Intro to Personality Psych Flashcards
what are the 3 levels of personality?
- dispositional traits
- characteristic adaptions
- life narratives
what is the defining feature of level 1 (dispositional traits) to describe personality? what does this mean?
it is relatively decontextualised… this means that when we say someone is X, it is not necessarily in a specific context
what are some examples of dispositional traits?
shy, bold, warm, aloof, impulsive etc
T or F? Dispositional traits are narrow descriptions of patterns of behaviour
F
what does the term characteristic adaptions refer to? what “level” is it?
how we might adapt in a characteristic way to a specific context, particular stage of life, situation, or role we may have.
Characteristic adaptions are highly contextualised, give an example of this
while someone may not be an anxious person, they may have a fear of heights
what are characteristic adaptions concerned with?
an individual’s particular life circumstances
what examples demonstrate characteristic adaptions?
specific goals, social roles, educational aspirations
what is level 3 of personality?
life narratives
what do some think life narratives provide?
the most detailed understanding of what an individual is like
what is the definition of personality traits?
probabilistic descriptions of regularities in behaviour and experience, arising in response to broad classes of stimuli and situations
what did theophrastus do?
write a book in ancient Greece about the different types of people he saw
what is the lexical hypothesis? who introduced it? when?
that if something is important to us, we will have developed a lexical way to describe it… allport and odbert (1936)
what did allport and odbert do? what is the flaw of it?
collected a list of 18,000 terms that were personality descriptors
it’s a list not a system
what was used to determine domains out of Allports 18,000 terms?
Factor analysis
what is factor analysis?
a statistical method that reduces many correlated variables to much fewer composite variables or factors
who developed Factor analysis to study mental abilities?
spearman and thurstone
what did Cattell do? When?
in 1943, reduced allport’s list down to a 16 factor solution using factor analysis
what were the steps of Cattell’s method?
- take 18,000 descriptors into 160 clusters of synonyms and antonyms
- discard near identical descriptors
- reduced to final list of 171 descriptors
- then asked some people to rate their friends on these 171 descriptors
- used factor analysis to settle on 16 factors
what are problems with Cattell’s 16 traits
- subjectivity before getting to factor analysis
- had poor replicability - people found different factors even when starting from his 171 traits
- redundancy - many factors correlated too highly to be different traits
from broad to narrow, what is the hierarchical structure of traits?
- meta traits (stability/plasticity)
- domains (Big 5)
- aspects (eg assertiveness, enthusiasm)
- facets (eg energy levels, talkativeness)
- nuances (discrete behaviours eg, liking parties)
how can one distinguish between an extraverted person and an agreeable person?
E person will be bold, assertive and sociable, but not necessarily nice or kind, while an A person will be kind, caring, cooperative and trusting but not necessarily a people person
what are the characteristics of a conscientious person?
- concerned with finishing things
- doing them properly
- being thorough, precise and careful
what are the characteristics of a neurotic person?
- concerns reflect anxiety, worry about getting things wrong
what are the 3 discussed “themes” of the big 5?
- interpersonal responses
- responses to achievement settings
- emotional responses
what is the reliability of a measure?
the repeatability, or the consistency of your measure
what is the general model of reliability? what increase this reliability?
observed score = true score + measurement error… if the measurement error gets smaller
what is validity?
give example
whether or not trait questionnaires measure what they intend do. you may use your feet to measure a room and this may be unreliable, but is still a valid measure
what a the three ways to estimate reliability?
- test - retest
- split half reliability
- cronbach’s alpha
what is the test-retest reliability measure?
the test is administered to the same participant twice, with enough time between that they forget their answers on the first time, and analyse how strongly the score is correlated at time 1 and time 2 and if there is TEMPORAL STABILITY
what is the caveat to the test-rest reliability
not applicable to all psychological phenomena as there are some we only expect to see in the moment.
what is the rationale behind test-retest reliability measure?
reliable is repeatable, you should be able to verify the score
what are the split half reliability measure?
what sort of reliability does this specifically refer to?
you administer a trait questionnaire, and take half of the extraversion items (for eg) and correlate them with the other half of the extraversion items… internal consistency
what does cronbach’s alpha measure?
- average of all possible split halves
T or F? Cronbach’s alpha measure is measure of internal consistency
True
what does a high cronbach’s alpha score show?
people are responding to the items on a questionnaire in a fairly consistent way
what cronbach’s alpha score and below is not considered reliable? what is normally achieved in psych?
less than .60…
.70 and above
what is the difference between face validity and content validity?
face value is any person judging if the questionnaire is relevant, while content validity is this process conducted by experts on the matter
what is the most relied upon measure of validity?
criterion related validity
how does criterion related validity work?
it measures whether there are sensible correlations with other established measures of the same phenomena
what are the two major forms of criterion related validity
concurrent validity and predictive validity
what does concurrent validity ask?
does the questionnaire correlate with other things we think it should? other related measures…
what are the two types of concurrent validity? and define
convergent - does it correlate significantly with related measures?
divergent - does it show weak or zero correlations with unrelated measures?
what does predictive validity ask? give example…
if the thing that you’re measuring predicts something that it should?
- does a measure of extraversion predict going to parties?
the big 5 were empirically derived… what does this mean?
they were derived without a guiding theory
regarding validity… what could the big 5 initially not asses? and why?
content, convergent and discriminant validity because the scale was not intended to measure any particular construct
T or F, initially, the big 5 placed stronger emphasis on predictive validity?
true
what is the main limitation of using traits to define personality?
these are somewhat generic descriptors and are relatively decontextualised, which is problematic given that so much of what we do is highly contextualised
how does McAdams and Pals define characteristic adaptations?
motivational, social-cognitive, and developmental adaptations, contextualised in time, place, and or social role
regarding characteristic adaptations for mcadams, define and give example of time, place, and role
time - stage of life (extraverted toddler, v teenager v retiree
place - specific situation (at work, with friends, etc)
role - function or duty (mother, buddhist, cyclist)
what are some examples of characteristic adaptations
motives, goals, values, virtues, schemas etc
how does de young conceptualise characteristic adaptations?
relatively stable goals, interpretations and strategies, specified in relation to an individual’s particular life circumstances
regarding characteristic adaptations for deyoung, define and give example of goals, interpretations and strategies
goals - desired future states (job aspirations)
interpretations - appraised current states (perceived statistical ability)
strategies - plans and actions to move between states (study routines, degree choice)
what is a personal myth?
it is a coherent life story about ourselves, which serves as the richest level of personality description
what is the method commonly used to examine/study life narratives?
extended, structured interviews as opposed to questionnaires
what 6 things do interviews concerning life narratives focus on?
- 8 key events in your life
- significant people
- the future script
- stresses and problems
- personal ideology
- life theme
when studying life narratives, what 3 things does content analyses focus on?
what does content analyses provide?
tones, themes, form
a process to try and draw out inferences about the person’s personality based on their responses
what are two common life narratives? define them
- redemption sequences - overcoming adversity/undergoing transformation
- growth story - personal development as a central theme, steady trajectory
