Week 22 Flashcards
List and describe the “Big Five” (“OCEAN”) personality traits that comprise the Five-Factor Model of personality.
Openness-higher curiosity, creativity, open to experience
Conscientiousness-careful, organized, hardworking
Extraversion-sociable, out going and assertive
Agreeableness-compassionate, warm and cring
Neuroticism-sensitive and negative emotions
Describe how the facet approach extends broad personality traits.
More-specific, lower-levels of personality known as facets
Useful because they provide more specific descriptions of what a person is like
Explain a critique of the personality-trait concept.
Honesty-Humility as a 6th dimension to personality
Behavior across many different situations is not consistent
Describe in what ways personality traits may be manifested in everyday behavior.
Specific behaviors were driven by the interaction between very specific, psychologically meaningful features of the situation that people were in
Describe each of the Big Five personality traits, and the low and high end of the dimension.
Openness-LOW narrow interests, down to earth, not analytical
HIGH curious, imaginative, untraditional
Conscientiousness-LOW spur of the moment actions, unreliable HIGH organized, hardworking Extraversion-LOW quiet evening of reading, aloof HIGH active, life of the party Agreeableness-LOW irritable, manipulative, rude HIGH-good-natured, forgiving, gullible Neuroticism-LOW calm, unemotional HIGH insecure, inadequate
Lexical hypothesis
The lexical hypothesis is the idea that the most important differences between people will be encoded in the language that we use to describe people. Therefore, if we want to know which personality traits are most important, we can look to the language that people use to describe themselves and others.
- Define heterotypic stability, homotypic stability, absolute stability, and differential stability.
Heterotypic stability-consistency in the underlying psychological attributes across development regardless of any changes in how the attribute is expressed at different ages
Homotypic stability-consistency of the exact same thoughts, feelings and behaviors across development
Absolute stability-consistency in the level or amount of a personality attribute over time
Differential stability-consistency in the rank-ordering of personality across two or more measurement occasions
- Describe evidence concerning the absolute and differential stability of personality attributes across the lifespan.
Absolute stability-different age levels and personality-extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness increases with age, neuroticism decreases with age, openness also declines with age
Differential stability-personality change can occur at any time in a lifespan
- Explain the maturity, cumulative continuity, and corresponsive principles of personality development.
Maturity principle-positive average changes (attributes associated with successful fulfillment of adult roles increases during adulthood)
Cumulative continuity- the generalization that personality attributes show increasing stability with age and experience
Corresponsive principle of personality-preexisting personality attributes and environmental contexts work in concert to promote personality continuity
Explain person-environment transactions, and distinguish between active, reactive, and evocative person-environment transactions.
People gain more autonomy to select their own environment as they transition from childhood to adulthood
Reactive and evocative person-environment transactions also facilitate personality stability
Active-the interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever individuals play a key role in seeking out, selecting, or manipulating aspects of their environments
Evocative-the interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever attributes of the individual draw out particular responses from others in their environment
Reactive-the interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever attributes of the individual shape how a person perceives and responds to their environment
- Identify the four processes that promote personality stability (attraction, selection, manipulation, and attrition). Provide examples of these processes.
Attraction-individuals are attracted to environments because of their personality attributes
Select-connection between attributes and aspects of the environment that occurs whenever individuals with particular attributes choose particular kinds of environments
Attrition- a connection between personality attributes and aspects of the environment that occur because individuals with particular traits drop out from certain environments
Manipulate-a connection between personality attributes and aspects of the environment that occurs whenever individuals with particular traits actively shape their environments
- Describe the mechanisms behind the possibility of personality transformation.
The simplest mechanism for producing change is a cornerstone of behaviorism(patterns of behavior that produce positive consequences (pleasure) are repeated) Social settings may have the power to transform personality
- Appreciate the diversity of methods that are used to measure personality characteristics.
Self report measures-ask people to describe themselves
Informant ratings-ask someone who knows a person well to describe his or her personality characteristics
- Understand the logic, strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
Self report-shows impressive validity, impressive and important links to psychopathology
However, self-enhancement bias and reference group effect
Informant ratings-valuable when self-ratings can’t be collected, one general issue is the level of relevant information that is available to the rater, also some response biases
