Personality Flashcards
Why do we care about personality and why do we label people?
- Predictability: We’re trying to impose predictability on the world
- Variability: We apply consistency to the person across all domains and form ideas about peoples personality all the time.
How do we form personality and stereotype views?
We tend to go with our overall judgement and make assumptions about causes rather than change our overall judgement because we like consistency.
What is personality?
Individual differences in our characteristics and qualities.
They form an individuals distinctive character
Theory: Different modes of personality
We have different modes which are different ways of interacting with the world.
It changes with the situation that we’re in but can become problematic when “two worlds collide” / inconsistency
Temperament vs Personality
We don’t generally settle until between 21 and 25, so before this point we refer to temperament.
How do you measure personality?
MMPR - 567 of questions for optimum data but usually shorter.
Very out of date but still used.
Statistical factor analysis.
What are the issues with MMPR
Fatigue
Socially desirable answers
Misleading answers
Interpretation: what does it mean? Do we disregard results that don’t meet our own opinions? Can you be different in person to on paper?
Adult measures don’t work well with children due to being prone to change.
What is the Major models of personality?
Type A or B
A: Competitive, outgoing, ambitious
B: Relaxed, Calm
C - emotionally cut off
D - negative out-look on life but not liked to mental health
What are the multi-dimensional models of personality?
MMPI
Cattell’s 16 personality factors
Eysenck’s 3 factor model
Myers Briggs
What is MMPI?
Inventory of questions used to test personality.
What is Cattell’s 16 personality factors?
There are 16 personality factors used to assess personality however this has never been replicated and you cannot get the same numbers out of the same data set
What is Eysenck’s 3 factor model?
Three key factors that are linked to brain function and temperament.
- extra/introvert
- psychotic-ism (aggression)/socialism
- neuroticism/stability
However, he wouldn’t accept that he was wrong and wouldn’t allow anything to the contrary to be published.
Different personality = different biology.
Explain Myers Briggs 4 components.
- intrusion/sensing
- intro/extrovert
- feeling/thinking
- perception/judging
Presented to sum up to a personality type and the combinations are presented as one of the 16 personality types.
Bert
Created correlation coefficients that showed biological aspects were overwhelmingly responsible.
Made up people and results to back up his theory. White male superiority.
Moral? We can’t adapt science to meet your own social beliefs or expectations.
Goldberg
We don’t know enough but it is likely to be a combination of biology and the environment.
Best method?
MZ twins compared with DZ twins.
Bert then developed this to MZ twins that are raised separately (Same biology, different environment).
Explain what Loehlin & Nicholas did/found.
Investigated the big 5 across several countries - neurotic-ism and extroversion.
Found it is largely influenced by environment.
MZ twins are more similar in intelligence and less similar with goals and interests.
Not all genes!
Psycho-social influences
Freud - ID, Ego, Superego
Humanist theories - totally impossible to prove or disprove
Behaviourist theories - Classical and opperant conditioning - we’re affected by the world and how we interact.
- people are nice to us because we are nice to them
- We learn from experiences (sociopath - hostility learnt)
Social cognitive theories - Bandura - social learning theory - modelling behaviours and attitudes.
Attributional style model - Negative about us, positive about others. Leads to low self-esteem
Is the personality we have now what we will have for the rest of our lives?
- More changes in childhood but we can learn and have lifelong changes in our personality.
Although there’s very little evidence (problematic doing longitudinal studies)
Longitudinal study of personality
Measured using MMPR. 1208 participants to start with at age 14. Only 174 followed up age 77.
174 - overall, more intelligent however perhaps they were the 174 which were more willing to take part, healthier, lack dementia, lived longer.
no correlations were significant.
personality at 14 doesn’t predict personality at 77 however, more conscientious at 14 leads to better quality of life at 77.
Cohort study with effects
Age 10 to age 60.
Women - more conscientious than men apart from 1 week.
Women - more agreeable than men - increases over lifetime and big gender difference
Women - increase in neurotic-ism, men dip and then maintain.
Women - more introvert than men, dips then maintains
Women - begin more open but become more equal over tie.
Interventions
Personality surgery - lobotomies to destroy frontal lobe. very very dangerous.
Electrocution therapy - frying the brain to change personality - worked for aggression!
Aversion therapy - morally wrong and doesn’t work with homosexuality for example, despite lots of attempts
Personality level interventions - Not effective for anti-social behaviour.
Personality disorder / Multiple personality disorder issues
Can resolve the behaviours but the cognition is still there
Best to leave PD alone because 10 year stability change makes you less likely to have it in 10 years time anyway
MPD - You cannot use more than more than one model at the same time.
Define personality
An across the board, stable, situation independent pattern of attitudes, behaviours and emotions.
Trait rather than a state
Explain prior issues
Well established and promoted but not actually any good.
Mischel - They don’t give any prediction about what people are going to do and they were no good at explaining behaviour.
Mischel therefore suggested (proposed a challenge) we should give up the idea of personality and focus on the situation that you’re in.
What did Mischel’s proposal lead to?
- People looking for something consistent
- Something data driven not theory driven - bottom up approach.
How did the big 5 come about?
Asked lots of questions, collated data then did a factor analysis and looked at whether there were any consistent categories
Proposed in the 60’s but confirmed in the 80’s when they found that the data did map out into the same 5 factors.
Digman - established as being robustly superior to other models in the 90’s
What are the pro’s of the big 5?
- Good correlations with patterns of behaviour
- Good correlations with behaviour when under pressure. (stress causes us to return to habitual patterns)
What are the big 5?
OCEAN
O - openness to experience C - conscientiousness E - extroversion A - agreeableness N - neuroticism
Expand on Openness to experience
- high = inventive & curious
- low = cautious & consistent
Expand on Conscientiousness
- high = Efficient & organised
- low = easy going & careless
Expand on Extroversion
- high = outgoing & energetic
- low =solitary & reserved
Expand on Agreeableness
- high = friendly & passionate
- low = analytical & detached
Expand on Neuroticism
- high = sensitive & nervous
- low = secure & confident
Factors are:
Single dimensions (OCEAN)
good for predicting behaviour
Facets are:
Separate clusters
(expansion/description)
Macrae & costa - 6 facets per factor
Problematic measurement occurs for the big 5 because…
- the measure is huge, there are lots of items when focused on the facets (2-300 compared to 3-5)
- you have to decide what you want to measure
- trade off between precision and utility
NEO PI R
Big 5 personality measurement method.
243 items, widely used and validated across cultures
The big 5 inventory
- John & Srivastava
- includes facets, 44 items and exists in a 10 items measurement but this doesn’t include the facets
IPIP big 5 factor markers
50 items
TIPI
10 items, correlates with longer measures.
Problems with the big 5:
- phenomenological rather than theory based
- limited ability to predict behaviours. Only predicts generality of behaviour, not specific.
- Doesn’t cover all traits (masculinity/femininity/sensation seeking)
- Possible 6th factor? Honesty-humility (Ashton - facets include sincerity, modesty and fairness)
