Personality, thinking, and language

An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting

In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware

Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions

Contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy the basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification

The largely conscious, “executive” part of the personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain

The part of the personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for feature aspirations

The childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones

According to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires towards his mother and feelings of jealously and hatred for the rival father

The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ values into their development superegos

In psychoanalytic theory, the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness

Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history

A personality test, such as Rorschach ink block test, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics

The most widley used projective test, a set of 10 inkblocks, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

According to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one’s potential

According to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance towards another person

All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, “who am I?”

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

A questionnaire (often with true-false or agree-disagree statements) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits

The most widely used researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), this test is now used for many other screening purposes

A test (such as the MMPI) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups

Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people's traits (including their thinking) and their social context

The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment

The extent to which people perceive control over their environment rather than feeling helpless

The perception that chance or outside forces beyond your personal control determine your own fate

The perception that you control your own fate

The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events

In contemporary psychology, assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions

Overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us)

One’s feelings of high or low self-worth

A readiness to perceive oneself favorably

a mental image or best example of a category, matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories

a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problems, contrasts with the use of heuristics

• Algorithms can be laborious and exasperating

a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but more error prone than algorithms

a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with the strategy based solutions

• Researchers gave people a problem: think of a word that will form a compound word or phrase with each of three words in a set

• Press a button when you know the answer

• “Aha!” insight which was determined by frontal lobe activity and a burst of activity in the right temporal lobe

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or discord contradictory evidence

• Gave students a three-number sequence and asked them to guess the rule he had used to devise the series

• Once they felt certain of the rule, they announced it

• Results: most students formed the wrong idea and then searched for only evidence confirming the wrong rule

The inability to see a problem from a new perspective by employing a different mental set

a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often that has been successful in the past

• usually just follow our intuition

• When we need to act quickly, heuristics often do help us overcome analysis paralysis

• These generally helpful shortcuts can lead even the smartest people into dumb decisions

judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information

• Ex: guessing whether or not a description fits an Ivy league scholar or a truck driver

Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common

the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments

• clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

• first impressions are built around this

An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

• More common/quick- more likely be incorrect

• The way an issue is posed

• how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments

Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

Beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language

Stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words

Beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements

Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram— “go car”— using mostly nouns and verbs

Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think

• visualizing process to achieve hopeful outcome; more effective and influences real life actions

  • Ex: Spend time imagining how to reach goal, rather than the destination, will increase likelihood of success

  • Ex: Study showed that group of people who visualized studying had greater positive impact on scores then vizualizing receiving an A

1. Dramatic deaths in bunches breed concern and fear

   1. More people drove after 9/11 due to fear of planes, despite fact that car accidents are far more likely

2. fear what our ancestral history has made us fear, what we can’t control, the immediate (smokers who are afraid of flying), and what is available in memory

Operant learning

• Skinner believed we can explain language development with familiar learning principles, such as association (words aided by visuals), imitation (of the words and syntax modeled by others), and reinforcement (reinforcing a kid when they say something right)

• Chomsky rejected this theory

Noam Chomsky was linguist who rejected skinners idea because of how quickly we are able to pick up language

1. Through nurture language occurs

2. biologically prepared to learn language, by means of a language acquisition device (switchbox that controls lang) that equips us with a universal grammar, which we use to learn a specific language

Childhood

1. By age 7 children who have not been exposed to either a spoken or a signed language gradually lose their ability to master any language

   1. Once the window closes it becomes much more difficult to learn a second language and nearly impossible to perfect

2. When a young brain does not learn any language, its language-learning capacity never fully develops

Ex: the wild child

• Procedural memory

• Thinking in images can increase our skills when we mentally practice upcoming events

• Visualization aids in acting/performing/remembering things

• Primates (and others) demonstrate abilities to communicate

• Ex: Chimpanzees have learned to communicate with humans by signing or by pushing buttons wired to a computer and have taught their skills to younger animals

  1. Pygmy chimpanzees have learned to comprehend syntax, but only humans possess true language—the ability to master the verbal or signed expression of complex grammar

  2. those who are skeptical that apes share our capacity for language are especially likely to highlight chimps' limited use of appropriate syntax

• Invited China-born bilingual students to describe themselves in English or Chinese

• English-language versions of self-descriptions fit typically Canadian profiles: expressed mostly positive self-statements and moods

• Responding in Chinese gave students a typically Chinese self-description: reported more agreement with Chinese values and roughly equal positive and negative self-statements and moods

a mental picture of how you do it

Has little effect

• Visualizing getting an A on a test

Pays off

• Visualizing effective studying

Bilingual children who lean to inhibit one language while using the other, are also better able to inhibit their attention to irrelevant information