Personality assessment - Human personality structure and its aetiology Flashcards
1
Q
is personality biological?
A
- outcome of multiple generations of successful fitness to survive
2
Q
What is personality?
A
- Traits that are stable across time and situations
- But beware: Most often the situation one finds oneself in is a better determinant of eventual behaviour.
- Fundamental attribution error =
- Individuals tendency to overemphasise internal characteristics in explaining behaviour rather than external factors.
- Converse =
- actor-observer bias which people overestimate role of situation and underemphasise personality.
- Milgram experiments 1960’s and 1970’s
- The most famous set of experiments began in 1961 at Yale University.
- Participants were told they were participating in a study on learning and memory and were assigned the role of “teacher,” with an actor playing the “learner.”
- The teacher was instructed to administer electric shocks to the learner for each incorrect answer to a question.
- The shocks were supposed to increase in intensity with each wrong answer, although, in reality, no shocks were actually given.
- The learner (actor) pretended to be in pain, protesting and eventually ceasing to respond, simulating unconsciousness or death.
- Key findings included:
- 65% of participants (in the original experiment) were willing to administer the highest level of shocks, even when they were uncomfortable doing so, if instructed by an authority figure.
- Many participants showed signs of distress during the experiment but continued to follow orders to administer shocks.
- Key findings included:
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The 1970s Extensions
- These variations included changing the proximity of the learner to the teacher, the location of the study to decrease the authority associated with the Yale University setting, and the presence of dissenting peers who refused to continue administering shocks.
- Obedience rates decreased when the authority figure was not in the same room as the participant.
- Obedience rates also decreased when the participant had to physically place the learner’s hand on a shock plate.
- The presence of peers who refused to continue with the shocks significantly reduced the obedience rate.
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Ethical Considerations and Impact
- Milgram’s experiments have been both highly influential and controversial.
- They provided insight into the power of authority in social psychology, suggesting that under certain conditions, ordinary people can perform acts that violate their moral principles.
- However, the experiments also faced criticism for ethical issues, including deception and the potential psychological harm to participants who believed they were harming others.
- Despite the ethical debates, Milgram’s work has had a lasting impact on psychology, contributing to the development of ethical standards for research involving human participants and fostering further research into authority, conformity, and social influence.
- apply to Nazi Germany, Russia?, privacy?
- Studies suggest roughly 50% of the variance in the 5 dimensions is explained by genetic factors (Jang, Livesley & Vemon 1996).
- But beware what is inherited are more likely to be limits around set points rather than absolute characteristics.
- The environment clearly plays a role
3
Q
How many dimensions of personality?
A
- the Big Five model or Five Factor Model of Personality (John & Srivastava 1999)
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OCEAN:
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Openness
- open to new experience, curious and comfortable to explore new ideas and activities
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Conscientiousness
- attention to detail, planning, extreme: OCD
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Extraversion
- most biological
- comfortable around more people opposite to introverts - Myers-Briggs type indicator
- intraversion - more negative and less happy - good for survival
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Agreeableness
- willing to take action to make peace, patient opposite; competitive
- disagreeing useful in discussions
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Neuroticism
- non pathological → predisposition
- feeling negative tendency
- perceive threats quicker
- emotionality, aggression, anxiety, intense feeling low or high
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6th: Honesty-humility
- hexaco model, opposite for dark triad, less likely to be psychopathic
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Openness
- These measures are widely used in the personality and prediction literature.
- think of pros and cons of every one!!
4
Q
testing personality
A
- Almost invariably assessed by questionnaire
- Based on research some more narrow traits have been identified but factor analysis suggests the big 5 encompass most of the information
- Big 5 inventory
- Alternative models - Jung
5
Q
Does personality predict important outcomes?
A
- What are important outcomes?
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Individual outcomes - that can be manifested by an individual outside of a social context.
- E.G. Physical health, psychopathology, happiness
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Interpersonal outcomes - involve other individuals and it generally matters who the other is.
- E.G. Forming and maintaining quality relationships
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Social/Institutional - more impersonal, organisational, societal-level processes involving interactions with more generalised others.
- E.G. Work satisfaction and performance
- useful to assess personality disorders e.g. someone who can’t make or keep friends
- Longitudinal study by Harvard on happiness found that more experiences ⇒ higher happiness
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Individual outcomes - that can be manifested by an individual outside of a social context.
6
Q
Prediction of individual outcomes
A
- Happiness and subiecive Well being
- SWB includes a cognitive component / judgement of one’s life satisfaction (Diener et al. 1985), and an affective component that includes
- And an emotional component comprising of the experience of positive and absence of negative emotions (Larsen 2000).
- Hedonic treadwill theory
- Importantly personality dispositions are strong predictors of most components of subjective well being (SWB) (see Diener & Lucas 1999)
- Furthermore, demographic factors, including age, sex, marital status, employment, social class and culture are only weakly to moderately related to SWB (Diener et al. 1999, Ryan & Deci, 2001)
- In detail, people high in extraversion and low in neuroticism tend to see events and situations in a more positive light, and tend to discount opportunities that are not available to them
- Differences in conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness to experience are less strongly and consistently associated with SWB (Diener & Lucas 1999)
- Personality traits have a stable effect on health and longevity (Caspi et al. 2005).
- longevity studies show - positive emotionality (extraversion) and conscientiousness predict longer lives (Danner et al. 2001, Friedman et al. 1995)
- and hostility (low agreeableness) predicts poorer physical health (e.g., cardiovascular illness)
- Neuroticism and health and longevity is more complex, some studies support an association between neuroticism and increased disease risk
- whereas others show associations with illness behavior only (Smith & Spiro 2002).
- Whether personality has a causal role remains unclear (Caspi et al. 2005).
- longevity studies show - positive emotionality (extraversion) and conscientiousness predict longer lives (Danner et al. 2001, Friedman et al. 1995)
7
Q
goodwin & Friedman (2006):
A
- Examined 5 factor personality and health in 3032 representative North Americans
- Conscientiousness is associated with reduced physical and mental health risk
- Neuroticism is associated with increased physical and mental health risk
- inconsistent effects of other personality characteristics
8
Q
Interpersonal effects
A
- The strongest personality links shown for empathy,
- i.e. a combination of extraversion and agreeableness, and emotional regulation, best predicted by low neuroticism.
- Romantic relationships - Neuroticism and low agreeableness consistently shown to be predictors of negative relationship outcomes
- e.g. relationship dissatisfaction, (Karney & Bradbury 1995).
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12
Q
Social effects
A
- Examined using meta analysis relations between personality traits and occupational types (Barrick et al. 2003, Larson et al. 2002):
- Extraversion was related to social and enterprising occupational
- Agreeableness to social interests
- Openness to investigative and artistic interests
- Neuroticism not related to any occupational interest
13
Q
Barrick et al. (2001)
A
- Conscientiousness predicts work performance across occupations ways, in all included occupations.
- Smaller, though nearly as broad, effects were found for
Extraversion and emotional stability — smaller effects but are important for some, though not all occupational groups - only weak and narrow effects for agreeableness and openness were identified.
- Agreeableness relates to job performance when a teamwork is important
- Best known occupation-specific measure of job performance is grade point average (GPA) in the US.
- But in UK school leaving exams are related to later work outcomes and - there is a positive relation between GPA and conscientiousness (Paunonen 2003).
- Years of education, is related to intellect, or openness (Goldberg et al. 1998)
14
Q
Thoresen et al. (2003)
A
- extraversion and emotional stability associated with job satisfaction and organisational commitment.
- Furthermore they are negatively related to a wish to change jobs and burnout.
- Conscientiousness best predicts how well one performs at work
- but extraversion and emotional stability are more important for understanding how one feels about work
15
Q
Roberts et al. (2003)
A
- Emotional stability (negative emotion) is strongly related to financial security
- Agreeableness (positive emotion-communion)
related to occupational attainment - Resource based power and work involvement predicted by extraversion (positive emotion-agency)
