Lecture 8: Personality, Strength & Virtues

Question 1

What is personality psychology and its relationship with positive psychology?

Answer 1

• Enormous breadth (personality psych expands from genes to culture)
• A strong base for positive psychology. Applications to clinical psychology (tends towards the negatives, but there wasn’t a relative neglect for positive psychology which makes it a good base e.g., differences in happiness, creativity etc.)

Question 2

How are people like all other people?

Answer 2

• Basic Needs and capacities: SDT, language

- SDT: everyone has these basic needs and everyone needs to meet these needs (competence, relatedness, autonomy)

Question 3

How are people like some other people?

Answer 3

• Individual & group differences; trait, gender, etc

Question 4

How are people like no others?

Answer 4

Individually unique quirks, life stories (defining moments that impact future behaviours and well-being), projects

Question 5

Where does personality come from?

Answer 5

Evolution, Genes, prenantal experience, temperament, and development

Question 6

How does personality come from evolution?

Answer 6

Adaptive problems form our personalities, one thing humans are really good at that is different from animals is cooperation

Question 7

How does personality come from genes?

Answer 7

Heritability, but not immutable. Environment does play a role.

Question 8

How does personality come from prenatal experience?

Answer 8

Potentially important to personality. Even twins, have different prenatal experiences (sharing a womb can even differ)

Question 9

How does personality come from early temperament?

Answer 9

• Infants have individual differences that are relatively stable. Early temperamental features are the building blocks of personality features. Temperament evokes responses from the environment (crying baby might get picked up more)

Question 10

How does personality come from development?

Answer 10

• In families, cultures, places, & random events (growing up in a noisy place might mean that you need that simulation, whereas growing up in a quiet environment might mean that noises and people overwhelm/distract you)
• Processes of evocation, selection, etc.
  Maturation, increasing cognitive complexity

Question 11

What is big about the big 5?

Answer 11

• These are BIG (broad)
• Think of these like a map of personality (traits come together to from the big five traits, facets of extraversion)
• Heritability (40-50%), physiological correlates
• Stability over time (rank order stability) yet room for change
• Predict important life outcomes (things that matter in life are predicted by these big five traits, e.g., divorce, health & longevity)

Question 12

Are traits dimensional?

Answer 12

Yes, most people are in the middle. not strictly extraverted or intraverted

Question 13

Are traits variable or consistent?

Answer 13

Both: Traits are variable, yet consistent. it is best to think of personality traits as dimensions of difference, rather than types or black-and-white categories. Moreover, most people tend to be moderate on most traits.

• There is moment to moment variation, sometimes extraverts are quiet, sometimes introverts are loud.
• Both introverts and extraverts are experiencing the full range of interversion and extraversion, however you can see mean differences (introvert mean ~40 and extroververt mean = 60)
• When we aggregate over many moments and collect average over tiem, we see clear differences in personality traits. However, personality psych is lousy at distinguishing moment-moment traits.

Question 14

What are other individual differences (things that aren’t traits but still describe similarities or differences among people)

Answer 14

• Needs or motives (vs. universal versions)
• Goals (things we are working towards)
• Interests
• Self-concept (through self report, e.g., am I satisfied with my life? Someone else might say something different about your self concept and this is assessed by peer reports)
• Values
• Attachment style (good relationships vs. bad relationships)
• Abilities (musical ability, athletic ability etc.)
• Character strengths (positive psychology individual differences)

Question 15

How are these other individual differences different compared to traits?

Answer 15

• Usually more specific or clearly defined
• Usually assumes causes or consequences
• Yet may overlap part of what’s included in trait

Question 16

What is personality?

Answer 16

Personality refers to the individual, internal characteristics that produce regularities in thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Question 17

How can traits be a personality process?

Answer 17

• Genes
• Physiology (e.g., BAS) Dopamine has to do with approach motivation, somehow extraverts have more of that and a more sensitive behavioral activation system (extraverts pursue things vigorously)
• Sociable/reward behaviour (cause & effect). Selection (selecting environments e.g., pub vs. home), evocation (evoking a different kind of environment make environment more or less conducive), manipulation (studies: finish the story e.g., john is sitting with his head on a desk… extraverts take that in a positive direction
• Cognitive biases (e.g., memory, homophones)
• Self regulation (mood)
• Culture (US/ western society really values extraversion but not all cultures do )

Question 18

What is a state vs. a trait?

Answer 18

Traits refer to average tendencies over time. They are inside people, i.e., the long-term inclinations that people carry with them to each situation. Yet, in each moment, we have thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that can vary quite a bit; these are states. States are temporary and sensitive to the immediate context; they are short-term units

Question 19

What are the jingle and jangle fallacies?

Answer 19

• Jangle= The jangle fallacy is thinking that two nearly identical things are different because they have different names. For example, some have argued that conscientiousness and grit are so similar that having two separate names is more confusing than helpful
• Jingle= the jingle fallacy is thinking that two actually different things are the same because they share a name. For example, optimism has been measured in two different ways: 1) with questionnaires about general future
  expectations (e.g., ‘in uncertain times, I usually expect the best) or 2) by coding the way people explain the reasons for good and bad events (e.g., as being due to internal vs. external or controllable vs. uncontrollable reasons)

Question 20

What are positive psychology’s unit of personality?

Answer 20

• Strengths and virtues
• Background: Similar to general arguments for positive psychology, Addresses the 2nd pillar of positive individual differences,
  Assumes virtue & character essential to the good life (cf aristotle & eudaimonia)

Question 21

What are the potential benefits and important differences between the DSM and the VIA system?

Answer 21

Potential benefits of both:
- Common language
- Directs research and assessment
- Provides a map for other institutions
Important differences
- Categories vs. dimensions (fall somewhere along a spectrum)
- Number of constructs (DSM has 700ish, the character strengths list has 24)
- (aspires to)greater validity, more universal

Question 22

How can we define strengths?

Answer 22

• Morally valued (positive* criteria of positivity)

Question 23

How do strengths compare to traits?

Answer 23

• Similar as units (Relative stability, consistency. Role for situations, nurturing)
• Similar hierarchical conceptual structure (Broad virtues, narrower strengths; big scope)
• Content differs (?) Exclusively positively/valued (e.g., there is no character strength like neuroticism whereas personality traits include negative traits. The big 5 can become extreme in such a way that they produce personality disorders or are problematic), some extras (the goal of the big five was to be comprehensive but character strengths reflects some areas that the big five didn’t hit)?

Question 24

How was the strengths list developed?

Answer 24

• Discussion among psychologists
• Consulted philosophers lists
• Consulted literature & pop culture
• Consulted institutions (e.g., boy scouts)
• Looked across cultures (might find things that are idiosyncratically considered in one culture but this would not be included on the list because they were looking for universality)
• Hoping for universal agreement (except situational themes)
• Criteria are ‘family resemblance’ (should meet most criteria, not perfect), debatable

Question 25

what are the six guiding virtues?

Answer 25

Wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, transcendence

Question 26

What are the 10 criteria for strengths?

Answer 26

1. Contributes to fulfillment
   - Beyond coping and merely feeling good
   - Recall eudaimonia
   - Signature strengths as authentic & intrinsic
2. Strengths valued themselves
   - Beyond outcome; invokes social/moral value
   - Compare to ability talent
3. Using it does not diminish others
   - More admiration than jealousy
4. No obvious positive opposite
   - Within reason, e.g., honesty –tactful rather than being honesty (or rudeness)
   - Loose criteria
5. Trait-like (stable, consistent)
   - But some within person variation over time
6. Distinctive from other strengths
   - Keeps list manageable, combinations possible
7. Has paragons
   - Cf., cardinal traits (e.g., the dalai lama and compassion or mother theresa and generosity. We associate them very firmly with this valued trait)
8. Has prodigies
   - Cf., multiple intelligence (seems like a thing if you can identify a prodigy)
9. Selective absences
   - As above, some distinct cause or function makes us feel more confident about it
10. Cultivated by institutions and rituals E.g., youth activities

Question 27

How can character strengths be assessed?

Answer 27

• Usually self report (Consider social desirability. But compared to other constructs, validity e.g., Adult and youth questionnaire)
  Other approaches:
  -Structured interview for signature strengths (you get people’s self affirmation, if they don’t think it suits them you can go back and try to identify strengths)
• Content analysis (synonyms etc. Indirect way of figuring out which strengths people express (could search their tweets)

Question 28

What are some initial findings about the strengths list?

Answer 28

• Internally consistent and stable
• Agreement with peer reports
• Similar levels across cultures: Kindness, fairness, authenticity, gratitude (highly endorsed or claimed) Vs. self regulation, modesty, prudence (low)
• Life satisfaction, especially ‘strengths of the heart’ ( Zest, gratitude, hope vs. love of learning)
• Effects of crisis: Major illness and bravery & humour, Before and After 9-11 and gratitude, hope, teamwork, leadership (higher mean levels seemed to increase after)
• Age differences: Hope, teamwork, and zest (youth), Authenticity, leadership, appreciation, open (adults), Generally, small increases with age (through maturity people do develop these strengths)

Question 29

What is the signature strengths exercise?

Answer 29

• Trying to use signature strengths in new ways
• Building on strengths a key idea of PP
• Promising initial results with intervention But, some placebo may be involved (does actively doing things in your day to day life account for the results). What about ‘lesser strengths’ (study found that people who practiced their signature strengths and control gorup who practiced their weakest strength had boosts in happiness over time)

Question 30

What are some critiques?

Answer 30

• Much still to be tested, integrated (much shorter history than the big 5)
• Application has outpaced research
• ‘structure’ not as implicitly described. Strengths do not fit their virtues ‘statistically’. For example in big 5 there is lots of evidence that sociability, cheerfulness etc. fit into extraversion (facets of extraversion). In the strengths list didn’t start with statistics, so when they got around to doing it they did not fit together in the same way as big 5
  -How unique is the approach?
  Similar to big 5 space (DSM vs. Personality), Heritability overlaps other traits, Minor role for shared environments