Stability & Change Flashcards
Stability vs. Change: 2 important issues to consider
- consistency across situations
- consistency over time
consistency across situations
- 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
Situationist perspective vs. trait psychologist perspective
- 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
consistency across time: 2 factors to consider
- Personal stability and change
- Personality coherence
Situational specificity
certain situations can provoke behaviour that is out of character for an individual (ex. Survival situations)
Strong situations
situations in which most people react in a similar way (ex. Public speaking)
weak situations
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?)
situational selection
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)
evocation
Certain personality traits may (naturally) evoke specific responses from others (ex. Neurotic behaviour evokes anxious/hostile response in others)
manipulation
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)
person-environment fit
- 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
practical implications of having good person-environment fit
- Optimal functioning
- Coping well with stress
- Conserving resources
- Maintaining health
- Performance (job, etc.)
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
- Most popular personality test in business settings
- Based on Carl Jung’s 8 psychological types
Problems with Myers-Brigs
- 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)
aggregation
- 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
measures of personality stability/change
- rank-order stability/change
- mean-level stability/change
rank-order stability/change
- 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
mean-level stability/change
- 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
2 key qualities for personality change
- Internal: changes are internal to a person, not occurring in the external environment or surroundings
- Enduring: changes are endearing over time, not temporary
personality coherance
- 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
3 levels of personality analysis
- population level
- group differences level
- individual differences level
population level analysis
- deals with personality changes that apply to almost everyone
- ex. increase in sexual motivation at puberty
group differences level analysis
- 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
individual differences level analysis
- 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?
temperament
- 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
stability in infancy/childhood
- 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)
stability in adulthood
- 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)
Victoria Longitudinal Study
- 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.)
changes in:
- autonomy, leadership, dominance, achievement, and ambition
- sensation seeking
- femininity
- independence
- 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)
self-esteem variability
- 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
cohort effects on assertiveness and narcisissm
- 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
3 aspects of personality that predicted martial dissatisfaction/divorce
- neuroticism of husband
- neuroticism of wife
- lack of impulse control of husband (related to having affairs)
What are high levels of Big 5 traits linked to?
- 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
traits linked to good health/longevity
- high conscientiousness
- positive emotionality (extraversion)
- low hostility
- low neuroticism
how spouses influence personality change
those with spouses who are highly similar to them experience less personality change across lifespan (and vice versa)
Self-esteem changes
- 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
Personality Change during College - Big 5
- Extraversion: no change
- Agreeableness: increase
- Conscientiousness: slight increase
- Neuroticism: decrease
- Openness: slight increase
Perceptions of personality change during college - Big 5
- 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
Famous examples of personality change
- 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
does psychological or emotional trauma change personality?
- 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
conclusions on change
- 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.
can you actively change your personality?
- 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
