Chapter 4: Persons and Situations

Question 1

What are the two most important aspects of the trait approach?

Answer 1

1. Relies on the correlational designs
2. It focuses exclusively on individual differences

Question 2

Why are people inconsistent?

Answer 2

Because their behavior in not only influenced by traits, but also the situations

Question 3

What are the three issues with the person-situations debate?

Answer 3

1. Does the personality of an individual transcend the immediate context and provide a consistent guide to actions, or is what a person does utterly dependent on the situation at the time?
2. Are common, ordinary intuitions about people fundamentally flawed or basically, correct?
3. Why do psychologists continue to argue about the consistency of personality?

Question 4

What is the situationist argument?

Answer 4

It is the belief that behaviours are mainly driven by situations

Question 5

What are the three parts of the situationist argument?

Answer 5

1. There is an upper limit to how well one can predict what a person will do based on any measurement of that person’s personality, and this upper limit is low
2. Situations are more important that personality traits
3. Not only is the professional practice of personality assessment a waste of time, but also, everyday intuitions about people are wrong, because people see others as being more consistent across situations than they really are

Question 6

What determines a behavior?

Answer 6

The situation

Question 7

What are the three ways people interact with situations?

Answer 7

1. The effect of a personality variable may depend on the situation, or vice versa
2. Certain types of people go to or find themselves in different types of situations
3. People change the situations that they are in by what they do with them

Question 8

The person-situation debate…
a. was based on a disagreement about whether the personality coefficient had an upper limit of about .30
b. was a waste of time
c. was based on the finding that people are somewhat inconsistent across time
d. was resolved with the finding that personality is more important than the situation for determining behavior

Answer 8

c. was based on the finding that people are somewhat inconsistent across time

Question 9

What is true of the trait approach to understanding personality?
a. It is based mostly on correlational research
b. It is based on case studies
c. It focuses on how people are similar to each other
d. It proposes that traits are the only things that influence behavior

Answer 9

a. It is based mostly on correlational research

Question 10

The trait approach proposes that…
a. personality matters because it affects and predicts important life outcomes
b. personality is important because it has small effects on behavior that add up over time
c. personality is better for explaining how people behave in general than are situations
d. all of the above

Answer 10

d. all of the above

Question 11

What is the situationist’s view of human nature?

Answer 11

Their view the world, at a superficial level at least, implies that people are free to do whatever they want, rather than having their behaviour influenced by their consistent personality

Question 12

What is the personality’s view of human nature?

Answer 12

Their view begins with the idea that understanding human nature demands more than a one-size-fits-all approach, and it appreciates the unique aspects of every individual

Question 13

Which of the following behaviors would be the easiest to predict accurately?
a. Mary will smile at 10:00 A.M. tomorrow
b. At a party on Friday, Susan will talk to at least 10 people
c. David will generally be on time for work most days next week
d. None of the above answer options is correct; each of these behaviors would be equally easy to predict

Answer 13

c. David will generally be on time for work most days next week

Question 14

Someone who is ________ is likely to express his or her personality consistently from one situation to the next.
a. low in self-monitoring
b. high in self-efficacy
c. high in self-monitoring
d. low in self-efficacy
e. low in self-monitoring AND low in self-efficacy

Answer 14

a. low in self-monitoring

Question 15

A long life is associated with what trait?
a. neuroticism
b. introversion
c. self-monitoring
d. openness to experience
e. conscientiousness

Answer 15

e. conscientiousness

Question 16

Based on recent research, what is likely to happen when an aggressive person plays a competitive multiplayer video game?
a. The aggressive person will evoke aggression from the other players
b. There is no ability to predict how the aggressive person will behave in this context
c. The aggressive person will become more passive as the game goes on
d. The aggressive person will be less aggressive in the game than in real life
e. The aggressive person will frequently win

Answer 16

a. The aggressive person will evoke aggression from the other players

Question 17

A social psychologist focused on statistical significance is concerned with ________, whereas a personality researcher focused on effect sizes is concerned with ________.
a. squaring correlations; Binomial Effect Size Displays
b. process; outcome
c. documenting the existence of an effect; quantifying the size of an effect
d. quantifying the size of an effect; documenting the existence of an effect

Answer 17

c. documenting the existence of an effect; quantifying the size of an effect

Question 18

Walter Mischel and his 1968 book Personality and Assessment are noteworthy because this work
a. was the first to outline the Five Factor Model of personality
b. provides the most cogent argument for why trait theory and psychodynamic theory should be integrated
c. is credited with starting the person-situation debate by claiming that traits are not as important as situational factors in behavioral prediction
d. provides the first published defense of trait theory against the situationist critique

Answer 18

c. is credited with starting the person-situation debate by claiming that traits are not as important as situational factors in behavioral prediction

Question 19

Funder notes that the person who is most talkative at a party is also likely to be the most talkative at the department of motor vehicles (DMV). Which of the following terms describes this principle?
a. synchronicity principle
b. absolute consistency
c. relative change
d. absolute change
e. relative consistency

Answer 19

e. relative consistency

Question 20

Which of the following is NOT a reason that older people believe their personalities are more consistent than those of younger people?
a. They have more wealth accumulated
b. They have more responsibilities
c. They are more mature
d. Their social roles are more stable

Answer 20

a. They have more wealth accumulated

Question 21

According to situationists, the upper limit of personality coefficients is estimated as…
a. .60
b. .20
c. -.45
d. .80
e. .40

Answer 21

e. .40

Question 22

Which of the following is true about predicting future behaviors?
a. Specific behaviors are better predicted than aggregated behaviors
b. Aggregated behaviors aren’t usually very accurate when predicting future behaviors
c. Specific behaviors are generally pretty easy to predict
d. Aggregated behaviors are better predicted than specific behaviors
e. Only fortune-tellers can predict the future

Answer 22

d. Aggregated behaviors are better predicted than specific behaviors