Test 1 Flashcards
Chapters 1-3
What personality traits characterized Steve Jobs?
Emotional, self-centered, confident, outgoing, and open to new ideas
How was Steve Jobs’ company, Apple, known for its approach?
Known for innovation and considering the whole experience
How did Bill Gates differ from Steve Jobs in terms of personality?
Less outgoing or emotional, preferred email communication, was never fired by his company, and focused more on function over form
What major personality change did Jeff Bezos undergo?
From nerd to Vin Diesel to Pitbull
What is personality?
A person’s usual pattern of behavior, feelings, and thoughts across time and situations
What does personality typically NOT include?
IQ, physical characteristics, and attitudes
What is personality psychology?
The scientific study of personality, involving research, theoretical roots, and connections across disciplines
What are the Big Five personality traits?
Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience
Do the Big Five capture all aspects of personality?
No, they do not capture self-views, motivations, or unconscious drives
Where can personality be observed?
Through direct interaction, environmental traces (e.g., social media, dorm rooms, clothing), and nonverbal behaviors
How do extraverts’ bedrooms and officers differ from others’?
Bedrooms are noisier with more stacks of paper; offices are more welcoming with comfortable chairs and candy dishes
What is the equation Kurt Lewin used to describe behavior?
B = f(P,E); meaning behavior is a function of the person and the environment
What was Walter Mischel’s critique of personality?
He argued that personality effects were weak compared to situational influences
How does modern psychology revolve around the Person-Situation Debate?
With an interactionist approach, considering both person and situation influences
What are the four key historical roots of modern personality psychology?
Assessment and measurement, trait models, psychodynamics, and self-processes
What question is central to the self-processes root?
“Who am I? Who do I want to be?”
Why are reverse scores used in personality assessments?
To balance out the acquiescence response set, where some people agree with everything
What is a norm in personality assessments?
The average score of a sample group used for comparison
What is Extraversion and its facets?
Being outgoing and talkative. Includes friendliness, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity level, excitement-seeking, and cheerfulness
What is Agreeableness and its facets?
Being agreeable and likable. Includes trust, morality, altruism, cooperation, and modesty
What is Conscientiousness and its facets?
Being neat and organized. Includes self-efficacy, orderliness, dutifulness, achievement-striving, and cautiousness
What is Neuroticism and its facets?
Being worried and emotional. Includes anxiety, anger, depression, self-consciousness, immoderation, and vulnerability
What is Openness to Experience and its facets?
Enjoying change and new ideas. Includes imagination, artistic interests, emotionality, adventurousness, intellect, and liberalism
What is the Nature vs Nurture debate?
Whether the source of personality is nature (genetics) or nurture (environment)
How do we know a personality scale is good?
If it is reliable and valid
What is reliability?
That a measure is consistent
What is validity?
That a measure can predict behavior or correlates with similar measures
What is internal reliability?
Do the questions on the same test all measure the same construct? That is, do the responses to individual questions correlate with each other?
What is Test-Retest Reliability?
Do you get the same result more than once? Will your score be the same as it was two weeks ago?
What is Inter-Rater Reliability?
Do coders agree on their assessment? Used for free-form questions or behaviors that are coded
What is Face Validity?
Does it look valid?
What is Predictive Validity?
Does it predict outcomes?
What is Convergent Validity?
Does it correlate with similar scales?
What is Discriminant Validity?
Does it not correlate with scales measuring other things?
What is Construct Validity?
The iterative process of designing measures of constructs, seeing how they work, and then revisiting them (and perhaps changing). Often used for psychological variables, which are challenging to define
What is the nomological network?
The lawful relationships that connect all personality constructs
What are the issues with Myers-Briggs?
While similar to the Big Five, it has issues with test-retest reliability, lacks divergent validity, and lacks predictive validity
What is the Barnum Effect?
The tendency to believe vague generalities about one’s personality
What is social desirability response set?
When people try to make themselves look good due to a need for social approval
What is malingering?
“Faking bad”, which can be done to shirk responsibility, escape punishment, or receive medical care
Pros and cons of experiments?
Random assignment to condition which can show causation, but cannot always be used
Why are correlational studies msot often used in personality research?
People cannot be randomly assigned to personality types
What is Triangulation?
Using multiple resources to reach a conclusion (E.g., using a self-report, lab assessment, and other report to deduce personality)
What is the Lexical Approach?
Whatever traits are important in the social world will eventually be encoded into language, then into one word
What are the Big Two Metatraits?
Stability/plasticity; beta/alpha; yin/yang; eros/thanatos
What are circumplex views?
Two major poles of human social behavior which form a circle, not a line. Dominance/nurturance
Why these Big Five traits?
Considered to have been useful for evolution and adaptability in various ways. All are trade-offs with risks at extremes, though
What is the Likert Scale?
A range of numbers that correspond to how much someone agrees or disagrees with an item
What was the first personality test?
The Woodworth Personal Data Sheet, created by Robert S. Woodworth during World War 1 and designed to measure symptoms linked to shell-shock (now PTSD)
What is Cronbach’s Alpha?
A statistical measure of internal reliability
What is Meta-Analysis?
A study that statistically analyzes the results of many studies on the same topic
What is the Many Labs Approach?
When different groups of researchers do the exact same study at the same time
