| personality | The pattern of enduring characteristics that produce consistency and individuality in a given person.
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| psychodynamic approaches to personality | Approaches that assume that personality is motivated by inner forces and conflicts about which people have little awareness and over which they have no control.
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| psychoanalytic theory | Freud's theory that unconscious forces act as determinants of personality.
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| unconscious | A part of the personality that contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, drives, and instincts of which the individual is not aware.
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| id | The raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality whose sole purpose is to reduce tension created by primitive drives related to hunger, sex, aggression, and irrational impulses.
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| ego | The part of the personality that provides a buffer between the id and the outside world.
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| superego | According to Freud, the final personality structure to develop; it represents the rights and wrongs of society as handed down by a person's parents, teachers, and other important figures.
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| psychosexual stages | Developmental periods that children pass through during which they encounter conflicts between the demands of society and their own sexual urges.
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| fixations | Conflicts or concerns that persist beyond the developmental period in which they first occur.
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| oral stage | According to Freud, a stage from birth to age 12 to 18 months, in which an infant's center of pleasure is the mouth.
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| anal stage | According to Freud, a stage from age 12 to 18 months to 3 years of age, in which a child's pleasure is centered on the anus.
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| phallic stage | According to Freud, a period beginning around age 3 during which a child's pleasure focuses on the genitals.
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| Oedipal conflict | A child's sexual interest in his or her opposite-sex parent, typically resolved through identification with the same-sex parent.
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| identification | The process of wanting to be like another person as much as possible, imitating that person's behavior and adopting similar beliefs and values.
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| latency period | According to Freud, the period between the phallic stage and puberty during which children's sexual concerns are temporarily put aside.
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| genital stage | According to Freud, the period from puberty until death, marked by mature sexual behavior (that is, sexual intercourse).
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| defense mechanisms | In Freudian theory, unconscious strategies that people use to reduce anxiety by concealing the source of it from themselves and others.
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| repression | The primary defense mechanism in which unacceptable or unpleasant id impulses are pushed back into the unconscious.
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| neo-Freudian psychoanalysts | Psychoanalysts who were trained in traditional Freudian theory but who later rejected some of its major points.
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| collective unconscious | According to Jung, a common set of ideas, feelings, images, and symbols that we inherit from our ancestors, the whole human race, and even animal ancestors from the distant past.
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| archetypes | According to Jung, universal symbolic representations of a particular person, object, or experience (such as good and evil).
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| inferiority complex | According to Adler, a problem affecting adults who have not been able to overcome the feelings of inferiority that they developed as children, when they were small and limited in their knowledge about the world.
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| trait theory | A model of personality that seeks to identify the basic traits necessary to describe personality.
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| traits | Consistent personality characteristics and behaviors displayed in different situations.
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| social cognitive approaches to personality | Theories that emphasize the influence of a person's cognitions-thoughts, feelings, expectations, and values-as well as observation of others' behavior, in determining personality.
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| self-efficacy | Belief in one's personal capabilities. Self-efficacy underlies people's faith in their ability to carry out a particular behavior or produce a desired outcome.
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| self-esteem | The component of personality that encompasses our positive and negative self-evaluations.
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| biological and evolutionary approaches to personality | Theories that suggest that important components of personality are inherited.
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| temperament | The innate disposition that emerges early in life.
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| humanistic approaches to personality | Theories that emphasize people's innate goodness and desire to achieve higher levels of functioning.
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| self-actualization | A state of self-fulfillment in which people realize their highest potential in their own unique way.
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| unconditional positive regard | An attitude of acceptance and respect on the part of an observer, no matter what a person says or does.
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| psychological tests | Standard measures devised to assess behavior objectively; used by psychologists to help people make decisions about their lives and understand more about themselves.
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| self-report measures | A method of gathering data about people by asking them questions about a sample of their behavior.
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| Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) | A widely used self-report test that identifies people with psychological difficulties and is employed to predict some everyday behaviors.
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| test standardization | A technique used to validate questions in personality tests by studying the responses of people with known diagnoses.
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| projective personality test | A test in which a person is shown an ambiguous stimulus and asked to describe it or tell a story about it.
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| Rorschach test | A test that involves showing a series of symmetrical visual stimuli to people who then are asked what the figures represent to them.
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| Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) | A test consisting of a series of pictures about which a person is asked to write a story.
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| behavioral assessment | Direct measures of an individual's behavior used to describe personality characteristics.
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