| A | B |
|---|
| trait | a characteristic pattern of behavior, or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports |
| personality | an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting |
| social-cognitive perspective | perspective stating that understanding personality involves considering situation and thoughts before, during and after an event |
| Gordon Allport | trait theorist who researched the idea that individual personalities are unique |
| Hans Eysenck | German psychologist who researched the genetically influenced dimensions of personality, including extraversion and introversion |
| Raymond Cattell | English psychologist who researched whether some traits predicted others. He proposed 16 key personality dimensions, or factors to describe personality |
| personality inventories | questionnaires (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personaltiy traits |
| validity | the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to test |
| reliability | the extent to which a test yields consistent results, regardless of who gives the test or when or where it is given |
| Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) | the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered it's most appropriate use), this test is now used for man other screening purposes |
| Albert Bandura | he developed the social-cognitive perspective - he believed that to understand personality, one must consider the situation and the person's thoughts before, during and after an event |
| reciprocal determinism | the mutual influences between personality and environmental factors |
| external locus of control | the perception that chance, or forces beyond your control, controls your fate |
| internal locus of control | the perception that you control your own fate |
| learned helplessnes | the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated bad events |
| Martin Seligman | he researched helplessness early in his career before turning his interests to optimism - he has been the primary proponent of positive psychology |
| positive psychology | a movement in psychology that focuses on the study of optimal human functioning and the factors that allow individuals and communities to thrive |
