week 22

Question 1

The enduring dispositions that people show across situations are called personality ______.

Answer 1

traits

Question 2

______ refers to the fact that traits tend not to change very much over time. As an example, if a person tends to be very anxious as a 30-year old, they would probably be rather anxious as a 40-year old.

Answer 2

Stability

Question 3

Richard tends to be a very positive person but Kenny is a rather grumpy person. This contrast reflects one of the three main criteria of a personality trait, which is ______.

Answer 3

individual differences

Question 4

What was the basic premise of the lexical hypothesis, introduced by Allport and Odbert?

Answer 4

Personality characteristics should be reflected in the language that we use to describe people.

Question 5

______ is a statistical technique that allows one to group things together according to how highly they are associated (or how similar they truly are).

Answer 5

Factor analysis

Question 6

What is the best way to describe the relationship between the personality traits in the Five-Factor Model?

Answer 6

The traits are relatively independent. A high score on one trait tells little about a score on another trait.

Question 7

In a new revision of the Five-Factor approach to personality traits, called the HEXACO model, a sixth trait has been added. What is that newer trait?

Answer 7

Honesty/Humility

Question 8

A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be compassionate, cooperative and caring to others.

Answer 8

Agreeableness

Question 9

A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be careful, organized, hardworking, and to follow rules.

Answer 9

Conscientiousness

Question 10

A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be sociable, outgoing, active, and assertive.

Answer 10

Extraversion

Question 11

A personality trait that reflects the tendency to be interpersonally sensitive and the tendency to experience negative emotions like anxiety, fear, sadness, and anger.

Answer 11

Neuroticism

Question 12

A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to seek out and to appreciate new things, including thoughts, feelings, values, and experiences.

Answer 12

Openness

Question 13

Characteristics can go from low to high, with all different intermediate values possible.

Answer 13

Continuous distributions

Question 14

Broad personality traits can be broken down into narrower _______ or aspects of the trait.

Answer 14

Facets

Question 15

Advocates of what model believe that much of the variability in people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can be summarized with five broad traits.

Answer 15

Five-Factor Model

Question 16

The sixth factor, Honesty-Humility [H], is unique to what model.

Answer 16

HEXACO model

Question 17

What is the debate about the relative power of personality traits as compared to situational influences on behavior.

Answer 17

Person-situation debate

Question 18

___________ occur when individuals seek out certain kinds of environments and experiences that are consistent with their personality characteristics.

Answer 18

Active person–environment transactions

Question 19

________ occur when individuals react differently to the same objective situation because of their personalities.

Answer 19

Reactive person–environment transactions

Question 20

___________ occur whenever individuals draw out or evoke certain kinds of responses from their social environments because of their personality attributes.

Answer 20

Evocative person–environment transactions

Question 21

Consistency in the level or amount of a personality attribute over time.

Answer 21

Absolute stability

Question 22

Consistency in the rank-ordering of personality across two or more measurement occasions.

Answer 22

Differential stability

Question 23

Consistency in the underlying psychological attribute across development regardless of any changes in how the attribute is expressed at different ages.

Answer 23

Heterotypic stability

Question 24

Consistency of the exact same thoughts, feelings, and behaviors across development.

Answer 24

Homotypic stability

Question 25

______validity refers to the ability of a given test to predict real world outcomes. For example, a measure of openness to new experiences should be related to one’s desire to engage in unconventional activities.

Answer 25

Criterion

Question 26

The tendency to see or present ourselves in an overly favorable manner is called the ______.

Answer 26

self-enhancement bias

Question 27

When he plays baseball against less-skilled kids younger than himself, Adam sees himself as being a particularly good player. When he plays with older kids, Atohi feels that he is not very good at the game. This difference demonstrates the ______effect.

Answer 27

reference group

Question 28

When informant ratings are used to assess the personalities of children, who is most likely to be the informant?

Answer 28

A parent or teacher

Question 29

When our actions are affected by desires or impulses that are outside of our awareness, we would say that they have been impacted by ______motives.

Answer 29

implicit

Question 30

Settings in which test scores are used to make important decisions about individuals. For example, test scores may be used to determine which individuals are admitted into a college or graduate school.

Answer 30

High-stakes testing

Question 31

The tendency for newly married individuals to rate their spouses in an unrealistically positive manner.

Answer 31

Honeymoon effect

Question 32

These are goals that are important to a person, but that they cannot consciously express.

Answer 32

Implicit motives

Question 33

The general tendency for informants in personality studies to rate others in an unrealistically positive manner. The informants are individuals who like the person they are rating and, therefore, are motivated to depict them in a socially desirable way.

Answer 33

Letter of recommendation effect

Question 34

The theory that when people are confronted with ambiguous stimuli, their responses will be influenced by their unconscious thoughts, needs, wishes, and impulses.

Answer 34

Projective hypothesis