Lecture 3 Flashcards
Rational/theoretical method?
You write questions that appear to be related to the trait you want to measure (face valid).
To find out which items are good, you need to find those that correlate with each other.
It is a structured, undisguised method.
Factor analytic method?
Structured but non-disguised. Provide participants with a broad set of questions relevant to a couple of traits. In the end you put the things into groups called factors. You need to have a strong intuition that people will not lie. If you want a narrow vision of a person, you shouldn’t use factor analysis.
Empirical method?
Structured and disguised.
You ask the group of interest and a group of non-interest a lot of questions about anything and nothing. You do this to identify patterns of responses characteristic of interest (group).
You need lack of face validity because people can’t know what you’er measuring.
You need a serious amount of ressources, time and a big purpose.
What can lead to inaccurate self-reporting?
Will the person be able to speak the truth?
People low in “private self-consciousness” don’t spend much time thinking about themselves.
Inattention.
Response set.
Faking.
Faking good.
What is “inattention” and how can it be avoided?
When people don’t pay attention to the reporting - hurts reliability.
Can be avoided by repeating the question later in the exam, and include easy factual questions.
What is “response set”?
Example, extreme responding. Acts a lot on the validity - can still be reliable.
What is “faking” and how to detect it?
People will have in mind what is responsibly to answer. People are able to lie in a reliable manner but it will hurt the validity.
Will happen when important decisions will be based on the outcome of the measure.
You can detect it with overclaiming questions where one of the answer choices aren’t true.
What is “faking good”?
Socially desirable responding give reliable answers but with less validity.
The basic concept behind projective test by Rorschach
He selected a small number out of thousands of inkblots on which patients with different psychiatric diagnoses responded to most differently. It is an unstructured, disguised test. Empirical method used to make the test.
The basic concept behind projective test as the TAT
Thematic Apperception Test. Pictures of individuals in important life situations. To find out what people prioritize. People often response with answers referring to themselves. Some motives have been studied with this method: achievement, power, intimacy.
May be useful for predicting motives (McAdams level 2)
What is Meehl’s opinion to projective tests?
You might worsen your clinical predictions with projective tests. It can cause you to neglect information from more valid scores but drier
How was MMPI scale constructed?
Is a structured and disguised because people don’t know what the test is for. Used when you are afraid that other people will lie. Developed using the empirical method. A problem is that it is not always useful for normal personality assessment.
What is the intellectual expectancy effect?
A student is selected at random. The teacher is told that a kid is expected to achieve great things. Those children ended up performing better and achieved better grades than the rest of the class.
What is the social expectancy effect?
This study included a heterosexual man and woman. The man is given a picture of an attractive and non-attractive girl. The woman thinks that one of the pictures is of her, because the researcher took a picture of her when she came to the lab. She is then given a phone and talking to the man. The man still has the picture in his hand (it isn’t her on the picture). All the conversations are recorded. Blind raters (people who didn’t see the picture that the man looked at) code the woman side of the conversation. They find that attractive people are more warm and friendly when talking to the man. Here we are seeing that the man’s conception of the attractive woman makes the woman act in the expected way.
• Therefore, the impression other has of us can influence our own behavior in the future.
Who is an effective judge of the personality of other people?
An effective judge has to be intelligent, conscientious, sociable and open. Women are better judges.
What kind of information is most informative?
We get it from faces, tone of voice, mode of dress, condition of someone’s bedroom. The automatic impression.
Also music preferences.
What is interactionist theories?
Something in our environment that says something about our personality. It can either be from the interior or exterior.
Who is an “effective” target?
Someone who is stable. Also if they’re extravert and agreeable.
Strong vs weak situations
Stressful/emotional situations are good to pick up information about someone’s personality because it is harder to self-monitor in these situations.
What is the SOKA model?
It is a model that says something about which information you can get from self-report, friends and strangers, and in which case it is most useful. It also looks at a trait and its observability and evaluativeness.
For example, in neuroticism: self-ratings most useful, then friends, then strangers. But for extraversion, every rating is equally useful.
