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Psych1100H > Personality > Flashcards

Personality Flashcards

1
Q

Traits and Behavior

What is personality?

A

A person’s general manner of interacting with the world especialy with other people:

imaginative or unimaginative
reliable or undependable
sociable or reserved
cooperative or uncooperative

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2
Q

Traits and Behavior

What are personality traits?

Branch: Surface trait, Central trait

A

The enduring individual differences in the tendency to behave, think, and feel in certain consistent (that is, cross-situational) ways.

For example, a professor may be late to class one day– there’s nothing to say about her personality from that specific behavior.

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3
Q

Traits and Behavior

Surface Trait

A

A professor may be late to class one day– there’s nothing to say about her personality from that specific behavior.

BUT:
when she’s late nearly every day,
for all courses she teaches,
and late for most events,
late paying bills,
late returnign phone calls
- Then we might describe her as tardy (a surface trait)

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3
Q

Traits and Behavior

Central trait

A

If we learn further that:
She is sploppy in most of her work,
Careless in many other activities,
makes promises she never keeps,
unreliable in other ways,
gives up easily on all sorts of tasks,
can never decide what she wants to do next on all sorts of activities, then
- We describe her as undirected (a central trait

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3
Q

Traits and Behavior

A
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3
Q

Traits and Behavior

What did Kenrick & Funder (1988) find about traits?
-(Are traits real?)

A
  • observers agree to a substantial degree in the traits they assign to other people
  • observers don’t just agree about which alledged traits go with which, but also about to whom these traits apply
  • observers relaibly differentiate people even on relatively common traits
  • Observers increasingly agree with each other the longer they have known the person and these ratings increasingly correlate with the person’s actual behavior
  • observer’s ratings are just as reliabel whether the observers know one another or are strangers
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4
Q

Traits and Behavior

Are personality traits important (1) ?
-cross cut categorizing people

A

Personality trats cross cut other ways of categorizing people.

  • For example men differ more among themselves in curiosity than they differ from women, and women differ among themselves (significantly different) in curiosity than they differ from men
  • All social groups–racial, socio-economic, or gender based are made up of individuals who differ from oe another in curiosity, extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticims, etc.
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4
Q

Traits and Behavior

What did Costa & McCrae (1994) find?
(Are personality traits reliable?)

A

Even when personality tests are administered 30 to 40 years apart,, they still correlate between +0.50 and +0.70

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5
Q

Traits and Behavior

Are personality traits important (2) ?
-cross cut situations

A

Personality traits cross-cut situations.
* That is, people behave similarly across many different situations
* Even when situation differences in behavior are large (how you act in a bar vs thanksgiving), personality differences are just as large.

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6
Q

Traits and Behavior

Are personality traits important (3) ?
-surviving in real world
-Barrick & Mount 1991: productiveness

A

Personality traits are important for surviving in the real world
* Productiveness: Barrick & Mount (1991) found that personality differences account for job performance differences even beyond IQ differences.

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7
Q

Traits and Behavior

Are personality traits important (4) ?
-surviving in real world
-Buss 1996: Romance

A

Personality traits are important for surviving in the real world
* Romance: Buss 1996 found that conscientious spouses were less likely to have affairs than undirected spourses, and antagonistic spouses were more likely to become aggressive toward sexual rivals than agreeable spouses.

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8
Q

Traits and Behavior

Are personality traits important (5) ?
-surviving in real world
Health & Finding Crimminals

A

Personality traits are important for surviving in the real world
* Health: Fiedman et al (1995) found that personality differences are related to risk and health promoting behaviors
* Finding crimminals: Caspi et al (1994) found that the same personality differences are related to delinquency in different coutnries, genderations, and races.

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9
Q

Traits and Behavior

Early Trait Theories

So what are these central traits?

A
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10
Q

Traits and Behavior

What is the Big Five?

So what are these central traits?

A

O.C.E.A.N
* Openness to experience-nonopenness
* Conscientiousness-undirectedness
* Extraversion-introversion
* Agreeableness-antagonism
* Neuroticism-stability

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11
Q

Traits and Behavior

Openness to Experience

Central traits

A

Openness: I Have…
* rich vocab
* vivid imagination
* excellent ideas
* quick to udnerstand things
* use difficult words
* full of ideas

Nonopenness:
* I am not interested in abstractions
* I don’t have a good imagination
* I have difficulty udnerstadnign abstract ideas

Pro:
enroll in liberal arts, change careers, less racial prejudice, musical instrument

Cons: drug use

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12
Q

Traits and behaviors

Conscientiousness

Central traits

A

Conscientiousness:
* prepared
* pay attention to details
* get chores done right away
* like order/follow schedule

Undirected:
* Messy
* forget to put things back
* shirk duties

Pro:
Sexually faithful, good grades, drive safely, eat well, live longer

Con:
Conformity, obedience, lack of innovation

13
Q

Traits and Behaviors

Extraversion

Central traits

A

Extraversion:
* life of the party
* energized socially
* center of attention
* comfortable around people
* start convos

Introversion:
* drained socially
* don’t talk alot
* don’t draw attention
* queit around strangers
* no intention of tlaking in large crowds

Pro:
Popular, attend more parties, seend as leaders, undisturbed by loud noises, live& work with more people

Cons:
High risk of diseases and intimate violence

14
Q

Traits and behavior

Agreeableness

central traits

A

Agreeableness:
* interested in people
* soft hard
* sympathy
* make people at ease

Antagonism:
* not interested in others’ problems
* insult people
* little concern for others

Pro:
Lend money, easy childhood, less alcoholism, less crime, less divorce

Con:
Poor negotiation, gullible

15
Q

Traits and Behaviors

Neuroticism

Central trait

A

Neuroticism:
* easily irritated
* stressed out
* upset
* frequent mood swings
* more anxious than most

Stability:
* relaxed most of the time
* seldom feel blue

Pro: less risk taking

Con: more anxious, depressed, divorce, hate surprises, remember threats

16
Q

Origins and Development

Where do our personalities come from?

Hypothesis 1: genes (Jang et al. 1996) ( √ )

A

(Look at notes for charts)
* Genes play a portion in personality
* (shared ) environment also do

17
Q

Origins and Development

Where do our personalities come from?
(Extraversion Example)

A
18
Q

Origins and Development

Where do our personalities come from?

Hypothesis 2: Age (√)

A
  • In adults (and babies), persoanlity differences show up most clearly in situations that are
    1. novel (new/original)
    2. ambiguous (uncertain)
    3. stressful
  • Babies’ reactions to 1,2,3 events correlate with many of the same outcomes predicted by personailit factors
  • negative reactions to novelty predicts internalization of negative envets (this bad thing happened because im just bad.)
  • Researchers are now attempting to link temperament differences in infancy with personality traits:

-Activity (energy level): seems to be positively related to extraversion and negatively related to agreeableness and conscientiousness

-Inhibition (fearfulness,shyness, withdrawal): positively related to Neuroticism and negatively related to extraversion

-Persistence (attention span, distractibility, interest): seems to be positively related to Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness

19
Q

Origins and Development

Hypothesis 2: Age
- Personality is not set in childhood

Where do our personalities come from?

A

Childhood to Adolescence:
* adolescents: more emotional autonomy from parents; feel more independent and idealize the less.
* adolescents: less emotional autonomy form peers: resistance to peer pressure plummets from fifth to eighth grade
* adolescent male enage in group risk taking: teen males join peers in such dangerous behaviors (fight, rrepsonsible driving, tree climbing,etc.)

20
Q

Hypothesis 2: Age
- Adolescence to adulthood

A

(look at notes/ graphs)
B/t the alte teens and 30 years old, people typically become:

  • not open
  • alot more conscientious
  • little less extraverted
  • bit more agreeable
  • much less neurotic
21
Q

Where do our personalities come from?

Hypothesis 3: Sex (√)

A

Infants are already being treated in gender specific ways according to their sex

  • fathers describe girls as soft, small, and beautiful, boy newborns as firm, strong, and well coordinated
  • mothers who were asked to hold an infant talked moree to Beth than Adam and gave Adam more direct gazes unaccompanied by talk

Later adults give aid and comfort to girls while expecting boys to be self reliant
* colleges students were quicker to call for help if a infant girl was crying rather than a boy
* when two ear olds were given problem solvign task, mothers were mroe likely to aid their daughters than sons

Children themselves actively promote sex-segregated play, especially for boys

22
Q

Where do our personalities come from?

Hypothesis 4: Birth order (X)

A
  • Sulloway theory: birth order has large impact on personality
  • It is actually negligible
23
Q

Where do our personalities come from?
A possible synthesis (of the hypotheses)

A

genes–> temperament– proto-personality traits

Age + experience helps to mold these proto-p traits into enduring ones

-even at birth, there are individual differences in how we react to the world around us
-With age and experience, our temperament develope ina stable and mature personality

24
Q

Self-Determination

Beyond traits (1)

A

Social cognitive and humanistic approaches to personality emphasize the role of our beliefs, our pursuit of goals, and our self control in shaping our personality

25
Q

Self-Determination

Social cognitive perspective

A
  • Based on research on learning, cognition, and social influence
  • focuses on beliefs and habits that increase or decrease our ability to take control of their lieves and accomplish goals.
26
Q

Self-Determination

Locus of control

social cognitive perspective

A
  • Proposed by Julian Rotter
  • Belief that rewards are controllable by one’s own efforts (internal locus– captains of their fate) or not (external locus—influence by environment)
  • Internal locus
    –more optimism/less depression
    –more achievement
    –more health-promoting activities

Success at setting and achieving difficult goals has the effect of increasing our internal locus

Internal locus- maintained over many years (doesn’t occur every day) much like a cycle.

27
Q

Self-Determination

Self-Efficacy

social cognitive perspective

A

Proposed by Albert Bandura
* belief about one’s ability to perform specific taks
* high self-efficacy
- low in anxiety
- specific,difficult, realistic goals–> best quality to set good goals and its achievable
- achieve more

This is a cycle with internal locus of control

28
Q

Self-Determination

Beyond Traits (2)

A
  • differences in cognitive processing also play a large role in personality
  • ex. delay of gratification
29
Q

Self-Determination

Delay of Gratification

A

(slides)
* Self control in 4-5 year old children is highly correlated with adult competence

Positive correlation:
* ability to concentrate
* verbal fluency
* general competence
* foresight
* high credit scores (!)

Negative correlation: (no relation positive)
* gets rattled/immaturity under stress
* low self esteem
* slow to make social contacts

30
Q

Self-Determination

Personal Projects/ Personality

Delay of gratification

A

Brian Little–(video + notes)

  • Setting difficult long term goals (like projects) for ourselves and organizing our activities in consciously chosen projects is very strongly associated w/ happiness
  • But sometimes our projects require use to adopt ‘free traits’
  • overtime, however, ‘free traits’ can become ‘second nature’
  • thus, our personalities are partly determined by the projects that we choose

ex. project: joining military–> increasing conscientiousness–> 2nd nature to be on time/order

31
Q

Self-Determination

The bottom line

A

While personality traits may have orgins in genetic predispositions and experiences outside our volition, our beliefs about ourselves, goals that we set, and our ability to self control can also make us the people we are.

Psych1100H (2 decks)

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