Chapter 1 - Personality As A Science Flashcards
What is personality?
Set of psychological traits and mechanisms which determine how an individual will act in intrapsychic, physical and social environments.
What are trait descriptive adjectives?
Adjectives used to describe characteristics that describe people’s personality e.g. Thoughtful
What are psychological traits?
Traits that describe the ways that people are different
What are average tendencies?
Things a person does often, “average” e.g. A talkative person will engage in more conversations than a less talkative person.
What are the 3 main parts of psychological mechanisms? An example?
Input -> decision -> output
E.g. You see a danger, you can either choose to run from that danger or fight it, you then either run or fight
What are organized and enduring?
Organized: psychological traits are not random, they contain decision rules that are activated depending on the situation.
Enduring: relatively stable and consistent over situations e.g. Having a short temper
Person environment interaction have 3 factors: selection, evocations and manipulations. What are they?
Selection: the manner in which we choose situations to enter e.g. The friends we choose, the career we attract
Evocations: reactions we produce in others e.g. A child with high acting level will have parents that constrain the child whether it likes it or not
Manipulations: the way which we intentionally attempt to influence others e.g. Someone who is anxious and scared easily will try to persuade their friends not to go to a scary movie
What is intrapsychic?
“Within the mind”
E.g. Memories, desires, dreams and fantasies
What is nomothetic and idiographic?
Nomothetic: statistical comparisons of individuals or groups requiring samples of subjects for research.
Idiographic: means description of one. Research focusing on just one individual e.g. Analyzing a person in terms of a sequence of events in their lives
6 domains of culture:
D B I C S A
Dispositional domain: how we differ from one another
Biological domain: humans are first a biological system which provide building blocks for behaviour thought and emotion
Intrapsychic: mechanisms mentally of personality that operate outside conscious awareness
Cognitive: focus on cognitive subject experience such a conscious thoughts, feelings and beliefs
Social and cultural: personality effects and is affected by social and cultural context
Adjustment: personality plays a key role in how we cope, adjust to the flow of our everyday lives
What is a good theory?
One that provides a guide for researchers, organizes known findings and makes predictions
What is the difference between beliefs and theories?
Beliefs are an idea made by someone, a theory is able to be tested by systematic observations
The 5 scientific standards for evaluating personality theories are: comprehensiveness, heuristic value, testability, parsimony and compatibility. Describe in 1 sentence each
Comprehensiveness: explains most or all known facts
Heuristic value: guides researchers to important new discoveries
Testability: makes precise predictions that can be empirically tested
Parsimony: constrain few premises or predictions
Compatibility: consistent with what’s known in other domains can be coordinated with what’s known other branches of scientific knowledge
Why does personality matter?
It affects choices we make, things we pursue, friends we make, our health and out personality
Every person is unique, what makes us tick? What are our goals? What is this an example of
Idiographic approach
