Invitation to Psychology

Chapter 2 Theories of Personality 75

Taking Psychology With You

•   Critical thinkers can learn to avoid the “Barnum effect”—being

a sucker for fake inventories, horoscopes, handwriting analysis,

and other pseudoscientific “tests” of personality.

Psychology in the News, Revisited

• Genetic influences, life experiences and learned habits, cultural
norms, unconscious fears and conflicts, and our private, inner
sense of self all combine in complex ways to create our complex,
distinctive personalities.

personality 43
traits 43
Sigmund Freud 44
psychoanalysis 44
psychodynamic theories 44
id 44
libido 44
ego 44
superego 44
defense mechanisms 45
repression 45
projection 45
displacement and
sublimation 45
regression 45
denial 45

psychosexual stages (oral,

anal, phallic, latency,

genital) 45

Oedipus complex 46

Clara Thompson and Karen

Horney 47

Carl Jung 47

collective unconscious 47

archetypes 47

shadow 48

object-relations school 48

illusion of causality 49

objective tests

(inventories) 51

Gordon Allport 52

central trait 52

secondary trait 52

Raymond B. Cattell 52

factor analysis 52

the Big Five personality

factors 52

genes 55

epigenetics 55

temperaments 56

heritability 57

behavioral genetics 57

social-cognitive learning

theory of personality 60

reciprocal determinism 60

nonshared environment 61

culture 64

individualist cultures 64

collectivist cultures 64

culture of honor 67

life narratives 69

humanist psychology 69

Abraham Maslow 69

peak experiences 69

self-actualization 69

Carl Rogers 70

congruence 70

unconditional positive

regard 70

Rollo May 70

existentialism 70

positive psychology 70

Key Terms