Chp. 15 - Personality

An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling & acting

Attributes our thoughts & actions to unconscious motives & conflicts

Emphasizes free will, personal growth, resilience & achievement of human potential

A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel & act, as assessed by self-report inventories & peer reports

Views behavior as influence by the interaction between persons (and their thinking) & their social context

How our environment controls us

A single subject is studied in great detail

Technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of people, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of them

Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use)

A projective test in which people express their inner feelings & interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes

Giving priority to one's own goals over group goals & defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications

Giving priority to the goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) & defining one's identity accordingly

Believed behavior is driven by childhood social tensions

Developed social-cognitive perspective

Constructed "Big Five" dimensions of personality