Chapter 16 Flashcards
what is personality
the characteristic ways that people differ from one another
how are personality traits shows
on continuous distributions (almost like a bell curve) with some being high, low, and most in the middle for each trait
what are 3 characteristic of personality traits
they are consistent, stable, and show individual differences
why are personality traits important
help us predict behavior and functioning (health and organizational psychology
five factor model of personality
openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism
what is openness
tendency to appreciate new things
what is conscientiousness
tendency to be careful, on-time, follow rules, be hardworking, etc.
what is extraversion
tendency to be talkative, sociable, and enjoy others
what is agreeableness
tendency to agree and go along with others despite personal beliefs
what is neuroticism
tendency to frequently experience negative emotions as well as being interpersonally sensitive
what are facets
lower level units of personality
what is the HEXACO personality model
Honesty, Emotionality, extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness
openness
what is the person situation debate
Peoples behavior is unimpressive in consistency
Pitts the power of personality against the power of situational factors as determinants of behavior
what is the alternative to the trait perspective of personality
Behaviors are driven by social-cognitive processes
Interaction between psychologically meaningful features of a situation and a persons unique way of dealing with said situation along with heir abilities for dealing with it
what are self-report measures of personality
where people are asked to rate and describe themselves
advantages of self-report measures
Self-raters have direct access to their own thoughts, feelings, motives, etc.
Simple, easy and cost-effective
Impressive validity
limits of self-report measures
Raters may present themselves as overly favorable
Reflect self-enhancement bias
Subject to reference group effect
(We base our self-perception partly on how we compare to others)
what is an informant ring way of measuring personality
Asks someone who knows a person well to describe his or her personality characteristics
advantages of informant rings
- Can be combined with self-rating to produce more reliable and valid measures
- An informant has the opportunity to observe large samples of behaviour form the person they’re rating
- Typically have strong incentives for being accurate
- Comparable validity as self-rating but also outperform when assessed traits are evaluative in nature (intelligence, charm, creativity, etc.)
limits to informant rings
- informants lack access to the thoughts, feeling, and motives of the other person (one they are rating)
- Subject to response bias (Sibling contrast bias: parents might exaggerate the true magnitude of differences between their children)
- If individuals are allowed to nominate informants they may produce overly favorable ratings
what is comprehensiveness
The extent to which an instrument seeks to assess personality comprehensively
what are projective tests based upon
Based on the idea that important thoughts, feelings, and motives operate outside of conscious awareness
what is the projective hypothesis
If a person is asked to describe or interpret ambiguous stimuli, their responses will be influenced by nonconscious needs, feelings, and experiences
what are the thematic apperception tests
Asks respondents to generate stories about a series of pictures
limitations of the thematic apperception test
- Cumbersome and labor intensive to administer
- Challenging to develop a reliable and valid scoring system
- Questionable validity (especially for Rorschach inkblot test)
- Weak relation between objective and projective measures of motives
what are behavioral and performance measures
use direct samples of behavior to infer personality characteristics
advantages to behavioral and performance measures
- Not subject to response bias
- Allow people to be studied in their natural environments
- Only approach that actually assesses what people do as opposed to what they think/feel
limitations to behavioral and performance measures
- Cumbersome and labor intensive than objective tests
- Generate a rich set of data that then need to be scored in a reliable and valid way
- Often contains relatively small samples of behaviors that may provide a somewhat distorted view of a persons true characteristics
