Ch 2 Flashcards
continuously improve on tentative answers to questions
goal of research
the exploration of the unknown and requires gathering data
research
There are no perfect indicators of personality; there are only clues, and clues are always ambiguous
Funder’s Second Law
Something beats nothing, two times out of three
Funder’s Third Law
Psychologist’s job
gather as many clues as possible and put them together
- usually questionnaires or surveys
- high face validity
advantages: you are always with yourself and people are their own best experts. access to thoughts, feelings, and intentions. definition truth, casual force (self-efficacy and self-verification), simple and easy)
disadvantages: overly positive/negative, faking, fish-and-water effect, distortion of memory, lack of self-insight, carelessness, too simple and too easy
S Data: Self-Judgments or Self-Reports
- acquaintances, co-workers, clinical psychologists
- may be more accurate than self-judgments for extremely desirable or undesirable traits
Advantages: a large amount of information, real-world basis (not controlled), likely to be relevant, common sense, definitional truth, causal force
Disadvantages: limited behavioural information, lack of access to private experiences, error, bias
I Data: Informant Report
- obtained from archival records/self-report
- the results, or “residue”, of personality
Advantages: objective, verifiable, intrinsic importance, psychological relevance.
Disadvantage: multidetermination, (may be determined by different factors)
L Data: Life Outcomes
- observations in daily life/in a lab
- can be from certain kinds of personality tests
Advantages: can tap into many types of behaviors and it is obtained through direct observations, so its objective, realistic
Disadvantages: difficult + expensive to gather, and has superficial objectivity (lab)
B Data: Behavioural Data
stability + repeatability of measurements
reliability
the degree that the measurement is successful in what it intended to measure
validity
states versus traits
state: what’s happening for you right now
traits: a little bit more long-term
- low precision of measurement
- the state of the participant
- the state of the experimenter
- variation in the environment
factors that undermine reliability
- being careful
- using a constant, scripted, procedure
- measure something that is important and engages participants
-aggregation
enhancing reliability
reliability is necessary but not sufficient for
validity
an idea about a psychological attribute that goes beyond what might be assessed through any particular method of assessment (cannot be seen)
constructs
can it be applied to all? is it generalizable? a concept that includes reliability and validity
Generalizability
closely studying a particular person or event to find out as much as possible
advantages: describes the whole phenomenon, source for ideas (gives better information) sometimes necessary for understanding an individual
disadvantage: unknown generalizability (it’s impossible to know who and to what extent the findings applies to)
case method (research design)
determines causality between the independent variable (x) and the dependent variable (y).
experimental method (research design)
establishes a relationship between two variables (x) and (y), by measuring both in a sample of participants
correlational method (research design)
the experimental method manipulates the presumed causal variable and the correlational method…
measures it
only experiments can asses
causality (because there might be third-variable problems and unknown direction of cause)
