Intro + Research Methods

Question 1

What is Allport’s definition of personality?

Answer 1

Personality is a dynamic organization of psychological systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns of behaviour, thoughts and feelings
1. Personality is organized
Patterns and hierarchies direct their activity and behaviour
Personality has processes and forces
2. It’s deterministic, personality is something and does something
3. Personality is psychophysical
Personality is neither exclusively mental or neural, its both
4.Personality is individualized patterns
It has recurrences and consistencies

Question 2

What is temporal sequence?

Answer 2

Changes in one variable must come before changes in the other, every time

Question 3

What is Inductive Research?

Answer 3

research that goes from specific to general, using observation to develop a theory on a topic

Question 4

What is deductive research?

Answer 4

Research that goes from general to specific. starts with a theory (theory → problem statement → hypothesis → collect data → analyze and test data → prove or disprove hypothesis)

Question 5

What is Parsimony?

Answer 5

The principle that the best explanation is the simplest, or the one that includes the fewest assumptions (Occam’s razor)

Question 6

What is experience sampling?

Answer 6

people self-report repeatedly on their current experiences
Report on feelings like mood or level of self esteem
Benefit: the immediacy of reports, truthful, can report 3-4x per day
Can give us insight into how actions/ events affect people’s feelings
Similar to case study in that it’s repetitive, different in that it’s very structured

Question 7

What are WEIRD people in research?

Answer 7

W.E.I.R.D people: refers to research that focuses on participants from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic Societies

Question 8

What are nominal/categorical variables?

Answer 8

Variables where you can only be one or the other (eye colour, birth country, sex)

Question 9

What are continuous variables?

Answer 9

Makes use of real numbers designating amounts to reflect relative differences in magnitude. Scores reflected on a continuum
(eg. rosenberg self esteem) Jon has higher self esteem than Chris bc Jon’s score is 5.3 and Chris’s score is 3.7

Question 10

What are inventories?

Answer 10

A personality test that measures several aspects of personality on distinct subscales (eg. a number of statements related to pride, shame and guilt on a scale) Self reported

Question 11

what is a correlation?

Answer 11

A correlation is a relationship in which two variables or dimensions covary when measured repeatedly. (they seem go together in a non random way)
Two distinct aspects of a correlation:
The direction: positive or negative

Question 12

What is a confound?

Answer 12

additional variable, or a nuisance variable, that may influence our dependent variable or varies systematically with our independent or predictor variable.

Question 13

What is a person confound?

Answer 13

a variable within the individual that we didn’t measure, that could be what’s driving the behaviour instead of the variable that we’re studying

Question 14

What is an environmental confound?

Answer 14

A situational variable, something outside the individual (eg. hot weather causing higher # of ice cream sales and homicides)

Question 15

What are the three essential factors to establish causality (John Stewart Mill)?

Answer 15

1. Covariation: changes in one variable correspond to changes in another variable. AKA association/correlation
2. Temporal Sequence: changes in the first variable must come before changes in the second variable, this has to happen every single time. Eliminates reverse causality once established.
3. Eliminates Confounds: Ruling out other possible causes of an event before concluding that one thing is the cause of another. Get rid of 3rd variable problem.

Question 16

What are the two ingredients in an experiment?

Answer 16

Random assignment and manipulation of a variable

Question 17

What is an independant variable?

Answer 17

The variable manipulated in an experiment and tested as the cause in a cause and effect relationship

Question 18

What is the dependant variable?

Answer 18

The variable measured as the outcome of an experiment, the effect in a cause and effect relationship

Question 19

What is experimental control?

Answer 19

The holding constant of variables that are not being manipulated (eg. the task we have participants work on) this allows us to deduce that changes in results are due to our manipulation alone, tries to eliminate environmental confounds

Question 20

What are quasi-experimental designs?

Answer 20

Designs that incorporate an independent variable and a personality (or subject variable) and both are expected to influence the dependant variable
. Something is being actively manipulated, we want to see how a certain variable (like a personality trait) interacts with it

Question 21

What’s a drawback to quasi-experimental designs?

Answer 21

3rd variable problem, Not a true experiment bc we have not manipulated everything and we have not randomly assigned

Question 22

What is reliability?

Answer 22

Consistency across repeated measures

Question 23

What is test-retest reliability?

Answer 23

stability of measurements across time. Similar results over and over again. Common in longitudinal research where groups or individuals are studied over time.

Question 24

What is internal consistency?

Answer 24

agreement among responses made to the items of a measure. Retest reliability in a single session. Can use split-half reliability to test this.

Question 25

Cronbach’s Alpha

Answer 25

measure of internal consistency/ how closely related a set of items are as a group: at least 0.7, strong correlation means all items on measure are testing the same thing and responses are reliable.

Question 26

Inter-rater Reliability

Answer 26

degree of agreement between observers of the same event. Should be independent and confidential (ex. Gymnastic judges)

Question 27

What is validity?

Answer 27

the degree to which a measure actually measures what it’s intended to measure

Question 28

Internal Validity

Answer 28

Degree to which the causal relationship being tested is trustworthy and not being influenced by other variables.

Question 29

Construct Validity

Answer 29

Degree to which a test measures the concept it was designed to evaluate.

Question 30

Criterion Validity

Answer 30

Degree to which a test measures the outcome it was designed to measure.

Question 31

Convergent Validity

Answer 31

he degree to which a measure relates to other characteristics that are conceptually similar to what it’s supposed to assess. (how do different measures converge?)

Question 32

Discriminant Validity

Answer 32

Degree to which a test is NOT related to other tests that measure different constructs. (constructs = behaviours, attitudes, concepts)

Question 33

Face Validity

Answer 33

Degree to which a test appears to measure what it’s supposed to measure. (ex. A self esteem test asking “Rate your self esteem 1-10” would have high face validity)

Question 34

External Validity

Answer 34

Degree to which a set of research findings provides an accurate description of what typically happens in the real world. (related to generalizability)

Question 35

Mundane Realism

Answer 35

extent to which a research setting accurately resembles the real world.

Question 36

Experimental Realism

Answer 36

extent to which situations created in experiments feel REAL to participants. Degree to which experimental procedures lead participants to behave naturally.

Question 37

Confederate

Answer 37

Someone pretending to be a participant in a study.

Question 38

Debreifing

Answer 38

A disclosure, made to participants after research procedures are completed, in which the researcher explains the purpose of the research, attempts to resolve any negative feelings, and emphasizes the scientific contribution made by the participants’ involvement.

Question 39

What are 3 reasons for loss of validity?

Answer 39

Acquiescence, response sets, social desirability

Question 40

Explain the difference between reliability and validity.

Answer 40

Reliability is about consistency,
Validity is about accuracy (actually measuring what we aim to measure)
Reliability can sometimes be there without validity