Allie Psychology Unit 1: Personality Flashcards
What you need to know for Personality topic
Define Personality
Including Definition Temperament
Descriptions and Evaluations of :
Thomas
Buss and Plomin
Kagan
Eysenck’s Type theory
Extraversion, Introversion and Neuroticism
Personality scales including EPI and EPQ
Evaluation of Eysenck’s type theory
APD.
APD characteristics (dsm).
Causes of APD:
Biological – amygdala Raine
Situational – including Farrington and Elander
Description and Evaluation of the studies and causes of APD
Practical Implications of research into APD
Personality and temperament
Background (blue card)
Personality is
“the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that make an individual unique”
What makes you - you It’s reasonably constant throughout our lives.
Temperament is
“The genetic component of personality”
It’s is a part of personality that’s present from our early childhood. Understanding it can help us recognize how to deal with situations. E.g. Allie you’re easily distracted so you can plan for this before you start a task e.g. Learning somewhere quiet
What is personality? [definition]
The THOUGHTS, FEELINGS and BEHAVIOURS that make an individual UNIQUE
What is temperament? [definition]
The genetic component of personality
Define longitudinal study
A study carried out to show how behaviour changes over time.
Describe a study into temperament Thomas, Chess and Birch
Aim
To discover whether
ways of responding to the environment
remain the same throughout life.
Method
studied 133 children from infancy to early adulthood. The children’s behaviour was observed
and their parents were interviewed.
The parents were asked about the child’s routine and reactions to change.
Results
They found that the children fell into 3 types;
-Easy
= happy, flexible and regular.
-difficult
= demanding, inflexible and cried a lot
-slow to warm up
=did not respond well to change or new experiences to at 1st, but once they had adapted they were usually happy.
Conclusion
These ways of responding to the environment stayed with the children as they developed. Therefore the researchers concluded temperament must be innate
Thomas, Chess and Birch evaluation
Strength
This is one of the few longitudinal studies of temperament allowing researchers to support the view that temperament is innate. This is because if the children still show the same reactions to situation as they get older, this would suggest it is an inborn response.
Weakness
The difficulty with longitudinal studies is that people can drop out partway through and affected the results.
Children in the study were from middle class families living in New York. This means that the results cannot be generalised to other social classes, and perhaps cultures/ Nationalities.
The parents’ views would not have been value free. They may have been biased in the answers they gave in the interviews. For example the answers that showed their children in the best light.
The difference between
Monozygotic and dizygotic twins
[Blue card]
Monozygotic twins
developed from one fertilised egg
(identical twins)
Dizygotic twins
developed from two separately fertilised eggs.
(non-identical twins)
Describe the aim, method, results and conclusion of Buss and Plomin study on temperament.
Aim
To test the idea that temperament is innate.
Method They
studied
-228 pairs of monozygotic twins
-172 pairs of dizygotic twins.
rated the temperament of the twins when they were 5 years old.
They looked at three parts of behaviour: [E.A.S]
Emotionality: how strong the child’s emotional response is
Activity: how energetic the child was
Sociability: how much the child wanted to be with other people.
They then compared the scores for each pair of twins
Results
There was a closer correlation between the scores of the monozygotic twins
than between the scores of the dizygotic twins.
[the twins from the same egg were more similar for each category than the twins from diff eggs]
Conclusion
Temperament has a genetic basis
Evaluation Bus and Plomin
Strength
This study supports the view that temperament is innate. This is because the monozygotic twins, who are genetically identical, were more similar in emotionality, activity and sociability than the dizygotic twins, who are only as genetically similar as any other siblings.
Weakness
However we could argue that parents and others people involved with the monozygotic twin children treat them in a way that influences their beliefs in their similarities during socialisation and development. The correlation between their scores could therefore be explained by their environment rather than their genes.
Research carried out on twins cannot be generalised to the whole population because not everyone is a twin.
Describe the aim, method, results and conclusion of Kagan and snidman study on temperament.
Aim To investigate whether temperament is due to biological differences.
Method K and S studied the reactions of 4 month old babies to new situations.
- 1st minute the baby was placed in a seat with the caregiver near by
- next 3 minutes the caregiver moved out of the baby’s view while the baby was shown different toys by the researcher
Results
20% of the babies showed distress by crying, vigorous movement of the arms and legs and arching of the back = classed as high reactive
40% of the babies showed little movement or emotion
= classed as low reactive
The rest fell somewhere between the two *
*in a follow up study 11 years later K and S found there was still a difference in the way the two groups reacted to new situations:
- high reactives were shy
- low reactives were calm
Conclusion K and S concluded that these two temperaments are due to
INHERITED DIFFERENCES
in the way the brain responds.
Kagan and Snidman
Evaluation
Strengths
Kagan and Snidman used a large sample, which means it’s easier to generalise their results to the whole population
The research took place in an experimental stetting and was therefore rigorous and scientific.
Weaknesses
The downside of using the experimental method is that the controlled environment would have been unfamiliar to the children taking part. They might therefore have behaved very differently from usual because they were in a strange place.
The researchers observed the babies’ behaviour. They may have missed important data and recorded the behaviours inaccurately. This would have affected the results.
[There may be other explanations for the babies’ behaviours. For example attachment studies such as the Strange situation shed light on the different behaviours of the parent being out of sight. The babies showing little movement may have been more dissociative rather than calm.]
Eysenck’s Type Theory
Blue card
Eysenck believed that there are different personality types. Theories about personality types are called
TYPE Theory
Each personality types has permanent traits or characteristics.
Eysenck said there were three important traits in a person’s personality:
- extroversion
- introversion
- neuroticism
- (later psychoticism)
Define Type Theory
Personality types are thought to be inherited. They can be described using related traits (eg Extroversion, Introversion, Neuroticism)
Eysenck’s Personality scales
Background [Blue card]
Eysenck developed personality scales called the EPI and the EPQ.
“These are ways of measuring personality
using yes/ no questions”
Examples of questions that could be used to measure personality:
Do you long for excitement [extroversion]?
Are you an outgoing person [extroversion]?
Do you sometimes feel anxious [neuroticism]?
Are you a moody person [neuroticism]?
Extroversion and Introversion
The E-I Scale
The Extroversion - Introversion scale
What is Extroversion/ being an Extrovert?
A personality type that describes
people who look to the outside world for entertainment and get energised by high level of activity and being in large groups.
E.g. they might have lots of friends and enjoy parties and practical jokes.
What is Introversion/ being an Introvert?
A personality types that describes people who are content with their own company, likes to do things on their own and not in a crowd.
E.g. They have a small number of very close friends.
Label the amygdala
