3. Are We Stuck? Personality Across Space & Time Flashcards
The three important assumptions of trait theories
Traits are:
1. Meaningful individual differences
2. Stable or consistent over time
3. Consistent across situations
Trait psychologists are interested in determining the ways in which people [answer]
are different from each other.
This is why trait psychology is sometimes called differential psychology.
Situationism
The theory that situational differences, rather than underlying personality traits, are the determiner of behaviour.
This position is outdated today, we know that traits are important too. Though, situational factors of course play a part.
Interactionism/Person-Situation Interaction
Two explanations for behaviour
Theory that emphasizes one must take into account both a situation and personality traits when understanding a behaviour.
Behaviour = function(person * situation)
Trait psychologists (specifically in juxtaposition to situationists)
assumed cross-situation consistency.
i.e. People’s traits determine their behaviour across situations
Situational Specificity
Certain situations provoke behaviour that is out of character for an individual (a person acts a particular way in a specific circumstance).
Eg. Life and death/emergency situation - people are unpredictable/inconsistent in these types of situations
Eg. Exam stress - you can be high in neuroticism but calm during exams, or vice versa
Strong Situations
Situations that prompt similar behaviour from everyone/most people behave the same in the situation.
Social norms are often one of the reasons people conform.
Weak Situations
Situations that are ambiguous/weak in effect, thus personality has a stronger influence on behaviour.
Eg. Text messaging: How you text, how you interpret texts, and so on
The Three Key Forms of Person-Situation Interaction
List them; definitions are on other cards
- Situational Selection
- Evocation
- Manipuation
Situational Selection
The tendency to put ourselves in certain situations as a result of our personality traits. (We often select the situations in which we spend our time.)
Interesting: Long-term relationships with individuals with similar personality traits are more common and last longer.
Person-Environment Fit
A theory that suggests there are specific environments/situations that are more suited to/complementary to a person’s traits and characteristics, and that this may motivate individuals to choose certain situations over others.
Evocation
A form of person-situation interaction based on the idea that certain personality traits may naturally evoke specific responses from others/the environment.
Manipulation
Various means by which people intentionally influence others’ behaviour or alter environments.
Eg. People high in agreeableness (pleasure induction) can put others in a good mood (intentionally).
No malicious intent need be implied by the term manipulation, although such intent is not excluded either. Manipulation can be via charm as well as the siletnt treatment or coercion.
Aggregation
Adding up or averaging several observations, resulting in a more reliable measure of a personality trait than a single observation of behaviour.
This approach implies that personality traits refer to average tendencies in behaviour, how people behave on average.
It also implies that traits are only one influence on behaviour, as in, many factors influence why a person does one thing and not another.
Density Distribution of States
Refers to the idea that traits are distributions of states in a person’s life over time, and the mean of that distribution is the person’s level of the trait.
Miscellaneous Issues With MBTI
Implies a bimodal distribution, vs. a normal distribution
Myers-Briggs - implies thinking and feeling are opposites
Low test-retest reliability
Not very predictive of anything
People are not 100% consistent over time
Infrequency Scale
Commonly used to detect measurement technique problems within a set of questionairre items. Contains items most (or all) people would answer in a particular way. If a participant answers >1-2 of these questions unlike the majority of the participants, this could indicate the participant’s answers do not represent valid information.
Faking
The motivated distortion of answers on a questionairre.
From the textbook: Some people may be motivated to “fake good” in order to appear to be better off or better adjusted than they really are. Others may be motivated to “fake bad” in order to appear to be worse off or more maladjusted than they really are.
Social Desirability
The tendency to exaggerate the positivity of one’s personality.
Basically the same as impression management.
Barnum statements
Generalities or comments that could apply to anyone. Eg. Astrology, MBTI
Fundamental Attribution Error
We tend to emphasize the internal characteristics of other people when explaining their behaviour, but recognize situational factors in our behaviour
Trait Ascription Bias
We tend to view ourselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behaviour, and mood, but view others as much more predictable through different situations
Personnel Selection
When personality tests are used to select people especially suitable for a specific job.
Integrity Testing
Designed to assess whether a person is generally honest or dishonest.
