Personality

Question 1

define personality

Answer 1

Characteristics, emotional responses, thoughts, and behaviors that are relatively stable over time and across circumstances

Question 2

distinguish how the perspectives of psychology explain personality development

Answer 2

• openness
• conscientiousness
• extraversion
• agreeableness
• neuroticism

Question 3

illustrate Freud’s models for describing the mind

Answer 3

• Conscious: having an awareness of something, being able to call it to mind
• Subconscious: storage point for any recent memories needed for quick recall
  -Unconscious: where all of our memories and past experiences reside

Question 4

describe how Maslow’s hierarchy of needs relates to personality

Question 5

discuss how Bandura uses the social-cognitive perspective to explain personality

Answer 5

• people seek to develop a sense of agency and exert control over the important events in their lives
• self-efficacy, outcome expectations, goals, and self-evaluation

Question 6

Explain why reliability and validity are important in personality assessment

Answer 6

• reliability: consistency of scores obtained by the same persons when retested (test-retest)
• Validity: provides a check on how well the test fulfills its function

Question 7

define projective tests and evaluate their strengths and limitations

Answer 7

• use ambiguous images or other ambiguous stimuli. (Rorschach Inkblot Test, the RISB, and the C-TCB
• limitations: poor reliability and validity, time-consuming
• strengths: maintain conscious and unconscious limitation

Question 8

describe objective personality tests and evaluate their strengths and limitations

Answer 8

• self-reporting system that measures personality traits on a “yes” or “no” scale
• Strengths: relatively cost effective, only use paper and can be scored by hand or using a machine
• limitations: may be inaccurate, lack of diversity in the workplace, false sense of confidence in a candidate