Lecture 2: Observing personality

Question 1

What is the lexical hypothesis?

Answer 1

1. Those personality characteristics that are important to a group of people will eventually become a part of that group’s language.
2. More important personality characteristics are more likely to be encoded into language in many words.
3. Principle Component Analysis of the covariance-structure of traits can be used to extract the most important aspects of variation in a population.

Question 2

What are traits?

Answer 2

Words in natural language to describe individual characteristics

Question 3

What is the method for studying covariance patterns?

Answer 3

1. Large list of trait words in language
2. Method to derive principal components or factors
3. Factor structure of 5-7 factor

Question 4

What is important when interpreting covariance?

Answer 4

Why is it common to find 5/6/7 principal components in lexical studies?
Reasoning behind covariance between traits
Persistence (consistency over time)
Pervasiveness (consistency over situations)

Question 5

Trait realism

Answer 5

Traits seen as inferred organismic structure underlying behavioural dispositions. Seen as inclinations to behave in certain ways in situations than generalized action tendencies. For example one trait is related to a biopsychological stem which results in other related adjectives

Question 6

What is a realist trait perspective on the big three?

Answer 6

Positive emotionality= wellbeing, social closeness, achievement, social potency
Negative emotionality= stress reactivity, alienation, aggression
Constraint= harm avoidance, control, traditionalism, absorption

Question 7

Realist perspective on temperament big 3 infant behaviour questionnaire

Answer 7

Surgency= approach, vocal reactivity, high intensity pleasure, smile and laughter, activity level, perceptual sensitivity
Negative affectivity= sadness, distress to limitation, fear and falling reactivity
Orienting/regulation capacity= cuddliness, low intensity pleasure, duration of orienting, soothability

Question 8

Situationism

Answer 8

That the situation does not imply a certain trait which argues that generalized behavioural consistencies have not been demonstrated. But has been found to be no longer compatible with evidence

Question 9

What is the solution for situationism?

Answer 9

1. Look for evidence for situations as people can act very differently on different occasions
2. Evidence for people as they can act similar from one week to another
3. See that both are correct due to person specific distributions

Question 10

Person-specific distributions

Answer 10

Traits are certain states-of-mind and behaviours which indicate the likelihood of states over a certain time period. These can be stable but specific outcomes at any moment can vary (situationism)

Question 11

What is network stability?

Answer 11

1. Interactions of particular acts, feelings, thoughts
2. Give rise to covariance between
   them
3. Resulting in generalized patterns
4. And broad traits

Question 12

Stability in the performance of the actor

Answer 12

The self as a social actor which includes semantic representations of traits, social roles and other features which result in repeated performance on the social stage of life. Includes persona and appearance to others.

Question 13

How does the self as an actor lead to stable characteristics?

Answer 13

Perceived reactions and self judgement-> actions-> perception and judgement by others -> reactions by others

Question 14

What is the goal of CBP (verhalen bank psychiatrie)?

Answer 14

• Creating a scientific database of interviews on experiences of mental health and mental health care
• Developing new methods for analyzing these narratives
• Initiate possibilities for improving mental health care
• Creating educational material for students in mental
  health care
• Working against taboo and stigma
• Offering comfort, strength and inspiration to fellow patients

Question 15

What was the method used?

Answer 15

• 138 narratives of (ex) patients , people in their network ,
  and workers in mental health care.
• Transcripts of the interviews are kept private in a scientific database
• From these transcripts narratives are written by an editor and then revised on the basis of input from the
  interviewer and the person being interviewed
• These are published online and can be freely used
• In this course we use two narratives from this database

Question 16

What are the coding narratives agency and communion?

Answer 16

Agency is the existence of an organism as an individual, involves self-protection, self-assertion and self-expansions. Exists in separations can manifest in isolation, alienation and aloneness as well as urge to master.
Communion is engaging in a larger organism which the individual is a part of, sense of being with others. Lack of separation, contact, openness and union, non-contractual cooperation.

Question 17

Factors which make up agency and communion?

Answer 17

Agency: self-mastery, status/victory, empowerment, achievement/responsibility
Communion: love/friendship, dialogue, unity, caring/help

Question 18

Qualitative analysis of narratives

Answer 18

Thematic analysis
Grounded theory
Case-wise narrative analysis
Phenomenological analysis

Question 19

Model of agency and communion to understand personality disorders

Answer 19

There could be disturbances in the self in terms of identity and self-direction, interpersonally could be empathy and intimacy. Both of which lead to issues with personality functioning