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Psych 305 > Stability & Change > Flashcards

Stability & Change Flashcards

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1
Q

Stability vs. Change: 2 important issues to consider

A
  • consistency across situations

- consistency over time

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2
Q

consistency across situations

A
  • Research indicates that behaviour is both a function of the situation and the person -> personality and situation interact to produce behaviour (interactionism)
  • Person-situation interaction
  • Person-environment fit
  • Aggregation
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3
Q

Situationist perspective vs. trait psychologist perspective

A
  • Situationists argued that behaviour varies across situations, and situational differences (not traits) determine behaviour
    • Ex. Human Rights Violations in Iraq, Stanford Prison experiment -> power of the situation (rotten barrel vs. Rotten apple)
  • Trait psychologists assumed cross-situation consistency
    • If situations mainly control how people behave, then the existence/relevance of traits is questionable
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4
Q

consistency across time: 2 factors to consider

A
  • Personal stability and change

- Personality coherence

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5
Q

Situational specificity

A

certain situations can provoke behaviour that is out of character for an individual (ex. Survival situations)

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6
Q

Strong situations

A

situations in which most people react in a similar way (ex. Public speaking)

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7
Q

weak situations

A

when situations are weak or ambiguous, personality has its strongest influence (ex. When someone smiles at you – are they being friendly or do they like me?)

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8
Q

situational selection

A

Tendency to choose or select situations in which one finds oneself, as a function of personality (ex. Extroverts more likely to choose highly social situations)

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9
Q

evocation

A

Certain personality traits may (naturally) evoke specific responses from others (ex. Neurotic behaviour evokes anxious/hostile response in others)

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10
Q

manipulation

A

Various means by which people (intentionally) influence the behaviour of others; altering existing environments; includes things like charm, coercion, and silent treatment (ex. Helping someone in hopes that they’ll help you later)

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11
Q

person-environment fit

A
  • the extent to which a setting or situation complements one’s personality, traits, and characteristics (you work well in some settings, less so in others)
  • personality tests used in workplaces to screen out applicants who wouldn’t have good person-environment fit
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12
Q

practical implications of having good person-environment fit

A
  • Optimal functioning
  • Coping well with stress
  • Conserving resources
  • Maintaining health
  • Performance (job, etc.)
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13
Q

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

A
  • Most popular personality test in business settings

- Based on Carl Jung’s 8 psychological types

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14
Q

Problems with Myers-Brigs

A
  • Categorical versus dimensional approach to personality
  • Assumes a bimodal distribution of personality traits (which are actually normally distributed)
  • Self-report MTBI questionnaire has a forced-choice response format (ex. You could choose 11 extraversion and 9 introversion items, while another “E” might get 20 and 0)
  • Low test-retest reliability across studies (so we can’t necessarily conclude that it’s valid)
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15
Q

aggregation

A
  • Implies that traits refer to the person’s average level (ie. Level of agreeableness today might not be reflective of your typical level of agreeableness)
  • Thus, personality psychologists will never be good at predicting single acts, single observations of behaviour, states
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16
Q

measures of personality stability/change

A
  • rank-order stability/change

- mean-level stability/change

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17
Q

rank-order stability/change

A
  • Refers to an individual’s position within a group
  • Assessed by test-retest (correlation between time points) to see if that changes your position in the group -> unlikely to change
  • Ex. Broad personality traits show moderate to high rank-order stability over time
18
Q

mean-level stability/change

A
  • Refers to average level of population; normative increases or decreases over time
  • Measured by longitudinal studies (mean differences/t-tests)
  • Ex. Broad personality factors show moderate mean-level stability over time
    • Openness, extraversion, neuroticism decline with age; conscientiousness and agreeableness show gradual increases
19
Q

2 key qualities for personality change

A
  • Internal: changes are internal to a person, not occurring in the external environment or surroundings
  • Enduring: changes are endearing over time, not temporary
20
Q

personality coherance

A
  • no change in traits, but changes in how those traits are manifested
  • ex. male dominance may manifest in childhood by bullying others, and in adulthood by asking women out
  • ex. Schwarzenegger moving from acting to politics -> is it a personality change? Not really, just a different expression of the same traits
21
Q

3 levels of personality analysis

A
  • population level
  • group differences level
  • individual differences level
22
Q

population level analysis

A
  • deals with personality changes that apply to almost everyone
  • ex. increase in sexual motivation at puberty
23
Q

group differences level analysis

A
  • deals with personality changes that affect certain groups differently
  • ex. from adolescence to adulthood, men’s self-esteem increases slightly while women’s decreases slightly; European kids become more extroverted than Asian kids
24
Q

individual differences level analysis

A
  • focuses on individual differences in personality to try to predict behaviours of an individual
  • ex. can we use personality to predict when someone will go through a midlife crisis?
25
Q

temperament

A
  • individual differences that arise early in life, have basis in heredity, and are often involved in emotionality/arousability
  • studied by Rothbart
  • based on activity level, smiling/laughter, fear, distress to limitations, soothability, duration of orienting
  • stays relatively stable across infancy, and becomes even more stable as infants age
26
Q

stability in infancy/childhood

A
  • individual differences show in infancy (ex. temperament)
  • ind. diffs tend to be moderately stable over time (ex. activity level)
  • predictability decreases over time (behaviours measured early in life are better predictors than those measured later)
  • differences change more across long-term intervals than short-term (ex. aggression levels)
27
Q

stability in adulthood

A
  • moderate rank-order stability of Big 5 Traits and other personality dispositions (ex. self-esteem, self-confidence)
  • personality consistency tends to increase with age, peaking at age 50
  • Slight changes in mean-order stability of Big 5 (openness, neuroticism, and extroversion decline w/age until 50, while conscientiousness and agreeableness increase -> the “maturity principle”), both through age and with therapy
  • people show awareness of these changes (perceptions line up with actuality)
28
Q

Victoria Longitudinal Study

A
  • longitudinal study looking at personality changes (and other changes) across the life course
  • results suggested that against what was previously found, personality change may still be possible in old age (esp. Big 5 traits), potentially due to life-changing events (ie. death of spouse, retirement, etc.)
29
Q

changes in:

  • autonomy, leadership, dominance, achievement, and ambition
  • sensation seeking
  • femininity
  • independence
A
  • in men, autonomy, leadership, dominance, achievement increase with age & ambition decreases with age
  • sensation seeking increases increases until its peak in late adolescence, then decreases
  • femininity decreases in women between their 40’s-50’s
  • independence increases for women as they age (except home-makers)
30
Q

self-esteem variability

A
  • magnitude of short-term changes in ongoing self-esteem
  • helps determine average self-esteem and how much it fluctuates
  • the level of self-esteem and the variability of self-esteem interact to predict important life outcomes (ex. depression)
  • people with high self-esteem variability are more vulnerable to stressful life events, and show enhanced sensitivity to evaluative events, increased concern about self-concept, over-reliance on social sources for self-evaluation, reactions of anger/hostility when things don’t go their way
31
Q

cohort effects on assertiveness and narcisissm

A
  • women’s assertiveness rose in 1930’s-40’s, declined in 50’s-60’s, and has been rising since
  • narcissism rose from 80’s, 00’s
32
Q

3 aspects of personality that predicted martial dissatisfaction/divorce

A
  • neuroticism of husband
  • neuroticism of wife
  • lack of impulse control of husband (related to having affairs)
33
Q

What are high levels of Big 5 traits linked to?

A
  • neuroticism: difficulty coping with death of a spouse, marital dissatisfaction/divorce, alcoholism, drug use, and emotional disturbances (liked to lack of impulse control)
  • conscientiousness: high religiosity, academic/work success, good health/long life (linked to high impulse control)
  • agreeableness: high religiosity
  • openness: high spirituality
34
Q

traits linked to good health/longevity

A
  • high conscientiousness
  • positive emotionality (extraversion)
  • low hostility
  • low neuroticism
35
Q

how spouses influence personality change

A

those with spouses who are highly similar to them experience less personality change across lifespan (and vice versa)

36
Q

Self-esteem changes

A
  • Day-to-day changes in self-esteem happen, and people differ in the degree to which self-esteem changes daily
  • Self-esteem declines markedly during adolescence (mean-level change); more significantly for girls than boys
  • Into adulthood, young men recover more quickly than young women
37
Q

Personality Change during College - Big 5

A
  • Extraversion: no change
  • Agreeableness: increase
  • Conscientiousness: slight increase
  • Neuroticism: decrease
  • Openness: slight increase
38
Q

Perceptions of personality change during college - Big 5

A
  • Extraversion: increase
  • Agreeableness: slight increase
  • Conscientiousness: slight increase
  • Neuroticism: decrease
  • Openness: increase
  • 98% of participants believed they had changed on at least 1 dimension, but only 64% had -> overestimation of change
39
Q

Famous examples of personality change

A
  • Phineas Gage -> metal rod through skull/brain led to him becoming more impulsive, indulgent, disrespectful, and exhibiting less restraint and forethought
  • Heather -> brain hemorrhage led to increased sexual promiscuity
40
Q

does psychological or emotional trauma change personality?

A
  • Possible, but most extreme changes result from changes in brain biology caused by injury or disease (personality is “deep” psychology)
  • Differentiating among symptomology and personality is conceptually challenging
41
Q

conclusions on change

A
  • Personality does change across the lifespan, but even traits observed in early childhood tend to be stable into adulthood
  • We primarily see moderate evidence for mean-level change
  • Rank-order stability is very high -> changing your position within a group is difficult
  • Personality is highly stable after age 50
  • You can definitely change behaviours, attitudes, beliefs, values, social roles, etc.
42
Q

can you actively change your personality?

A
  • Some evidence showing we can become more open-minded through interventions aimed to increase cognitive ability (but we don’t know if these changes last)
  • High dose of psilocybin (magic mushrooms) leads to significant increase in openness that remains higher for over a year
  • Mindfulness meditation can influence perception of time

Psych 305 (18 decks)

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