Personality Flashcards
What are the origins of personality theories?
The ancient origins of personality testing thought that our temperament is directly influence by our bodily fluids. When these fluids/humours are balanced, they produce perfect health. However, when they are unbalanced, they produce disease and disability.
What is the Sanguine humour?
- Showed up as blood in the body
- The element associated is air
- The complexion of the person would be red-cheeked, or corpulent (full-bodied)
- Associated characteristics: charismatic, stimulation-seeking, people-oriented, infectiously optimistic, disorganised, frivolous, impulsive.
- Falls into extroverted and stable quadrant
What is the choleric humour?
- Body: yellow bile
- Element: fire
-Complexion: red-haired, thin - Characteristics: leader temperament, confident, overbearing, passionate, energetic, ambitious, strong-willed, dominant, quickly angered.
- Extroverted and unstable quadrant.
What is the phlegmatic humour?
- Body: phlegm
- Element: water
- Complexion: corpulent
- Characteristics: quiet, relaxed, stable, consistent, loyal, prone to passive-aggressiveness, prone to laziness, meek, submissive.
- Stable and introverted quadrant.
What is the melancholic humour?
- Body: black bile
- Element: earth
- Complexion: swallow, thin
- Characteristics: introspective, reserved, quiet, idealistic, craves time alone, serious, intense, moody, sensitive, perfectionistic, careful in decision-making.
- Introverted and unstable quadrant.
What are the three levels of personality theory today?
- Stable characteristics (personality traits, basic behavioural/ emotional tendencies)
- Personal projects and concerns (what the person is doing and what they want to achieve)
- Life story/narrative (construction of an integrated identity)
What are traits (part of traits assessment)
Traits are basic tendencies/predispositions to act in a certain way.
They can also be described as consistencies in behaviour.
They influence behaviour across a variety of situations
How applicable are traits to real life?
Are these traits predictors of leadership, career choice, psychopathology?
What are structured personality measures used for?
They are used for measuring traits.
What is the big 5 personality model?
Personality is made up of 5 aspects: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism.
- Each factor is supposed to be related to psychological wellbeing and adjustment in adolescence.
- Each factor is related to one or more aspect of narcissism.
- It also provides a framework for understanding personality disorder.
What traits are associated with neuroticism?
- Anxiety, angry hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsivity, vulnerability
What traits are associated with extraversion?
Warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement seeking, positive emotions
What traits are associated with openess to experiences?
Fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, values
What traits are associated with agreeableness?
Trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, tender-mindedness.
What traits are associated with conscientiousness?
Competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, deliberation.
How relevant is the big 5 across cultures?
- The test is called the NEO-PI
- The 5 factor structure was replicated in 26 different cultures but with varying degrees of fidelity.
- E.g. some cultures might encourage modesty but discourage trust; or promote openness to ideas but inhibit openness to feelings.
- E.g. chinese lower of extraversion than US/Western society.
- E.g. Zimbabweans lower on neuroticism than US/Western World.
- Although differences may be found between cultures, it might not affect profiles within cultures as individuals are equally affected by cultural influences
What is the 16 Primary Factors model?
- Measures 16 Primary Factors and 5 second-order factors.
- Provides clinicians with a normal-range measurement of anxiety, adjustment, emotional stability, and behavioural problems.
What is the 16PF test useful for?
- Measures normal personality
- Can also be used to help diagnose psychiatric disorders
- Can help with prognosis and therapy planning.
Name 5 of the 16PF factors and their corresponding high and low score outcomes.
Warmth
- Low score: cold, selfish
- High score: supportive, comforting
Intellect
- Low score: instinctive, unstable
- High score: cerebral, analytic
Perfectionism
- Low score: relaxed, cool
- High score: stressed, unsatisfied
Anxiety
- Low score: confident, self-assured
- High score: fearful, self-doubting
Independence
- Low score: outgoing, social
- High score: loner, craves solitude.
What is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator?
- It is based on Jung’s theory of psychological type.
- It consists of 4 bi-polar scales (bipolar meaning you can fall an a continuum between the one end of a scale and the other. Each end of the scale are opposite of each other)
- Scales:
1. Extroversion vs Introversion
2. Thinking vs Feeling
3. Sensing vs Intuition
4. Judgement vs Perception - The 4 poles of the scale are combined to form 16 personality types on a grid. People assigned the same type share certain characteristics
-Different types are supposed to function better in different environments.
What is the Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory? (MMPI)
- It was developed using a criterion-keying approach.
- This involves collecting data from 2 groups- one is the normal group and the other is the criterion group. The criterion group is defined as having a specific condition
- Items developed from sources such as psychological and psychiatric case histories and reports, textbooks, earlier published scales.
- The vacuum cleaner technique
- Has 10 scales
What are 8 scales of the MMPI and what they measure?
- Hypochondriasis (concern with bodily symptoms)
- Depression (depressive symptoms)
- Hysteria (awareness of problems and vulnerabilities)
- Psychopathic deviate (conflict, anger, struggle)
- Masculinity/Femininity (stereotypical male/female behaviours)
- Paranoia (level of trust)
- Hypomania (people orientation)
- Schizophrenia (odd thinking and social alienation)
What are the uses of the MMPI?
- It is a standardized test of adult personality and psychopathology
- Uses are:
1. Help develop treatment plans
2. Help with diagnosis
3. Help answer legal questions
4. Screen job candidates
5. Part of therapeutic assessment.
What are unstructured personality tests?
- They assess the “personal project and concerns” schema of understanding personality.
- Unstructured tests are supposed to measure motives that underlie behaviour.
- These cannot be measured in the same was as traits as they are supposed to involve wishes, desires, and goals. These are unconscious and implicit.
