Personality Flashcards
What do we use to measure personality?
- Projective tests
- Implicit measures
- Self-report questionnaires
What are projective tests?
Ambiguous stimuli are presented to a person who then provides a response.
What do projective tests show about personality?
- Can provide info about underlying emotions/inner-conflict
- Provides insight into personality
What is the Rorschach Inkblot test?
Subjects perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analysed using psyhological interpretations, complex algorithms, or both.
What is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)?
30 grayscale pictures containing a dramatic event or critical situation and PPs are asked to think about the relationships between people and the feelings of the people in the picture. Stories are constructed which reflect individual personalities and experiences.
Give 2 examples of projective tests used to measure personality?
- Rorschach Inkblot
- Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
What do implicit measures show about personality?
- Taps into our automatic associations and measures whether the subject responds faster to when certain categories are combined vs other combinations of categories.
- It is hard for people to ‘fake good’ while doing this
What is an examples of an implicit measure test of personality?
Emotional Stroop Test
What is the emotional stroop test?
- Requires a person to look at a list of words and say the colour of the ink
- Some words represent possible sources of concern or anxiety
- Negative words are designed for what you’re testing.
- The assumption is that the subject will take longer when trying to say the colou of the words that relate to areas of concern/stress
How do self-report questionnaires measure personality?
A factor analysis is perfoemed where items are analysed statistically for clusters of items - each cluste measures a personality trait.
What is the 2 factor model of traits from faces?
People automatically evaluate faces on multiple trait dimensions - 2 orthogonal dimensions are sufficient to describe face evaluation and these are trustworthiness and dominance.
How do collectivistic cultures perceive personality?
To be malleable
How do individualistic cultures perceive personality?
To be fixed.
What does trait theory assume?
Personality characteristics are relatively stable over time and traits are stable across siutations.
What is the idiographic approach?
Looking at individuals to see what their personality is.
What was Gordon Allport’s lexical approach to personality?
- Identified 18,000 words and turned those into 4,500 described traits.
What are cardinal traits?
Single, dominant traits (heavily influences behaviour)
What are central traits?
5-10 traits which descibe personality.
What are secondary traits?
Preferences, not core to personality.
What was Raymond Cattel interested in?
- How personality can predict behaviour.
- Role of genetics and experience
- Investigating common traits
What did Raymond Cattell’s factor analysis show?
- Reduced 4,500 trait names to 46 surface traits.
- Used various methods to collect data on people
What methods did Raymond Cattell use to collect data on people?
- L-data (life-record data)
- Q-data (questionnaires)
- T-data (standardised tests)
What are advantages of Cattell’s 16PF (16 Personality Factors)?
- Use of 16PF in research
- Shows good predictability
What are disadvantages of Cattell’s 16PF?
- Internal consistencies of some factors were low
- Not many have been able to replicate 16 factors
- Some evidence can reduce 16PF to 5.
What did Eysenck’s theory of personality propose?
- Fundamental traits are biologically based but environment can impact how they are expressed
- Pesonality is based on character, temperament, intelligence, physique and nervous system
- Traits are relatively stable
What are Eysenck’s 3 personality types/ ‘super traits’?
- Extraversion
- Neuroticism
- Psychoticism
What did Eysenck state were the traits of extraversion?
- Dominant, active, sociable, sensation seeking
What did Eysenck state were the traits of neuroticism?
- Tense, irrational, shy, low self-esteem
What did Eysenck state were the traits of psychoticism?
- Impulsive, impersonal, anti-social, creative, cold
How did Eysenck measure neuroticism, extraversion, and psychoticism?
EPQ - Eysenck’s Personality Questionnaire
What empirical findings were there from EPQ?
- Crimincals score high in E, N and P
- Creative people score high on P
- Extroverts more willing to have sexual contact without commitment and report more sexual experience.
What are the advantages of Eysenck’s Theory?
- 3 factors have shown to be stable across time
- Cross-cultural validity of EPQ
- Child version of EPQ
- Theory has significant application in mental health
What are the disadvantaged of Eysenck’s Theory?
- Psychoticism scale has low internal reliability
- Reducing personality to 3 supertraits is too simplistic
What does the Five Factor Model include?
- Love
- Work
- Affect
- Power
- Intellect
What is the Emic approach?
Personality terms found in native language
What is the Etic approach?
Translated personality questionnaires
What is Affect in personality?
How you deal with things/how resilient you are
What are the Big Five Personality traits?
- Openness
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
What associations did Hayes and Joseph 2003 find with the Big 5?
- High E and low N is associated with higher happiness levels
- Low N and high C is associated with higher life satisfaction
What associations did Stoughton et al 2013 find with the Big 5?
- Low A is associated with badmouthing on social media
- High E is associated with social media postings of substance abuse
Why do we find geographical differences in personality?
- Social Influence
- Ecological Influence
- Selective Migration
What 3 traits make up the Dark Triad?
- Narcissism
- Machiavellianism
- Psychopathy
What traits make up Narcissism?
- Entitlement, superiority, grandiosity
What traits make up Machiavellianism?
- Cold and manipulative
What traits make up Psychopathy?
- Low empathy, low anxiety, thrill-seeking, high impulsivity
What is The Dark Tetrad?
- Evidence for a 4th trait: Sadism
What evidence is there for the Dark Tetrad?
- All 4 traits correlated with each other
What issues are there with the Trait Approach?
- None of the psychologists started with a theory to test, it was all data driven.
- No theory development from the ground-up.
How are personality traits described?
On a continuum.
What is the learning approach to personality?
- Personality is a result of a response to an experience - can explain maladaptive parts of personality.
- Personality is learned so can be unlearned.
What are the different elements of Classical Conditioning?
- Unconditioned stimuli
- Unconditoned response
- Neutral stimulus
- Conditoned stimulus
- Conditioned response
What are the basics of operant conditioning?
- Based on Skinner’s work of reinforcement
- positive reinforcement
- negative reinforcement
What is positive reinforcement?
A positive experience after a behaviour e.g. being rewarded for a behaviour
What is Bandura’s model of reciprocal causation?
Personality development occurs through an interaction between inner stimuli, external environment, and the way an individual reacts to these two factors.
What is personal agency?
Beleiving one can change things to make them better for self and others
What is proxy agency?
Others helping you to change things about your life.
What is collective agency?
Group of people working together to change things for the benefit of all.
What is observational learning?
We learn more from observing and imitating others’ behaviour
What determines whether or not we’re likely to copy others’ behaviours?
- Characteristics of the model
- Attributes of the observer
- Consequences of copying the behaviour
What characteristics of the model affect whether or not we are likely to copy their behaviour?
- Similarity
- Complexity of behavour (simple)
- Type of behaviour
What attributes of the observer determine whether or not they are likely to copy others’ behaviour?
- Low confidence, self-esteem
- Used to being rewarded for conforming to behaviours
- Highly dependent people
What is the structure of internal self-regulatory processes?
- Self-monitoring
- Self-diagnostic
- Self-motivation
What is self-efficacy?
Confidence in your own ability
What does self-efficacy affect?
- choices we make, effort we apply, level of perseverance, thought patterns, ability to cope
- high SE are more likely to set more challenging goals for themselves
- High SE increases likelihood of success
How can we change self-efficacy?
- Use self-monitoring to evaluate and re-evaluate
- Vicarious experience
- Participant modelling
What is emotional self-efficacy?
Controlling anxiety when facing a problem
What is social self-efficacy?
Being able to ask lecturers to help when I need it
What is self-regulated learning self-efficacy?
Being able to work when there are other interesting things to do.
What are cluster analyses?
Analyses people’s respnses in multiple questionnaires and puts the responses in categories/clusters
How do we work out Behaviour potential?
Reinforcement Value x Expectancy
What is Expectancy?
Our own subjective prediction of the outcome of a particular behaviour
What is reinforcement value?
Preferences for the different possible reinforcements that occur as a result of the behaviour
What is an External LoC?
People who believe reinforcement depends on external forces (powerful others, luck, God, government)
What is an Internal LoC?
People who believe reinforvement is linked to their own behaviour
What did Brosschot et al 1994 find when measuring IPC models against psychopathological symptoms?
- Internal negatively correlated with all except agoraphobia.
- Powerful Others correlated positively with sensitivity, neuroticism, depresssion, and trait anxiety
- Chance correlated positively with 7 measures.
How does self-efficacy affect motivation?
If you have a higher level of self-efficacy, you’re more likely to be motivated to do something
What does the multidimensional locus of control involve?
- Internal
- Powerful Others
- Chance
What is an internal Health Locus of Control associated with?
- Greater degree of exercise and healthy diet
- Higher levels of mental and physical quality of life
- Lower levels of depression and anxiety
What is an Powerful Others Health Locus of Contol associated with?
- Lower levels of alcohol consumption
- Higher levels of physical quality of life
- Higher levels of depression and anxiety
What is a Chance Health Locus of Control associated with?
- Poor diet
- Smoking
- Lower mental and physical quality of life
- Higher levels of depression and anxiety
What associations between other factors and HLoC did Jacobs-Lawson et al 2011 find?
- As you get older, you start to believe that your health is much more likely to be under the control of powerful other people e.g. your doctors or even your spouse.
How can self-efficacy impact health?
- Can impact behaviour change relating to health (e.g. increasing exercise, giving up smoking)
- Can impact self-care or self-management of diseases of conditions
What did Peters et al measure using self-efficacy?
- general health status
- overall health on the day
- living well with long term condition
How did discrimination affect self-efficacy levels?
Higher levels of perceived discrimination led to lower levels of self-efficacy.
High self-efficacy means they are less likely to be smoking through the weeks.
How is linking personality to health behaviours helpful? (5Ts)
- Targeting
- Tailoring
- Training
- Treament
- Transformation
How can targeting link personality to health behaviours?
Target the traits that are linked to different health outcomes
How can tailoring link personality to health behaviours?
Design tailored materials for patients
How can training link personality to health behaviours?
Modifying personality
How can treatment link personality to health behaviours?
Some medications can change personality
How can transformation link personality to health behaviours?
Track changes in personality throughout the course of disease or illness
What do Health Psychologists do?
- Promote wellbeing and physical fitness
- Support people with the psychological and emotional aspects of health and illness
- Prromote healthy living
- Advisory role to improve healthcare systems
What is trait anxiety?
Underlying stable characteristic that affects behaviours, thoughts, and emotions
What is state anxiety?
Anxiety evoked by a specific situation or event. Transient in nature.
What is the distraction model?
Increase in arousal leads to attention to irrelevant cues and thus distraction.
What is the self-focus model?
Conscious monitoring of a skill that has become automated leads to poor performance.
What models can explain why athletes may mess up in high pressure settings?
- Distraction model
- Self-focus model
What did Horikawa and Yagi 2012 find with trait and state anxiety and performance in sport?
Higher levels of trait anxiety tends to have higher state anxiety which interferes with performance.
What is emotional intelligence?
The ability to understand tour own emotions and those of people around you
What are the 4 branches of emotional intelligence?
- Accurately perceiving emotions
- Using emotions to facilitate thinking
- Understanding emotional meanings
- Managing emotions
What do athletes need EI for?
- Deal with stressors (e.g. anxiety)
- Understand how teii e motions affect performance
- Interact effectively with others
What did Crombie et al 2009 find about EI and sports?
- The better the team were at EI, the more successful they were in their matches
- EI is important for success
What do Sports and Exercise Psychologists do?
- Provide counselling to referees
- Advise coaches on how to build cohesion within their squad
- Help with personal development
- Optimise benefits from exercise participation
What relationship traits are associated with narcissism?
- desiring a variety of relationships
- that means they are better suited to reinforce their sense of self
- most social out of the DT
What relationship traits are associated with psychopathy?
- opportunistic
- exploitive mating strategy
- booty-call relationships
What kind of relationships were narcissistic people found to prefer?
- One-night stands
- Friends with benefits
What kind of relationships were psychopathic people found to prefer?
Booty-call
