Lecture 1 - PT

Question 1

History of personality

Answer 1

The four humours (Hippocrates)
Phrenology (Gall)
P. Gage
Extra-introverted (Jung)

Lexical hypotheses (Galton)
1. Important personality characteristics will become part of that groups language
2. More important personality characteristics are more likely to be encoded into language in a single word
3. Principle component analysis can be used to extract important aspects of variation in a population

Question 2

Jingle/Jangle fallacy

Answer 2

The fact that personality models describe the same things yet name it differently

Question 3

Mechanisms promoting individual differences

Answer 3

Life history theory: Choices in how you spend energy (more intro or extra)

Balance selection;
- environmental heterogeneity in fitness optima: Depending on your environment certain traits are more beneficial
- Frequency-dependent selection: behaviour depends on behaviour of others (prisoners dillema)

Question 4

Supervenience vs. multiple realizability

Answer 4

Supervenience: Idea that there cannot be A diff. without B diff. Change in thought/feeling/etc. means change in brain.

Multiple realizability; diff brain states are related to same mental state

Question 5

Rank-order stability

Answer 5

Stability of traits across a lifetime varies. Goes up at about 20-25, but eg emotional stability continues across whole life