Personality and social psychology

Question 1

Define social psychology

Answer 1

The study of individuals actions, thought and feelings and how others can impact these (whether they are actual, imagined or implied). (Allport 1961) as well as looking at the external environment

Question 2

Define personality psychology

Answer 2

Looks ‘inside the person’ and their psychophysical systems which create their behaviours, thoughts and feelings. (Allport 1961)

Question 3

What is the fundamental attribution error?

Answer 3

A bias where we put emphasis on one’s internal characteristics rather than considering how external factors could explain behaviour.

Question 4

What is the person- situation conflict

Answer 4

An academic conflict of whether one’s behaviour is determined more by their personality or the situation they are in.

Question 5

Mischel’s view on the person- situation conflict

Answer 5

Personality can only explain 10% of a persons behaviour. Personality traits are consistent whereas behaviour is not

Question 6

Epstein’s view on the Person- situation conflict.

Answer 6

Rather than examining personality through one single test, we should use an aggregate approach and examine it on multiple instances to understand behaviour better.

Question 7

Fleeson on the person- situation conflict

Answer 7

Correlation between one’s hourly behaviour will be lower than correlation between weeks.

Question 8

Funder and Colving (1991) on the Person- situation conflict.

Answer 8

• They did a study on individuals social interactions with other participants twice with different partners, looking out for 62 specific characteristics.
• As a result there was cross- situational consistency where 42 features were correlated and 20 differed on average.

Meaning:
- Both situation and personality influence behaviour.

Question 9

What are situation selection and situation evocation

Answer 9

Situation selection: people have freedom to put themselves in a certain situation
Situation evocation: individuals unintentionally alter a situation by their presence. (Buss 1987)

Meaning people influence situations.

Question 10

Why is there a replication crisis

Answer 10

Small sample sizes, measurement errors, statistical power, publication bias.

Question 11

How can the replication crisis be solved?

Answer 11

Larger sample sizes and multiple studies.

Already existing solutions include: having to upload data, register any studies and report all measures.