving statistical comparisons between individuals or groups.
Noncontent responding (also referred to as the concept of response sets). The tendency of some people to respond to the questions on some basis that is unrelated to the question content. One example is the response set of acquiescence or yea saying. This is the tendency to simply agree with the questionnaire items, regardless of the content of those items.
Nonshared environmental influences. Features of the environment that siblings do not share. Some children might get special or different treatment from their parents, they might have different groups of friends, they might be sent to different schools, or one might go to summer camp while the other stays home each summer. These features are called "nonshared" because they are experienced differently by different siblings.
Norepinephrine. A neurotransmitter involved in activating the sympathetic nervous system for flight or fight.
Novelty seeking. In Cloninger's tridimensional personality model, the personality trait of novelty seeking is based on low levels of dopamine. Low levels of dopamine create a drive state to obtain substances or experiences that increase dopamine. Novelty and thrills and excitement can make up for low levels of dopamine, and so noveltyseeking behavior is thought to result from low levels of this neurotransmitter.
Objectifying cognition. Processing information by relating it to objective facts. This style of thinking stands in contrast to personalizing cognitions.
Objective anxiety. Fear occurs in response to some real, external threat to the person. For example, being confronted by a large, aggressivelooking man with a knife while taking a shortcut through an alley would elicit objective anxiety (fear) in most people.
Objective self-awareness. Seeing oneself as an object of others' attention. Often, objective self-awareness is experienced as shyness, and for some people this is a chronic problem. Although objective self-awareness can lead to periods of social sensitivity, this ability to consider oneself from an outside perspective is the beginning of a social identity.
Object relations theory. Places an emphasis on early childhood relationships. While this theory has several versions that differ from each other in emphasis, all the versions have at their core a set of basic assumptions: that the internal wishes, desires, and urges of the child are not as important as his or her developing relationships with significant external others, particularly parents, and that the others, particularly the mother, become internalized by the child in the form of mental objects.
Observer-report data (O-data). The impressions and evaluations others make of a person whom they come into contact with. For every individual, there are dozens of observers who form such impressions. Observer-report methods capitalize on these sources and provide tools for gathering information about a person's personality. Observers may have access to information not attainable through other sources, and multiple observers can be used to assess each individual. Typically, a more valid and reliable assessment of personality can be achieved when multiple observers are used.
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. The obsessive-compulsive personality is preoccupied with order and strives to be perfect. The high need for order can manifest itself in the person's attention to details, however trivial, and fondness for rules, rituals, schedules, and procedures. Another characteristic is a devotion to work at the expense of leisure and friendships. Obsessive-compulsive persons tend to work harder than they need to.
Oedipal conflict. For boys, the main conflict in Freud's phallic stage. It is a boy's unconscious wish to have his mother all to himself by eliminating the father. (Oedipus is a character in a Greek myth who unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother.)
Optimal level of arousal. Hebb believed that people are motivated to reach an optimal level of arousal. If they are underaroused relative to this level, an increase in arousal is rewarding; conversely, if they are overaroused, a decrease in arousal is rewarding. By optimal level of arousal, Hebb meant a level that is "just right" for any given task.
Optimistic bias. Most people generally underestimate their risks, with the average person rating his or her risk as below what is the true average. This has been referred to as the optimistic bias, and it may actually lead people in general to ignore or minimize the risks inherent in life or to take more risks than they should.
Optimistic explanatory style. A style that emphasizes external, temporary, and specific causes of events.
Oral stage. The first stage in Freud's psychosexual stages of development. This stage occurs during the initial 18 months after birth. During this time, the main sources of pleasure and tension reduction are the mouth, lips, and tongue. Adults who still obtain pleasure from "taking in," especially through the mouth (e.g., people who overeat or smoke or talk too much) might be fixated at this stage.
Organized and enduring. Organized means that the psychological traits and mechanisms for a given person are not simply a random collection of elements. Rather, personality is coherent because the mechanisms and traits are linked to one another in an organized fashion. "Enduring" means that the psychological traits are generally consistent over time, particularly in adulthood, and over situations.
Orthogonality. Discussed in terms of circumplex models, orthogonality specifies that traits that are perpendicular to each other on the model (at 90 degrees of separation, or at right angles to each other) are unrelated to each other. In general, the term "orthogonal" is used to describe a zero correlation between traits.
Ought self. A person's understanding of what others want them to be.
Overt and covert integrity measures. Both are self-report measures of integrity used in business and industry. Overt measures include questions directly related to past violations of workplace integrity, such as excessive absenteeism or theft. Covert measures include questions that are indirectly related to integrity, such as questions about personality traits that are correlated with workplace integrity, such as conscientiousness.
Pain tolerance. The degree to which people can tolerate pain, which shows wide differences between persons. Petrie believed that individual differences in pain tolerance originated in the nervous system. She developed a theory that people with low pain tolerance had a nervous system that amplified or augmented the subjective impact of sensory input. In contrast, people who could tolerate pain well were thought to have a nervous system that dampened or reduced the effects of sensory stimulation.
Paranoid personality disorder. The paranoid personality is extremely distrustful of others and sees others as a constant threat. Such a person assumes that others are out to exploit and deceive them, even though there is no good evidence to support this assumption. Paranoid personalities feel that they have been injured by other persons and are preoccupied with doubts about the motivations of others. The paranoid personality often misinterprets social events and holds resentments toward others for slights or perceived insults.
Parsimony. The fewer premises and assumptions a theory contains, the greater its parsimony. This does not mean that simple theories are always better than complex ones. Due to the complexity of the human personality, a complex theory -- that is, one containing many premises -- may ultimately be necessary for adequate personality theories.
Passive genotype-environment correlation. Occurs when parents provide both genes and environment to children, yet the children do nothing to obtain that environment.
Penis envy. The female counterpart of castration anxiety, which occurs during the phallic stage of psychosexual development for girls around 3 to 5 years of age.
People-things dimension. Brian Little's people-things dimension of personality refers to the nature of vocational interests. Those at the "things" end of the dimension like vocations that deal with impersonal tasks -- machines, tools, or materials. Examples include carpenter, auto mechanic, building contractor, tool maker, or farmer. Those scoring toward the "people" end of the dimension prefer social occupations that involve thinking about others, caring for others, or directing others. Examples include high school teacher, social worker, or religious counselor.
Percentage of variance. Individuals vary or are different from each other, and this variability can be partitioned into percentages that are related to separate causes or separate variables. An example is the percentages of variance in some trait that are related to genetics, the shared environment, and the unshared environment. Another example would be the percentage of variance in happiness scores that are related to various demographic variables, such as income, gender, and age.
Perception . One of the three levels of cognition that are of interest to personality psychologists. Perception is the process of imposing order on the information our sense organs take in. Even at the level of perception, what we "see" in the world can be quite different from person to person.
Perceptual sensitivity. The ability to detect subtle stimuli from the environment.
Person-environment interaction. A person's interactions with situations include perceptions, selections, evocations, and manipulations. Perceptions refer to how we "see" or interpret an environment. Selection describes the manner in which we choose situations -- such as our friends, our hobbies, our college classes, and our careers. Evocations refer to the reactions we produce in others, often quite unintentionally. Manipulations refer to the ways in which we attempt to influence others.
Person-situation interaction. The person-situation interaction trait theory states that one has to take into account both particular situations (e.g., frustration) and personality traits (e.g., hot temper) when understanding a behavior.
Personal construct. A belief or concept that summarizes a set of observations or version of reality, unique to an individual, which that person routinely uses to interpret and predict events.
Personal project. A set of relevant actions intended to achieve a goal that a person has selected. Psychologist Brian Little believes that personal projects make natural units for understanding the working of personality, because they reflect how people face up to the serious business of navigating through daily life.
Personality. The set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the environment (including the intrapsychic, physical, and social environment).
Personality coherence. Changes in the manifestations of personality variables over time, even as the underlying characteristics remain stable. The notion of personality coherence includes both elements of continuity and elements of change: continuity in the underlying trait but change in the outward manifestation of that trait. For example, an emotionally unstable child might frequently cry and throw temper tantrums, whereas as an adult such a person might frequently worry and complain. The manifestation might change, even though the trait stays stable.
Personality-descriptive nouns. As described by Saucier, personalitydescriptive nouns differ in their content emphases from personality taxonomies based on adjectives and may be more precise. In Saucier's 2003 work on personality nouns, he discovered eight factors, including "Dumbbell," "Babe/Cutie," "Philosopher," "Lawbreaker," "Joker," and "Jock."
Personality development. The continuities, consistencies, and stabilities in people over time, and the ways in which people change over time.
Personality disorder. An enduring pattern of experience and behavior that differs greatly from the expectations of the individual's culture. The disorder is usually manifest in more than one of the following areas: the way a person thinks, feels, gets along with others, or controls personal behavior. To be classed as a personality disorder, the pattern must not result from drug abuse, medication, or a medical condition such as head trauma.
Personalizing cognition. Processing information by relating it to a similar event in your own life. This style of processing information occurs when people interpret a new event in a personally relevant manner. For example, they might see a car accident and start thinking about the time they were in a car accident.
Personnel selection. Employers sometimes use personality tests to select people especially suitable for a specific job. Alternatively, the employer may want to use personality assessments to deselect, or screen out, people with specific traits. In both cases an employer is concerned with selecting the right person for a specific position from among a pool of applicants.
Perspective taking. A final unfolding of the self-concept during the teen years; the ability to take the perspectives of others, or to see oneself as others do, to step outside of one's self and imagine how one appears to other people. This is why many teenagers go through a period of extreme self-consciousness during this time, focusing much of their energy on how they appear to others.
Pessimistic explanatory style. Puts a person at risk for feelings of helplessness and poor adjustment, and emphasizes internal, stable, and global causes for bad events. It is the opposite of optimistic explanatory style.
Phallic stage. The third stage in Freud's psychosexual stages of development. It occurs between three and five years of age, during which time the child discovers that he has (or she discovers that she does not have) a penis. This stage also includes the awakening of sexual desire directed, according to Freud, toward the parent of the opposite sex.
Phenotypic variance. Observed individual differences, such as in height, weight, or personality.
Physiological needs. The base of Maslow's need hierarchy. These include those needs that are of prime importance to the immediate survival of the individual (the need for food, water, air, sleep) as well as to the longterm survival of the species (the need for sex).
Physiological systems. Organ systems within the body; for example, the nervous system (including the brain and nerves), the cardiac system (including the heart, arteries, and veins), and the musculoskeletal system (including the muscles and bones which make all movements and behaviors possible).
Pleasure principle. The desire for immediate gratification. The id operates according to the pleasure principle; therefore, it does not listen to reason, does not follow logic, has no values or morals (other than immediate gratification), and has very little patience.
Positive illusions. Some researchers believe that part of being happy is to have positive illusions about the self -- an inflated view of one's own characteristics as a good, able, and desirable person -- as this characteristic appears to be part of emotional well-being (Taylor, 1989; Taylor et al., 2000).
Positive reappraisal. A cognitive process whereby a person focuses on the good in what is happening or has happened to them. Folkman and Moskowitz note that forms of this positive coping strategy include seeing opportunities for personal growth or seeing how one's own efforts can benefit other people.
Positive regard. According to Rogers, all children are born wanting to be loved and accepted by their parents and others. He called this inborn need the desire for positive regard.
Positive self-regard. According to Rogers, people who have received positive regard from others develop a sense of positive self-regard; they accept themselves, even their own weaknesses and shortcomings. People with high positive self-regard trust themselves, follow their own interests, and rely on their feelings to guide them to do the right thing.
Possible selves. The notion of possible selves can be viewed in a number of ways, but two are especially important. The first pertains to the desired self -- the person we wish to become. The second pertains to our feared self -- the sort of person we do not wish to become.
Postmodernism. In personality psychology, the notion that reality is a construct, that every person and culture has its own unique version of reality, and that no single version of reality is more valid or more privileged than another.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A syndrome that occurs in some individuals after experiencing or witnessing life-threatening events, such as military combat, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, serious accidents, or violent personal assaults (e.g., rape). Those who suffer from PTSD often relive the trigger experience for years through nightmares or intense flashbacks; have difficulty sleeping; report physical complaints; have flattened emotions; and feel detached or estranged from others. These symptoms can be severe and last long enough to significantly impair the individual's daily life, health, relationships, and career.
Power stress. According to David McClelland, when people do not get their way, or when their power is challenged or blocked, they are likely to show strong stress responses. This stress has been linked to diminished immune function and increased illness in longitudinal studies.
Preconscious. Any information that a person is not presently aware of, but that could easily be retrieved and made conscious, is found in the preconscious mind.
Predictive validity. Whether a test predicts criteria external to the test (also referred to as criterion validity).
Predisposition model. In health psychology, the predisposition model suggests that associations may exist between personality and illness because a third variable is causing them both.
Prefrontal cortex. Area of the brain found to be highly active in the control of emotions. Many people who have committed violent acts exhibit a neurological deficit in the frontal areas, portions of the brain assumed to be responsible for regulating negative emotions.
Press. Need-relevant aspects of the environment. A person's need for intimacy, for example, won't affect that person's behavior without an appropriate environmental press (such as the presence of friendly people).
Prevalence. The total number of cases that are present within a given population during a particular period of time.
Prevention focus . One focus of selfregulation where the person is concerned with protection, safety, and the prevention of negative outcomes and failures. Behaviors with a prevention focus are characterized by vigilance, caution, and attempts to prevent negative outcomes.
Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins. A Supreme Court case in which Ann Hopkins sued her employer, Price Waterhouse, claiming that they had discriminated against her on the basis of sex in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, on the theory that her promotion denial had been based on sexual stereotyping. The Supreme Court accepted the argument that gender stereotyping does exist and that it can create a bias against women in the workplace that is not permissible under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. By court order Ann Hopkins was made a full partner in her accounting firm.
Primary appraisal. According to Lazarus, in order for stress to be evoked for a person, two cognitive events must occur. The first cognitive event, called the primary appraisal, is for the person to perceive that the event is a threat to his or her personal goals. See also secondary appraisal.
Primary process thinking. Thinking without the logical rules of conscious thought or an anchor in reality. Dreams and fantasies are examples of primary process thinking. Although primary process thought does not follow the normal rules of reality (e.g., in dreams people might fly or walk through walls), Freud believed there were principles at work in primary process thought and that these principles could be discovered.
Priming. Technique to make associated material more accessible to conscious awareness than material that is not primed. Research using subliminal primes demonstrates that information can get into the mind, and have some influence on it, without going through conscious experience.
Private self-concept. The development of an inner, private selfconcept is a major but often difficult development in the growth of the selfconcept. It may start out with children developing an imaginary friend, someone only they can see or hear. This imaginary friend may actually be children's first attempt to communicate to their parents that they know there is a secret part, an inner part, to their understanding of their self. Later, children develop the full realization that only they have access to their own thoughts, feelings, and desires, and that no one else can know this part of them unless they choose to tell them.
Problem-focused coping. Thoughts and behaviors that manage or solve the underlying cause of stress. Folkman and Moskowitz note that focusing on solving problems, even little ones, can give a person a positive sense of control even in the most stressful and uncontrollable circumstances.
Projection. A defense mechanism based on the notion that sometimes we see in others those traits and desires that we find most upsetting in ourselves. We literally "project" (i.e., attribute) our own unacceptable qualities onto others.
Projective hypothesis. The idea that what a person "sees" in an ambiguous figure, such as an inkblot, reflects his or her personality. People are thought to project their own personalities into what they report seeing in such an ambiguous stimulus.
Projective techniques. A person is presented with an ambiguous stimulus and is then asked to impose some order on the stimulus, such as asking what the person sees in an inkblot. What the person sees is interpreted to reveal something about his or her personality. The person presumably "projects" his or her concerns, conflicts, traits, and ways of seeing or dealing with the world onto the ambiguous stimulus. The most famous projective technique for assessing personality is the Rorschach inkblot test.
Promotion focus . One focus of selfregulation whereby the person is concerned with advancement, growth, and accomplishments. Behaviors with a promotion focus are characterized by eagerness, approach, and "going for the gold."
Psychic energy. According to Sigmund Freud, a source of energy within each person that motivates him or her to do one thing and not another. In Freud's view, it is this energy that motivates all human activity.
Psychoanalysis. A theory of personality and a method of psychotherapy (a technique for helping individuals who are experiencing some mental disorder or even relatively minor problems with living). Psychoanalysis can be thought of as a theory about the major components and mechanisms of personality, as well as a method for deliberately restructuring personality.
Psychological mechanisms. Similar to traits, except that mechanisms refer more to the processes of personality. For example, most personality mechanisms involve some information-processing activity. A psychological mechanism may make people more sensitive to certain kinds of information from the environment (input), may make them more likely to think about specific options (decision rules), or may guide their behavior toward certain categories of action (outputs).
Psychological traits. Characteristics that describe ways in which people are unique or different from or similar to each other. Psychological traits include all sorts of aspects of persons that are psychologically meaningful and are stable and consistent aspects of personality.
Psychological types. A term growing out of Carl Jung's theory implying that people come in types or distinct categories of personality, such as "extraverted types." This view is not widely endorsed by academic or research-oriented psychologists because most personality traits are normally distributed in the population and are best conceived as dimensions of difference, not categories.
Psychopathology. The study of mental disorders that combines statistical, social, and psychological approaches to diagnosing individual abnormality.
Psychopathy. A term often used synonymously with the antisocial personality disorder. It is used to refer to individual differences in antisocial characteristics.
Psychosexual stage theory. According to Freud, all persons pass through a set series of stages in personality development. At each of the first three stages, young children must face and resolve specific conflicts, which revolve around ways of obtaining a type of sexual gratification. Children seek sexual gratification at each stage by investing libidinal energy in a specific body part. Each stage in the developmental process is named after the body part in which sexual energy is invested.
Psychosocial conflicts. As posited by Erik Erikson, psychosocial conflicts occur throughout a person's lifetime and contribute to the ongoing development of personality. He defined psychosocial conflicts as the crises of learning to trust our parents, learning to be autonomous from them, and learning from them how to act as an adult.
Race norming or gender norming. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 forbids employers from using different norms or cutoff scores for different groups of people. For example, it would be illegal for a company to set a higher threshold for women than men on their selection test.
Random assignment. Assignment in an experiment that is conducted randomly. If an experiment has manipulation between groups, random assignment of participants to experimental groups helps ensure that each group is equivalent.
Rank order stability. Maintaining one's relative position within a group over time. Between ages 14 and 20, for example, most people become taller. But the rank order of heights tends to remain fairly stable because this form of development affects all people pretty much the same. The tall people at 14 fall generally toward the tall end of the distribution at age 20. The same can apply to personality traits. If people tend to maintain their position on dominance or extraversion relative to the other members of the group over time, then we say that there is high rank order stability to the personality characteristic. Conversely, if people fail to maintain their rank order, we say that the group has displayed rank order instability or rank order change.
Rank order stability. The maintenance of individual position within the group.
Rationalization. A defense mechanism that involves generating acceptable reasons for outcomes that might otherwise be unacceptable. The goal is to reduce anxiety by coming up with an explanation for some event that is easier to accept than the "real" reason.
Reaction formation. A defense mechanism that refers to an attempt to stifle the expression of an unacceptable urge; a person may continually display a flurry of behavior that indicates the opposite impulse. Reaction formation makes it possible for psychoanalysts to predict that sometimes people will do exactly the opposite of what you might otherwise think they would do. It also alerts us to be sensitive to instances when a person is doing something in excess. One of the hallmarks of reaction formation is excessive behavior.
Reactive genotype-environment correlation. Occurs when parents (or others) respond to children differently depending on their genotype.
Reactively heritable. Traits that are secondary consequences of heritable traits.
Reality principle. In psychoanalysis, it is the counterpart of the pleasure principle. It refers to guiding behavior according to the demands of reality and relies on the strengths of the ego to provide such guidance.
Reciprocal causality. The notion that causality can move in two directions; for example, helping others can lead to happiness, and happiness can lead one to be more helpful to others.
Reducer/augmenter theory. Petrie's reducer/augmenter theory refers to the dimension along which people differ in their reaction to sensory stimulation; some appear to reduce sensory stimulation, some appear to augment stimulation.
Reinforcement sensitivity theory. Gray's biological theory of personality. Based on recent brain function research with animals, Gray constructed a model of human personality based on two hypothesized biological systems in the brain: the behavioral activation system (which is responsive to incentives, such as cues for reward, and regulates approach behavior) and the behavioral inhibition system (which is responsive to cues for punishment, frustration, and uncertainty).
Reliability. The degree to which an obtained measure represents the "true" level of the trait being measured. For example, if a person has a "true" IQ of 115, then a perfectly reliable measure of IQ will yield a score of 115 for that person. Moreover, a truly reliable measure of IQ would yield the same score of 115 each time it was administered to the person. Personality psychologists prefer reliable measures so that the scores accurately reflect each person's true level of the personality characteristic being measured.
Repeated measurement. A way to estimate the reliability of a measure. There are different forms of repeated measurement, and hence different versions of reliability. A common procedure is to repeat the same measurement over time, say at an interval of a month apart, for the same sample of persons. If the two tests are highly correlated between the first and second testing, yielding similar scores for most people, then the resulting measure is said to have high test-retest reliability.
Repetition Compulsion. The idea that people recreate or repeat their interpersonal problems over and over with different people in their lives. This notion underlies the psychoanalytic transference, wherein the patient recreates the interpersonal difficulties they have in their everyday life with the analyst during the course of their treatment.
Repression . One of the first defense mechanisms discussed by Freud; refers to the process of preventing unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or urges from reaching conscious awareness.
Resistance. When a patient's defenses are threatened by a probing psychoanalyst, the patient may unconsciously set up obstacles to progress. This stage of psychoanalysis is called resistance. Resistance signifies that important unconscious material is coming to the fore. The resistance itself becomes an integral part of the interpretations the analyst offers to the patient.
Resistance stage. The second stage in Selye's general adaptation syndrome (GAS). Here the body is using its resources at an above-average rate, even though the immediate fight-orflight response has subsided. Stress is being resisted, but the effort is making demands on the person's resources and energy.
Response sets. The tendency of some people to respond to the questions on some basis that is unrelated to the question content. Sometimes this is referred to as noncontent responding. One example is the response set of acquiescence or yea saying. This is the tendency to simply agree with the questionnaire items, regardless of the content of those items.
Responsibility training. Life experiences that provide opportunities to learn to behave responsibly, such as having younger siblings to take care of while growing up. Moderates the gender difference in impulsive behaviors associated with need for power.
Restricted sexual strategy. According to Gangestad and Simpson (1990), a woman seeking a high-investing mate would adopt a restricted sexual strategy marked by delayed intercourse and prolonged courtship. This would enable her to assess the man's level of commitment, detect the existence of prior commitments to other women and/or children, and simultaneously signal to the man the woman's sexual fidelity and, hence, assure him of his paternity of future offspring.
Reward dependence. In Cloninger's tridimensional personality model, the personality trait of reward dependence is associated with low levels of norepinephrine. People high on this trait are persistent; they continue to act in ways that produced reward. They work long hours, put a lot of effort into their work, and will often continue striving after others have given up.
Right to privacy. Perhaps the largest issue of legal concern for employers using personality testing is privacy. The right to privacy in employment settings grows out of the broader concept of the right to privacy. Cases that charge an invasion-of-privacy claim against an employer can be based on the federal constitution, state constitutions and statutes, and common law.
Rite of passage. Some cultures and religions institute a rite of passage ritual, usually around adolescence, which typically is a ceremony that initiates a child into adulthood. After such ceremonies, the adolescent is sometimes given a new name, bestowing a new adult identity.
Rod and Frame Test (RFT). An apparatus to research the cues that people use in judging orientation in space. The participant sits in a darkened room and is instructed to watch a glowing rod surrounded by a glowing square frame. The experimenter can adjust the tilt of the rod, the frame, and the participant's chair. The participant's task is to adjust the rod by turning a dial so that the rod is perfectly upright. To do this accurately, the participant has to ignore cues in the visual field in which the rod appears. This test measures the personality dimension of field dependence-independence.
Rumination. Repeatedly focusing on one's symptoms or distress (e.g., "Why do I continue to feel so bad about myself?" or "Why doesn't my boss like me?"). Rumination is a key contributor to women's greater experience of depressive symptoms.
Safety needs. The second to lowest level of Maslow's need hierarchy. These needs have to do with shelter and security, such as having a place to live and being free from the threat of danger. Maslow believed that building a life that was orderly, structured, and predictable also fell under safety needs.
Schizoid personality disorder. The schizoid personality is split off (schism) or detached from normal social relations. The schizoid person simply appears to have no need or desire for intimate relationships or even friendships. Family life usually does not mean much to such people, and they do not obtain satisfaction from being part of a group. They have few or no close friends, and they would rather spend time by themselves than with others.
Schizotypal personality disorder. Whereas the schizoid person is indifferent to social interaction, the schizotypal personality is acutely uncomfortable in social relationships. Schizotypes are anxious in social situations, especially if those situations involve strangers. Schizotypal persons also feel that they are different from others, or that they do not fit in with the group. They tend to be suspicious of others and are seen as odd and eccentric.
Scientific standards for evaluating personality theories. The five key standards are comprehensiveness, heuristic value, testability, parsimony, and compatibility and integration across domains and levels.
Secondary appraisal. According to Lazarus, in order for stress to be evoked for a person, two cognitive events must occur. The second necessary cognitive event, called the secondary appraisal, is when the person concludes that he or she does not have the resources to cope with the demands of the threatening event. See primary appraisal.
Secondary process thinking. The ego engages in secondary process thinking, which refers to the development and devising of strategies for problem solving and obtaining satisfaction. Often this process involves taking into account the constraints of physical reality, about when and how to express some desire or urge. See primary process thinking.
Secure relationship style. In Hazan and Shaver's secure relationship style, the adult has few problems developing satisfying friendships and relationships. Secure people trust others and develop bonds with others.
Securely attached. Securely attached infants in Ainsworth's strange situation stoically endured the separation and went about exploring the room, waiting patiently, or even approaching the stranger and sometimes wanting to be held by the stranger. When the mother returned, these infants were glad to see her, typically interacted with her for a while, then went back to exploring the new environment. They seemed confident the mother would return. Approximately 66 percent of infants fall into this category.
Selective breeding . One method of doing behavior genetic research. Researchers might identify a trait and then see if they can selectively breed animals to possess that trait. This can occur only if the trait has a genetic basis. For example, dogs that possess certain desired characteristics, such as a sociable disposition, might be selectively bred to see if this disposition can be increased in frequency among offspring. Traits that are based on learning cannot be selectively bred for.
Selective placement. If adopted children are placed with adoptive parents who are similar to their birth parents, this may inflate the correlations between the adopted children and their adoptive parents. In this case, the resulting inflated correlations would artificially inflate estimates of environmental influence because the correlation would appear to be due to the environment provided by the adoptive parent. There does not seem to be selective placement, and so this potential problem is not a problem in actual studies (Plomin et al., 1990).
Self-actualization need. Maslow defines self-actualization as becoming "more and more what one idiosyncratically is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming" (1970). The pinnacle of Maslow's need hierarchy is the need for self-actualization. Maslow was concerned with describing selfactualization; the work of Carl Rogers was focused on how people achieve self-actualization.
Self-attributed motivation. McClelland argued that self-attributed motivation is primarily a person's self-awareness of his or her own conscious motives. These selfattributed motives reflect a person's conscious awareness about what is important to him or her. As such, they represent part of the individual's conscious self-understanding. McClelland has argued that self-attributed motives predict responses to immediate and specific situations and to choice behaviors and attitudes. See implicit motivation.
Self-complexity. The view that each of us has many roles and many aspects to our self-concepts. However, for some of us, our self-concepts are rather simple, being made up of just a few large categories. Other people may have a more complex or differentiated self-concept. For people with high selfcomplexity, a failure in any one aspect of the self (such as a relationship that breaks apart) is buffered because there are many other aspects of the self that are unaffected by that event. However, for persons low in self-complexity, the same event might be seen as devastating because they define themselves mainly in terms of this one aspect.
Self-concept. The way a person sees, understands, and defines himself or herself.
Self-efficacy. A concept related to optimism and developed by Bandura. The belief that one can behave in ways necessary to achieve some desired outcome. Self-efficacy also refers to the confidence one has in one's ability to perform the actions needed to achieve some specific outcome.
Self-enhancement. The tendency to describe and present oneself using positive or socially valued attributes, such as kind, understanding, intelligent, and industrious. Tendencies toward self-enhancement tend to be stable over time, and hence are enduring features of personality (Baumeister, 1997).
Self-esteem. The extent to which one perceives oneself as relatively close to being the person one wants to be and/or as relatively distant from being the kind of person one does not want to be, with respect to person-qualities one positively and negatively values (Block & Robbins, 1993).
Self-esteem variability. An individual difference characteristic referring to how much a person's self-esteem fluctuates or changes over time. It is uncorrelated with mean level of self-esteem.
Self-fulfilling prophecy. The tendency for a belief to become reality. For example, a person who thinks he or she is a "total failure" will often act like a total failure and may even give up trying to do better, thus creating a selffulfilling prophecy.
Self-guides. The ideal self and the ought self act as self-guides, providing the standards that one uses to organize self-relevant information and motivate appropriate behaviors to bring the self in line with these self-guides.
Self-handicapping. Situations in which people deliberately do things that increase the probability that they will fail.
Self-report data (S-data). Information a person verbally reveals about themselves, often based on questionnaire or interview. Self-report data can be obtained through a variety of means, including interviews that pose questions to a person, periodic reports by a person to record the events as they happen, and questionnaires of various sorts.
Self-schema (schemata is plural, schema is singular). The specific knowledge structure, or cognitive representation, of the self-concept. Self-schemas are the network of associated building blocks of the self-concept.
Self-serving bias. The common tendency for people to take credit for success yet to deny responsibility for failure.
Sensation seeking. A dimension of personality postulated to have a physiological basis. It refers to the tendency to seek out thrilling and exciting activities, to take risks, and to avoid boredom.
Sensory deprivation. Often done in a sound-proof chamber containing water in which a person floats, in total darkness, such that sensory input is reduced to a minimum. Researchers use sensory deprivation chambers to see what happens when a person is deprived of sensory input.
Separation anxiety. Children experiencing separation anxiety react negatively to separation from their mother (or primary caretaker), becoming agitated and distressed when their mothers leave. Most primates exhibit separation anxiety.
Serotonin. A neurotransmitter that plays a role in depression and other mood disorders. Drugs such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil block the reuptake of serotonin, leaving it in the synapse longer, leading depressed persons to feel less depressed.
Sex differences. An average difference between women and men on certain characteristics such as height, body fat distribution, or personality characteristics, with no prejudgment about the cause of the difference.
Sexual selection. The evolution of characteristics because of their mating benefits rather than because of their survival benefits. According to Darwin, sexual selection takes two forms: intrasexual competition and intersexual selection.
Sexually dimorphic. Species that show high variance in reproduction within one sex tend to be highly sexually dimorphic, or highly different in size and structure. The more intense the effective polygyny, the more dimorphic the sexes are in size and form (Trivers, 1985).
Shared environmental influences. Features of the environment that siblings share; for example, the number of books in the home, the presence or absence of a TV and VCR, quality and quantity of the food in the home, the values and attitudes of the parent, and the schools, church, synagogue, or temple the parents send the children to.
Shyness. A tendency to feel tense, worried, or anxious during social interactions, or even when anticipating a social interaction (Addison & Schmidt, 1999). Shyness is a common phenomenon, and more than 90 percent of the population reports experiencing shyness at some point during their lives (Zimbardo, 1977). Some people, however, seem to be dispositionally shy -- they tend to feel awkward in most social situations and so tend to avoid situations in which they will be forced to interact with people.
Situational selection. A form of interactionism that refers to the tendency to choose or select the situations in which one finds oneself. In other words, people typically do not find themselves in random situations in their natural lives. Instead, they select or choose the situations in which they will spend their time.
Situational specificity. The view that behavior is determined by aspects of the situation, such as reward contingencies.
Situationism. A theoretical position in personality psychology that states that situational differences, rather than underlying personality traits, determine behavior. For example, how friendly a person will behave or how much need for achievement a person displays will depend on the situation, not the traits a person possesses.
Skin conductance. The degree to which the skin carries (or conducts) electricity, which locate depends on the amount of water present in the skin.
Social and cultural domain. Personality affects, and is affected by, the social and cultural context in which it is found. Different cultures may bring out different facets of our personalities in manifest behavior. The capacities we display may depend to a large extent on what is acceptable in and encouraged by our culture. At the level of individual differences within cultures, personality plays itself out in the social sphere. One important social sphere concerns relations between men and women.
Social anxiety. Discomfort related to social interactions, or even to the anticipation of social interactions. Socially anxious persons appear to be overly concerned about what others will think. Baumeister and Tice propose that social anxiety is a species-typical adaptation that functions to prevent social exclusion.
Social attention. The goal and payback for surgent or extraverted behavior. By being the center of attention, the extravert seeks to gain the approval of others and, in many cases, through tacit approval controls or directs others.
Social categories. The cognitive component that describes the ways individuals classify other people into groups, such as "cads" and "dads." This cognitive component is one aspect of stereotyping.
Social class. Variability between people based primarily on economic, educational, and employment variables. In terms of within-culture variation, social class can have an effect on personality (Kohn et al., 1990). For example, lower-class parents tend to emphasize the importance of obedience to authority, whereas higher-status parents tend to emphasize the importance of self-direction and not conforming to the dictates of others.
Social comparison. When people compare their skills and abilities with others.
Social desirability. Socially desirable responding refers to the tendency to answer items in such a way as to come across as socially attractive or likable. People responding in this manner want to make a good impression, to appear to be well adjusted, to be a "good citizen."
Social identity. Identity refers to the social aspects of the self, that part of ourselves we use to create an impression, to let other people know who we are and what can be expected from us. Identity is different from the self-concept because identity refers mainly to aspects of the self that are socially observable or publicly available outward, such as ethnicity or gender or age. Nevertheless, the social aspects of identity can become important aspects of the self-concept.
Social learning theory. A general theoretical view emphasizing the ways in which the presence of others influence people's behavior, thoughts, or feelings. Often combined with learning principles, the emphasis is on how people acquire beliefs, values, skills, attitudes, and patterns of behavior through social experiences.
Social power. Horney, in reinterpreting Freud's concept of penis envy, taught that the penis was a symbol of social power rather than some organ that women actually desired. Horney wrote that girls realize, at an early age, that they are being denied social power because of their gender. She argued that girls did not really have a secret desire to become boys. Rather, she taught, girls desire the social power and preferences given to boys in the culture at that time.
Social role theory. According to social role theory, sex differences originate because men and women are distributed differentially into occupational and family roles. Men, for example, are expected to assume the breadwinning role. Women are expected to assume the housewife role. Over time, children presumably learn the behaviors that are linked to these roles.
Socialization theory. The notion that boys and girls become different because boys are reinforced by parents, teachers, and the media for being "masculine," and girls for being "feminine." This is probably the most widely held theory of sex differences in personality.
Sociosexual orientation. According to Gangestad and Simpson's theory of sociosexual orientation, men and women will pursue one of two alternative sexual relationship strategies. The first mating strategy entails seeking a single committed relationship characterized by monogamy and tremendous investment in children. The second sexual strategy is characterized by a greater degree of promiscuity, more partner switching, and less investment in children.
Spreading activation. Roediger and McDermott applied the spreading activation model of memory to account for false memories. This model holds that mental elements (like words or images) are stored in memory along with associations to other elements in memory. For example, doctor is associated with nurse in most people's memories because of the close connection or similarity between these concepts. Consequently, a person recalling some medical event might falsely recall a nurse rather than a doctor doing something.
Stability coefficients. The correlations between the same measures obtained at two different points in time. Stability coefficients are also called test-retest reliability coefficients.
Stage model of development. Implies that people go through stages in a certain order, and that a specific issue characterizes each stage.
State levels. A concept that can be applied to motives and emotions, state levels refer to a person's momentary amount of a specific need or emotion, which can fluctuate with specific circumstances.
Statistical approach. Having a large number of people rate themselves on certain items, and then employing a statistical procedure to identify groups or clusters of items that go together. The goal of the statistical approach is to identify the major dimensions or "coordinates" of the personality map.
Statistically significant. Refers to the probability of finding the results of a research study by chance alone. The generally accepted level of statistical significance is 5 percent, meaning that, if a study were repeated 100 times, the particular result reported would be found by chance only 5 times.
Strange situation procedure. Developed by Ainsworth and her colleagues for studying separation anxiety and for identifying differences between children in how they react to separation from their mothers. In this procedure, a mother and her baby come into a laboratory room. The mother sits down and the child is free to explore the room. After a few minutes an unfamiliar though friendly adult enters the room. The mother gets up and leaves the baby alone with this adult. After a few minutes, the mother comes back into the room and the stranger leaves. The mother is alone with the baby for several more minutes. All the while, the infant is being videotaped so that his or her reactions can later be analyzed.
Stress. The subjective feeling that is produced by uncontrollable and threatening events. Events that cause stress are called stressors.
Stressors. Events that cause stress. They appear to have several common attributes: (1) stressors are extreme in some manner, in the sense that they produce a state of feeling overwhelmed or overloaded, that one just cannot take it much longer; (2) stressors often produce opposing tendencies in us, such as wanting and not wanting some activity or object, as in wanting to study but also wanting to put it off as long as possible; and (3) stressors are uncontrollable, outside of our power to influence, such as the exam that we cannot avoid.
Strong situation. Certain situations that prompt similar behavior from everyone.
Structured and unstructured. Self-report can take a variety of forms, ranging from open-ended questions to forced-choice true or false questions. Sometimes these are referred to as unstructured (open-ended, such as "Tell me about the parties you like the most") and structured ("I like loud and crowded parties"; answer true or false) personality tests.
Style of emotional life. How emotions are experienced. For example, saying that someone is high on mood variability is to say something about the style of his or her emotional life, that his or her emotions change frequently. Compare to the content of emotional life.
Sublimation. A defense mechanism that refers to the channeling of unacceptable sexual or aggressive instincts into socially desired activities. For Freud, sublimation is the most adaptive defense mechanism. A common example is going out to chop wood when you are angry rather than acting on that anger or even engaging in other less adaptive defense mechanisms such as displacement.
Subliminal perception. Perception that bypasses conscious awareness, usually achieved through very brief exposure times, typically less than 30 milliseconds.
Superego. That part of personality that internalizes the values, morals, and ideals of society. The superego makes us feel guilty, ashamed, or embarrassed when we do something wrong, and makes us feel pride when we do something right. The superego sets moral goals and ideals of perfection and is the source of our judgments that something is good or bad. It is what some people refer to as conscience. The main tool of the superego in enforcing right and wrong is the emotion of guilt.
Surgency. A cluster of behaviors including approach behavior, high activity, and impulsivity.
Symbols. Psychoanalysts interpret dreams by deciphering how unacceptable impulses and urges are transformed by the unconscious into symbols in the dream. (For example, parents may be represented as a king and queen; children may be represented as small animals.)
Sympathetic Nervous System. That branch of the autonomic nervous system that supports the fight-or-flight response. The sympathetic nervous system is activated when a person feels threatened or experiences strong emotions such as anxiety, guilt, or anger.
Synonym frequency. In the lexical approach, synonym frequency means that if an attribute has not merely one or two trait adjectives to describe it, but rather six, eight, or ten words, then it is a more important dimension of individual difference.
Systemizing. The drive to comprehend how things work, how systems are built, and how inputs into systems produce outputs.
Taxonomy. A technical name given to a classification scheme -- the identification and naming of groups within a particular subject field.
Telemetry. The process by which electrical signals are sent from electrodes to a polygraph using radio waves instead of wires.
Temperament. Individual differences that emerge very early in life, are likely to have a heritable basis, and are often involved in behaviors linked with emotionality or arousability.
Tender-mindedness. A nurturant proclivity, having empathy for others, and being sympathetic with those who are downtrodden.
Test data (T-data). A common source of personality-relevant information comes from standardized tests (T-data). In these measures, participants are placed in a standardized testing situation to see if different people react or behave differently to an identical situation. Taking an exam, like the Scholastic Aptitude Test, would be one example of T-data as a measure used to predict success in school.
Testability. The capacity to render precise predictions that scientists can test empirically. Generally, the testability of a theory is dependent upon the precision of its predictions. If it is impossible to test a theory empirically, the theory is generally discarded.
Thanatos. Freud postulated that humans have a fundamental instinct toward destruction and that this instinct is often manifest in aggression toward others. The two instincts were usually referred to as libido, for the life instinct, and thanatos, for the death instinct. While thanatos was considered to be the death instinct, Freud also used this term to refer to any urge to destroy, harm, or aggress against others or oneself.
Thematic apperception test. Developed by Murray and Morgan, this is a projective assessment technique that consists of a set of black and white ambiguous pictures. The person is shown each picture and is told to write a short story interpreting what is happening in each picture. The psychologist then codes the stories for the presence of imagery associated with particular motives. The TAT remains a popular personality assessment technique today.
Theoretical approach. The theoretical approach to identifying important dimensions of individual differences starts with a theory, which then determines which variables are important. The theoretical strategy dictates in a specific manner which variables are important to measure.
Theoretical bridge. The connection between two different variables (for instance, dimensions of personality and physiological variables).
Theoretical constructs. Hypothetical internal entities useful in describing and explaining differences between people 42
Theories and beliefs. Beliefs are often personally useful and crucially important to some people, but they are based on leaps of faith, not on reliable facts and systematic observations. Theories, on the other hand, are based on systematic observations that can be repeated by others and that yield similar conclusions.
Third variable problem . One reason correlations can never prove casuality. It could be that two variables are correlated because some third, unknown variable is causing both.
Time urgency. A sub-trait in the Type A personality. Type A persons hate wasting time. They are always in a hurry and feel under pressure to get the most done in the least amount of time. Often they do two things at once, such as eat while reading a book. Waiting is stressful for them.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A specific section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that requires employers to provide equal employment opportunities to all persons, regardless of sex, race, color, religion, or national origin.
Trait-descriptive adjectives. Words that describe traits, attributes of a person that are reasonably characteristic of the individual and perhaps even enduring over time.
Trait levels. A concept that can be applied to motives and emotions, trait levels refer to a person's average tendency, or his or her set point, on the specific motive or emotion. The idea is that people differ from each other in their typical or average amount of specific motives or emotions.
Transactional model. In the transactional model of personality and health, personality has three potential effects: (1) it can influence coping, as in the interactional model; (2) it can influence how the person appraises or interprets the events; and (3) it can influence exposure to the events themselves.
Transference. A term from psychoanalytic therapy. It refers to the patient reacting to the analyst as if he or she were an important figure from the patient's own life. The patient displaces past or present (negative and positive) feelings toward someone from his or her own life onto the analyst. The idea behind transference is that the interpersonal problems between a patient and the important people in his or her life will be reenacted in the therapy session with the analyst. This is a specific form of the mechanism of evocation, as described in the material on person-situation interaction.
Transmitted culture. Representations originally in the mind of one or more persons that are transmitted to the minds of other people. Three examples of cultural variants that appear to be forms of transmitted culture are differences in moral values, self-concept, and levels of self-enhancement. Specific patterns of morality, such as whether it is considered appropriate to eat beef or wrong for a wife to go to the movies without her husband, are specific to certain cultures. These moral values appear to be transmitted from person to person within the culture.
Traumatic stress. A massive instance of acute stress, the effects of which can reverberate within an individual for years or even a lifetime. It differs from acute stress mainly in terms of its potential to lead to posttraumatic stress disorder.
Tridimensional personality model. Cloninger's tridimensional personality model ties three specific personality traits to levels of the three neurotransmitters. The first trait is called novelty seeking and is based on low levels of dopamine. The second personality trait is harm avoidance, which he associates with low levels of serotonin. The third trait is reward dependence, which Cloninger sees as related to low levels of norepinephrine.
Trust. The proclivity to cooperate with others, giving others the benefit of the doubt, and viewing one's fellow human beings as basically good at heart.
Twin studies. Twin studies estimate heritability by gauging whether identical twins, who share 100 percent of their genes, are more similar to each other than fraternal twins, who share only 50 percent of their genes. Twin studies, and especially studies of twins reared apart, have received tremendous media attention.
Type A personality. In the 1960s, cardiologists Friedman and Rosenman began to notice that many of their coronary heart disease patients had similar personality traits -- they were competitive, aggressive workaholics, were ambitious overachievers, were often hostile, were almost always in a hurry, and rarely relaxed or took it easy. Friedman and Rosenman referred to this as the Type A personality, formally defined as "an action-emotion complex that can be observed in any person who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and if required to do so, against the opposing efforts of other things or other persons" (1974). As assessed by personality psychologists, Type A refers to a syndrome of several traits: (1) achievement motivation and competitiveness; (2) time urgency; and (3) hostility and aggressiveness.
Type D personality. A dimension along which individuals differ on two underlying traits: (1) negative affectivity, or the tendency to frequently experience negative emotions across time and situations (e.g., tension, worry, irritability, and anxiety); and (2) social inhibition, or the tendency to inhibit the expression of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in social interactions. People high on both of these traits are said to have the Type D personality, which places them at risk for poor outcomes once they develop cardiac disease.
Unconditional positive regard. The receipt of affection, love, or respect without having done anything to earn it. For example, a parent's love for a child should be unconditional.
Unconscious. The unconscious mind is that part of the mind about which the conscious mind has no awareness.
Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. The purpose of the guidelines is to provide a set of principles for employee selection that meet the requirements of all federal laws, especially those that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. They provide details on the proper use of personality tests and other selection procedures in employment settings.
Unrestricted mating strategy. According to Gangestad and Simpson (1990), a woman seeking a man for the quality of his genes is not interested in his level of commitment to her. If the man is pursuing a short-term sexual strategy, any delay on the woman's part may deter him from seeking sexual intercourse with her, thus defeating the main adaptive reason for her mating strategy.
Validity. The extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure.
Validity coefficients. The correlations between a trait measure and measures of different criteria that should relate to the trait. An example might be the correlation between a self-report measure of agreeableness, and the person's roommate reports of how agreeable they are.
Violation of desire. According to the violation of desire theory of conflict between the sexes, breakups should occur more frequently when one's desires are violated than when they are fulfilled (Buss, 2003). Following this theory, we would predict that people married to others who lack desired characteristics, such as dependability and emotional stability, will more frequently dissolve the marriage.
Ward's Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio. Ward's Cove Packing Co. was a salmon cannery operating in Alaska. In 1974 the non-White cannery workers started legal action against the company, alleging that a variety of the company's hiring and promotion practices were responsible for racial stratification in the workplace. The claim was advanced under the disparate impact portion of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In 1989 the Supreme Court decided on the case in favor of Ward's Cove. The court decided that, even if employees can prove discrimination, the hiring practices may still be considered legal if they serve "legitimate employment goals of the employer." This decision allowed disparate impact if it was in the service of the company. This case prompted Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which contained several important modifications to Title VII of the original act. Most important, however, the new act shifted the burden of proof onto the employer by requiring that it must prove a close connection between disparate impact and the ability to actually perform the job in question.
Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic relativity. In 1956, Whorf proposed the theory that language creates thought and experience. According to this hypothesis, the ideas that people can think and the emotions they feel are constrained by the need locate words that happen to exist in their language and culture and with which they use to express them.
Wish fulfillment. If an urge from the id requires some external object or person, and that object or person is not available, the id may create a mental image or fantasy of that object or person to satisfy its needs. Mental energy is invested in that fantasy and the urge is temporarily satisfied. This process is called wish fulfillment, whereby something unavailable is conjured up and the image of it is temporarily satisfying.
Within-culture variation. Variations within a particular culture that can arise from several sources, including differences in growing up in various socioeconomic classes, differences in historical era, or differences in the racial context in which one grows up.
Within the individual. The important sources of personality reside within the individual -- that is, people carry the sources of their personality inside themselves -- and hence are stable over time and consistent over situations.
Working models. Early experiences and reactions of the infant to the parents, particularly the mother, become what Bowlby called "working models" for later adult relationships. These working models are internalized in the form of unconscious expectations about relationships.
Xenophobia. The fear of strangers. Characteristics that were probably adaptive in ancestral environments, such as xenophobia, are not necessarily adaptive in modern environments. Some of the personality traits that make up human nature may be vestigial adaptations to an ancestral environment that no longer exists.

Personality Psychology 6e by Larsen, Buss

Navigation menu

Personal tools

Namespaces

Variants

Views

More

Search

Navigation

Tools