W2

Question 1

What is personality?

Answer 1

Regularities in behavior and experience;
Mode of response;
Identity and our reputation;
Dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, self-defining life narratives…

Question 2

What are the three levels of personality?

Answer 2

Level 1: Dispositional traits;
Level 2: Characteristic adaptations;
Level 3: Life narratives

Question 3

What is “Dispositional traits”?

Answer 3

Definition: personality traits are probabilistic descriptions of regularities in behavior and experience.
E.g., sociable, moody, aggressive, kind, etc…
…Arising in response to very broad classes of stimuli and situations (i.e., “relatively decontextualized”).
E.g., social encounter, threat/danger, etc…

Question 4

What is the very early trait catalogue?

Answer 4

The characters of Theophrastus (c. 371 -c. 287 BC)

The flatterer; the reckless man; the chatty man; the gossip, the surly man; the distrustful man; the mean man…

Question 5

What is the somewhat early trait catalogue?

Answer 5

Allport and Odbert (1936):
The ‘Lexical Hypothesis’: Important characteristics will be coded in language;
Collected an exhaustive list of personality descriptors – about 18,000 terms;
Problem: Very unwieldy, more of a ‘laundry list’ than a
system

Question 6

What is Factor Analysis?

Answer 6

A statistical method that reduces many correlated variables to much fewer composite variables or factors.
Developed by Spearman and Thurstone to explore the structure of mental abilities.
Cattell (1943): reduced Allport and Odbert’s list through many and varied techniques, including factor analysis
Eventual result was a 16 factor solution…

Question 7

What are we approaching a personality system or taxonomy for?

Answer 7

Describing the structure of personality;

Organizing the universe of trait descriptors.

Question 8

What are the three main problems with Cattell’s 16 traits?

Answer 8

Subjectivity: Different people reach a different reduced set of Allport & Odbert’s descriptors;
Replicability/Reproducibility: Using Cattell’s 171 personality descriptors, many people failed to obtain his same 16 factors;
Redundancy: Many of his factors correlated too highly for them to really be “different traits”.

Question 9

The chaos and consensus for factor analysis

Answer 9

1950s-1980s: death by factor analysis
However, some consistencies began to emerge:
Most replicable factor structures suggested 3-6 traits, Very similar traits appear in this taxonomies;
A Five Factor Model seemed to interface best with the various solutions

Question 10

What are the Big Five?

Answer 10

Extraversion; Agreeableness; Conscientiousness; Neuroticism; Openness

Question 11

Hierarchical Structure of Traits

Answer 11

‘Meta-traits’ (very broad): Stability/Plasticity
‘Domains’: the Big Five
‘Aspects’: e.g., assertiveness, enthusiasm
‘Facets’: e.g., energy levels, positive emotions, talkativeness
‘Nuances’ (very narrow): e.g., liking parties

Question 12

What are the themes in The Big Five?

Answer 12

Interpersonal responses;
Responses to achievement settings;
Emotional responses

Question 13

Can we trust these questionnaires in measurement?

Answer 13

Reliability:
Do they perform consistently, relatively free from error?
General model of reliability:
Observed Score = True Score + Measurement Error

Validity:
Do trait questionnaires measure what they are intended to?

Question 14

What is Test-retest reliability in estimating reliability?

Answer 14

• Correlation between T1 score and T2 score
• Temporal stability

Rationale: a reliable measure is a repeatable measure (you should be able to verify the score)
Caveat: Not applicable to all psychological phenomena
e.g., states vs. traits; Personality traits are relatively stable

Question 15

What is the Split-half reliability in estimating reliability?

Answer 15

Correlation between score from one half of the scale and another half
(Internal consistency)

Question 16

What is Cronbach’s alpha (α) in estimating reliability?

Answer 16

Cronbach’s alpha (α): Most widely reported measure of reliability;
Average of all possible split halves;
(Internal consistency)

Scales with α < .60 generally not considered reliable

Question 17

What are the types of validity?

Answer 17

1. Face validity
   Does the questionnaire appear valid at ‘face value’?
   Not very useful
2. Content validity
   Is the relevant content sampled among the items?
   Usually performed by expert judges
3. Criterion-related validity

Question 18

What is the criterion-related validity?

Answer 18

1. Concurrent validity
   Convergent validity – does it correlate significantly with related measures?
   Divergent validity – does it show weak or zero correlations with unrelated measures
2. Predictive validity
   Does it predict expected outcomes, or behaviors?

Question 19

Important caveat for The Big Five validity

Answer 19

The Big Five were empirically derived (i.e., without a guiding theory)
Initially, cannot assess content, convergent, and discriminant validity…
It was not ‘intended’ to measure any particular construct.
Stronger emphasis on predictive validity

Not the case for new big five measures (e.g., BFI-2)

Question 20

What are the scope and limits of traits?

Answer 20

Personality is more than traits

Traits are somewhat generic descriptors, and relatively decontextualized, but much of our personality is highly contextualised…

Question 21

What is characteristic adaptation?

Answer 21

Concerns an individual’s particular life circumstances
Highly contextualized

E.g., specific social roles, educational aspirations

Question 22

One conceptualization for “Characteristic adaptations”?

Answer 22

Motivational, social-cognitive, and developmental adaptations, contextualized in time, place, and/or social role. Aka “Personal Concerns”.

Time: Stage of life;
Place: Specific situation;
Role: A function or Duty

E.g., motives, goals, plans, habits, strivings, strategies, values, virtues, schemas, self-images, developmental tasks…

Question 23

What is the content of “Characteristic adaptations”?

Answer 23

Relatively stable goals, interpretations, and strategies, specified in relation to an individual’s particular life circumstances.

Goals: desired future stages;
Interpretations: appraised current states;
Strategies: plans and actions to move between stages

Question 24

What is “Life narratives”?

Answer 24

The richest level of personality description.

Personal story. The unity and purpose of the self.

As seen in personology, psychotherapy, (auto)biography, biopics, and fiction.

Question 25

Studying life narratives

Answer 25

Focus of content analyses:
Tone (Positive/negative)
Themes (Preoccupations with certain problems, goals etc)
Form (Stability? Change? Slow vs. rapid progress? Inertia?)

Question 26

Common life narratives

Answer 26

‘Redemption Sequences’
- Significant episodes whose form goes from worse to better (overcoming adversity, undergoing a transformation etc)
The ‘Growth Story’
-Personal development, or ‘becoming’ as a central theme

Question 27

What is narrative identity

Answer 27

Narrative Identity: The internal, dynamic life story that an individual constructs to make sense of his or her life.

Question 28

What is the limitation for life narratives?

Answer 28

Idiographic, no predictive value

Question 29

What is the limitation of characteristic adaptations?

Answer 29

Unclear scope and structure