Week 22: Personality Flashcards
Agreeableness
personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be compassionate, cooperative, warm, caring; people low in this tend to be rude, hostile, and to care more about themselves than others
Conscientiousness
a personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be careful, organized, hardworking, to follow rules
Continuous distributions
characteristics can go from low-high, w all different intermediate values possible; one doesn’t simply have the trait/not have it, they can have varying amounts of it
Extraversion
personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be sociable, outgoing, active, assertive
Facets
broad personality traits can be broken down into narrower facets/aspects of the trait; ex. extraversion has several facets, like sociability, dominance, risk-taking
Factor Analysis
statistical technique for grouping similar things together according to how highly they’re associated
HEXACO Model
alternative to the Factor-Five model; includes six traits, five of which are variants of traits included in the Big Five:
H - honesty-humility (unique to hexaco)
E - emotionality
X - extraversion
A - agreeableness
C - conscientiousness
O - openness
Independent
two characteristics/traits separate from one another - a person can be high on one and low on the other, vice-versa; some correlated traits relatively independent in that although there’s a tendency for a person high on one to also be high on the other (not always the case)
Lexical Hypothesis
idea that the most important differences between people will be encoded in the language that we use to describe people; if we want to know which personality traits are most important, we can look to the language that people use to describe themselves/others
Neuroticism
personality trait that reflects the tendency to be interpersonally sensitive, and the tendency to experience negative emotions like anxiety, fear, sadness, anger
Openness to Experience
personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to seek out/to appreciate new things, including thoughts, feelings, values, experiences
Personality
enduring predispositions that characterize a person, like styles of thought, feelings, behaviour
personality traits
enduring dispositions in behaviour that show differences across people, and which tend to characterize the person across varying types of situations
Person-situation debate
historical debate about the relative power of personality traits as compared to situational influences on behaviour; situationist critique, which started the person-situation debate, suggested that people overestimate the extent to which personality traits are consistent across situations
absolute stability
consistency in the level or amount of a personality attribute over time
Active person-environment transactions
the interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever people play a key role in seeking out, selecting, or otherwise manipulating aspects of their environment
Age effects
differences in personality between groups of different ages that are related to maturation and development instead of birth cohort differences
Attraction
a connection between personality attributes and aspects of the environment that occurs because individuals w particular traits are drawn to certain environments
Attrition
connection between personality attributes and aspects of the environment that occurs because individuals w particular traits drop out from certain environments
Birth cohort
people born in a particular year/span of time
Cohort effects
differences in personality that are related to historical/social factors unique to individuals born in a particular year
Corresponsive principle
the idea that personality traits often become matched w environmental conditions such that an individual’s social context acts to accentuate and reinforce their personality attributes
Cross-sectional study/design
a research design that uses a group of individuals w different ages (and birth cohorts) assessed at a single point in time
cumulative continuity principle
the generalization that personality attributes show increasing stability w age/experience
differential stability
consistency in the rank-ordering of personality across two/more measurement occasions
Evocative person-environment transactions
interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occur whenever attributes of the individual draw out particular responses form others in their environment
Group level
focus on summary statistics that apply to aggregates of people when studying personality development; ex. is considering whether the average score of a group of 50 year olds is higher than the average score of a group of 21 year olds when considering a trait like conscientiousness
Heterotypic stability
consistency in the underlying psychological attribute across development regardless of any changes in how the attribute is expressed at different ages
Homotypic stability
consistency of the exact same thoughts, feelings, behaviours across development
Hostile attribution bias
the tendency of some individuals to interpret ambiguous social cues and interactions as examples of aggressiveness, disrespect, or antagonism
Individual level
a focus on individual level stats that reflect whether individuals show stability/change when studying personality development
Manipulation
connection between personality attributes and aspects of the environment that occurs whenever individuals w particular traits actively shape their environments
Maturity principle
the generalization that personality attributes associated w the sucesful fulfillment of adult roles increase w age/experience
Person-environment transactions
the interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that ends up shaping both personality/environment
Reactive person-environment transactions
the interplay between individual and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever attributes of the individual shape how a person perceives and responds to their environment
Selection
a connection between personality attributes and aspects of the environment that occurs whenever individuals w particular attributes choose particular kinds of environments
Stress reaction
the tendency to become easily distressed by the normal challenges of life
Transformation
the term for personality changes associated w experience/life events
Big Five
5 broad general traits that are included in many prominent models of personality:
1. neuroticism
2. extraversion
3. openness to expeirence
4. agreeableness
5. conscientiousness
Honeymoon effect
tendency for newly married individuals to rate their spouses in an unrealistically positive manner; represents a specific manifestation of the letter of recommendation effect when applied to ratings made by current romantic partners; illustrates the very important role played by relationship satisfaction in ratings made by romantic partners: as marital satisfaction declines, the effect disappears
High-stakes testing
settings in which test scores are used to make important decisions about individuals; ex. test scores for college, tests in forensic settings
Implicit motives
these are goals that are important to a person, but that they cannot consciously express; because individual can’t verbalize goals directly, cannot be easily assessed via self-report; can be measured using Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Letter of recommendation effect
the general tendency for informants in personlaity studies to rate others in an unrealistically positive manner; tendency is due a pervasive bias in personality assessment: in the large majority of published studies, informants are people who like the person they are rating (ex. often friends/family) and therefore are motivated to depict them in a socially desirable way; term reflects a similar tendency for academic letters of recommendation to be overly positive and to present the referent in an unrealistically desirable manner
Projective hypothesis
the theory that when people are confronted w ambiguous stimuli, their responses will be influenced by their unconscious thoughts, needs, wishes, impulses; in turn based on the Freudian notion of projection, which is the idea that people attribute their own undesirable/unacceptable characteristics to other people/objects
reference group effect
the tendency of people to base their self-concept on comparisons w others
Reliability
consistency of test scores across repeated assessments
Self-enhancement bias
the tendency for people to see and/or present themselves in an overly favourable way; tendency can take two basic forms; defensiveness and impression management; informants also can show enhancement biases; general form of this bias has been called the letter-of-recommendation effect, which is the tendency of informants who like the person they’re rating (ex. friends, relatives) to describe them in an overly favourable way
Sibling contrast affect
the tendency of parents to use their perceptions of all of their children as a frame of reference for rating the characteristics of each of them; more generally, the effect causes parents to exaggerate the true extent of differences between their kids; effect represents a specific manifestation of the more general reference group effect when applied to ratings made by parents
