Exam 1 Study Flashcards
Definition of personality
Consistencies in people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors over time and across situations
• traits should continue and evolve throughout life
• should also be same in multiple situations
Psychological triad
Thoughts, feelings, behaviors
Funder’s First Law
Weaknesses can be strengths and strengths can be weaknesses
Psychoanalytic approach (approaches to personality)
- what are the mechanisms that drive personality (conflict)?
- what is the role of unconscious processes?
Disorders (approaches to personality)
What aspects of personality are adaptive versus maladaptive?
What are the clinical manifestations of personality?
Cognitive approach (approaches to personality)
How do cognitive processes and subjective experience shape personality?
How are these processes shaped by personality?
Positive illusions
Story changes either consciously or subconsciously to make something better
(Ex. College students who over estimated their academic ability classified as “self-enhancers”, they had higher self esteem and well being entering college but then decreased over college)
Trait approach (approaches to personality)
How do people differ from one another?
What are the fundamental dimensions of personality?
Where do these differences come from?
(THE BIG FIVE)
Cultural approach (approaches to personality)
How do social, cultural conducts influence personality?
Cultures, family, peer groups, dyads
Biological approach (approaches to personality)
How is personality influenced by biological processes?
How is personality expressed in physiological processes?
Self-report data
Information provided directly from subject
Pros: you know yourself better than anyone else, cheapest, easiest (administration and interpretation), easy to compare results
Cons: inconsistencies in what they do and what they say they do, only one perspective for data, people may lack accurate self-knowledge, responses could be intentionally changed
Informant Report
Data are provided by others
Pros: can provide data subjects may not, others are the experts in some cases, can have several observations per subject, discrepancies between observers can be interesting
Cons: any observer has limited view, some traits more observable than others, potential for bias, can be time consuming and costly, discrepancies can be problematic
Life-outcomes
Archival info (criminal records, marriage, divorce, career outcomes, living spaces, social media profiles)
Pros: “real-world” outcomes, more objective than other sources of data
Cons: can be difficult to collect, may be more accessible for some subjects, information is not contextualized, multiple determinism
Behavioral observations
Recording devices, experiments, etc.
Pros: allows for control over context and stimuli, can elicit behavior of interest, les potential for bias
Cons: can be time consuming and costly, interpretation can be ambiguous, potential for bias
Measurement error
Not consistent measurements across situations
High error means low reliability
Reliability
Yields consistent measurements across situations
Improve with aggregation
Test-retest reliability
Scores are consistent over time
Internal consistency (alpha)
Individual scale items should be associated
Inter-rater reliability
Multiple observers should agree
Validity
A valid measure assessed what it claims to assess
• an unreliable measure cannot be valid
• but a reliable measure may not always be valid
Face validity
Does the measure appear to measure what it claims?
Predictive/criterion validity
Does it predict what it claims to measure?
Convergent validity
Is it related to other measures of the same construct?
Discriminant validity
Is it (un)related to other measures is should not be?
Construct validity
All of the others combined
Generalizable
Valid across contexts and implementation
WEIRD
Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic
Threat to generalizability
Projective test
Test in which words, images, or situations are presented to a person and the responses analyzed for the unconscious expression of elements of personality that they reveal
Suffer from low reliability
Person-situation debate
Personal traits
• traits
• genetic dispositions
• free will
Situation
• obedience to authority
• peer pressure
• social rules
Situational constraints
The extent to which personality predicts behavior given the presence of social rules and expectations in a situation
Weak situation: more variation in behavior, personality more influential
Strong situation: less variation in behavior, situation more influential
Interactionalism
Both personality and situation are important predictors is behavior
More than the sum of their parts
Fundamental attribution error
The tendency people have to overemphasize personal characteristics and ignore situational factors in judging others behavior
Consensus
Do others agree?
• Inter-judge agreement (reliability)
Accuracy
Does your target agree?
Do your judgments predict behavior? (Predictive validity)
Case study
In depth study of an individual case
Pros: potentially lots of information, can examine very unusual people and situations, valuable for hypothesis generation
Cons: not generalizeable since case studies are unique, special cases
Correlational study
Association between TWO variables
Pros: can examine naturally occurring relationships, some variables cannot be controlled.
Cons: association between two variables may be caused by third variable, difficult to determine direction of causality
Experiment
Can determine causality by manipulating ONE variable to see its effect on another variable
Pros: can provide powerful test of causality
Cons: are you manipulating the factor you think you are? Can create unnatural contexts, some variables cannot be manipulated
Implicit association test
Test to measure implicit attitudes— subjects answer right away without thinking
Personality response to situation debate
1) personality predicts behavior over time
2) broad traits predict broad behaviors, narrow traits predict narrow behaviors
3) people are consistent relative to others
4) personality traits explain as much variance as situations
5) personality psychologists can still do better
Somatic marker hypothesis
Emotions enable people to make decisions that maximize good outcomes and minimize bad ones
Single trait approach
One trait, many outcomes
Many trait approach
Focus on behavior as a function of multiple traits
Essential trait approach
Which are the most important?
Big five
Typological approach
Is there something unique about different combinations of traits?
Theoretical approach
Important traits are identified from theory
Theory is the most important part
Statistical approach
Search for commonalities among large numbers of traits
Factor analysis used to statistically identify high-order traits
• totally depends on the items included in the analyses
• the factors must be interpreted
Q-sort measure (many trait approach)
Understand particular outcome/behavior
Start with a lot of descriptive items
Lexical hypothesis
Most important traits will be found in natural language
More important traits —> more words used in dictionary
Seek cross-cultural universals
Some subjective judgment involved
Critiques of the big five
1) Atheoretical
2) too broad
3) descriptive, not explanatory
4) not comprehensive (other factors)
The end of history illusion
We perceive our personalities to change more in the past (accurate)
We expect our personality to change less in the future (inaccurately)
Mean-level change
Change in average level of a trait over time
- population level change
Maturity principle
Changes in traits that are useful for adult roles
Plaster hypothesis results (the big five)
1) neuroticism: women decrease, men stable (more change after 30)
2) extraversion: women higher, but both stable
3) openness: similar, but men higher than women
4) agreeableness: women higher than men (changes over time, much more after 30)
5) conscientiousness: women higher than men (steady growth for women)
Meta-analysis
(Large aggregation) of longitudinal studies over personality change
Rank-order stability
Your “rank” of a trait in comparison to others stays the same across situations
Why does personality change?
Biological (hormone) changes with age
Changes in social roles foster responsibility
Psychotherapy and psychiatric medications
