Lecture 1: Introduction Flashcards
How can we begin to make sense of people’s personalities?
an organized theory
What is Personality
Personality is the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his/her interactions with and adaptations to the intrapsychic (inner psychological process, e.g., motivation, self esteem), physical (e.g., house, food), and social environments
What are psychological traits?
General characteristics, average tendencies
what is the utility of traits?
- Describe ourselves and others
- Explain behaviours
- Predict future behaviours
What is a psychological mechanism?
How we interact with others and the environment. Personality is an information processing system. There are three key ingredients to a psychological mechanism: input, decision rules (if then) and output.
What is the pre cursor to personality?
Temperament
Traits vs. States
Traits are relatively enduring over time and states are transient experiences
How does personality impact how we think, feel, act and interact?
- Perceptions or interpretations of the environment
- Selection of the situations we enter (e.g., friendships, hobbies, classes, skydiving)
- Evocation of feelings, responses in others (aggression)
- Manipulations or way we intentionally impact the environment
Does personality serve adaptive functions?
Yes- accomplish goals, cope, adjust and respond to challenges. Behaviour is goal directed, functional and purposeful
What behaviours that don’t appear functional may be functional?
-Chronic worry (neurotic behviour) –> elicits social support
What is the functional perspective?
traits/ behaviours evolved because they gave our ancestors an evolutionary advantage, they serve a function
What is also key for understanding personality?
Understanding a persons environment is also key for understanding personality. Personality interacts with our environments, which in turn interacts with us: Physical environment, Social environment, Intrapsychic environment. Each environment contributes to our reality
What are the 3 levels of personality?
- The human nature level of analysis (Exploring the ways that make us similar, taking a broad lense)
- Group (and hence individual) differences level of analysis. Like some others, explores the ways that groups differ or are similar
- Individual uniqueness level of analysis (Like no other, identifying unique traits. Progression of personality development that makes each of us unique)
What is a theory?
- Organizes research findings to tell a coherent story
- Can be used to make predictions
- Provides a guide for researchers (directing future research)
What is the big five factor theory ?
openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness
Theories vs. Beliefs
- Beliefs are not necessarily based on facts- this does not mean they are untrue, but we cannot assume the truth of a belief until it is supported with research
- A good theory… Is Comprehensive, Provides a guide for future research, Is testable, Avoids assumptions, Is compatible with other areas of knowledge
What is the fissure/gap in the field
No such thing as a grand theory (human nature level of analysis), just many separate ones that cover different domains of personality at the individual and group differences level of analysis.
(e.g., the elephant metaphor)
How do we bridge this fissure?
Through the domains of knowledge
What are the 6 domains?
Dispositional, biological, intrapsychic, cognitive/experiential, social/cultural, adjustment
what is the dispositional domain?
- Deals with ways in which individuals differ from one another.
- Interest in the number and nature of fundamental dispositions
- Goals: Identify and measure the most important ways in which individuals differ form one another. Origin of individual differences and how these develop/ change over time.
What is the biological domain?
- Core assumption: humans are collections of biological systems, and these systems provide building blocks for behaviours, thoughts and emotions (e.g., women with more testosterone act differently than women with less)
- Behavioural genetics of personality (Twin studies, selective breeding)
What is the intrapsychic domain?
- Deals with mental mechanisms of personality, many of which operate outside conscious awareness
- Classic and modern versions of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, including work on defense mechanisms
What is the cognitive/experiental domain?
- Focuses on cognition and subjective experience such as conscious thoughts, feelings, beliefs and desires about oneself and others
- Form and content of psychological mechanisms
- Locus of control: am I in control or do things control my destiny
What is the social and cultural domain?
-Assumption that personality affects and is affected by cultural and social contexts
-We will cover topics like: Personality traits in dating, mating and separating, Sex differences in personality,
Social influence tactics
what is the adjustment domain?
- Personality plays key role in how we cope, adapt and adjust to events in daily life
- Personality linked with important health outcomes and problems in coping and adjustment
- We will discuss topics like: Stress, Type a personality, Personality disorders
What are the sources of personality data?
- Self report Questionnaire Data
- Observer report data
- Test data
- Life outcome data
What is the format of S-data questions?
-Unstructured items-open ended
-Structured items- response options provided (more common)… Yes/NO, true/false
Likert rating scale
What is the 20 statement test?
- Open ended and unstructured (S-data)
- Start 20 statements with I am. Write the first things that come to mind and try not to censor. 1st category is physical characteristics (e.g., I am tall), 2nd is social role characteristics (e.g., I am a brother), 3rd is personal traits (e.g., I am socially aware), 4th is existential (e.g., I am human, I am an optimist)
What is experience sampling?
- Looks at average tendencies in peoples responding and how these differ depending on personality
- Phone software prompts you throughout the day with questions (e.g., 5 questions about self esteem through different times in the day)
- Daily Diary Design
Describe the daily diary design (experience sampling)
- Data are collected on a daily basis about events, such as physical symptoms, emotions and self esteem
- Personality researchers often collect personality data either before or after the daily diary phase
- Critical role of the participant in making personality research work
what are the advantages and disadvantages of S-data?
- Advantages: Access to thoughts, feelings, intuition, Definitional truth, Simple and easy
- Disadvantages: May not respond honestly (e.g., social desirability bias, altruism/egoism), Lack accurate self knowledge, Potential overuse
What is observer report data?
Information provided by someone else about another person
-Key features of O data: Provide access to information not attainable through other sources, Multiple observers can be used
What are the different types of observers?
- Professional personality assessors (trained in personality assessment/observation)
- People who actually know the target person
- Better position to observe targets natural behaviours
- Allows for assessment of multiple social personalities
Naturalistic observation vs. artificial
Naturalistic observation:
- Pro: realistic context
-Con: not able to control events witnessed
Artificial observation:
-Pro: controlling conditions and eliciting relevant behaviour
- Con: lacks realism
What are the advantages and disadvantages of observational research?
Advantages:
-Multiple sources of information (inter rater reliability)
-Provide access to information not attainable through other sources
Disadvantages:
-Lack access to private experiences
- Bias
- Error
What is test Data?
- Information provided by standardized tests or testing situations
- Idea is to see if different people behave differently in identical situations
- Situation designed to elicit behaviours that serve as indicators of personality
- Physiological Data (Blood pressure, galvanic skin response, HR, brain functioning as indicators of personality)
What are the advantages and disadvantages of physiological data?
Advantages: Appearance of objectivity (Cant fake it)
Disadvantage:
- Artificial setting/conditions
- Accuracy of recording dependent on participant perceiving situation as experimenter intended
What are projective techniques?
- Person presented with ambiguous stimuli and asked to describe what she/he sees
- Assumption that person “projects” personality onto ambiguous stimuli
- Examples: thematic apperception test (TAT) and Rorschach test
What is life outcome data?
- Information that can be gleaned from events, activities, and outcomes in a person’s life that is available for public scrutiny (E.g., speeding tickets, medical files, tax returns)
- Can serve as important source of real life information about personality
- Personality psychologists may use S- and O-data to predict L-data
- Examples facebook, instagram and twitter
What are the advantages and disadvantages of life outcome data?
Advantage: may provide useful means for gathering information about wishes, desires, fantasies that a person is not aware of and could not report
Disadvantage : Difficult to score, uncertain validity and reliability
Study: what your facebook says about you
- Facebook profiles yield accurate judgments of trait openness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness (but not neuroticism) Back et al., 2010
- When facebook page shows large amount of social interaction and prominently displays attractive photo of account owner tend to infer (many times correctly) that person is relatively narcissistic Buffardi & Campbell, 200
What are the issues in personality assessment?
Agreement among sources vary depending on personality variable (ranges from low to moderate)
e. g., Observable vs. non observable (extraversion vs. sincerity)
- all sources of data have limitations. Results that replicate through triangulation are most powerful
