Topic 2: Narrowing & Measuring Personality Flashcards
What is the hierarchy of personality description?
Highest level = general personality factor: ‘Big One.’ (Musek, 2007).
Second level = alpha (stability)/beta (plasticity). (Digman, 1997).
Lowest level = Big 5.
In the hierarchal model, what would a higher alpha level indicate?
The factors agreeableness, conscientiousness are higher whereas neuroticisim is lower
In Digman’s (1997) hierarchal model what would a higher beta level indicate?
higher levels of extraversion and openness
What is the ‘Big One’?
Generally represents positive, socially desirable aspects of personality.
High Big One = high levels of agreeableness, conscienticiousness, extraversion, openness and lower in neuroticism.
Broadly represents the extent to which someone is equipped to meet the trials of life, able to survive, grow and reproduce.
Measure of social efficiency.
What is the Bandwidth-Fidelity Dilemma? (Cronbach & Gleser, 1965).
Likely trade-off between breadth and accuracy of prediction. Trade off between the amount of behaviours we can predict by a model and the accuracy of those predictions.
How does prediction work for broader, higher-level descriptors?
Predict more behaviours but with lower accuracy.
How does prediction work for narrower, lower level descriptors?
Predict fewer behaviours but with more accuracy.
What is the analogy of the torch for the Bandwidth-Fidelity Dilemma?
Widening the width of the torch means that you can see more of a dark room but with lower accuracy. (Predict more behaviours but with lower accuracy and less specify). The opposite for a more concentrated light from the torch.
What are the descriptions and predictions that lower-level descriptors provide?
Provide narrower, richer descriptions.
Stronger predictions of specific behaviours.
Usually good to predict academic attainment.
What was the experiment by Paunonen and Ashton (2001)?
(hint - big 5 scale, nAch & conscientiousness)
Method
717 psychology students completed Big 5 scale. Allowed both traits and facets to be measured.
Looked at correlations between grades and pre-selected big factors and ‘lower level’ traits (from 21 in scale).
Results
found conscientiousness & need for achievement were significant predictors to final grad, but need for achievement was the stronger/better
What were the traits and facets picked to predict final grade?
Traits: conscientiousness and openness to experience.
Facets: need for achievement and need for understanding.
Were facets or traits better predictors for final grades?
Facets.
What were the differences in correlations between facets/traits and final grades?
We can see there was a stronger correlation for the need for achievement (facet) therefore, this shows that using facets might make the prediction better for the final grade.
When looking at openness to experience, we can see that the overarching trait is not significant but the need for understanding facet is significant.
Why do facets predict final grade better over traits?
Better accuracy (less behaviours can be predicted by the traits but with lower accuracy).
What factors could you take into account to make a better prediction at the trait level for final grade prediction?
Incidence of plagiarism, number of books read and meeting deadlines.
What do Holistic Models of Entire Personality aim to do?
Aim for simple model of entire personality space (fewer, broad traits). All the different traits combine together to make up the overall personality of that person.
What are Narrow measures of specific parts of personality?
Measures that focus on part of personality relevant to specific behaviour (specific, traits).
What is authoritarianism? (Adorno et al., 1950).
Attempt to explain recent examples of prejudice and extreme views towards others.
Is authoritarianism an attitude or personality trait?
Thought that it could be a more stable view of personality rather than a more modifiable aspect of personality. There was an attempt to find biological correlates that explained this trait.
What did Bouchard et al. (2003) do in regards to authoritarianism?
Evidence for heritability of conservatism from twins reared apart. Suggesting that this can be genetically determined.
What experiment did Amodio et al. (2007) in regards to authoritarianism and what were the results?
Conservatism associated with decreased neural response to supressing a habitual response in Go/No-Go task (and lower response accuracy).
They are less sensitive in identifying that a non-habitual response is required.
What did the results from the Amodio et al. (2007) experiment suggest overall?
(hint - conservatism)
This confirms that the conservatism could have a biological aspect and confirms it as potentially being a more stable attribute rather than something that can fluctuate according to the situations.
What is the continuity hypothesis? How does this relate to Schizotypy?
Continuity hypothesis: there is no discontinuity between ‘normality’ and illness (Cooper, 2002). Talking about links between personality and mental health.
There are not really categorical differences between the experiences, thoughts and behaviours of someone with a mental health problem and someone without.
Instead this hypothesis suggests it is more of a continuum, just the things we associate with mental health disorders are present to a lesser extent in the individuals that do not have the mental health disorder compared to the ones that do.
