What is Personality Psych?

Question 1

what is personality?

Answer 1

• Set of psychological traits and mechanisms within individual
• Organized (disorganization occurs in those with disorders)
• Relatively enduring
• Influences interactions with and adaptations to environment (physical, intrapsychic, and social)

Question 2

what is NOT personality?

Answer 2

• Attitudes, morals, values, and beliefs (because these are highly malleable and change over time)
• Abilities (cognitive or otherwise)
• Physical characteristics
• Social categories (ex. “Bully”)
• But personality can interact with all of the above

Question 3

what is temperament?

Answer 3

• Innate qualities and characteristics a person is born with
• Typically used to refer to emotionality (ex. Calm, anxious, nervous)
• Interchangeable with nature, character, disposition, makeup

Question 4

levels of analysis

Answer 4

• human nature
• individual and group differences
• individual uniqueness

Question 5

levels of analysis: human nature

Answer 5

• How we are like ALL others
• Traits/mechanisms typical of our species; possessed by nearly everyone
• Ex. Pro-social tendencies

Question 6

levels of analysis: individual and group differences

Answer 6

• How we are like SOME others
• Individual differences: ways in which each person is like some other people (ex. Introverts, sensation-seekers)
• Group differences: ways people of one group differ from another group (ex. Cultural differences, age differences)
• Important not to make conclusions about individual differences based on group differences

Question 7

levels of analysis: individual uniqueness

Answer 7

• How we are like NO others
• Everyone has unique qualities not shared by any other person in the world
• This uniqueness is the sum of traits and mechanisms -> their combinations and interactions (rather than one sole trait)

Question 8

early attempts to understand personality

Answer 8

• Astrology
• Humoral theory (surplus/imbalance of bodily fluids affecting personality)
• Physiognomy (personality assessment based on shape of body, esp. face)
• Phrenology (personality assessment based on morphology of skull)

Question 9

2 means of personality assessment today

Answer 9

• descriptive research: describing personality (ex. what is a person’s level of extroversion?)
• explanatory research: used to discover relationships between personality factors and other phenomena (ex. is extroversion related to empathy?)

Question 10

descriptive research relies on what?

Answer 10

• Self-reports (S-Data)
• Observer reports (O-Data)
• Test data (T-data)
• Life history/life outcome (L-data)

Question 11

what is the goal of descriptive research?

Answer 11

• triangulation!
• process of evaluating a phenomenon using multiple sources/types of data
• ex. do self-report findings on shyness replicate with observer report data?
• low-moderate correspondence across all types of data

Question 12

types of explanatory research (and their major limitation)

Answer 12

• correlational designs
• experimental designs
• meta-analyses (important for achieving scientific consensus)
• case studies
• limitation: typically WEIRD research (70% from the USA)

Question 13

S-Data

Answer 13

self-reports (ie. surveys, interviews, experience sampling)

Question 14

O-Data

Answer 14

info provided by someone else (ie. psychologists, teachers, friends & family)

Question 15

naturalistic vs. artificial observation

Answer 15

• naturalistic: observing in natural environment (ex. home, school)
• artificial: observing in lab setting

Question 16

T-Data

Answer 16

• info from standardized tests (not just written, can also include standardized lab tests)
• includes physiological data, projective techniques

Question 17

physiological data

Answer 17

• measuring physiological responses (ie. heart rate, blood pressure, etc.) to indicate aspects of personality
• ex. using eye-blink test to measure fear response in people with high levels of psychopathy
• ex. using fmri to measure levels of brain activity

Question 18

projective techniques

Answer 18

• person is given standard ambiguous stimulus and asked to report what they see
• ex. Rorschach test

Question 19

L-Data

Answer 19

• info gathered from events, activities, and publicly-available outcomes in person’s life (ex. Amount of times one’s been married, speeding tickets, internet visiting history)
• can often be predicted by S-data and O-data

Question 20

3 standards used to evaluate personality measures

Answer 20

• reliability: ability to repeatedly accurately measure the trait of interest (consistency)
• validity: extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure (accuracy)
• generalizability: the degree to which a measure retains its validity across various contexts (ie. across people, across conditions)