Introduction

Question 1

What does “persona” mean in Latin?

Answer 1

mask

Question 2

What is personality?

Answer 2

attributes that describe an individual in terms of uniqueness, consistency, and what the individual brings to a situation

Question 3

What is affect?

Answer 3

phenomena that involve feeling such as emotional states, moods, or emotional traits (can be short or long term)

Question 4

Why study personality?

Answer 4

1. predict behavior
2. related to important life outcomes
3. influence policy

Question 5

personality vs. situation debate

Answer 5

is behavior determined by personality or by the situation?

Question 6

Walter Michel

Answer 6

people can be categorized with personality traits but you can’t fully predict how they will behave

Question 7

What was Michel’s belief about the existence of personality?

Answer 7

He didn’t think personality existed because personality has to be stable

Question 8

Situationist Argument

Answer 8

personality traits are categories, but they don’t predict behavior across situations

Question 9

What evidence does the situationist argument present?

Answer 9

1. correlation between behavior across situations is low (0.3-0.4)
2. many examples in which the situation drives behavior
3. people act the same across situations because the situations are similar

Question 10

How does the personality argument respond to the situationist argument?

Answer 10

1. personality predicts behavioral trends, not behavior in a specific situation
2. critique is based off of a biased literature review
3. 0.4 is not a small correlation

Question 11

So what is the deal with the situationist vs personality debate?

Answer 11

both affect the behavior to a similar degree

Question 12

What are some studies that demonstrate that both personality and situation affect behavior?

Answer 12

1. Marshmallow
2. Stanford prison experiment
3. Carnahan and McFarland (Zimbardo follow up with word changes for recruitment)

Question 13

Carnahan and McFarland

zimbardo

Answer 13

Follow up to Zimbardo study, found that the personality of respondents differed according to the prompt

Question 14

What studies talk about how personality affects life outcomes?

Answer 14

1. Roberts et al. (2007): personality compared to other measures
2. Presidential elections

Question 15

Roberts et al. (2007)

Persobality related to life outcomes

Answer 15

Personality predicts:

1. mortality more than SES or IQ
2. divorce more than SES
3. educational and occupational attainment more than SES or parental income

Question 16

Presidential elections and personality

Answer 16

less pessimistic candidates more likely to be elected

Question 17

Is personality unique to American culture?

Answer 17

Personality might be more consistent in America because of emphasis on the individual. It might be more driven by the situation in Asian cultures because of emphasis on relationships

Question 18

Oishi, Diener, Scollon, Biswas-Diener (2004) cultural comparison of affect

Answer 18

• looked at how positive or negative someone felt at one point and if this correlated to how they would feel at another time point.
• found cultural similarities
• personality exists similarly across culture

Question 19

David Brooks (policy)

Answer 19

psychology should be considered in public policy
policy failures are due to simplistic view of humans
emotions can have function

Question 20

Webb, Christian, Armitage (2007) Class attendance

Answer 20

Intervention- why it is important to attend class, goals
measured conscientiousness
Intervention increased attendance for low and moderate conscientiousness

Question 21

Why should personality be considered when creating interventions

Answer 21

it would save money to focus on the individuals who would benefit the most