Exam 4 Flashcards
Explain the difference between an inter-individual and group-average approaches to studying behavior
Inter-individual means studying behavior based on an individual alone whereas group-average studies the social norms
Weigh the relevance of genetic and environmental factors in shaping personality
Personality seems to have a genetic component, but genes still have a relatively small effect on personality relative to other external factors
Define personality
A person’s characteristic thoughts, emotional responses, behaviors
Define personality trait:
A person’s pattern of thought, emotion, and behavior, that’s relatively consistent over time and across situations
Trait approach:
Focuses on how individuals differ in personality dispositions
Humanistic Approach:
Approaches to studying personality that emphasize how people seek to fulfill their potential through greater self-understanding
Temperaments:
Biologically based tendencies to feel or act in certain ways
Three personality characteristics considered temperaments
Activity level, emotionality, sociability
Describe the relationship between temperaments and personality traits
The gene-environment correlation phenomenon:
-Genes and environment affect not only behavior but also each other
-Even if genes and environments are unrelated to start with, they become
complementary over time because of decisions people make
List and describe the Big Five traits used to assess personality
-openness to experience
-conscientiousness
-extraversion
-agreeableness
-neuroticism
Biological trait theory
-Personality traits had two major dimensions: introversion/extraversion and emotional stability
-Proposed that personality traits are based on biological processes
that produce behaviors, thoughts, and emotions
Describe the relationship between age and trait stability
traits stay relatively stable throughout life, particularly 50+, lowest stability in childhood, life events affect traits
Rank-order stability
Lack of change in where a person stands on the trait relative to other people
Situationism:
The theory that human behavior is determined by surrounding circumstances rather than by personal qualities.
Idiographic approaches:
Person-centered approaches to studying personality; focus is on individual lives and how various characteristics are integrated into unique persons
Nomothetic approaches:
Approaches to assessing personality that focus on
how common characteristics vary from person to person
Compare and contrast explicit and implicit measures
Explicit: self-report surveys–include a large inventory of traits. Participants might distort the truth to appear more positive
Implicit: behavioral measures–using an environment to make assumptions about someone’s personality. Other examples of implicit measures include projective measures
What criteria do psychologists use to identify behavior as pathological?
If the behavior is maladaptive, harmful, disruptive
Describe the general content of the DSM
DSM: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. Disorders are
described in terms of observable symptoms.
-The main purpose of it is description. It groups disorders based on similarity of
symptoms.
-Another purpose of it is to allow care providers to bill health insurance companies
for treatment via DSM diagnosis.
Categorical:
A person either has a psychological disorder or does not
-Fails to capture differences in the severity of a disorder
Dimensional:
Considers psychological disorders along a
continuum on which people vary in degree rather than in kind.
-Recognizes that many psychological disorders are extreme versions of normal feelings
Comorbidity
Many psychological disorders occur together
Anxiety disorders:
Psychological disorders characterized by excessive fear in the absence of true danger
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)
State of constant anxiety not associated with any specific object or event
Social anxiety disorder
Fear of being negatively evaluated by others
Major depression
A disorder characterized by severe negative moods or a lack of interest in normally pleasurable activities
Persistent depressive disorder
Not severe enough to be diagnosed as major
depressive disorder (sometimes called dysthymia)
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
Developmental disorder characterized by deficits in social interaction, impaired communication, and restricted interests
Two essential features of ASD
- Impairments in social interactions
- Restrictive or repetitive behaviors, interests, or activities
Describe cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and its use in treatment of psychological
disorders
CBT: A therapy that incorporates techniques from cognitive therapy+behavior
therapy to correct faulty thinking and change maladaptive behaviors.
-CBT is about as equal as antidepressants. Can be effective on its own, but
combining it with antidepressants might be more effective than each separate treatment option.
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy:
Based on the idea that those who recover
from depression still suffer from faulty thinking. Helps clients learn to disengage
from it through meditation.
Addiction:
Compulsive use of a drug despite negative consequences
Tolerance:
Needing more and more of a drug to feel the same effect
List and describe the four basic types of study validity:
-Construct validity: Are we studying what we intend to study? Are the constructs
(conceptual variables like impulsiveness) being measured/ manipulated?
-Statistical validity: How thorough are the statistics that we used to back up our
findings?
-Internal validity: Confidence that a study demonstrated that one variable causes
another.
-External validity: Generalizability of findings beyond study across populations,
settings, species. Established with replication.
Explain the difference between internal validity and external validity
External validity concerns generalizability, and internal validity concerns the accuracy of the study
Threats to internal validity
History, maturation, instrumentation, testing, regression to the mean, attrition, selection
