Week 2: Personality Psyc Flashcards
the 3 levels of Personality
lvls:
1) dispositional traits
2) characteristic Adaptations
3) life narratives
they are hierarchical (3 is the highest)
1) Dispositional traits
- broad descriptions of patterns of behavior and experience
-relatively decontextualised
as it arises from v. broad classes of stimuli and situations
Dispositional traits:
Allport and Odbert (1936)
they have a Lexical Hypothesis:
impt chars coded in language.
18k descriptors
Prob: v. unwieldy, a list rather than a system
Cattell (1943):
reduced Odbert’s list to Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors (traits)
Precedure
1) 18,000 descriptors
2) Sorted into 160 clusters of synonyms/antonyms
3) Discarding near-identical descriptors
4) Final list of 171 descriptors
5) 100 participants rate 1-2 friends on the 171 descriptors
6) Factor Analysis
7) 16 Personality Factors
Dispositional Traits:
content
strengths
limitations
content) Broad, coherent patterns of behaviour and experience
strength) Universal structure, high predictive value
limitation) Lowest resolution description of a person
Problems with Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors
1) Subjectivity
2) Poor Replicability / Reproducibility
3) Redundancy
Problems with Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors
1) Subjectivity &
2) Poor Replicability / Reproducibility
Different people reach a different reduced set of Allport
& Odbert’s descriptors
cannot obtain the same set
Problems with Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors
3) Redundancy
Many of his factors correlated too highly for them to really be ‘different’ traits
Digman, 1990 created:
The Big Five
1) Extraversion
2) agreeableness
3) conscientiousness
4) Neuroticism
5) openness
Hierarchical Structure of Traits
1) Nuances (very narrow: liking something)
2) Facets (energy lvl. + emotions)
3) Aspects (enthusiasm)
4) Domains (big 5)
5) Meta-traits (stability, plasticity: v. broad)
Big 5 themes are?
3
1) Interpersonal responses
2) Responses to achievement settings
3) Emotional responses
Interpersonal responses
An extraverted person is
Bold and assertive
Talkative and sociable
An agreeable person is
Kind, warmhearted, caring
Cooperative and trusting
Responses to achievement settings
A conscientious person…
finishing things, doing things properly, being thorough, precise and careful
A neurotic person…
reflect anxiety,
worry about getting things wrong, messing things up
Emotional responses
An extraverted person…
Experiences positive affect and energy
A more neurotic person…
Experiences worry and mood swings
An open person…
Experiences interest and curiosity
Measurements of B5:
Questionnaires:
3 methods used to Estimate Reliability
Temporal stability
1) Test-retest reliability
(Correlation between T1 score and T2 score)
Internal consistency 2) Split-half reliability (Correlation between scores: half & half) 3) Cronbach's Alpha (Average of all possible split halves)
Measurements of B5:
Questionnaires:
3 methods used to for validity
1) Face validity (appear valid) 2) Content validity (relevant content: judge by experts) 3) Criterion-related validity (sensible correlations with other valid measures)
Test-retest reliability:
rationale and caveat
R: repeated measure: easy to verify the score
C: not applicable to all psychological phenomena (eg: states: changes more)
Cronbach’s Alpha:
widely reported measure of reliability
> 0.6 to be considered reliable
Criterion-related validity:
1.Concurrent validity
Concurrent validity:
2 aspects:
Convergent validity: correlate significantly with related measures?
Divergent validity: weak or zero correlations with unrelated measures
Criterion-related validity:
2.Predictive validity
predict expected outcomes, or behaviours
Caveat of validity of B5
Big Five were empirically derived (i.e., without a guiding theory)
Stronger emphasis on predictive validity
but not for the the new BFI-2
The scope and limits of traits
its not all aspects of personality
Traits are generic descriptors, and relatively decontextualised
personality can be v. contextualised.
Characteristic Adaptations’ conceptualizations
Both are specific to an individual McAdams & Pals, 2006: time - stages of life place - Specific Situations Role - Function / Duty
DeYoung, 2015:
stable goals - Desired future states
interpretations - appraised current states
strategies - plans and actions to move between states
Life Narratives:
content
strengths
limitations
content) Personal Story, unity and purpose of self
strength) Highest resolution description of a person
Limitation) no predictive value
To study life narratives using interview focus on:
1) 8 key events in your life
2) Significant people
3) The future script
4) Stresses and problems
5) Personal ideology
6) Life theme
when we study life narratives, the focus of content analyses are ______, _________ and ______.
Tone (+/-) Themes and (preoccupations w certain prob) Form (stability/change, slow/fast)
Characteristic Adaptations:
content
strengths
limitations
content) Goals, interpretations, strategies
strength) Captures individual circumstances
Limitation) Unclear scope and structure
