personal psychology Flashcards
1
Q
What is personality?
A
Personality as what is ‘beneath the mask’
◦ Personality as the authentic true self
◦ Separate from social roles
◦ Linked to growth of individualism
◦ Personality as ‘psychological individuality
2
Q
Individual differences
A
So … personality refers to enduring, relatively broad differences between people that are
psychological but not cognitive abilities These ‘dispositions’ are fundamental
◦ Personal identity & self-concept
◦ Social communication & gossip
◦ Person perception
◦ Stereotypes
3
Q
Personality & social communication
A
Much of our communication aims to learn what others are like (i.e., their personalities)
Dunbar argued that human intelligence evolved to handle the complexities of group life
4
Q
Person perception
A
Person perception is largely devoted to judging other people’s personalities
◦ Rapid personality judgments
◦ ‘Dispositional inference’ (predictions about a person’s future behavior) and the ‘correspondence bias (the tendency to draw inferences about a person’s unique and enduring dispositions from behaviors)
5
Q
Stereotypes
A
Stereotypes are largely made up of personality traits believed (rightly or wrongly) to be associated with social groups
6
Q
Personality within psychology
A
• Dedicated to understanding the ‘whole person’
• Focus on the study of differences between people
• Closely related to clinical psychology
• Emphasis on factors intrinsic to the person
◦ Contrast with social psychology
◦ The person vs the situation
7
Q
Personality traits
A
-The simplest descriptive unit for personality is the ‘trait’
-A trait is a consistent pattern of behaviour, thinking or feeling
◦ Relatively stable over time
◦ Relatively consistent across situations
◦ Varying between people
◦ Dispositional
Trait vary in generality or ‘bandwidth’: some are broad, others narrow
8
Q
The structure of personality traits
A
- Survey the traits that are encoded in language
- This is the “lexical approach”
- It assumes that important distinctions for describing people are incorporated in everyday speech
9
Q
Allport & Odbert
A
• 1936 attempt to survey the ‘trait universe’
• Searched large dictionary for words that
could describe differences between people
• 18,000 out of 550,000
• These were then filtered
• Remove physical attributes (e.g., “tall”)
• Remove cognitive abilities & talents (e.g., “smart”)
• Remove transient states (e.g., “sad”)
• Remove highly evaluative terms (e.g., “moron”)
• 4,500 terms remained
10
Q
Raymond Cattell
A
• 4,500 trait words is still too many
• Many of them were synonyms or closely related
• Cattell progressively reduced the set
• Sorted words into 171 groups of synonyms/antonyms
• Reduced these in several steps to 16 “factors” using a
technique called ‘factor analysis’
• These factors represented basic dimensions of personality
11
Q
Cattell’s 16 factors
A
Reserved↔ Outgoing Stable↔ Neurotic Expedient↔ Conscientious Shy↔ Venturesome Tough-minded↔ Tender-minded Trusting↔ Suspicious Practical↔ Imaginative Forthright↔ Shrewd Less intelligent↔ More intelligent Humble↔ Assertive Sober↔ Happy-go-lucky Placid↔ Apprehensive Conservative↔ Experimenting Conforming↔ Independent Undisciplined↔ Controlled Relaxed↔ Tense
12
Q
Five basic factors
A
- Cattell’s 16 factors were still correlated
- Different factors might both reflect a single underlying “super-factor”
- Ideally, the dimensions of personality should be independent of one another
- Donald Fiske showed that the 16 factors could be further reduced by factor analysis to 5
13
Q
The “Big Five”
A
Openness to Experience Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism
14
Q
Facets of the “Big Five”
A
Each factor has low-level ‘facets’; e.g
15
Q
Value of the “Big Five”
A
Suggests that there are 5 fundamental ways in which people differ in personality
◦ Assessment of personality
◦ Investigation of personality correlates
◦ Explanation of the underpinnings of personality
Provides a way to map specific personality traits ◦ E.g., shyness is a combination of (low) Extraversion and (high) Neuroticism
16
Q
evidence for the “Big Five”
A
Big Five-like factors have been found in studies of many languages Similar personality factors (except Openness & Conscientiousness) can be observed in numerous other species ◦ Piglet extraversion = frequency of snout-touching
17
Q
Alternatives to the “Big Five”
A
The Big Five derives from the lexical approach
• But what if this approach is flawed?
• “Questionnaire approach” does not assume that all important personality variation is captured by everyday language
• Uses personality test items to derive basic factors
18
Q
Hans Eysenck
A
Major proponent of the questionnaire method
• Developed a two-factor model
o Extraversion
o Neuroticism
• Subsequently proposed a third factor
o Psychoticism: aggressiveness, coldness, antisocial
tendencies, egocentricity, vulnerability to psychotic
disorders (e.g., schizophrenia)
• Proposed biological bases for these factors
• Others have developed similar 3-factor
models
19
Q
Controversies in trait psychology
A
Despite its success, trait psychology has been challenged un several ways:
- Are individual differences consistent?
- Is the structure of traits universal?
- Traits or types?
- Are traits sufficient for describing personality?
20
Q
- Are individual differences consistent?
A
• Traits are ways in which behaviour is consistent across situations
• But is behaviour consistent in this way?
• Mischel (1968) & ‘situationism’
◦ Behaviour expressing a trait in different situations often correlates weakly (< .3)
◦ The situation is the main determinant of behaviour (i.e., social psychological factors)
◦ Traits are weak predictors of behaviour
◦ Therefore personality tests lack validity
21
Q
Hartshorne & May (1928), Studies in deceit
A
• Gave thousands of 10- to 13-year children multiple behavioural tests of dishonesty
◦ Lying
◦ Cheating
◦ Stealing
• Dishonesty varied widely across situations, with little consistency
• Average correlation among tests = 0.26
22
Q
Responses to Mischel’s critique
A
- ‘Weak’ correlations are still important
- Consistency is greater for aggregate behaviour vs single behaviours
- Situational influences are about as weak as dispositional influences
- We need an interactionist view that recognizes traits, situations & their combined effects
23
Q
- Is the structure of personality universal?
A
• One way to assess consistency of personality structure across cultures is to translate English language personality tests
• Multiple tests across many translations of the NEO-PI-R test of the 5 factors suggest strong consistency
• But some evidence of subtle differences: factors sometimes have minor differences of content
◦ Extraversion & Agreeableness better described as Dominance & Love in Filipino, Korean & Japanese samples
• Another approach is to start from other cultures’ personality lexicon
• Among several European languages (i.e., English, French, German, Polish, Hungarian, Dutch, Italian, Czech) strong congruence for most Big Five factors, except Openness
• Occasionally apparent culture-specific factors emerge
◦ ‘Chinese tradition’ factor (Harmony, Ren Qing [relationship orientation], Thrift, Face, low Adventurousness)
24
Q
- Traits or types?
A
Traits vary by degrees: they are dimensions
Might some personality variation be best described by categories or types?
‘Type’ concept proposed by Jung
Extraversion↔ Introversion
Sensation↔ Intuition
Perception↔ Judgement
Thinking↔ Feeling
Common in popular psychology
• There is no persuasive evidence for any personality type
• Jungian “types” appear to be dimensional
25
4. Are traits enough?
```
• Traits are behavioural dispositions
• Other aspects of personality might not be reducible to such behavioural tendencies
◦ Values
◦ Interests
◦ Character strengths
```
26
Character strengths
• ‘Positive psychology’ aims to study and promote human character strengths
• Created in opposition to traditional focus on abnormality and conflict
• The VIA taxonomy aims to classify character strengths that …
◦ Are environmentally shaped
◦ Contribute to fulfilment in life
◦ Are valued in their own right
◦ Do not diminish anyone in society when exercised
27
McAdams’ personality levels
1. Dispositional traits
2. Characteristic adaptations
3. Life stories
28
Cognitive explanations
Explain personality with reference to cognitive processes & structures
◦ Thoughts, plans, memories, beliefs, strategies
Focus on ways of thinking & the construction of meaning
◦ Having vs doing
◦ People as active sense-makers
◦ Emphasis on ‘experience-near’
phenomena
◦ Motivation to understand & predict
◦ Person-as-scientist model
29
Cognitive theory
There is no single cognitive theory of personality
We will examine four approaches or topics
◦ Perceiving (personal constructs)
◦ Explaining (attributional style)
◦ Thinking (emotional intelligence)
◦ Representing (the self)
30
Personal constructs
Theory developed by George Kelly
Proposes that humans are primarily driven to understand, predict & control their environment
We develop ‘theories’ to assist in this process
These theories are ‘personal constructs’
◦ ‘Personal’ because idiosyncratic to individuals
◦ We construct a sense of the world from these theories
◦ We use them to construe that world
To Kelly, human cognition is contrastive: bipolar & categorical
◦ E.g., warm vs cold, honest vs untrustworthy
Each person has a system of constructs in terms of which they perceive the world
This system of constructs is the personality
This is a radical approach
31
Construct system
Systems of constructs can be analysed in several ways
◦ Simplicity vs complexity
◦ Rigidity
◦ Internal conflict
32
Attribution
Constructs are about how we perceive the world
‘Attributions’ are about how we explain it
People aim to determine the causes of events and experiences
Attributions differ on several dimensions
◦ Internal vs external (i.e., dispositional vs situational)
◦ Stable vs unstable (i.e., lasting vs transient)
◦ Global vs specific (i.e., broad vs narrow)
Causes can vary along these dimensions
33
Attributional style
Attributional style is focused on negative events
‘Pessimism’ is the disposition to explain such events with Internal, Stable & Global causes
◦ this sense of pessimism differs from standard sense (i.e., negative expectations for the future)
Pessimists may also explain positive events as External, Unstable & Specific (e.g., due to chance)
Both pessimism & optimism may be irrational
Attributional style predicts many phenomena
34
Components of Emotional Intelligence (EI)
Perceiving emotion
◦ Accurate recognition of own emotions & nonverbal perception of other people’s
Using emotion
◦ Use of own emotions to guide & plan behaviour
Understanding emotion
◦ Predicting other’s emotional states & reasoning about them
Managing emotion
◦ Ability to control & regulate emotions
35
More on EI
```
EI appears to be distinct from general intelligence It is measured not by self-ratings but by performance on tests with correct & incorrect answers
Correlates with Openness & Agreeableness
Has many correlates
◦ Academic performance
◦ Job performance
◦ Social sensitivity
◦ Less antisocial behaviour
```
36
The self
The self is a mental representation of one’s personal attributes
Two individual difference variables relevant to it
1. Self-complexity ◦ Degree to which its structure is complex
2. Self-esteem ◦ Degree to which it is valued
37
Self-complexity
Defined as number of ‘self-aspects’ and degree of distinctness of them
Early evidence suggested that greater complexity buffers people against negative life events
However, it is also associated with greater depression
If ‘complexity’ implies a fragmented, incoherent or confused self, it may have negative consequences
‘Self-concept clarity’ may be more important than self-complexity
38
Self-esteem
Positive global evaluation of the self
39
Complexities of self-esteem
The stability or consistency of self-esteem may matter more than its level
‘Fragile’ self-esteem fluctuates in response to life events
‘Defensive’ self-esteem ◦ High explicit + low implicit self-esteem
Narcissism
◦ Sense of superiority & arrogance
◦ Entitlement
◦ Need for admiration
◦ Sensitivity to criticism
40
Narcissism & social
| media
Social networking sites may be ideal playgrounds for
narcissists, with opportunities to …
◦ create self-promoting content
◦ display personal appearance
◦ pursue many shallow relationships
Study by Davenport et al. (2014) examined how
Facebook & Twitter use correlates with narcissism
◦ “my body is nothing special” vs. “I like to look at my body”
◦ “I am more capable than other people” vs. “There is a lot that I
can learn from other people”
41
Biological approaches
```
Efforts to explain the biological bases of personality differences
These operate at several levels, from “distal” to “proximal”
◦ Genetics
◦ Brain functioning
◦ Neural systems
◦ Neural structures
◦ Neurochemicals
◦ Hormonal factors
```
42
Genetics of personality
Is personality inherited?
DNA as source of our similarities & differences
◦ ~20,000 protein-coding genes
◦ ~3,000,000,000 DNA base pairs
◦ Most DNA is shared between people
◦ Genetic variation accounts for 0.001% of an individual’s DNA
To what extent does this DNA variation underpin variations in personality?
43
Three ways to examine genetic contributions
1. Family studies
2. Twin studies
3. Adoption studies
44
1. Family studies
Examine resemblance between family members as a function of genetic relatedness
◦ 50%: child, parent, sibling
◦ 25%: grandparent, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece
Greater resemblance for closer relations implies genetic contribution
BUT: genetic contributions are confounded with shared environmental contributions
45
2. Twin studies
Compare resemblance between monozygotic (MZ) & dizygotic (DZ) twins
MZ twins are 100% related, DZ twins 50% related
Greater resemblance for MZ twins implies genetic contribution
Environments are same for both kinds of twin so environmental factors are not confounded
BUT: possibility of more similar environments for MZ twins, & perhaps twins are unrepresentative
46
3. Adoption studies
Compare resemblance of adopted children to adoptive (APs) & biological parents (BPs)
APs are 0% related but supply environment, BPs are 50% related
Degree of resemblance to APs & BPs shows environmental & genetic contributions
BUT: adoption must occur early; problem of selective placement; biological mother provides prenatal environment as well as genes
47
Heritability
Behavioural genetic studies yield estimates of heritability = proportion of variance in the trait accounted for by genes
◦ e.g., .9 for height, .7 for weight, .4 for maths
Most personality attributes show heritabilities from .3 to .5
This is even true for apparently purely learned attributes (e.g., death penalty attitudes)
48
Important caveats re. heritability
Even if personality is substantially heritable …
◦ This does not entail strong resemblance between parents and children on personality traits
◦ Heritability relates to variation within a population: it says nothing about genetic contribution to any individual’s personality
◦ Heritability does not imply that personality is fixed
◦ Heritability is consistent with substantial environmental contributions to personality
◦ A .40 heritability implies a substantial environmental contribution to personality
49
The role of the environment
One outcome of behavioural genetic research is awareness of the role of the environment
Most environmental influences are not ‘shared’
◦ e.g., parental education, class, ethnicity, diet
Most is ‘non-shared’ environment
◦ e.g., illnesses, friends, differential treatment by parents
Environmental factors can themselves be genetically influenced
◦ e.g., susceptibility to accidents & other life events
50
Specific personality-related genes
Heritability says nothing about specific genes or genetic mechanisms
Several specific genes have been identified in candidate gene studies, but they do not replicate
◦ Novelty-seeking & dopamine sensitivity
◦ Neuroticism/shyness & serotonergic functioning
More recent research, surveying the entire genome with huge samples, finds few replicable personality genes
However, most traits appear to be influenced by hundreds of genes, each with very small effect
51
Brain functioning: Systems
| Eysenck’s theory
Extraversion & low brain arousal
◦ Leads to desire for stimulation (e.g., novelty, excitement)
Neuroticism & limbic system reactivity
◦ Leads to greater autonomic NS arousal to threat & stress
52
Brain functioning: Systems
| Gray’s theory
Impulsivity & “behavioural activation system” (BAS)
◦ Linked to sensitivity to reward & pleasure
◦ Associated with a tendency to approach rewards
Anxiety & “behavioural inhibition system” (BIS)
◦ Linked to sensitivity to punishment & pain
◦ Associated with a tendency to avoid punishments
53
Brain functioning: Structures
Some links between Big 5 & brain structure volumes
◦ Extraversion with a region involved in processing reward information
◦ Neuroticism with regions associated with threat, punishment & negative emotion
◦ Agreeableness with regions that process information about other people’s intentions and mental states
◦ Conscientiousness with region involved in planning & voluntary control of behaviour
◦ No brain volume correlates of Openness
54
Brain functioning: Chemicals
Personality factors may be associated with neurotransmitter activity in the brain
Extraversion & dopamine levels
◦ Linked to exploration, approach & incentive motivation
Neuroticism & norepinephrine levels
◦ Linked to negative emotion, vigilance for threat, cautiousness: ‘neurobehavioural warning system’
Agreeableness & opioids
◦ Linked to attachment processes
Constraint & serotonin levels
◦ Linked to inhibition of emotional response, low impulsiveness; low serotonin linked to aggression & emotional instability
55
Hormonal factors
There is evidence that personality is influenced by prenatal exposure to sex hormones
Ratio of 2nd (index) to 4th (ring) finger (2D:4D) is associated with testosterone exposure
Lower ratio in men than women, especially on right hand i.e., men tend to have longer ring finger than pointer finger
56
Hormonal factors ratio meaning
Among men, lower 2D:4D ratio correlates with:
◦ Physical aggression
◦ More stereotypically ‘masculine’ career interests (realistic & enterprising)
◦ Less stereotypically feminine gender role
In women, lower 2D:4D ratio correlates with:
◦ More indirect aggression (spreading rumours, malicious humour, excluding people)
◦ More stereotypically ‘masculine’ interests (enterprising, less social)
57
Example study (Benderlioglu & Nelson, 2004)
Examined reactive aggression in women
Participants asked to raise money for fictitious
charity by making calls
Calls went to kind but non-donating or hostile
confederates
Hostility assessed by how hard phone was put
down & by tone of follow-up letter
Women with lower 2D:4D were more hostile
58
Risks of biological explanation
◦ Reductionism
◦ Belief that if something has a biological explanation then higher level (psychological) explanations are unnecessary
◦ Determinism
◦ Belief that because something has a biological explanation it is inevitable and can’t be changed
◦ Naturalistic fallacy
◦ Belief that if something has a biological explanation then it is ‘natural’ and ought to be the way it is
59
Domains of personality assessment
```
Organisational psychology
Clinical psychology
Educational psychology
Counselling psychology
Forensic psychology
Assessment, and personality assessment in
particular, is a core component of psychological
practice
```
60
Personality assessment also faces serious challenges
1. Assessment appears to be subjective
2. No infallible source of information about the person
3. The ‘object’ being measured knows it is being measured
4. Personality traits are not directly observable
61
Measurement quality & confidence
Degree to which personality is measured well is captured by two main concepts
Reliability: does the measurement yield consistent, dependable & error-free information
Validity: does the measurement assess what it is intended to assess & is it useful
62
Reliability
Reliability comes in three varieties
Internal consistency
◦ Do the components of the test all cohere?
◦ All test items should correlate with one another
Inter-rater reliability
◦ Does the test give the same information about the person
when different people administer it?
Re-test reliability
◦ Does the test yield similar scores when it is administered to
the same person on different occasions?
High reliability = high consistency = low measurement error
63
Validity
Validity has two components
Does the test measure what it is intended to measure?
◦ Content validity
◦ Convergent validity
◦ Discriminant validity
Does the test provide practically useful information
◦ Predictive validity
64
Kinds of personality measurement
* Interviews
* Personality inventories
* Projective tests
* Implicit personality tests
65
• Interviews
Interviews are rarely used in personality assessment
• Time-consuming & labour-intensive
• Subjective (i.e., poor inter-rater reliability)
• Interview interactions are prone biases
◦ Halo effect, self-fulfilling prophecy, confirmation bias
Sometimes used for assessing attributes where the person may not be a reliable informant, and/or where interpersonal & nonverbal behaviour may be revealing
• Personality disorders
66
Various forms of interview
```
• Structured
• Unstructured
• Semi-structured
◦ Combines structure & flexibility
• ‘Provocative’
◦ Type A personality
```
67
Inventories
```
Self-report personality tests
Composed of multiple items
Items form scales
◦ Omnibus tests with many scales
◦ Single-scale tests
◦ Generally at least 10 items per scale
Variety of response scales
◦ True/false
◦ Likert scales (strongly disagree ↔ strongly agree)
```
68
Inventory development
```
• Item generation
• Pilot testing
• Item analysis
◦ Check internal consistency
◦ Factor analysis
• Select optimal items for final scales
• Re-test on new sample
• Correlate with other tests and prediction criteria
• Develop norms
```
69
Problems of self-report
Inventories are vulnerable to response biases & limitations of self-knowledge
Longer tests include validity scales to check for this
◦ Lie scales (faking good)
◦ Infrequency scales (faking bad, random responding)
◦ Defensiveness scales (subtle guardedness)
◦ Inconsistency scales (carelessness, random
responding)
70
the MMPI
• Developed in 1940s for comprehensive clinical personality assessment
• 10 clinical scales, 3 validity scales; 566 items
• Scale development via ‘criterion groups method’
◦ Items that best differentiated known clinical groups selected from large original item set
• Scales converted to T-scores ( M = 50, SD = 10)
• Interpretation of scale profiles
Check validity scales High F scale
Identify peaks (T>65) PD & SC scales
Inspect ‘atlas’ for profile code
48 code
71
Projective tests
Developed to bypass problems of self-report
Aim to penetrate to deeper levels of personality
◦ Dynamics, object relations, core motives
Allied with psychoanalytic approach
Involve deliberate ambiguity & open-endedness
◦ Ambiguous stimuli
◦ Unstructured responses
Based on assumption that personality will be ‘projected’ onto stimuli without defensive distortions operating
72
Thematic Apperception Test
• Developed by Henry Murray
• Idiographic approach
• Series of monochromatic images
• Person tells extended story about what is happening in the picture
• Responses coded for repeated themes in the stories: motives attributed to protagonists, interpersonal conflict, ways of handling conflict etc.
Few widely accepted scoring conventions
But …
Rigorous scoring systems for defense mechanisms
◦ Denial & projection (Cramer)
System for scoring motives
◦ Need for achievement (McClelland); does not correlate
with self-reported achievement striving
73
Rorschach Test
* Evolved from 19th C parlour game
* Series of symmetrical inkblots
* Person says what objects are seen and on what basis they’re seen
* Responses are scored on many dimensions
74
Rosarch look at
* Number of distinct percepts
* Complexity/integration of percepts
* Content themes
* Plausibility of percepts (i.e., are they recognizable)
* Response to colour
* Use of shading, blank spaces
75
Critiques of projective tests
* Time consuming
* Encourages ‘wild’ interpretation
* Low inter-scorer reliability
* Predictive validity generally weak compared to self-report tests
* Often little ‘incremental validity’ beyond self-report tests
76
Implicit tests
* New form of testing based on rapid, ‘automatic’ responses
* In principle difficult to fake & less susceptible to response bias
* Early evidence suggests these methods have promise
77
Example: Implicit Association Test (IAT)
Two ‘blocks’ of trials where person must rapidly classify words into
different pairings of words
If ‘self’ is more associated with ‘introversion’, classification will be
quicker for the LEFT block
Quicker classification for the RIGHT block if ‘self’ is associated with
‘extraversion’
78
Conclusions for personality assesment
* Personality assessment is challenging but can be done well
* Doing so requires attention to validity & reliability
* These considerations count against superficially appealing modes of assessment such as interviews and projective tests
79
Implications of theories for personality
| change
According to many theorists, personality is essentially fixed in adulthood
• Trait theory: traits are stable by definition
• Biological approaches: heritability may imply stability, but maturational change can also be genetically programmed
• Psychoanalysis: childhood determinism
• Cognitive approaches: if personality is made up of cognitions and cognitions can change, then personality is malleable
80
Something persists ….
Mischel et al. (1990)
• 4 year-old participants completed a delay of
gratification task
• 11-14 years later they were re-examined
• Delay as a child was associated with
◦ Greater planfulness
◦ Greater stress tolerance
◦ Better SAT scores
Casey et al. (2011)
◦ Delay of gratification at age 4 predicted self-control 40
years later
Shlam et al. (2013)
◦ Delay also predicted BMI 30 years later
81
Evidence for stability
* Longitudinal studies of personality
* Correlating personality scales across time allows a measure of “rank order stability’
* Costa & McCrae report correlations of ~0.65 for the Big Five over a 20-year period after age 30
* If someone is above average on a factor at 30, they have an 83% chance of being above average at 50 (5:1 odds)
82
Stability increases with age
Rank ‐order stability increases over time
Meta analysis by Roberts & DelVecchio (2000) calculated re ‐test correlations over a 7 ‐year period at different ages
30-73 .67
18-29 .57
3-17 .45
0-2 .31
83
What causes stability?
* Genetic influences
* Environmental channelling
* Environmental selection
* Freedom from disruptive life changes
* Psychological resources
* Identity formation
84
Another sense of stability
Rank-order stability relates to people’s position relative to their peers
It is compatible with ‘mean-level change’
85
Stability & change have two meanings
Correlational (rank order) meaning
• People’s personality is/isn’t highly correlated over time
Mean-level meaning
• People’s average level of personality is/isn’t stable over time
• These two kinds of change/stability can co-occur in any combination
• They also give different answers to William James’ question
86
Evidence for mean level change
Large web-based survey by Srivastava et al. (2003)
It examined two possible tests of William James’ claim
Hard plaster view: personality change stops at 30
◦ Mean scores on personality tests should reach a plateau
Soft plaster view: personality change slows at 30
◦ Mean scores on personality should change in a decelerating way with increasing age
Agreeableness: increases, especially after 30
Conscientiousness: increases but plateaus after 30
Neuroticism: decreases in women only
Openness: decreases
Extraversion: increases (men) & decreases (women)
87
What causes mean level change
Such changes may reflect changing life circumstances and social roles & expectations
Mills College longitudinal study
◦ women who became mothers between university and 27 became more responsible, tolerant and feminine, and less sociable and self-accepting than childless peers
◦ from 21 to 43, women who became homemakers showed smaller increases in independence than childless women
Roberts et al. (2003) study of young people 18-26
◦ Work attainment was associated with increased self-confidence & sociability, and decreased anxiety
88
Mean level change in early adulthood transition
* Young people typically become more agreeable & conscientious and less neurotic during the transition to adulthood (Soto et al., 2011)
* Educational challenges in transition from school to university are associated with rise in Conscientiousness (Bleidorn, 2012)
* Work attainment from age 18-26 is associated with increased self-confidence & sociability, and decreased anxiety (Roberts et al., 2003)
* Transition to first intimate partner relationship is associated with lasting drops in Neuroticism & shyness (Neyer & Lehnart, 2007)
* International sojourns in university student raise Agreeableness & Openness (Zimmerman & Neyer, 2013)
89
Historical change
These kinds of stability refer to individual lives Might personality change over historical eras?
Cross-temporal meta-analysis: comparing mean levels of attributes across time In university samples, Jean Twenge has found …
◦ Self-esteem increases
◦ Extraversion rises
◦ Neuroticism/anxiousness rises
◦ External attribution rises
◦ Women’s assertiveness rises 1930s-1950s, falls 1950s-1970s, then rises 1970s-present
Personality may respond to cultural change
90
Another kind of change
* Even if mean-level change does not occur, different life stages may have different preoccupations
* These themes may not correspond to trait changes but may be reflected in how traits are expressed
* Erik Erikson & the “eight stages” of humankind
* These ‘psychosocial’ stages extend and broaden Freud’s psychosexual stages
* Each stage has a central theme or challenge
91
Erikson’s life stages
1. Basic trust vs. mistrust Infancy; corresponds to oral stage
2. Autonomy vs. shame & doubt Toddler-hood; corresponds to anal stage Where the toddler ideally develops a sense of mastery of its body and a capacity for independent actions. If its dawning autonomy is suppressed too harshly by adult authorities, it can be overcome with shame and self-doubt, and become rigid and over-controlled.
3. Initiative vs. guilt Pre-school; corresponds to phallic stage
4. Industry vs. inferiority School years; corresponds to ‘latency’
5. Identity vs. identity confusion University years
‘Psychological moratorium’; trying on of identities
Risk of ‘foreclosing
6. Intimacy vs. isolation Young adulthood
Close relationships
7. Generativity vs. stagnation Mid-life
Sense of meaningful contribution to the future
8. Integrity vs. despair Old age
Wisdom & transcendent satisfaction with lived life
Key message: How traits are expressed will differ depending on the central themes of particular life stages
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Why it all matters personality change
* Optimism about psychological treatment
* Attitudes towards rehabilitation
* Attitudes towards self-improvement
* Our view of human nature
93
Different ‘lay theories’ of personality
Entity theory: personality is fixed
◦ “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”
Incremental theory: personality is malleable
◦ “People can change even their most basic characteristics”
Entity theorists …
◦ Are more likely to endorse social stereotypes
◦ Are more likely to make rapid judgments about others based on minimal evidence
◦ Are less likely to resolve conflicts
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VIA classification
Wisdom: strengths involving acquisition and use of knowledge, freativity, curiosity, judgement, social intelligence, perspective
Courage: strengths involving use of will in the face of opposition Integrity, vitality, industry, valour
Humanity: strengths that are interpersonal in nature, kindness, love
Justice: strengths that are civic in nature, fairness, leadership, teamwork
Temperance: strengths that protect from excesses, modesty, prudence, self-regulation
Transcendence: strengths that connect us to the larger universe, forgiveness, appreciation of beauty, hope, gratitude, spirituality, playfulness
95
Prentice, (1990) asked undergrad students to describe themselves. What were their findings
```
Likes, beliefs, values 33%
Personality traits 25%
Behaviours 9%
Interpersonal attributes 9%
Demographic attributes 9%
Physical characteristics 8%
Abilities/aptitudes 6%
```
