Personality Psych Final

measuring test-retest reliability

Pearson Correlation

Maddi's hardiness theory

People should embrace life's challenges rather than seek to avoid all stress.

increasing validity

Perform construct validation --> gathering many different measurements of a given construct.

what biology can't explain about personality

There's no causation: biological processes don't produce behaviors.

five personality paradigms

Trait, biological, psychoanalytic, phenomenological, learning & cognitive.

dis/advantages of l-data

Advantages: Results are objective and have intrinsic importance as well as psychological relevance. Disadvantages: Multidetermination.

validity

Degree to which a test measures what is claims to measure. If a test is valid, it must also be reliable. If a test is not valid, it may or may not be reliable. Types: Face, criterion, content, convergent & discriminant, construct.

reliability

Degree to which measure is free of error. Types of reliability: test-retest, inter-rater, internal consistency.

generalizability

Degree to which measures retain validity across different contexts, conditions and groups of people. Subsumes reliability and validity.

secure attachment

Develop a confident faith in themselves and their caregivers. Carries over into their adult relationships.

construct validity

How well does the measure truly assess the construct? Most important form of validity; incorporates evidence from all previous forms of validity, except face validity.

McCrae article

Findings demonstrated that personality stabilizes over time.

Bandura's social learning theory

Focuses on how individual's expectancies about their own behavioral capacities affect what they attempt to do. Also focuses on observational learning and reciprocal determinism: involves a self system in which an individual's actions are determined by, and also change, the environment, which in turn affects the self system.

positive psychology

Focuses on the traits and psychological processes that promote well-being and give life meaning.

shared vs. nonshared environment

For most personality traits, the environment has major influence, but almost all is nonshared. The shared environment has little impact (5% on average) Turkheimer's Second Law: The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes

parapraxes

Forgetting, or "Freudian Slips."

genotype and the environment

Genotype-Environment Interaction: Differential response of individuals with different genotypes to environments. Genotype-Environment Correlation: Differential exposure of individuals with different genotypes to environments.

Cattell's 16 Personality Factor System

Goal of identifying and measuring the basic units of personality. Identified 16 factors including interpersonal warmth, intelligence, emotional stability, apprehension, etc.

idiographic goals

Goals that are unique to the individual: current concerns, personal projects, personal strivings.

motivation and goals

Goals: What you want. Motive: Internal state that arouses and directs behavior toward that goal. Caused by a deficit of something, often thought to lie outside of conscious awareness. Affects attention, thoughts and behavior.

three kinds of learning

Habituation, classical conditioning, and operant conditioning.

Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory

Happiness can be pursued through hedonic means (seeking pleasure and comfort) or eudaimonic means (seeking to fulfill one's potential). A solely hedonic route is self-defeating because people's universal needs are best fulfilled by pursuing intrinsic rather than extrinsic goals.

internal consistency

How consistently do people respond to items within a scale? Measured by split half reliability and cronbach's alpha.

content validity

How well does the measurement capture all of the important aspects of the construct?

face validity

How much a measurement appears to measure what it's measuring. Simplest and least important kind of validity.

inter-rater reliability

How much do two rates make comparable ratings of the same target? Measured by kappa and intra class correlation.

The Anal Stage

18 months - 3/4 years. Physical focus is the anus and organs of elimination. Psychological theme: obedience, self-control. Permissive parents in toilet training results in anal aggressive fixation, anti-authority and chaotic. Overly strict parents in toilet training results in anal retentive fixation, obedient and obsessed with order. Relevant mental structure: the ego.

McAdams article

3 levels of personality: Level 1/Dispositional Traits - intrinsic traits within a person. Level 2/Personal Goals - aspirations of a person. Level 3/Life Story - the entire history of a person as s/he describes it.

The Phallic Stage

3-7 years Physical focus is sexual organs: masturbation is common. Psychological theme: gender identity and sexuality. The Oedipal complex: Castration anxiety (males), penis envy (females) Rejected by opposite-sex parent, threatened by same-sex parent: children develop a poor sense of self-worth. Boys may become gay or hyper promiscuous. Girls may become a wall-flower or hyper-feminine. Favored by opposite-sex parent over same-sex parent: children develop an overexaggerated self-worth. Boys may become narcissistic or effeminate. Girls may become vain or masculine. Relevant mental structure: the superego.

Latency

7-puberty Sexuality is suppressed in the service of learning, this means that nothing happens.

humor

A form of sublimation: impulse that would otherwise be threatening or harmful can be vented harmlessly or enjoyably.

regression

A movement back in psychological time when one is faced with stress.

Roger's self-actualization theory

A person can only be understood from the perspective of their phenomenal field, which is the entire panorama of conscious existence. People have a basic need to actualize, to maintain and enhance life.

encoding strategies and personal constructs (Mischel's CAPS)

A person's ideas about how the world can be categorized and beliefs about one's own capabilities.

relation between early and later humanistic theories

A person's individual experience of the world is the most important part of their psychology. People's ultimate goal is to become self-actualized: to enhance one's life.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

A person's ultimate need/motive is to self-actualize. This motive only becomes active only if the person's more basic needs are met first. Hierarchy: Self-actualization Status, esteem Belonging, social activity Safety, security, comfort, sex Basic physiological needs, food, water, etc.

Secondary Process Thinking (Freud)

A product of the conscious ego. The type of thought that we generally associate with "thinking," it is generally rational and practical. "Secondary" because it develops later than primary process thinking.

situationist argument

A review of personality research reveals a low upper limit to how well one can predict what a person will do based on personality. Situations are more important than traits in determining behavior. Personality assessment is a waste of time and everyday intuitions of people are flawed. People who believe personality is important commit the fundamental attribution error.

self-regulatory systems and plans (Mischel's CAPS)

A set of procedures that control behavior, including self-reinforcement and situational selection.

moderators of accuracy in person perception

A variable that changes the correlation between a judgment and its criterion. Properties of judge Properties of target Properties of trait Good quality and quantity of information Self-other agreement and consensus

Ascending Reticular Activating System (ARAS)

ARAS controls channels of info and stimulation that flows into the brain. Extraverts' ARAS lets in less stimulation.

Funder's Realistic Accuracy Model

Accurately judging someone's personality relies on components: Relevance, availability, detection and utilization.

dis/advantages of natural b-data

Advantages: Provides a range of contexts. Disadvantages: Uncertain interpretation of situation/behavior and subject to experimenter influence.

dis/advantages of experimental b-data

Advantages: Uses standardized stimuli and there are measurable results. It also allows for rare situations, and there is low face validity. Disadvantages: It's artificial and relies on participant interpretation of situation.

dis/advantages of i-data

Advantages: You can get a large amount of info from multiple sources. It also has real world basis. Disadvantages: Limited amount of info, as well as high probability of error and bias.

dis/advantages of s-data

Advantages: You're your own best expert. The tests are easy; definitional truth. Disadvantages: Method is overused. Also, maybe they can't/won't tell you.

Life Instinct (Libido)

All human behavior is motivated by the drives or instincts, which are neurological representations of physical needs. These instincts perpetuate the life of the individual by motivating for food and water, and the life of the species by motivating for sex.

behavior genetics

An attempt to determine the degree to which individual differences are cause by genetic and environment differences.

subjective stimulus values (Mischel's CAPS)

An individual's beliefs about the probabilities of attaining a goal. Also includes how much people value different rewarding outcomes.

cognitive and behavioral construction competencies (Mischel's CAPS)

An individual's mental abilities and behavioral skills: IQ, creativity, social skills, etc.

Death Instinct

An unconscious, universal drive toward death and destruction. Ex: directed inward, suicide and suicidal wishes. Directed outward, aggression, cruelty, murder, and destructiveness.

self concept

Answers question: "Who am I?" Provides a sense of continuity - framework for understanding your past and present and for guiding future behavior.

essential-trait approach

Asks the question, Which traits are the most important traits?

many trait approach

Asks the question, Who does that? ("That" being an important behavior, ex: delaying gratification, drug abuse, depression.)

Behavioral Activation/Inhibition Systems

BAS is responsive to incentives and regulates approach behavior. Its activity produces impulsivity. BIS is responsive to cues in punishment and uncertainty. It motivates inhibiting or avoidance behavior. Its activity produces anxiety.

Eysenck's PEN Model

Based on traits Eysenck believed to be highly heritable and had a physiological basis. Psychoticism (P) Extraversion-Introversion (E) Neuroticism-Emotional Stability (N)

relationship between behavioral/social-cognitive theories and person/situation and interactionism

Behavioral and social-cognitive theories each theorize differing things in order to explain learning and behavior, and person/situation debates each theorize differing things in order to explain traits and behavior. Each debate has come down to interactionism as the most plausible answer.

reaction formation

Believing the opposite.

The Oral Stage

Birth - 18 months. Physical focus is the mouth: sucking and biting. Psychological theme: dependence, passivity. Overly indulgent parents in feeding result in oral-passive fixation, dependent. Dismissive parents in feeding results in oral-aggressive fixation, overly independent. Relevant mental structure: the id.

denial

Blocking external events from awareness.

Cardiovascular activity

Blood pressure and heart rate increase with anxiety, fear, arousal, cognitive effort. Cardiac reactivity: greater than normal increase in blood pressure and heart rate when performing difficult task.

behavioral theories and situationist arguments

Both argue that context (environment) determines behavior.

social learning theories and person arguments

Both argue that the basis for the opposing argument is established in a lab setting, and in real life, people make deliberate choices that determine one's environment.

Brain activity

Brain spontaneously produces small amounts of electrical activity. Measured by electrodes on scalp electroencephalograph (EEG). Evoked potential technique: EEG with specific brain response to stimulus.

increasing reliability

Care with research procedure and standardizing research protocol.

anxious-ambivalent attachment

Caregiver's behaviors are inconsistent, hit-or-miss, or chaotic. Develop feelings of anger and insecurity that result in them being clingy.

what biology can explain about personality

Certain behaviors are related to certain brain structures and neurotransmitters, and making changes to them (such as medication) can affect behavior. So behavior does have a biological basis.

attachment theory

Children - primary attachment with mother. Adults - close relationships. Attachment is largely self-fulfilling and styles affect outcomes later in life.

avoidant attachment

Children have been rebuffed repeatedly in their attempts to enjoy contact or reassurance. As they grow older, they develop an angry self-reliance and a cold, distant attitude toward others.

hedonism

Claims that people learn in order to seek pleasure and avoid pain.

utilitarianism

Claims that the best society is one that creates the most happiness for the largest number of people.

Visualizing brain structure

Computer-assisted tomography (CT scan) Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) uses magnetic fields and measures resulting radio waves.

Primary Process Thoughts

Condensation: Several disparate ideas are compressed into a single notion. Symbolism: One thing represents another. Displacement: Generalize feelings to similar objects.

Freud's Topographic Model

Consciousness operates at three levels: Conscious Mind Preconscious Mind Unconscious Mind

family studies

Correlates the degree of genetic overlap among family members with the degree of similarity in personality traits. Twin studies attempt to distinguish genetic and environmental influences.

measuring internal consistency

Cronbach's Alpha

what cross-cultural understanding doesn't imply about differences

Cross-cultural values define one's life satisfaction. That certain values observed to be universal are necessarily the natural order. That cultural differences are applicable to entire populations.

cross-cultural understanding

Cultural difference are important: collectivists place group values ahead of individual values while individualist cultures do the opposite. A few values may be universal. One analysis suggests potentially global values that can be organized in two dimensions: openness to change vs. conservatism, and transcendence vs. self-enhancement.

what cross-cultural understanding implies about differences

Cultural values are learned and obtained, not innate. Societies are structured in different manners (collectivism and individualism). Cultures are formed because of different environmental conditions.

criterion validity

How well does the measure correlate with another validated outcome of the construct? Concurrent validity: outcome measured at the same time Predictive validity: predicts a future outcome

natural behavioral data

Direct observation of behavior, ex: psychological interview or therapy; MMPI.

convergent validity

Does the measure correlate with other measures of the construct?

discriminant validity

Does the measure not correlate with measures of other things?

neurotransmitters

Dopamine is associated with pleasure, reward. Serotonin is associated with depression, anxiety, mood disorders. Norepinephrine is associated with arousal and fight or flight response.

Kelly's personal construct theory

Each person's experience of the world is organized by a unique set of personal constructs. These personal constructs, which stem from & help determine one's construals of experience, resemble scientific paradigms.

how earlier humanistic theories set the stage for later

Earlier theories had a focus on subjective experience, which was also included in later theories. Earlier theories also focused on self-actualization and improving your life, which later theories also focused on.

Electrodermal Activity (EDA)

Electrodes or sensors placed on the skin surface. Increased sweat with arousal, skin conductance of electricity increases.

epigenetic (non-genomic) inheritance

Environmental influences may override genetics in a heritable way. Changes expression of genes, without a change in genetics.

nomothetic goals

Essential motivations that almost everyone pursues: The Big Three (achievement, affiliation, and power), The Big Five (enjoyment, self-assertion, esteem, interpersonal success, avoidance of negative affect).

biological reductionism

Everything about the mind is reduced to biology -- if personality is based on biology, once everything about biology is known, what will there be left for psychologists to study?

single trait approach

Examines link between personality and behavior by asking, What do people like that do? ("That" being an important trait, ex: narcissism, conscientiousness, or self-monitoring.)

Rotter's social learning theory

Expectancies of reward can be more important determinants of behavior than reward itself.

experimental behavioral data

Experimentally controlling situational variables.

greatest influence of biological approach

Explaining how biology interacts with social processes to influence what people do.

statistical trait approach

Factor analysis used to distill lexical trait adjectives into basic categories. Determine which traits share some property or belong within the same group.

self-discrepancy theory

Ideal self: What you want to be. Ought self: Understanding of what others want you to be. Actual/Ought discrepancy leads to social anxiety. Actual/Ideal discrepancy leads to depression.

test-retest reliability

If you take the test more than once, would your score be the same? Measured by pearson correlation.

observer-report data

Informant data, for example, structured clinical interview with subject's family member.

life outcome data

Information from events, activities and outcomes in life.

undoing

Involves "magical" gestures or rituals that are meant to cancel out unpleasant thoughts or feelings.

measuring inter-rater reliability

Kappa

Turkheimer article

Law 1: "All human behavioral traits are heritable" Law 2: "The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of the genes" What he's alluding to in this point is the nonshared environment, which are the situations, friends, etc. that we don't share with our family, and which contribute very much to our personality Law 3: "A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families" Again, he makes reference to nonshared environments.

social learning theory

Learning takes place in a social context through pure observation or direct instruction

lexical trait approach

Lexical hypothesis: All important individual differences have become encoded within the natural language over time. Criteria for identifying important traits: synonym frequency and cross-cultural universality.

Freud's Structural Model

Mind consists of three structures: The id The ego The superego

situationist criticisms (person side of debate)

Mischel unfairly reviewed literature, selecting only a few studies that obtained disappointing results. The low personality-behavior correlations don't prove the value of situational variables. The real relationship btwn personality and behavior is higher than .40. Personality/behavior correlation established in the lab, outside of the labs people have situational selection that reflect personality.

environmental influences

Moderate heritability suggests the importance of environmental influences. Degree of environmentality is 50-70%.

repression

Motivated forgetting, the primary ego defense.

Dollard and Miller's social learning theory

Motivation can be explained as the result of primary and secondary drives. Aggression can be explained as a result of frustration from blocked goals. Psychological conflict is the result of conflicting motivations to approach and avoid a goal.

will biology replace psychology?

No. While the biology is interesting and gives us info about physiological things and such, it tells us nothing about how humans behave socially.

three types of anxiety

Objective/Realistic: fear Moral: guilt or shame Neurotic: free-floating, focused

Five Factor Model

Originally based on combination of lexical and statistical approaches. Openness to experience Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism

interactionism

Personality and situation interact to produce behavior. Differences between people make a difference only under certain circumstances. Certain situations can provoke behavior that is out of character for an individual.

amygdala

Plays a special role in generating emotional response. Controls the fight or flight response. Traits associated with amygdala functioning include anxiety, frightfulness and sociability.

Visualizing brain function

Positron emission tomography (PET) injects radioactively tagged glucose and measures brain's use of the glucose. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures CBF using magnetic resonance and radio waves.

PEN Model Facets

Psychoticism: Aggressive, cold, egocentric, impersonal, impulsive, antisocial Extraversion: Sociable, lively, active, assertive, sensation-seeking Neuroticism: Anxious, irritable, guilty, low self-esteem, tense, shy, moody

The Genital Stage

Puberty-adulthood Physical focus is intercourse: sexuality in the context of a mature relationship. Psychological theme: creation and enhancement of life. The genital stage is to be attained rather than passed through: the attainment of becoming a mature adult. Relevant mental structure: all three are equally balanced.

typological trait approach

Raises possibility that individual differences are qualitative, not quantitative.

increasing generalizability

Reducing gender bias and preventing WEIRD (white, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) samples.

projection

Seeing your own unacceptable desires in other people.

anxiety

Signals that control of ego is being threatened by reality, id, or superego.

similarities and differences btwn trait models

Similarities: They all use the essential trait approach. Differences: They each focus on different traits as essential.

personality influences situation

Situational Selection: We seek out situations, we don't passively encounter them. Evocation: What we evoke in others without meaning to. Manipulation: How we intentionally alter the behavior of others.

self-schema

Specific cognitive representation of the self-concept. Guides the processing of information about the self.

Wiggins Circumplex

Started with lexical assumption and focused on interpersonal traits. Status and Love are two resources that define social exchange.

theoretical trait approach

Starts with a theory, which then determines which variables are important.

intellectualization

Stripping the emotion from a difficult memory of threatening impulse.

Hierarchical PEN Model

Super traits (PEN) at the top. Narrower traits at the second level. Habitual acts at the third level. Specific behavior at the fourth level.

self-report data

Survey, interview or questionnaire completed by subject. ex: NEO-PI Unstructured: open-ended questions. Structured: closed-ended questions.

introjection (identification)

Taking characteristics of someone else into your own personality.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Taxonomical approach. Sorts people into one of two types on four traits: Extraversion/Introversion Sensing/Intuition Thinking/Feeling Judgment/Perception

heritability

The amount of variance within a trait that can be attributed to genetic factor. Variance within a trait is necessary for it to be heritable. Heritability estimates are population estimates and tell us nothing about individuals. Turkheimer's First Law: All human behavioral traits are heritable

habit hierarchy

The behavior you are most likely to perform at a given moment is at the top of your hierarchy, while the behavior you are least likely to perform is at the bottom. The effect of rewards, punishment and learning is to rearrange the habit hierarchy. Learning changes an unobservable psychological entity.

Csikszentmihalyi's flow theory

The best state of experience is one in which challenges and capabilities are balanced, attention is focused, and times passes quickly.

early humanistic theories

The best way to live is to become more clearly aware of reality and yourself. The goal of humanistic psychotherapy is to help the person become fully functioning.

associationism

The claim that any two things, including ideas, become mentally associated as one if they're repeatedly experienced close together in time.

rationalization

The cognitive distortion of reality to make an event or an impulse less threatening.

The id

The emotional part of the mind. It works via the Pleasure Principle: a demand to take care of needs immediately.

Principles of Psychoanalytic Therapy

The goal of therapy is to make the unconscious conscious. Relaxed atmosphere Free association Dream analysis Parapraxes Transference Catharsis Insight

empiricism

The idea that all knowledge comes from experience.

The superego

The moral part of the mind. Two aspects to the superego: the conscience and the ego ideal. The superego communicates with the ego via feelings.

Mischel's CAPS (cognitive-affective personality system)

The most important aspect of personality and cognition is their interaction. Mischel claims that individual differences stem from person variables that characterize properties and activities of the cognitive system: cognitive and behavioral construction competencies, encoding strategies and personal constructs, subjective stimulus values, and self-regulatory systems and plans. He also theorizes if-then contingencies: personality variables combine in each person to create a repertoire of actions triggered by particular stimuli.

social identity

The part of the self that we show to others.

The ego

The rational part of the mind. It is connected to the world via the senses. The ego searches for ways to satisfy the id's wishes while satisfying the superego. It functions via the reality principle.

displacement

The redirection of an impulse onto a substitute target.

Psychosexual Development

The sex drive was the primary motivating force not only for adults but for children and infants. Sexuality refers to all pleasurable sensation from the skin.

behaviorism

The study of psychology based on behavior -- conscious actions rather than unconscious thoughts. Behaviorists believe that all knowledge worth having comes form direct, public observation. Private introspection is invalid because nobody can verify it. Learning changes behavior.

Primary Process Thinking (Freud)

The way in which the unconscious mind and the id operate. The only goal is the immediate gratification of every desire, it does not concern itself with practical issues. Can only experience this unconscious thinking through: Small children Delirious ppl Ppl with schizophrenia Parapraxes Dreams

sublimation

Transforming an unacceptable impulse into a socially acceptable form. The more constructive of the defenses.

dual processing cognitive system

Unconscious thought: Affective, faster, imagery-based, larger. Conscious thought: Rational, slower, verbal, flexible, limited.

self esteem

Your general evaluation of your self-concept along a good-bad dimension.

"wild" personality disorders (cluster B)

antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic

neuroticism

anxiety, hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, vulnerability to stress, withdrawal

"worried" personality disorders (cluster C)

avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive

conscientiousness

competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, deliberation, idustriousness

openness to experience

fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, values, intellect, openness

"weird" personality disorders (cluster A)

paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal

agreeableness

trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, compassion, politeness

extraversion

warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement seeking, positive emotionality, enthusiasm