Chapter 4

Question 1

Differential psychology 

Answer 1

The name, sometimes, given trait psychology due to its emphasis on the study of differences between people includes the study of other forms of individual differences, in addition to personality traits, such as abilities, attitudes, and intelligence

Question 2

Consistency

Answer 2

Trait, theories, assume there is some degree of consistency in personality over time. If someone is highly extroverted during one period of already observation, trait psychologist tend to assume that they will be extroverted tomorrow next week a year from now, or even decades from now. 

Question 3

Rank order

Answer 3

One’s relative position within a group overtime. For example, if someone tend to maintain their position on extroversion related to the other members of the group overtime, then we say that there is a higher rank order stability to the personality characteristic. Conversely, if people fail to maintain their rank order, we say that the group has displayed rank order, instability, or rank order change. 

Question 4

Situationism

Answer 4

A theoretical position and personality psychology that states that situational differences, rather than underlying personality traits, determine behavior. For example, how friendly a person will be, or how much need for achievement, a person displays will depend on the situation, not traits a person possesses.

Question 5

Person situation interaction

Answer 5

Theory which states that one must take into account both particular situation’s example, (ex frustration) and personality traits, (ex hot temper) when understanding of behaviour 
B f(PxS)

Question 6

Aggregation

Answer 6

Adding up or averaging several single observations, resulting in better more reliable measures of a personality trait that is single observation of behavior. This approach implies that personality traits refer to average tendencies and behavior, how people behave on average.

Question 7

Situational specificity

Answer 7

The view that behaviour is determined by aspects of the situation, such as contingencies 

Question 8

Strong situation

Answer 8

Certain situations that prompt similar behaviour from everyone

Question 9

Situational selection

Answer 9

A form of person situation interaction that refers to the tendency to choose, or select the situation in which one finds one self. In other words, people typically do not find themselves in random situations in their natural lives. Instead they select or choose those situations.

Question 10

Person environment fit

Answer 10

A theory that suggests there are particular environments or situation’s that are more complementary to a persons, traits and characteristics, and that this may motivate individuals to select certain situations over others 

Question 11

Evocation

Answer 11

A form of person situation interaction discussed by Buss. It is based on the idea that certain personality traits may elicit consistent responses from the environment, particularly the social environment.

Question 12

Manipulation

Answer 12

A third form of person situation interaction identified by Buss. It can be understood as social influence, and involves the various means by which people intentionally influence the behaviours of others. No malicious intent need be employed by the term manipulation, although such intent is not excluded either.

Question 13

Density distribution of states

Answer 13

Refers to the idea that traits are distributions of states in a persons, life, overtime, and the mean of the distribution is the persons level of the trait 

Question 14

Infrequency scale

Answer 14

A common method for detecting measurement technique, problems with a set of questionnaire items. The infrequency scale contains items that most or all people would answer in a particular way. If a participant answered more than one or two of these, unlike the rest of the majority of the participants, a researcher could begin to suspect that the participant answers do not represent valid information 

Question 15

Faking

Answer 15

The motivated distortion of answers on a questionnaire. Some people may be motivated to fake good in order to appear to be better off or better adjusted than they really are. Others may be motivated to fake bad in order to appear to be worse off or more maladjusted than they really are 

Question 16

False negative

Answer 16

There are two ways for a psychologist to make mistakes when making decisions about persons based on personality tests. When, trying to decide whether a persons answers are genuine or faked, the psychologist might decide that a truthful person was faking, a false negative.

Question 17

false positive

Answer 17

There are two ways for a psychologist to make mistakes when making decisions about persons based on personality tests. When, trying to decide whether a persons answers are genuine or faked, the psychologist might decide that a person who is faking was actually telling the truth, a false, positive 

Question 18

Barnum statements

Answer 18

Generalities or comments that could apply to anyone. Exotic a good example is the astrology column in daily newspaper.

Question 19

Personnel selection

Answer 19

Employers, sometimes use personality test to select people, especially suitable for a specific job. Alternatively, the employer may want to use personality assessments to deselect rescreen out people with specific traits. In both cases, an employer is concerned with selecting the right person for specific position from among a pool of applicants pool of applicants. 

Question 20

Integrity tests

Answer 20

Because the private sector cannot legally use polygraphs to screen employees. Some companies have developed and promoted questionnaire measures to use in place of the polygraph. These questions are designed to assess whether a person is generally honest or dishonest.

Question 21

Negligent hiring

Answer 21

A charge sometimes brought against an employer for hiring someone who is unstable or prone to violence. Employers are defending themselves against such suits, which often see compensation for crimes committed by their employees. Such cases hinge on whether the employer should have discovered dangerous traits ahead of time, before hiring such a person into the position, where they posted a threat to others. Personality testing, may provide evidence that the employer did in fact try to reasonably investigate an applicants fitness for the workplace

Question 22

Right to privacy

Answer 22

This is perhaps the largest issue of legal concern for employers using personality testing. The right to privacy employment settings grows out of the broader concept of the right to privacy. Cases that charge an invasion of privacy claim against an employer can be based on the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms.

Question 23

Employment, equality act

Answer 23

This act in effect 1986 requires that federally regulated industries in Canada, adopt proactive employment practices, in order to improve the employment rates of for designated social groups: women, individuals with disabilities, aboriginal peoples, and visible minorities.

Question 24

Canadian human rights act

Answer 24

This act was passed in 1977 with a goal of ensuring equal opportunity to individuals who might be victims of discriminatory practises based on race national or ethnic origin, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability, and conviction, for which a pardon has been granted ; end in 2016, Bill C-16 was passed to include gender identity and gender expression as protect grounds of discrimination 

Question 25

Disparate impact

Answer 25

An employment practice that disadvantages people from a protected group. Most courts define disparity as a difference that is sufficiently large that is unlikely to have occurred by chance.

Question 26

Race or gendered norming

Answer 26

Activities that involve developing different standards for different ethnic groups or genders based on data obtained from large samples of people. The application of these normative data and employment testing scenarios is discriminatory and employees should avoid tests of this sort in favour of personality tests with a standard norm, applied equally to all applicants 

Question 27

Six factor personality questionnaire

Answer 27

A personality test that measures standard broad traits of extroversion, agreeableness and openness to experience. Additionally, it measures a broad trait of independence and divides conscientiousness into two distinct factors. This is commonly used by the employers of the RCMP in Canada. 

Question 28

Myers Briggs type indicator

Answer 28

One of the most widely used personality tests in the business world. It was developed by a mother, daughter team, Catherine Briggs, and Isabel Myers, based on jungian concepts. The test provides information about personality types by testing for eight fundamental preferences using a forced choice or either or format. Individuals must respond in one way or another, even if their preferences might be somewhere in the middle. Although the test is not without criticism, it has great intuitive appeal.

Question 29

Psychological types

Answer 29

A term growing out of Carl jungs Siri implying that people come in Destin categories of personality, for example, extroverted types. This view is not widely endorsed by academic or re-search orientated psychologist because most personality traits are normally distributed in the population are invest conceived as dimensions of difference not categories.

Question 30

Hogan, personality, inventory

Answer 30

A questionnaire measure of personality based on the big five, but modified to emphasize the assessment of traits important in the business world. Including the motive to get along with others, and the motive to get ahead of others.