Intro to Individual Differences

Question 1

What is personality inferred from?

Answer 1

1) behaviour that is mostly consistent and stable (situational and temporal)
2) preferences, values & interests

Question 2

When does personality exist?

Answer 2

• social settings
• outside of social interaction
• when were alone

Question 3

Implicit Personality theories

Answer 3

• “common sense”- non scientific understanding
• inadequate and biased
• silly generalisations
• we NEED science to make predictions

Question 4

History of personality research

Answer 4

• experimental data
• psychoanalysis
• psychiatric perspectives
• results from factor analysis

Question 5

Issues with psychiatric perspectives

Answer 5

• unreliability of diagnoses between psychiatrists
• “disease” perspective- results in categorising people
• based on psycho dynamic perspectives

Question 6

Idiographic / psychodynamic perspectives

Answer 6

• focus on individual uniqueness
• in depth analysis and understanding of person
• intra individual- how someone changes according to the situation or how the situation is defined

Question 7

Issues with psychodynamic perspectives

Answer 7

• no proof
• not scientific (Freud a fraud)

Question 8

Behaviourism

Answer 8

• personality is only the aggregation of a stimulus response element
• personality has no structure
• does indicate there is a measurable behavioural output

Question 9

The role of statistics in personality research: Galton’s Lexical Hypothesis (1884)

Answer 9

• assumption that important individual differences between individuals would be encoded in single linguistic terms that occur cross culturally
• interested in measuring differences (intelligence)
• created the standard deviation as measure of individual variation
• regression and correlation coefficients to quantify degree of association between measures of individual differences

Question 10

Factor analysis: Spearman (1904)

Answer 10

• study of cognitive performance in school children
• realised scores on range of tests correlated together
• underlying some sort of “factor”- called “g” for general cognitive ability

Question 11

Factor analysis: Galton

Answer 11

• used adjectives as way of coming to some understanding of what personality is
• we ‘naturally’ used descriptive words to describe personality

Question 12

Factor analysis: Allport and Odbert (1936)

Answer 12

• categorised all words in dictionary that describe personality
• started off with 18000 and reduced to 4500

Question 13

Factor analysis: Cattell (1949)

Answer 13

• applied factor analysis to Allport and Odbert 4500 words
• ended up with 16 personality factors which all vary

Question 14

Some of Cartell’s personality traits

Answer 14

• warmth
• reasoning
• emotional stability
• sensitivity
• privateness
• perfectionism

Question 15

Nomothetic (trait based)

Answer 15

• similarities between large number of individuals
• core structure of personality- predefined criteria/attributes that are universal
• dispositional
• dimensional- continum and not categorical

Question 16

Issues with factors/ traits

Answer 16

• can’t be regarded as parts of a substance
• not separate “organs” or “isolated properties”
• not “primary abilities”
• they are principles of classification described by person doing the analysis

Question 17

The need for both nomothetic and idiographic approaches (Eysenck, 1951)

Answer 17

• no scientific way of investigating the inner subjective organisation of a persons fundamental needs and drives except by studying
• no way of accounting for observed consistencies and characteristics tendencies except assuming some inner organisation

Question 18

Eysenck (1952)

Answer 18

• sought to structure personality into meaningful and testable entity

Question 19

Components of personality: Temperament

Answer 19

• individuals emotional nature
• suspectability to emotional stimulation
• customary strength and speed of response
• quality of his prevailing mood
• fluctuation and intensity in mood

Question 20

Components of personality: Character

Answer 20

• psychological disposition to inhibit instinctive impulses in accordance with a regulative principle
• ground of consistency, firmness, self control

Question 21

Components of Personality

Answer 21

• cognitive (intelligence)
• somatic (constitution)
• motivation (what drives us)
• values (whats important to us and others)
• attitudes (positive and negative feelings)
• beliefs (cognitive component of attitudes)

Question 22

Eysenck’s (1947) theory of personality structure

Answer 22

1) specific responses which are observed once and may be characteristic of an individual
2) habitual responses that tend to recur under similar circumstances
3) traits organised from habitual responses
4) general “types” organised from traits

Question 23

Where does it leave us now?

Answer 23

• Eysneck high influential in reserch having specified structure
• allowed for development and testing hypotheses about personality and individual differences
• he brought substance to traits defined by FA
• personality research rooted in this approach

Question 24

How to measure individual differences

Answer 24

• quantitative
• tested via various analyses like factor analysis, multiple regression, mediation and moderation and sometimes ANOVAs

Question 25

Psychometrics

Answer 25

• scientific measurement of individual differences
• factor analysis relies on data acquired from this
• accurate, effective, standardised and statistically tested for validity and reliability
  achieve accurate operational definitions of psychological constructs
• produce score for individual taking test

Question 26

What is a psychological construct?

Answer 26

• particular phenomena that is evidenced in research and NOT what is referred in everyday conversation
• label given to set of observations of beh that appear to belong together
• not something that exists in a person but manifested
• OPERATIONALISED definition of a personality trait