Mid-Term: Quiz 1 Flashcards
Which of the following is NOT an advantage of self-report data?
Participants always provide accurate accounts of their personalities.
Personality psychology’s biggest advantage over other areas of psychology is that
the psychology of whole persons is taken into account.
Of the four types of data, which ones call for individuals to directly answer questions about themselves or other people?
informant reports and self-reports
The principle behind the Spearman-Brown formula in psychometrics states that because random errors tend to cancel one another out, the __________ errors your measurements have, the __________ of them you need.
more; more
When patterns of behavior are extreme, unusual, and problematic, personality psychology overlaps with
clinical psychology
The biggest disadvantage of L data is that
it is extremely difficult to establish connections between personality and life outcomes because life outcomes can have so many causes.
The trait approach to personality psychology best describes what situation?
a psychologist focusing on ways that people differ from one another in behavior and disposition, and how these differences might be measured
According to the text, what is the central principle behind the use of S data?
People are the best experts on their own opinions and behaviors.
__________, a hybrid of S data and B data, consist(s) of participant reports of what they think they would do under various circumstances.
A behavioroid
The different approaches to studying personality __________ rather than __________ each other.
complement; compete with
A psychologist who is concerned primarily with a person’s conscious experiences follows the __________ approach.
phenomenological
Reliability is important to successful research, but every measurement involves a certain amount of error. Which of the following lists describes some factors that commonly undermine reliability?
low precision, variation in the participant and environment, state of the experimenter
Generalizability allows us to do what?
apply our results to populations or situations outside of an experiment
A personality psychologist who is concerned primarily with people’s unconscious mind and internal conflict follows what approach?
psychoanalytic approach
One disadvantage of creating “One Big Theory” of personality psychology is that
It would explain some parts of behavior well and other parts not as well
Personality psychology emphasizes individual differences. How does this focus serve as one of the discipline’s strengths?
It leads personality psychologists to be extremely sensitive to the fact that people really are different from each other.
Is “stubbornness” a good personality trait to have?
Yes and no; it can be a strength in some situations and a weakness in others
Validity can most simply be defined as the degree to which
a measurement actually reflects what it is supposed to be measuring.
A psychologist who is concerned primarily with how a person’s genes, physiology, and brain anatomy are related to his or her personality follows the __________ approach
Biological
Both experimental and correlational methods assess the relationship between variables. The two methods are different in that
the variable that is thought to be causal is manipulated in the experimental method, whereas it is measured without being manipulated in the correlational method.
