Personality Flashcards
Self-Report Inventories
Questionnaires that ask people to provide information about themselves.
Many different kinds of psychologists use self-report inventories as one means by which to gather data about someone
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) is one of the most widely used self-report instruments.
A potential problem with such inventories is that people may not be completely honest in answering the questions.
Projective Personality Tests
Often used by psychoanalysts.
Involve asking people to interpret ambiguous stimuli.
Psychoanalysts believe that people’s interpretations reflect their unconscious thoughts. People are thought to project their unconscious thoughts onto ambiguous stimuli.
Common examples are the Rorschach inkblot test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).
Humanistic Theories of Personality
View people as innately good and able to determine their own destinies through the exercise of free will.
Stresses the importance of people’s subjective experiences and feelings.
Focuses on the importance of a person’s self-concept and self-esteem.
Self-concept is a person’s global feeling about himself or herself.
Self-concept develops through a person’s involvement with others, especially parents.
Someone with a positive self-concept is likely to have high self-esteem.
Two of the most influential humanistic psychologists were Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.
Trait Theorists
Believed that we can describe people’s personalities by specifying their main characteristics, or traits.
These characteristics (e.g., honesty, laziness, ambition) are thought to be stable and to motivate behavior in keeping with the trait.
Social-Cognitive Personality Theorists
Combine behaviorists’ emphasis on the importance of the environment with cognitive psychologists’ focus on patterns of thought.
Example: Albert Bandura’s Reciprocal Determinism.
Temperaments
A person’s emotional style and characteristic way of dealing with the world.
Infants’ temperaments seem to differ immediately at birth. Some welcome new stimuli, whereas others seem more fearful. Some seem extremely active and emotional, while others are calmer.
Psychologists believe that babies are born with different temperaments.
A child’s temperament, then, is thought to influence the development of his or her personality.
Behaviorist Theories of Personality
Argue that behavior is personality and that the way most people think of the term “personality” is meaningless.
According to this view, personality is determined by the environment.
The reinforcement contingencies to which one is exposed create one’s personality.
Therefore, by changing people’s environments, behaviorists believe we can alter their personalities.
Heritability
For a specific characteristic, heritability is the percentage of variation between people that can be attributed to genetic factors.
For example, if a trait is highly heritable (e.g., height), much of the variation between a group of people on that trait is determined by genes.
Heritability can range from 0 to 1, where 0 indicates that the environment is totally responsible for differences in the trait, and 1 means that all of the variations in the trait can be accounted for genetically.
Biological Theories of Personality
View genes, chemicals, and body types as the central determinants of who a person is.
A growing body of evidence supports the idea that human personality is shaped, in part, by genetics.
Factor Analysis
A statistical technique used to analyze results of personality tests.
Allows researchers to use correlations between traits in order to see which traits cluster together as factors.
For example, if a strong correlation is found between punctuality, diligence, and neatness, one could argue that these traits represent a common factor that we could name conscientiousness.
Psychoanalytic Personality Theory
Freud theorized that personality consists of three parts: id, ego, and superego.
The id is propelled by the pleasure principle; it wants immediate gratification.
The ego follows the reality principle; it negotiates between the desires of the id and the limitations of the environment, acting as a mediator between the two.
The superego is our sense of conscience, how we think about what is right and wrong.
Personal-Construct Theory
George Kelly argued that people, in their attempts to understand their world, develop their own, individual systems of personal constructs.
Such constructs consist of pairs of opposites such as fair-unfair, smart-dumb, and exciting-dull.
People then use these constructs to evaluate their worlds. Kelly believed that behavior is determined by how people interpret the world.
Unconditional Positive Regard
Carl Rogers’ personality theory is based on the belief that people are innately good and require certain things from their interactions with others.
Rogers believed that people must feel accepted in order to make strides toward self-actualization.
Rogers argued that people need unconditional positive regard, a kind of blanket acceptance, in order to move toward self-actualization.
Reliability
Good personality tests are both valid and reliable.
A personality test is reliable when it returns consistent results.
A related concept is validity: A personality test is valid when it measures what the test claims to measure; it is accurate.
A personality test can be reliable, but it may not be valid.
Validity
Good personality tests are both valid and reliable.
A Personality test is valid when it measures what the test claims measure.
Related concept is reliability: A personality test is reliable when returns consistent results.
a personality test cannot be valid if it is not reliable.
