Lecture 18 - Can the Environment Change Personality Flashcards
What is the power of personality?
- True across time/context
- Stories about us have power
- If personality is fixed, we use it as an excuse to justify our actions
What did they do first?
- Made a rationale
- Inc. What is personality? Info on past stability and on long periods. Also talked about wellbeing across time/personality. Talked about relationship between personality and IQ before talking about the study.
What was the question they were asking?
- Looking at stability of personality across 6 decades (14-77 yo)
- Looking at small-moderate stability
What was the method?
- 1947 = most school kids completed Scottish mental health survey
- Teachers rated kids on 6 personality characteristics at 14. Some kids completed measures of IQ
- Ranked by teachers on Self-confidence, perserverence, originality and desire to excel, conscientiousness and stability of moods= umbrella of dependability
- Subsample selected in selected months of birthdays
- At 77, 174 ppts completed a booklet of measures inc personality with the same measures & new, IQ and wellbeing
- Someone else measured them on those traits
What were the results?
- No relationship between early and late personality characteristics
- Older age self and other ratings correlated e.g person A and friends ratings converged
- Dependability in later life was correlated to the IPIP (personality big 5 measure) and to wellbeing
- IQ correlated with dependability in adolescence and predicted dependability in old age
What were the implications?
- How does personality changes across lifespan if characteristics are inbuilt?
- Influences from env? What events in life change us?
- Can make therapies and treatments/interventions
What was critical analysis of this study?
- Published = stories made = authors make conclusions = look more at results than discussion
- Differences in past research: this study disagreed with the ones it was based off = look at experimental design e.g childhood to adulthood vs middle adulthood to older adulthood
- How accurate are teacher-led evaluation, child would nto have input. A lot of biases in teachers
- IQ was measured differently at both time-points
- Was personality measure valid? Not standardised
- Issue with sample = more likely to be dependable and have higher Iqs = does not represent those with lower IQs or lower dependability
What were similar papers?
- Personality changes throughout life = env influences
- Big 5 & said personality is based on social demands and experiences
- Relationship with bio and personality: 3 things that affect personality: work love and health
- Changing personality through intervention
