2a - did Flashcards
hierarchy of personality + digman
Identify meaningful descriptions of big 5 personality at higher levels in hierarchy: first dine by Digman who identified 2 factors he considered captured relationships between groups of the 5 factors
alpha
regulate thoughts, feelings, behaviours in line with social norms
beta
people high in plasticity high in extraversion an openness: embrace/response and adapt in certain situations
Bandwidth-Fidelity Dilemma
Likely trade-off between breadth and accuracy of prediction
broad higher level descriptions
Predict more behaviours
But with lower accuracy
narrow, lower level descriptors
Predict fewer behaviours
But with more accuracy
lower level descriptors study:
Paunonen & Ashton
Compared predictive value of big 5 traits with predictive power of specific lower order facets
results: Lower-Level Descriptors study for openess and conscientiousness
Openness to experience had no sig relationship to final uni grade
But its single facet (need for understanding) was a significant predictor of final uni grade
Conscientiousness was a sig predictor of final uni grades (r=.21)
But predictive power of facets of consciousnesses (need for achievement) better predictor of grade
Individual facets were stronger predictors of Uni grade
Holistic Models of Entire Personality
Aim for simple model of entire personality space.
Fewer, broad traits.
Narrow Measures of Specific Part(s) of Personality
Focus on part of personality relevant to specific behaviour.
Specific, narrow traits.
Authoritarianism
Adorno et al (1950) – attempt to explain recent examples of prejudice and extreme views towards others
evidence for heritability of conservatism
Bouchard et al. (2003): Evidence for heritability of conservatism from twins reared apart.
Conservatism associated with decreased neural response to supressing a habitual response in Go/No-Go task (and lower response accuracy).
Suggests differences in conservatism/authoritarianism are partly genetically determined are a stable personality trait
Schizotypy - continuity hypothesis
there is no discontinuity between ‘normality’ and illness
should be able to find personality traits in non-clinical populations that are related to psychosis
schizotypy
Schizotypy: correlated items based on clinical descriptions of schizophrenia.
- Reflects genetic/biological vulnerability to psychosis
Concepts/measures of Schizotypy - Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings (O-LIFE)
4 points
Unusual experiences: perceptual distortions, hallucinations, and magical thinking
Cognitive Disorganisation: cognitive difficulties, sense of purposelessness, anxiety etc
Introvertive Anhedonia: lack of enjoyment from social sources, and dislike of intimacy
Impulsive Nonconformity: impulsive and disinhibited behaviour.
Raine (1991): Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ
Ideas of Reference- (Interprets innocuous external events as having higher personal significance)
Excessive Social Anxiety
Odd Beliefs or Magical Thinking
Unusual Perceptual Experiences
Odd or Eccentric Behaviour
No Close Friends
Odd Speech
Constricted Affect
Suspiciousness
negative priming
A measure of cognitive inhibition.
Reduced in schizophrenia.
Steel, Hemsley & Jones (1996):
validity of schizotypy
condition 1 = control
condition 2 = stroop: measured cognitive inhibition - try and inhibit word to read colour of ink
3rd condition: negative priming condition: more difficult condition as inhibitory signals generated for first trial carry over for next trail inhibiting ability to make response = negative prime
Greater difference between trails = greater inhibition
People w S show smaller NP effect as they have less inhibition
Machiavellianism
Better to be feared than loved.
Trust no one.
Make decisions for the benefit of the group, with the absence of morality. The ends justify the means.
Be cunning and strong.
Make friends with powerful people.
Importance of how you appear to be
Christie and Geis (1970): Mach-IV
20 items: Likert-type response
Questions in tactics, views and morality
Mach people would be better at lying and feel less guilt/shame so better able to maintain eye contact
Eye contact after cheating high Mach were able to maintain more eye contact
the dark triad + what the traits relate to
Paulhaus and Williams (2002): Three overlapping, yet distinct, ‘dark’ personality traits relating to social malevolence, coldness, aggressiveness, self-promotion and duplicity.
Narcisism - traits
Feelings of grandiosity, superiority, dominance, self-focus and entitlement.
Subclinical measure of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
psychopathy traits
Nonclinical features of psychopaths.
Impulsivity and thrill-seeking.
Superficial charm, manipulative.
Low empathy, remorse and guilt.
evidence for dark triad
Students completed measures to see correlations between traits
Found moderate correlations: significant overlap between traits, still sufficiently distinct to be of interest in their own right
the dirty dozen study
4 items measuing each construct of dark triad:
each 4 items strongly related to 1 independent factor with low crossloadings on other 2
evidence that 3 traits are distinct
dark triad trait features
Preference for short-term relationships
‘Night-time’ chronotype - more awake/active later in the day .
Cruelty to animals
Attractiveness to others
