Research Methods Flashcards
3 criteria of personality
- consistency/continuity, stability across time and/or situations
- causal force from within (internal causality)
- distinctiveness : summarize what an individual is like
main differences between social psych and personality psych
social: influence of situation. Person IN situation, regardless of individual characteristic
Personality: focus on individual, trait, characteristics. forget about social context.
- not distinct, complement
goal of personality psych in terms of the 3 general criteria
show interaction between continuity of personality + internal causality. = can help predict person’s reaction to situation.
prof definition of personality
- dynamic organization inside the person, of psychophysical systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns of behaviour, thoughts, and feelings
4 elements of personality
- organization
- processes and causal factors
- psychological and physical
- individualized patterns
how is personality organized?
patterns and hierarchies direct activity/behaviour
- “normal” personality is organized
how does personality have processes + causal forces
deterministic - personality is something + does something
not dormant, interacts to make you think, feel, behave.
how is personality psychological and physical
- neither exclusively mental or neural.
- brain + body relate to the mind.
- neural processes may pre-dispose to extraversion/depression, but shaped by psychological situations
how is personality an individualized pattern
is consistent and recurring.
what are two key themes in personality psych?
individual differences
- interpersonal functioning
what are individual differences
- no 2 are exactly alike
- perspective on personality should address where the differences come from + why they are important
- capture key differences in individual
why are individual differences important?
- show needs and motivations.
what is intrapersonal functioning
- deterministic tendencies or propensities (internal causes) that exist within the individual, which are elicited from situational factors (situation brings out the internal cause)
- motive activated but situation needs to occur and have effect.
what is a theory?
summary statement; general principle, or set of principles about a class of events
2 purposes of theories?
- explain phenomena
2. predict new info
2 ways a theory is evaluated?
testing - should be testable: verifies, suggests changes
- should generate hypotheses: theory guides research
what is definition of theory?
predictions about specific events that are derived from one or more theories
theory - breadth of information behind
- theory based on 1 source = weak, less credible, valid. more info the better
- replication is key.
theory - parsimony
- as few assumptios as possible
- keeps theory simple + organized
subjectivity of theories
- good theories = strong feelings/opinions. however, it is subjective
what is the psychological triad?
- who named it that?
Funder,
- thoughts, feelings + behaviour
- important independently + as they combine/conflict
psych triad + personality
personality involved in psych triad when there are inconsistencies between 2+ areas.
relation between personality + clinical psychology
- patterns of personality are extreme, unusual, cause problems the two fields come together.
- understand the whole person
define personality
individual’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms behind those patterns
- explain whole person
5 basic approaches to personality
- trait approach
- biological approach
- psychoanalytic approach
- phenomenological approach
- learning and cognitive approach
the basic approaches compared
- not competing, complementing + address different set of questions.
- each approach handles diff things + ignores certain things
one big personality theroy?
- accounts for certain things extremely well will probably not explain everything else so well
- tries to explain everything? no best explanation for any one thing
what is Funder’s First Law
- great strengths are usually great weaknesses, and surprisingly often, the opposite is true as well.
- personality is coherent, each part stems from + depends on others. - narrow scope: manageable, but limited
examples of Funder’s first law
- flaws of Presidents were the same attributes that allowed them to attain and effectively use power
Ted Talk: child strength + weaknesses
- make talent your strength,
- redirect and cultivate talent
- harness power in weakness
what is pigeonholing?
- emphasizing how individuals are different by categorizing/labelling people
- sensitive to those that are really different
Funder’s second law
There are no perfect indicators of personality; there are only clues, and clues are always ambiguous
how is data just a clue about personality?
personality resides within each individual, inferences about personality must be based on indications that can be observed
- may be ambiguous, need a lot of data to get better understanding
What is Funder’s Third Law?
- something beats nothing, two times out of three
- maintain skepticism, but some data is better than no data.
4 types of Data
S data
I data
L data
B data
what is S data?
self-report
What are advantages of S data?
- large amount of info
- access to thoughts, feelings, intentions (things private to you)
- some S data true by definition
- Causal force
- simple + easy (cost-effective)
Disadvantages of S data
- Can’t (out of memory, fish-and-water effect, distorted, lack o insight)/Won’t report (private)
- too simple + too easy = over-used.
What is I data?
- key to it?
Informants’ reports
- judgement by knowledgeable informants about general attributes
- key: informant is well-acquainted.
- judgements or subjective opinions.
advantages of I data
- large amount of info
- real-world basis
- common sense
- some I data are true by definition
- causal force
disadvantages of I data
- limited behavioural info
- lack of access to private experience (little inner mental life)
- error (can’t remember everything.
- bias
L data: advantages
- objective and verifiable
- intrinsic importance
- physiological relevance
L data: disadvantages
- multi-determination
- possible lack of psychological relevance
what is L data?
life outcomes, degree of success in daily living
- results/residue of personality
- obtained from archival records or from q’s to participant
what is B data?
behavioural observations
- used to infer personality
- testing situation + observed. natural or contrived context
B data: advantages
wide range of contexts (real + contrived)
- appearance of objectivity
B data: disadvantages
uncertain interpretation
why is S data effective?
describe self largely matches the way they are described by others.
- face validity
what is face validity?
directly + obviously related to the construct they are designed to measure
Fish-and-water effect
- fish probably don’t know they’re wet.
- ppl don’t see their action as remarkable because they’re so accustomed to them.
Two types of context
- immediate: situation + context
2. New behaviour: judgments made easily and automatically
what behaviours are most likely to stand out in I-data?
extreme, unusual, emotionally arousing.
What is the causal force advantage of S-data?
what you think of yourself may influence what you do
- self-verification: make ppl look at you the way you look at you.
-
why is there a large amount of info in I-data?
descriptions based on hundreds of behaviours in lots of situations
- more informants the better
what’s important about I-data relating to the real world?
chance of being relevant to aspects that affect important life outcomes
how does I-data rely on common sense?
judgment includes context in immediate situation + other past behaviours
how may i-data be a piece of definitional truth?
some aspects reside in reaction from others, hard to assess yourself on them
how does I-data show a causal force?
- reflect your reputation which affects opportunities + expectancies
- people become what others expect them to be = expectancy effects, behavioural confirmation, self-fulfilling prophecy
How may I-data have limited behavioural information?
limited validity as a description of what you are like in general, diff person in each situation/context
how may I-data be biased?
- affected by whatever bias the informants have
- general bias is more common.
L data: ex - Social media
- facebook page + records of tweets is direct reflection of what he has done
what is the objective + verifiable advantage of L-data
outcomes are specific and may even be expressed in exact, numeric form
why is L-data intrinsically important (advantage)?
shows what the psychologist needs to know
why is L-data advantaged by psychological relevance?
- strongly affected by psychological variables
- if certain life outcomes dont happen, may be marker of psychopathology
what is the multideterminism disadvantage of L data?
- many causes, specific connections might be difficult to find.
- too many life outcomes to examine them all
why is there possibly a lack of psychological relevance to L data (disadvantage)
- chances of prediction L-data from personality are limited
examples of natural b-data
- diary: direct indications of specific behaviour
- experience sampling methods: moment by moment reports of thoughts/actions/ feelings
- ambulatory assessments: audio recorder turns on throughout the day
- reports of behaviour form participant/acquaintance
- watch person in context
examples of laboratory B-data
- psych experiments:
- certain Personality tests (ex: MMPI, not face value. TAT
- physiological measures: biological “behaviour” of participant
distinction between s-data and question-answer -data
s: wanna know answer to quesiton
b: wanna know how u answer question + later interpret that.
B- data range of contexts advantage
- provide important info about aspects of their personalities that are ordinarily hidden
b data : appearance of objectivity advantage
info gathered directly + can increase precision.
- may be numerically expressed = high reliability
B-data disadvantage of uncertain interpretation means?
numbers interpreted.
- appearances are often ambiguous + misleading
- what behaviour means depends on interpretation
= marshmallow test
Marshmallow test as example of B-data
- supposed to measure?
- Funder furthers this study
- supposed to measure delayed gratification
- Funder: what if delay because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do - more obedient, loyal, cooperative when they wait. cooperating with research person.
what is triangulation? why is it needed?
better to gather more than 1 type of info because all have disadvantages. Use a few kinds of data to find one conclusion. more data = more confidence in validity
what is funder’s fourth law
there are only 2 kinds of data: terrible data and no data
define reliability (in measurement)
tendency of an instrument to provide the same comparative info on repeated occasions.
what is measurement error?
the variation of a number around its true mean due to uncontrolled, essentially random influences
4 factors that undermine reliability
- low precision
- state of the participant
- state of the experimenter
- variation in the enviro
how does low precision undermine reliability
if not taking care or precise measurement = may not be accurate
how state of the participant undermine’s reliability
sick, sleepy etc. may have behaved differently.
how does state of the experimenter undermine reliability?
if untrained, drunk, no sleep = effects the quality of how it is presented to the participant.
- ppl respond differently to race, gender, dress etc
how does variation in environment undermine reliability
fire alarm, loud in hallways, other distractions.
- temp, weather, small effects that may be significant
4 techniques to improve reliability
- take care with the procedure (careful, double check)
- use constant, scripted procedure/protocol for all participants (proper training for experimenter)
- measure something that is important to participant, rather than trivial
- aggregation: combine measurements by averaging
what is validity
degree to which a measurement actually reflects what it is intended to measure
reliability + validity
reliability (same score each time) is necessary but not sufficient for validity.
define constructs
an idea about a psychological attribute that goes beyond what might be assessed through any particular method of assessment
what is construct validation?
the strategy of establishing the validity of a measure by comparing it with a wide range of other measures
define generalizability
the degree to which a measurement can be found under diverse circumstances (time, context, participant population)
- includes both reliability + validity
How University studies affect generalizability
- student samples
- shows vs no-shows tell us about ppl who show, no info on no show.
- cohort effects: limited to one place in time
- ethnic and cultural diversity: limited subset
what are WEIRD people
Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic
how does burden of proof relate to generalizability
resisting making simple generalizations about other cultures, including differences, researchers should share the burden + explain why, when, how it’s not generalizable
case study method
studying a particular phenomenon/individual in depth to understand the particular case + in hopes of discovering general lessons or scientific laws
advantages of case study method
- describes the whole phenomenon
- well chosen study can be source of ideas
- sometimes, necessary
disadvantage of case study method
- not controlled.
- need further confirmation
experimental design - define?
technique that establishes the causal relationship between X and Y, by randomly assigning participants to experimental groups characterized by differing levels of X and measuring the average behaviour (y) that results.
what is key to the experimental method?
random assignment
- allows pre-existing conditions to cancel out.
what is correlational method?
research technique that establishes the relationship (not necessarily causal) between 2 variables, traditionally denoted x+y, by measuring both variables in a sample of participants
comparing experimental + correlational methods
both attempt to assess relationship between 2 variables.
- experiment: casual variable manipulated,
- correlation: just measured
3 rules for causation
- covariance
- temporal precedence
- internal validity
what is covariance?
the proposed causal variable must vary systematically with changes in the proposed outcome variable
what is temporal precedence?
the proposed casual variable comes first in time, before the proposed outcome variable
what is internal validity?
the ability to rule out alternative explanations for causal relationship between the two variables
complications for the experimental method
- third-variable problem
- may create levels of variables that are unrealistic
- correlations measure existing things.
different goals of correlational vs experimental methods
experiments determine whether one variable can affect another, not how often/how much it does.
