personality psych Flashcards
features of a personality trait
tries to deviate from intellectual or ability-based traits, are enduring traits and relatively unchanging, and are broad
what did Allport and Odbert do
searched the dictionary for words that could describe the differences between people, filtered out physical attributes, cognitive abilities, transient states and insulting terms to leave 4500 terms that could be used to describe a person
what did Raymond Cattell do `
reduced the set created by Allport and Odbert by removing synonyms and then using a correlation factor test to determine which terms were highly correlational (and therefore could be used interchangably), leaving a 16 factor personality test
what did Donal Fisk do
further reduced Catells 16-factor test to a 5 factor test - “OCEAN”
what does the 5 factor acronym OCEAN stand for
openness to experience, conscientiousness (thorough), extraversion, agreeableness and neurotisism
what are 4 challenges of trait psychology
are individual differences consistent? (or are traits expressed differently in different contexts). is the structure of traits universal? Traits or Types? (should traits be on a continuum or one or the other). Are traits sufficient for describing personality? (what about values, interests and character strengths)
what does a 0.4 heritability of a trait indicate
that around 40% of the trait comes from genetics, while the other 60 is still heavily influenced by environment
what did Gray argue
the behavioural activation system (BIS) is related to impulsivity and sensitivity to reward and pleasure, while the behavioural inhibition system is liked to anxiety and sensitivity to punishment and pain
what does a low 2D:4D ratio mean
higher prenatal testosterone exposure
what are the risks of a biological explanation of personality
reductionism (if something has a biological explanation, then psychological explanations are unnecessary), determinism (if something has a biological explanation, then it cant be changed), naturalistic fallacy (if something has a biological explanation, then it is ‘natural’)
what are the cognitive theories of personality
personal construct, attributions, emotional intelligence, the self
explain personal construct
humans are driven to understand, predict and control their environment, and therefore we derive our own theories of the world to assist in this. How we perceive the world. Kelly (the creator) believes that humans see the world through dichotomies (eg. hot vs cold) and that each person has a set of contrasts that are particularly important to them.
explain attributions
attributions are how we explain the world. People try to determine the causes of events. There are several dimensions of attributions: internal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific
what attribution types are typical to a pessimistic attributional style
global, stable, internal (for negative events) and specific, unstable and external (for positive events)
explain emotional intelligence
refers to ones abilities and skills in solving problems of an emotional nature. Components are perceiving emotion, using emotion (to guide and plan behaviour), understanding emotion and managing emotion
