Personality Psychology Flashcards
Who was Phineas Gage?
He was a railroad worker in the late 1800s who sustained a major injury in which a metal rod when through his cheek and skull. He survived but his personality was irreparably changed. He lost everything.
Are all psychological individual differences permanent?
No
What are state differences?
temporary differences in people’s psychology . These differences are fundamentally temporary
What are trait differences?
Semi-Permanent, enduring differences between people’s psychology
What are examples of state differences?
(e.g hunger, anger)
What are examples of Trait Differences?
Shyness, friendliness, courage
What is the definition of Personality?
A person’s characteristic and enduring style of behaving, thinking, and feeling. (i.e traits, not states)
What is the first problem in trying to identify how many distinct personality traits there are?
If you conclude too many, the ability to generate predictions and test them becomes near-impossible. If the number was too high we could never have a scientific theory. It would be way too difficult
What is the second problem in trying to identify how many distinct personality traits there are?
If you make too few, prediction is trivial but your theory has not explained anything at all about how people are actually different.
What are the two measures we would use for personality?
Self-report and Observation
What is the problem with self report?
- People may not tell you how they actually act but instead tell you how they wish they acted. (people aren’t always truthful)
What is the problem with Observation?
- researcher may not be able to reliably infer the causes of behaviour because of their biases.
- If people know they are being observed, they may not act naturally.
What are the 4 approaches to discovering where distinct personalities come from?
- Heredity and Evolution
- Early developmental Experiences
- Socio-Cognitive approach
- Humanistic Approach
What is the perspective on the role of heredity and evolution on personality?
The theory is that personality is a genetic trait that allows for variable adaptations to changing environments. They believe that we need balances/ different personalities in order to have people act differently and be adaptable to different environments.
What is the perspective on the role of Early Developmental experiences on personality? What approach is this most associated with?
theory is that personality comes from positive and negative experiences we have in our childhood and youth (most associated w/ Psychodynamic approach of Sigmund Freud).
What is the social-cognitive approach on personality? Do they believe that personality is permanent?
theory is that personality comes about from our history of reward and punishment in various social situations. They believe that personality is not permanent and that it can be changed based on our lives.
What is the Humanistic Approach to Personality?
theory is that personality comes about as we try to maximize our well-being and autonomy.
What is a self-report measure?
any test in which a person is asked to evaluate themselves on questions, which often rank on scales from “not at all like me” to “very much like of me”.
What happens when self-report measures are made poorly? Why?
they are prone to extreme bias
that makes them invalid measures.
What is the Barnum/Forer effect?
a common phenomenon whereby people take extremely general descriptions to be highly specific to them and their personality.
What effect do self report measures suffer from?
The Barnum/Forer effect
What are some examples of phrases that show the Barnum effect?
“you have a great need for others to like and admire you, but you tend to be critical of yourself.”
“at times you are extroverted and sociable, while at other times you are introverted and reserved”
why would most psychologists reject the Myers Briggs test?
because the research behind this test was done by people with vested interests. This research has actually been proven to be false. Statements are too general.
what are the 3 things we can do to make a good personality test?
- Indirect self reporting
- Measure tendency to bias
- Converge Multiple Methods
What is an indirect self report?
ask a question about behaviours without signalling that you are asking about a personality trait (e.g., ask about likeability to test narcissism).
Why do we use indirect self-report?
A direct personality test gives you direct info on a personality trait. This allows you to cheat the system. Like “are you a narcissist”, people know thats bad so they say no even if they are.
How do we measure tendency to bias?
good personality tests have “catch items” that can tell us if the participant is likely to be biased or not.
What is converging multiple methods?
a good test was built by comparing the self-report measure to observable behaviour, asking friends and family, and other objective measurements.
Why is converging multiple methods useful?
its not actually the case that the people taking the test tell us if the test is good. We go out into the world to find other sources if the results of this test are actually valid. This bi-passes the Feror effect but produces tests that tend to be substantially less problematic.
What was the scenario provided in class regarding factor analysis?
Imagine that personality is made up of, say, 3 traits: sociality, curiosity, and empathy.
If each of these is a factor, then every person would have all three and would independently vary on them.
The traits would, in turn, lead to “clusters” of correlated behaviours.
We could pick up on these clusters by asking thousands of self-report questions, and then examining which ones correlate together (factor analysis – see textbook for details).
What is the currently accepted theory of personality and it’s factors?
The Five Factor Theory “Big Five”
What are the five factors of personality?
Openness, conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism
What is the Acronym for the five factors?
OCEAN
What is believed to be the case about the five factors? (Three things)
- Every person’s personality is thought to be fully captured by these traits.
- Each person varies along each factor’s full continuum and the factors are independent (e.g., a person can be high in Openness and Extraversion, medium in Agreeableness and low in Conscientiousness and Neuroticism).
- The factors predict behaviour in almost most situations.
What is openness? (or openness to experience)? What is it strongly related to?
the factor describing a person’s curiosity for experiencing new and varied things. It is strongly related to one’s intellect and imagination/creativity.
How are people high on openness often described?
as creative, dreamers, idealists, with a need to learn.
What is true of people low on openness?
People low in openness prefer concrete facts rather than ideals; they are traditional, down-to-earth, practical, and prefer routines.
What is conscientiousness?
the factor describing a person’s degree of thoughtfulness, organization, and responsibility. Strongly related to orderliness and industriousness.
What is true of people high on consientiousness?
People high in conscientiousness typically do very well in school and are described as self-disciplined, exacting, focused and responsible.
What is true of people low on conscientousness?
People low in conscientiousness are more laid-back, and less goal and success oriented.
What is extraversion?
the factor describing a person’s preference for social activities, including feeling energized from interacting with others. Is related to both enthusiasm for social situations and to assertiveness in social situations.
What is true of people high on extraversion?
People high in extraversion “recharge” by hanging out with others; they are described as very social and fun-loving.
What is true of people low on extraversion?
People low in extraversion (i.e., introverts) are not low in social skills, but instead “recharge” by being by themselves.
What is agreeableness? What is it related to?
the Big Five factor describing the person’s degree of kindness and need for social harmony as opposed to conflict. Related to one’s compassion, empathy, and politeness.
What is true of people high on agreeableness?
People high in agreeableness are described as considerate, kind, empathetic, and willing to compromise for others.
What is true of people low on agreeableness?
People low in agreeableness are typically sceptical and distrustful of other people and their motives and are not compromising in social situations.
What is Neuroticism?
the factor describing a person’s tendency to have negative, pessimistic, or unstable emotions. Related to emotional volatility and social withdrawal.
What is true of people high on neuroticism?
People high in neuroticism experience a lot of anxiety and stress, and are usually very self-conscious and shy.
What is true of people low on Neuroticism?
People low in neuroticism are typically emotionally stable and not as affected by stressful situations.
How did psychologists come up with the 5 factors?
through factor analysis
How do we measure personality?
we use standardized measures that contain indirect questions, “catch” items, and cross-validated questions to help with self- report biases.
Why is the Big Five the accepted theory of Personality?
because it has strong prediction to various real-life outcomes
What is evolutionary Psychology?
an approach to studying psychological processes by understanding why and how they might be universal adaptations shaped by principles of evolution. It tries to answer why our psychology is the way that it is.
How are adaptations thought to emerge?
Natural selection and Sexual Selection
What is natural selection?
selection of traits that support adaptive survival and procreation (e.g., walking on two legs).
What is sexual selection?
selection of traits that promote adaptive reproduction by advertising a mate as eligible and unique (e.g., feathers on a peacock). Sometimes these traits actually decrease fitness
What do evolutionary psychologists believe?
evolutionary psychologist believe that almost all of our psychological traits and mechanisms are a reaction to an adaptive pressure.
What does evolutionary try to understand? And why are adaptations important for this?
why we are the way that we are. Important becuase it has a commitment that these adaptations are universal. As a result of that, they are present within every person (within a narrow band).
What is the most intuitive way that personality exists the way it does? Example?
we want people to be adaptable to changing environments. Or personality promotes or decreases sexual selection. Imagine someone who is high on openness. If we imagine that everybody was high on openness this would mean that if the environment was ever dangerous, curiosity would kill us. So many people think that within this perspective we should have multiple personalities.
Why do many people view evolutionary psychology as being deeply flawed?
Because of Just So Stories
What are Just-So Stories?
an unverifiable and unfalsifiable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals.
Why are Just-So Stories so bad?
Adaptations can exist even without evolutionary pressures (e.g., the usage of fire is extremely common in all human cultures, but we did not evolve with that knowledge).
The environment is not static: humans have significantly changed the
environmental pressures that acted on us thousands of years ago through
domestication, building of cities, medicine, etc.
What is an example of an evolution that can exist without an evolutionary pressure?
They can look like universal adaptations. Ex: knowing how to use fire is helpful to survival it looks like a universal adaptation but it is just a product of culture converging on similar solutions. Its not biologically driven
How do evolutionary psychologists provide more than just plausible stories of how trait may have emerged?
alongside behavioural geneticists.
What would we generally expect if genes bias towards one personality or another?
heritability
ability Manipulate genes
Ability to manipulate environment
What do we mean by heritability?
high correlations in personality traits for identical vs. fraternal twins.
What do we mean by Manipulate genes?
personality should be changed by genetic manipulations.
What do we mean by manipulate environment?
the environment in which you grow up (and especially the way your parents raise you) should not change your personality very much.
What is the effect of the BIG FIVE on dizygotic twins compared to monozygotic twins?
All Big Five factors show small-to-moderate, positive effects when dizygotic twins are compared to monozygotic twins. (AKA the correlations are stronger btwn monozygotic twins)
What is the relationship between personality and gender?
no differences by gender
How do genes predict more about your personality as you age (if you are a twin)?
The ability to predict your traits based on your twins traits increases with age
What 3 traits are the effects of heritabiltiy particularly strong for?
extraversion, Oppeness and Neuroticism
What does evidence show about genes and personality?
Overall, good evidence that genetic heritability has a small-to-moderate
predictive role, though not as much as they do in intelligence. (about 50% of personality can be predicted by genes)
What was the silver Fox Experiment?
an influential experiment in which wild foxes were domesticated within eight generations by only those with a calm personality to have cubs.
What did the silver fox experiment try to emulate? How?
a kind of selective pressure. Only those who had particular personality traits were allowed to reproduce. Overtime, these foxes (through artificial selection) essentially because domesticated.
How did the silver fox experiment manipulate the environment?
The Silver Fox Experiment also manipulated the environment: tame foxes were embryonically implanted into wombs of aggressive mothers. And yet, when born and raised, they remained calm (and vice-versa).
What did the silver fox experiment show?
we have evidence that aggression vs non-aggression can be genetic because changing their environment doesn’t change their personality.
What is the Social Cognitive Approach to personality?
a theory arguing that personality is dynamic and changing, and dependent on outcome expectancies – our expectations about reward and punishment in a given social situation.
According to the Socio cognitive model, why does personality shift?
our expectations about reward and punishment in a given social situation which either come from direct experience, or from us interpreting novel situations to try and predict what will happen. Because of this, personality may shift throughout one’s life, and especially when our environments change.
According to the Socio Cognitive model why do some people shut down in social situations?
The idea here is this reward and punishment can come form experience or prediction of novel situations. Some people have difficulty predicting so they just shut down.
What is the social Cognitive approach doubtful of?
The BIG FIVE model
What is locus of control?
the tendency to perceive outcomes of a situation as Internal (controlled by yourself) or External (not controlled by you).
What is true of people with a high internal locus of control?
People with a high internal locus of control tend to be more organized, friendly, healthy, and social (i.e., high in conscientiousness and agreeableness).
What is true of people with a high external locus of control?
People with high external locus of control leads to anxiety (high neuroticism).
How do we define culture?
the system of shared beliefs, traditions, and values by a group or society. Culture in part defines what is good/desirable and bad/undesirable behavior and personality.
What is cross-cultural psychology?
subfield of psychology concerned with documenting similarities and differences in psychology in people from different cultures.
What do cross cultural psychologists spend lots of time thinking about?
cross cultural psychologists spend lots of time thinking about behavioural adaptations and they’re very aware of genetics
Why is cross-cultural work difficult?
cross cultural work is difficult. We have to be careful that when measuring these things we use the appropriate tools
Why is culture an important consideration in the study of personality?
A very important issue in the study of personality is the study of culture. There are cultures where high agreeableness is placed above everything else and there are other cultures where it is frowned upon.
What does WEIRD stand for?
Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic.
What does the weird acronym mean?
Western: almost all participants are from Europe, Canada or USA. Educated: on average, 12-16 years of schooling.
Industrialized: city-dwelling, non-traditional occupations.
Rich: access to health care, roads, etc.
Democratic: growing up in a society valuing individual expression.
What does WEIRD make us question?
How many of our findings are, then, truly universal?
What is one major difference not tested for in the BIg Five?
individualistic vs collectivist cultures
What is an individualistic culture?
(e.g., Canada, Western Europe, USA): cultures in which the uniqueness of each individual person is strongly esteemed; individuals of this
society feel that they, first and foremost, belong to themselves and can live and act in any way that they see fit.
What is a collectivist culture?
(e.g., China, India, Brazil): cultures in which social harmony outweighs the importance of each individual person; individuals of this society feel that they, first and foremost, belong to a group to which they must contribute
to and compromise for.
What does individualistic vs collectivist make a difference for in terms of personality?
This has impacts on which personality traits we emphasis and de-emphasize these traits.
how does culture lead to differences in?
how personality is conceptualized
What is more likely of members of an individualistic culture?
Members of individualistic cultures are more likely to attribute to people an enduring and unchanging personality that is characteristic of a person (“essentialism”).
What is more likely of members in a collectivist culture?
Members of collectivist cultures are more likely to evaluate the social situation in which the person found themselves, and hence the personality characteristic of the situation.
Why is personality especially valued in individualistic cultures?
They put such a strong emphasis on self-worth and self-esteem. they really elevate this notion. this is another notable difference in how people use thier personality and behaviours that htey believe they hold as unique individuals.
What is Self-Narrative?
a narrative we tell about ourselves (to ourselves and others) by both assimilating and contrasting to others.
What is Downward Comparison?
the act of comparing yourself to somebody you believe is worse off than you to boost your self-worth.
Which of the following assumptions do we have to make in order for the study of “personality” to be rigorous and scientific?
A-to-be studied aspect of personality must consist of characteristics that are both measurable and stable over time.
What is the unconscious?
Thoughts and feelings that fall below the threshold of our awareness but can guide thought and behaviour
what is the id?
The component of personality in Freuds psychoanalytic theory that is the manifestation of the unconscious and instinctual drives and needs.
What does the id operate in accordance to?
The pleasure principle
What is the pleasure principle?
where behavior is driven purely by what feels good, with no real filter or concern about what is polite or possible
What is responsible for tantrums?
The id
What is the ego?
The component of personality In Freuds psychoanalytic theory that represents the largely conscious awareness of reality and the ability to mediate the need of the id within the constraints of reality.
What principle does the ego operate according to?
The reality principle
What is the preconscious?
where thoughts and motives have the potential to become consciously accessible if they are cued.
What is the superego? When does it develop?
The component of personality in Freuds psychoanalytic theory that represents internalized cultural rules and ideals to guide our moral conscience. Develops at 5 or 6
What was frueds primary goal of psychoanalytic theory?
to access these buried thoughts and bring them to consciousness
What are defence mechanisms?
the various ways in which the ego is thought to cope with conflict between the unconscious desires of the id and the moral constraints of society.
What is displacement?
a response to anger that can flare up when we feel mistreated, insulted, or ignored. The id’s knee-jerk response to anger is attack, punishment, and retaliation
What is projection?
a defense mechanism in which people, instead of acknowledging it in themselves, see others as possessing a disliked trait or feeling.
What is repression?
the ego keeps unwanted feelings, thoughts and memories below the level of conscious awareness.
What is denial?
ego prevents the perception of a painful or threatening reality as it occurring
What are 4 things freud discovered that we still stick to today?
- The existence of unconscious thought
- The importance of early childhood development
- The influence of mind on body
- the talking cure
What was a key outcome of Freud suggesting the importance of early childhood development?
Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development emerged from this idea
What are some examples of psycho somatic symptoms?
headaches, sleep disruption, chest pains, shortness of breath, back pain, appetite disruption, stomach or bowel problems, sex drive disruption, weakened immune system
Why did Freud originally develop psychoanalysis?
he thought the psychological processes of the mind could account for medically inexplicable disorders of the body.
