L1 - Intro to personality and individual differences Flashcards
What are the 4 main ideas surrounding personality personality?
1) It’s an internal adaptive process that evolves to our experiences and changes our lives
2) It involves both the mind and the body
3) creates the persons characteristic patterns + it remains stable over time
4) It influences our thoughts, feelings and behaviour
Why is personality studied?
It’s the basic of human nature + acts as the motivational basis for human behaviour.
Helps us to understand how personality develops (nature v nurture).
Helps provide descriptions or help categorise people based on how they behave.
what is the strategy of the idiographic approach?
emphasises the uniqueness of the individual
What’s the strategy of the nomothetic approach?
focuses on the similarities between groups of individuals –> individuals are only unique in which they way they compare to the group
What is the goal of the idiographic approach?
to develop an in-depth understanding of the individual
What’s the goal of the nomothetic approach?
aims to identify the basic structure of personality and then minimum number of traits required to describe personality universally
what research method does the idiographic approach use?
Qualitative method that mainly produces case studies
what research method does the nomothetic approach use?
Quantitative methods e.g.,
explore the structures of personality
produce measures of personality
explore the relationships between variables across groups
How is data collected for the idiographic approach
interviews, diaries, narratives, treatment, session data
How is data collected for the nomothetic approach
self repot personality questionnaires
What are the advantages of the idiographic approach?
Depth of understanding the individual
What are the advantages of the nomothetic approach?
discovers general principles that have a predictive function
What are the disadvantages of the idiographic approach?
lack of generalisability
What are the disadvantages of the nomothetic approach?
can lead to a superficial understanding –> training is needed to analyse personality accurately
What should personality theories aim to do?
organise the complexity of the behaviours that are measured/ observed
should help to understand the “why” of behaviour + help to generate predictions so it can be empirically tested + shown to be valid aka empirical validity
the concepts should be testable (operationalised)
should explain a wide variety of behaviour (comprehensive)
should promote interest and research in the area
Should have applied value
