Personality - AP Psychology

The "big five" personality traits are conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion. The acronym "CANOE" can aid you in remembering these empirically-supported personality trait continuums.

The MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) is the world's most widely used personality test for adults. In the modern day, it is used to screen job applicants, answer legal questions, and help psychologists make diagnoses and subsequent treatment plans.

Sublimination is the taking of a certain energy, which could be the product of fear or desire, and channeling it in socially appropriate ways. For example, one may have the impulse to be violent towards other people, but then challenge this impulse into a sport, a socially condoned form of violence.

Repression is generally considered slightly less healthy, in that the desire or fear is buried from conscious awareness and can manifest in certain psychotic tendencies.

Those with a fantasy-prone personality spend much time daydreaming, thus utilizing their vivid imagination. They are often able to recall their fantasies with near perfect accuracy.

The MMPI, the Rorschach inkblot test, the big five test, and self-reporting are all ways of measuring personality. The MMPI is a standardized test that gauges personality by asking questions that seem unrelated to personality traits; for example, "I enjoy breaking things" might be used as a measure of aggression. The Rorschach test determines personality traits by examining a way a person interprets ambiguous inkblot shapes. The big five test determines where a person falls on five main personality traits: agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. Self-reporting is a larger concept that is defined as an individual answering questions about their own internal states; examples of this include the MMPI and the big five test.

Acquisition is a concept in classical conditioning that refers to the learning of the unconditioned stimulus and conditioned stimulus pairing.

An internal locus of control is when a person believes that his/her hard work (practicing free throws) leads to the consequences (scored on both of the free throws in the game). An external locus of control is when a person believes that his/her life is determined by external forces—such as luck, fate, and the other kids not trying hard—and often leads to a sense of hopelessness.

Conscientiousness is defined as the quality of being thorough, careful, and/or vigilant. Obviously, the ability to stay on schedule and keep track of deadlines meets this description. Each of the answers is a Big Five trait, but conscientiousness is the best fit for the traits described in the question.

People who score high on Extraversion in the Big Five personality traits tend to have a need for social interaction and attention. This is the counterpart to introversion, which correlates with a high need for alone time. While an extremely extraverted person may be more likely to have a high need for new experiences, this is not as directly relevant to the main aspects of extraversion, which have to do with the personal need for social interaction.

The other four of the Big Five personality traits are Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

People who score high on Conscientiousness on the Big Five personality traits tend to have a strong need for completing tasks and following rules. These people tend to get along well in large groups as they have also tend to have a high regard for social norms.

The Big 5 personality factors are conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion. To remember the Big 5, you can use the acronym CANOE!

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a psychometric test that is often used to detect personality traits and psychopathological tendencies. It consists of a long series of statements such as "I never seem to get enough sleep" that the subject endorses by marking "True" or does not endorse by marking "False." It was created by administering a large list of these "I..." statements to individuals who were known to have mental illnesses before they took the test; analysts then ran statistical tests to find the test items that were often endorsed by individuals with a certain illness. The modern test uses the test-taker's answering patterns to detect personality traits that may be associated with a mental illness. Answering patterns are also analyzed for possible intentional deceit (i.e. answering two similar questions oppositely) or hypochondriasis.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. By using Jung's research on personality types, the MBTI is able to classify people into 16 different personality categories.

Reaction formation is one of the more subtle defense mechanisms and can be a bit difficult to define. Essentially, one may feel an emotion unconsciously, and then express behaviors that reflect its opposite. For instance, one may continually express altruistic beliefs, but in actuality be motivated by selfishness. One may feel animosity towards another, but express affection and love towards them.

Reciprocal determinism depicts the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors. Thus, we choose to place ourselves in certain environments based on our personality, and those environments influence our behavior and the way we think.

Projective tests, such as the TAT, Word association, Rorschach inkblot, and Draw-A-Person, are used to examine hidden emotions and internal conflicts. These methods are rooted in psychoanalytic theories of personality. The MMPI is a widely-used psychometric personality test used for diagnoses, job screenings, or legal reasons.

All of these are part of Freud's theory except for ectomorphs. Ectomorphs are a part of William Sheldon's (largely discredited) Somatotype theory of personality in which there are three body types, each being associated with certain personality traits.

When people have an external locus of control, it means that they are likely to believe that luck and outside forces determine what happens. This is the opposite of an internal locus of control, which means that one feels that he/she is responsible for that which happens to him/her. The other answer choices are not terms referring to loci of control.

The id desires immediate gratification. The superego accounts for the moral component of a person's personality makeup. The ego mediates between the id and superego.

Post-traumatic growth is a term that grew from the field of positive psychology. It differs from resilience, which refers to the ability to endure traumatic events and recover, in the sense that the traumatic event can make the person grow in a significant manner. In other words, the person grows and gains from the experience as opposed to simply recuperating.