Personality
What to know
Personality theories divide into psychodynamic, trait, humanistic, social-cognitive, and biological. Freud's psychodynamic view: id (pleasure), ego (reality), superego (morality); psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital); defense mechanisms (repression, projection, displacement, rationalization, reaction formation, sublimation). Projective tests (Rorschach, TAT) are criticized for low reliability.
Traits and humanism
Trait theory: Allport (cardinal, central, secondary traits), Eysenck (dimensions), and the Big Five (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism). Humanistic: Rogers (self-concept, unconditional positive regard, congruence) and Maslow (self-actualization). Social-cognitive: Bandura (reciprocal determinism, self-efficacy) and Rotter (locus of control). Biological views stress heritability and temperament.
Assessment
Objective tests (MMPI, Big Five inventories) are more reliable than projective tests. Person-situation debate: behavior varies across situations, but traits predict averages.
Traps
Match defense mechanisms precisely-reaction formation is acting opposite to true feelings; projection attributes one's own impulses to others. Don't confuse id/ego/superego functions. Locus of control is internal vs. external, not introversion.
Rule of thumb
For defense-mechanism questions, identify the anxiety source and the maneuver used to manage it. For trait questions, recall the Big Five acronym OCEAN.
Worked example
A man who feels hostile toward a coworker insists the coworker hates him-this is projection (attributing his own feeling to the other person).