In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is the five-factor model of personality. These factors are often referred to as the Big Five. Personality traits are characteristics that are stable across time and across contexts. The five-factor model includes five personality trait dimensions. These are: …
What Is… The Five-Factor Model of Personality (The Big Five) Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is psychopathy. Psychopathy is a cluster of personality characteristics. It is sometimes described as a personality disorder or a neuropsychiatric disorder, but it’s not a diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The diagnosis …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is neuroticism. Neuroticism is a personality trait that’s part of the Big Five model of personality. It involves: “… the tendency to experience frequent, intense negative emotions associated with a sense of uncontrollability (the perception of inadequate coping) …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is addictive personality. The concept of an addictive personality, although often referred to in pop psychology, is actually less of a thing than you might think. For there to be an addictive personality, that would suggest that there …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is obsessive compulsive personality disorder. When people say that someone is “a little OCD,” chances are, what they’re referring to has little, if anything, to do with obsessive compulsive disorder. What they’re talking about is actually far more …
What Is… Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms This week’s term is the anal triad. I originally intended to do this post on stubbornness. I couldn’t find much interesting on that, but it led me to obstinacy, which in turn led to the anal triad. We have Sigmund Freud’s …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is reactance. Reactance was first described by American psychologist Jack Brehm in 1966. Reactance arises in response to having one’s freedoms threatened, such as being told what to do (or not do). It comes into play with “free …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is the dark triad/dark tetrad. The dark triad was first described in a 2002 paper by psychologists Paulhus and Williams, who happen to be researchers at my alma mater. They studied the three most common “offensive yet non-pathological …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is competitiveness. From an evolutionary perspective, competition is hardwired into us; living beings need to compete for limited resources in order to survive. For most of us, though, that isn’t too much of an issue, and the competitive …
Introversion and extraversion are personality traits lying at opposite ends of a spectrum. Some people fit with one extreme or another, but many people fall somewhere in the middle. While societal expectations might make it seems like introversion is rare, it’s actually not. Introversion & extraversion – what’s the difference? Much of the difference between …
