Ch 11 Flashcards
Personality
“The long standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, and behave in specific ways”
Trait
A unit of personality
A characteristic that describes a habitual way of behaving, thinking, and feeling
Personality is distinctive and relatively stable
This assumption is why we often rely too much on first impressions, and leads to difficulties in making attributions about motives for behavior
- Attributions(the explanations that we identify the way people behave the way they are) can be situational( behave because of position they are in) or dispositional(behaving because this is who you are)
Fundamental Attribution Error
Tendency to attribute motivations of others more to personality factors than to situational factors
More likely to engage in self serving bias when making attributions about ourselves
Depression- opposite
Self Serving Bias
Bad things for us situational, others are merely just by who they are
Personality drives our successes, situations drive out failures
Projective Tests
Based on the assumption that the test taker will project unconscious conflicts and motives onto an ambiguous stimulus
Personality Inventories
-Answer a series of questions about self
-There are no right or wrong answers
- From responses, develop a personality profile
Thematic Apperception Test
Person is asked to tell a story about the “hero” in the picture
Psychologist interprets the needs and motives that are projected via the story
Rorschach Inkblot Test
Show the person an ambiguous stimulus, ask them to explain why they see
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
-Measures personality across several personality “types” identified by Carl Jung
-Often used for employment/personnel management purposes
-Not well-supported by research
Focus on the outer world or on your own inner world?
Extroversion or Introversion
Focus on the basic information you take in or prefer to interpret and add meaning?
Sensing or Intuition
When making decisions, do you prefer to look at logic and consistency or look at the people and special circumstances?
Thinking or Feeling
In dealing with the world, do you prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options?
Judging or Perceiving
MVTI
Example of personality tests
Called ISTP
Tells you stuff you already know
Within the contemporary study of trait theory, ____ _____ is used to identify how these traits cluster together across the population
Factor Analysis
Studies suggest personality is more strongly based on ____ than most people might expect
Genetics
Costa and McRae proposed this Model
Five Factor Model
Five Factor Model
- Openness to experience
- Consciousness (relied upon to meet obligations)
- Extroversion
- Agreeableness (level of argumentative)
- Neuroticism (how worrying you are)
Most stable over lifespan, though some have consistent variations
- Introversion increases and openness decreases with age
More similar with genetics,
exclude openness
Parenting
Parenting influence will depend on genetics; parenting will vary according to the child’s personality
Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory
looks at how children may learn personality through imitation and cognitive processes
Reciprocal determinism
addresses how cognitive processes, behaviors and situational factors all interact to reinforce or punish personality traits
Historical Theories of Personality
Freud