Chapter 2

Question 1

Self-Report Data

Answer 1

Information a person reveals about their feelings or beliefs.

Question 2

Structured Personality Test

Answer 2

Self-report can take a variety of forms, ranging from open-ended questions to forced-choice true or false questions.

Question 3

Likert Rating Scale

Answer 3

A way for someone to express with numbers the degree to which a particular trait describes themselves.

Question 4

Personality Scale

Answer 4

Summing scores on a series of individual rating scales.

Question 5

Experience Sampling

Answer 5

People answer questions about moods or physical symptoms, every day for several weeks or longer.

Question 6

Observer-Report Data

Answer 6

Impressions and evaluations others make of a person whom they come into contact with.

Question 7

Inter-Rater Reliability

Answer 7

Use of multiple observers allows investigators to evaluate the degree of agreement among observers.

Question 8

Multiple Social Personalities

Answer 8

Each of us displays different sides of ourselves to different people; we may be kind to our friends, ruthless to our enemies, loving toward a spouse and conflicted toward our parents.

Question 9

Naturalistic Observation

Answer 9

Observers witness and record events that occur in the normal course of the lives of their participants.

Question 10

Test Data

Answer 10

Common source of personality-relevant information comes from standardized tests.

Question 11

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Answer 11

Technique used to identify the areas of the brain that light-up when performing certain tasks such as verbal problems or spatial navigation problems. Based on the oxygen levels and blood levels.

Question 12

Projective Techniques

Answer 12

The person is given a standard stimulus and asked what he or she sees.

Question 13

Life-Outcome Data

Answer 13

Information that can be gleaned from the events, activities, and outcomes in a person’s life that are available to public scrutiny.

Question 14

Reliability

Answer 14

Degree to which an obtained measure represents the true level of the trait being measured.

Question 15

Repeated Measurement

Answer 15

Repeat a measurement over time.

Question 16

Test-Retest Reliability

Answer 16

Take a certain test one time, then later take that same test.

Question 17

Internal Consistency Reliability

Answer 17

Examine relationships among the items themselves at a single point in time. If they are repeated in that same measurement, it has reliability. It is assessed within the test itself.

Question 18

Response Set

Answer 18

How individuals respond to a set of questions negatively for research.

Question 19

Noncontent Responding

Answer 19

Tendency of some people to respond to the questions on some basis that is unrelated to the question content.

Question 20

Acquiescence

Answer 20

Yea-saying to every response.

Question 21

Extreme Responding

Answer 21

The tendency to give endpoint responses, and to avoid middle responses.

Question 22

Social Desirability

Answer 22

Tendency to answer items in such a way as to come across as socially attractive or likable.

Question 23

Forced-Choice Questionnaire

Answer 23

Test-takers are confronted with pairs of statements and are asked to indicate which statement in each pair is more true of them.

Question 24

Validity

Answer 24

Extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure.

Question 25

Face Validity

Answer 25

Whether the test, from face value, measures what it is supposed to measure.

Question 26

Predictive Validity

Answer 26

Whether the test predicts criteria external to the test.

Question 27

Criterion Validity

Answer 27

Whether a test predicts criteria external to the test.

Question 28

Convergent Validity

Answer 28

Whether a test correlates with other measures that is should correlate with.

Question 29

Discriminant Validity

Answer 29

What a measure should not correlate with.

Question 30

Construct Validity

Answer 30

A test that measures what it claims to measure, correlates with what it is supposed to correlate with, and does not correlate with what it is not supposed to correlate with.

Question 31

Theoretical Constructs

Answer 31

Hypothetical internal entities useful in describing and explaining differences between people.

Question 32

Generalizability

Answer 32

Degree to which the measure retains its validity across various contexts.

Question 33

Experimental Methods

Answer 33

Used to determine causality; whether one variable influences another variable.

Question 34

Manipulation

Answer 34

Researchers conducting experiments use manipulation in order to evaluate the influence of one variable on another.

Question 35

Random Assignment

Answer 35

Randomly assign participants in a study to a group or condition.

Question 36

Counterbalancing

Answer 36

In some experiments, manipulation is within a single group.

Question 37

Mean

Answer 37

Average of all participants

Question 38

Standard Deviation

Answer 38

Measure of variability within each condition.

Question 39

T-Test

Answer 39

Used to calculate the difference between two means.

Question 40

Statistically Significant

Answer 40

Refers to the probability of finding the results of a research study by chance alone.

Question 41

Correlational Method

Answer 41

Statistical procedure is used for determining whether there is a relationship between two variables.

Question 42

Correlation Coefficient

Answer 42

Used to gauge the relationships between variables.

Question 43

Magnitude

Answer 43

How large or small the relationship is.

Question 44

Directionality Problem

Answer 44

If A and B are correlated, we do not know if A is the cause of B, vice versus.

Question 45

Third Variable Problem

Answer 45

If it is not A or B variables, it might be C or a third variable.

Question 46

Case Study Method

Answer 46

Examining the life of one person in particular depth, which can give researchers insights into personality that can then be used to formulate a more general theory that is tested in a larger population.