Psych 403 Exam 1

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Projective tests

- All provide B-data -Rorschach Inkblot Test -Thematic Apperception Test -Draw-a-person test -Mostly used by clinical psychologists

B data

- Behavioral - Most visible indication of an individual's personality

Natural B data

- Diary/experience-sampling methods, private investigators, social media etc. -Wearable cameras, social media, EAR, etc.

Theoretical approaches to reducing the many to a few

- Murray: 20 needs -the Blocks: ego-control and ego-resiliency (over-controlled people--> high in ego control; under-controlled people--> low in ego control)

Other arguments against situationism

- a correlation of .40 is not small

Techniques to improve reliability

- be careful - use a constant, scripted procedure - measure something that is important and engages participants -aggregation (Spearman Brown)(allows for random influences to cancel each other out)

Problems with NHST

- logic is difficult to describe and understand - criterion is just a rule of thumb - nonsignificant results are commonly mistaken for meaning "no result" -only provides info. about the probability of one type of error

Why are most published research findings false?

- many small studies with weak effects -reporting of selected analyses -researchers are rewarded for interesting results -publication bias

Reasons for Myers-Briggs popularity

- offers rich and intriguing descriptions of each personality type - looks insightful and all types are explained positively - people think learning their type is fun

Reasons for not knowing causality in correlational studies

- third-variable problem (possible confounds) - unknown direction of cause

Responses to the situationist argument

- unfair, selective literature review by Mischel (poor methodology)

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

-A personality test that taps four characteristics and classifies people into 1 of 16 personality types - Four opposing tendencies: -Extroversion (E) vs. Introversion (I) -Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N) -Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F) -Judgment (J) vs. Perception (P)

Evocative P-E transactions

-Aspect of an individual's personality leads to behavior that changes the situations he or she experiences -Refers to the process in which different individuals evoke different reactions from others

The empirical method of objective test construction

-Attempts to allow reality to speak for itself -"dust bowl empiricism" bc its dry and boring and also derived in the midwest

Personality's view of human nature

-Behavior is partly determined by personality -Every individual is unique -People can develop consistent identities and styles that allow them to be themselves across situations

Psychotherapy

-Carl Rogers & unconditional positive regard - can produce long-term changes -might have a downside -often combined with psychiatric drugs

Factor analytic approaches to reducing the many to a few

-Cattell: 16 essential traits (made correlational matrices) -Hans Eysenck: extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism -Tellegen: positive emotionality, negative emotionality, constraint (3 superfactors)

Laboratory B Data

-Experiments -Represents real life contexts that are difficult to observe directly -Physiological measures (sweat, heart rate, etc.)

Eysenck's view of extraversion

-Extraverts react less to sensory stimuli (lemon juice test) - Crave extreme levels of stimulation

Advantages of Projective tests

-Good for breaking the ice -Some skilled clinicians may be able to use them to get information not captured in other types of tests

GLAD Technique

-Grateful, Learned, Accomplished, Delight -Is an acronym for ways of finding joy and balance. It works by paying attention to certain positive aspects of life that are around you all the time, but which frequently go unnoticed.

The factor analytic method of objective test construction

-Identifies a group of things that seem to have something in common -has been used to decide how many fundamental traits exist

TAT

-Implicit motives -Now measured with Picture Story exercise (shorter)

The rational method of objective test construction

-Includes items that seem directly and obviously related to what the test developer wishes to measure -Based on theory, but sometimes less systematic -Provides S data Woodsworth Personality Data Sheet in WWI (WPDS) -Most common form of test construction

I data

-Informant reports -May be more accurate than self-judgements for either extremely good or bad traits -Based on use of judgements -Used frequently in daily life (gossip, etc); no training needed

L data

-Life outcomes - From archival records

Effect size

-Looking at the strength of a relationship (like correlation coefficient) - Look at the actual size; r^2 is a terrible way to evaluate effect size

Social expectancy effects

-Mark Snyder phone call experiment - attractive woman spoke in a warmer way when the man thought he was speaking to an attractive woman

Criticisms of Myers-Briggs

-Not useful for selection or predicting life outcomes -Based on normally distributed scores -Measurement is not reliable -No evidence that different types follow, persist in, or succeed in different lines of work

Situationism's view of human nature

-People are free to do whatever they want -Everybody is equal, and differences are a function of the situation

PDNOS

-Personality disorder not specified -Diagnose individuals with several features from more than one personality disorder -Diagnose a specific disorder that is not included in the classification system

Objective tests

-Questions seem more objective and less open to interpretation -Shows the elusiveness of objectivity (items are still not absolutely objective)

S data

-Self-reports -Usually questionnaires or surveys, most frequent -High face validity -Often matches I data

Situationism

-The belief that behavior is largely driven by the situation, and that personality is relatively unimportant -Personality does not exist

Validity

-The degree to which a test actually measures what it's supposed to measure (accuracy) - Invokes the idea of the ultimate truth, but personality constructs cannot be seen directly ++For data to be valid, it must be reliable

Null-Hypothesis Significance Testing

-The traditional method of statistical data analysis that determines the chance of getting the result if nothing were really going on

Typology

-To typify all individuals , one must "carve nature at its joints" (CAPSI) -Well-adjusted person, maladjusted overcontrolling person (too uptight, denies themselves pleasure, hard to deal with on an interpersonal level), and maladjusted undercontrolling person (too impulsive, more likely to engage in crime etc.)

Improving RAM

-Training -attend to relevant cues -create the right interpersonal environment -be attentive

Problems in Self-report

-Validity -Disclosure (self-revealing v. secretive) -Desirability (results affected by how people want to portray themselves ie. socially appealing, morally virtuous, etc.) -Debasement (Inclination to devalue oneself, present more troubling difficulties) -Negative impression management

Disadvantages of Projective tests

-Validity evidence is scarce -Expensive and time-consuming -A psychologist cannot be sure about what they mean -Other, less expensive tests work as well or better -Sometimes used inappropriately

Implications of RAM

-accurate personality judgement is difficult -moderators of accuracy might be the result of somthing that happens that one of the 4 stages

The good information

-acquaintanceship effect (judgments by people who have known or observed the target for longer are more accurate) - quality of information -amount of information

Targeted interventions

-address certain personality traits -includes writing self-affirmations, teaching parents about the general nature of anxiety that their child may have -"imagine how they feel"

beyond the big 5

-central objection: there are more than 5 personality traits -people say honesty-humility should be added

Generalizability over participants

-college students vs. others -gender bias -shows vs. no-shows -ethnic and cultural diversity

The good judge

-communion -scores high in attributional complexity -cardiac vagal flexibility -dispositional intelligence

criteria for accuracy of personality judgement

-convergent validation -interjudge agreement -behavioral prediction -predictive validity

High self-monitors

-different inner and outer selves; perform differently in different settings -carefully survey the room and act accordingly

The good trait

-easy to observe, highly visible - possible evolutionary basis (sociosexuality) - •Evidence against the idea that peer judgments are socially constructed and agreement is based on communication

Validity based on first impressions of the face

-extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience -dominant v. submissive and sexuality

Trait approach

-focuses on individuals differences in personality and behavior and the psychological processes behind them -This is the largest and most dominant approach b/c individual differences are central to most everything - focuses on how "every man is in certain respects like some other men"

The good target

-high in judgability -stable, well-organized, consistent behavior -psychologically well-adjusted

The Big Five view of extraversion

-how I normally think of extraverts; active, outgoing, dominant, positive etc. -disadvantage: mate poaching, argumentative, need to be in control, poor time management, at risk for becoming overweight, can be argumentative, controlling, bad at managing their time

maturity principle

-increase of positive traits and decrease of negative traits with time (studies show that there is a decline after age 50, but not for everyone)

How to improve self-knowledge

-introspection -seek feedback -observe your own behavior

Low self-monitors

-largely the same inside and out and do not vary based on the situation -more tru to their inner personality

Factors that undermine reliability

-low precision -state of the participant -state of the experimenter -variation in the environment

California Q-set

-many-trait approach -100 personality descriptions -sort into a forced choice, symmetrical, and normal distribution

Obstacles to change

-not seeing a reason to -takes effort -people blame negative experiences on external forces -people like consistency and predictability

Power of the situation

-personality traits do not determine behavior, situations do -used to do total variance minus variance explained by personality but that doesn't make sense -now we convert statistical significance tests to effect sizes

Problems in clinical interviewing

-persuasiveness -state v. trait - comorbidity (ascertaining which category the symptom belongs to)

Causes of personality development

-physical development and changes in strength -increases in IQ -hormone-level changes -changes in social roles and responsibilities (Erikson)

All causes of personality stability

-temperament -physical and environmental factors - birth order (mixed research support...) -early experience (neg. and pos.) - person-environment transactions -cumulative continuity principle

How to make research more dependable:

-use more participants - disclose all methods - share data - report studies that don't work - never regard done study as conclusive proof of anything

Rorschach test

-used by 82% of clinical psych. -4th most used test -2 scoring methods (Exner's Comprehensive system and Klopfer's technique)

2 main questions to help evaluate personality judgements

1) do the judgements agree with each other? 2) can they predict behavior?

4 required conditions for a rationally constructed objective test

1) each item must mean the same thing to everyone 2) person taking it must be able to make an accurate self-assessment 3) person taking it must report accurately 4) all items on the test must be indicators of what the tester is trying to meaure

Steps for using empirical testing method

1) gather lots of items 2) have a sample of people already divided into groups 3) administer the test 4) compare the answers of the different groups- cross-validation

Steps for using factor analysis

1) generate a long list of objective items 2) administer to a large # of people 3) analyze with factor analysis 4) consider what the items that group together have in common and name the factor

Sociogenomic trait intervention model

1) identify what the person wants to change 2) do things outside of your comfort zone until they become automatic

4 potential methods of personality change

1) psychotherapy 2) general interventions 3) targeted interventions 4) life experiences

Overcoming obstacles to change

1) the person must think the change is desirable AND feasible 2) person must follow up by beginning to change her relevant behaviors, one by one 3) she will find that her trait of conscientiousness has stabilized at a higher level than it was before!

3 main issues with the person-situation debate

1. Does the personality of an individual transcend the immediate context and provide a consistent guide to actions, or is what a person does utterly dependent on the situation at the time? 2. Are common, ordinary intuitions about people fundamentally flawed or basically correct? 3. Why do psychologists continue to argue about the consistency of personality?

Advantages of I data

1. Large amount of information (everyone has acquaintances) 2. Real-world basis (not from constructed tests or controlled environments) 3. Common sense (takes context into account) 4. Definitional truth 5. Causal force (expectancy effects)

Advantages of L data

1. Objective and verifiable 2. Intrinsic importance 3. Psychological relevance

Advantages of Natural B data

1. Realistic

Disadvantages of case methods

1. Unknown generalizabililty

Disadvantages of S data

1. bias (desire for privacy; faking) 2. error (distortion or memory; carelessness) 3. too simple and easy

Advantages of case methods

1. describes the whole phenomenon 2. source for ideas 3. sometimes necessary for understanding an individual

Disadvantages of Natural B data

1. difficult 2. desired contexts seldomly occur

Disadvantages of Laboratory B data

1. difficult and expensive 2. uncertain interpretation

Advantages of S data

1. large amount of information 2. access to thoughts, feelings, and emotions 3. some S data are true by definition (self-esteem, etc) 4. Causal force (have a way of creating own reality) 5. Simple and easy

Disadvantages of I data

1. limited behavioral information 2. lack of access to private experience 3. error (more likely to remember extreme/unusual behaviors 4. Bias

Disadvantages of L data

1. multidetermination (outcome has many different causes) (to get a PhD, need many different factors/traits) 2. possible lack of psychological relevance

Advantages of Laboratory B data

1. range of contexts 2. appearance of objectivity (but subjective judgements must still be made)

Psychology Triad

3 essential topics of psych; how people think, feel, and behave

Case method

A procedure for gathering scientific info by studying a single individual in order to understand a particular case and discover general lessons or scientific laws

Experimental method

A research technique that establishes the causal relationship between an independent variable (x) and a dependent variable (y) by randomly assigning participants to experimental groups characterized by differing levels of x, and measuring the average behavior y that results in each group

Statistical significance

A result that would only occur by chance less than 5 percent of the time

Basic approach or paradigm

A theoretical view of personality that focuses on some phenomena and ignores others

Humanistic psychology

A type of phenomenological approach HOW conscious awareness produces uniquely human attributes (like creativity, free will, and existential anxiety); understand meaning and basis of happiness

What criteria do critical realists' think can be used to assess accuracy?

All information that might be helpful

Personality

An individual's characteristic pattern of thought, emotion, and behavior

Projective hypothesis

Answers reveal inner psychological needs, feelings, experiences, thought processes, or other hidden aspects of the mind

"Attributional Complexity" Scale

Asks about the levels of complexity in your thinking about the causes of behavior

SILB

Clues that we gather to determine one's personality Ideally, we use as many clues as we can

Binomial Effect Size Display (BESD)

Concrete display of what a correlation means in terms of specific outcomes -Assume you have 200 participants, with 100 in each of two groups, and 100 with each of two outcomes.

Open science

Emerging principles intended to improve transparency of scientific research; encouragement of full reports on all variables between scientists

Narcissism

Excessive self-love and self-absorption

One Big Theory (OBT)

Explains everything about personality It's too difficult to do everything well

Research

Exploration of the unknown

Generalizability

Extent to which research results apply to a range of individuals not included in the study

Cognitive personality

Focuses on cognitive processes, including perception, memory, and thought

Single-trait approach

Focuses on one particular trait of interest and learning as much as possible about its behavioral correlates -focuses on self-monitoring and narcissism

Classic behaviorism

Focuses on overt behaviors

Phenomenological approach

Focuses on people's conscious experience of the world -Emphasizes experience, free will, and the meaning of life

Psychoanalytic approach

Focuses on the unconscious mind and internal mental conflict (Freud)

Biological approach

Focuses on the way behavior and personality are influenced in terms of the body

Reliability

In measurement, the tendency of an instrument to provide the same comparative information on repeated occasions (consistency)

Spearman-Brown Formula

In psychometrics, a mathematical formula that predicts the degree to which the reliability of a test can be improved by adding more items.

Construct validation

Is the tool really measuring what its supposed to?

Advantages of accounting for the whole person and real-life concerns

It is inclusive, interesting, and important

Moderators of Accuracy

Judge, Target, Trait, Information

The acquaintanceship effect

Judgements by people who have known or observed the target for a long time are more accurate

Dispositional intelligence

Knowledge about how personality is relevant to behavior

Type I error

Mistake of thinking that one variable has an effect on another variable when it really does not (false positive)

Pigeonholing vs. Appreciation of Individual Differences

Negative: Pigeonholing (an idea is too exclusive or "labeling"; some people are uncomfy with being categorized b/c they find it to be undignified and/or implausible) Positive: leads to sensitivity and respect for individual differences

Resolution to the person-situation debate

People are psychologically different, and these differences matter; People maintain their personalities even as they adapt their behavior to particular situations

Fish-and-water effect

People may be so used to the way they characteristically react and behave that their own actions stop seeming remarkable (error of S data)

Active P-E transactions

Person seeks out compatible environments and avoids incompatible ones

Disadvantages of basic approaches

Poor at addressing other topics or ignores them

p-level

Probability level of obtaining a result from a statistical test if there really is no difference between groups or no relationship between variables

4 Stages of Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM)

Relevancy, availability, detection, utilization

Intellectual expectancy effects

Rosenthal and Jacobson 1) Climate (the way teachers are warmer towards the kid they expect to do well) 2) feedback (the way teachers give feedback that is more differentiated) 3) input (the way teachers attempt to teach more and harder material) 4) output (teachers give extra opportunities for the better kid to show what they've learned

Funder's Third Law

Something beats nothing, two times out of three

Emotional intelligence

The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions

Type II error

The mistake of thinking that one variable does not effect another when it really does (false negative)

Constructivism

The philosophical view that reality, as a concrete entity, does not exist and that only ideas or "constructions" of reality exist

Critical realism

The philosophical view that the absence of perfect, infallible criteria for truth does not imply that all interpretations of reality are equally correct

Null hypothesis

The possibility of a zero result

Psychometrics

The technology of psychological measurement

Publication bias

The tendency for journals to publish positive findings but not negative or ambiguous ones

Measurement error/error variance

The variation of a number around its true meaning due to uncontrolled influences -State or trait -All measurements include some error

Funder's Second Law

There are no perfect indicators of personality; there are only clues, and clues are always ambiguous

The situationist arguments (Mischel)

There is an upper limit to how well one can predict what a person will do based on any measurement of that person's personality, and this upper limit is low (.40) - correlations rarely exceeded .30 (--> we can do better)

What is the goal of research in this field?

To continuously improve on tentative answer to questions

Convergent validity

Tool gives similar scores as other tools on the same subjects (the duck test)

Cross-cultural personality research

Type of phenomenological approach emphasizes how the experience of reality might be different across cultures

Orthogonal

Unrelated; getting a high score in one trait should not have anything to do with what you get on another

Self-verification

When people try to bring others to treat them in a manner that confirms their self-conceptions (ex. of causal force of S data) (if you think you are smart, you make an extra effort to make other people think you're smart)

Expectancy effects/behavioral confirmation/self-fulfilling prophecy

When someone becomes the kind of person people expect them to be (causal force of I-data)

moderator variable

a variable that affects the relationship between two other variables

why are there so many items on objective personality tests?

aggregation and spearman-brown formula

"Self-Monitoring" Scale

asks how much/how closely you watch other people for cues as to how you should act

The trait approach strengths

assesses and attempts to understand how people differ

The essential-trait approach

attempts to reduce the "many" to "a few"

Meta-accuracy

being able to tell who can and cannot judge accurately

social investment principle

changing social roles at different stages of life can cause personality to change

content validity

does it really represent all of the things it needs to? ex. are we measuring all aspects of depression?

Correlational method

established a relationship between 2 variables by measuring both in a sample (scatter plot&correlation coefficient)

general interventions

focused on important outcomes, like completing school, etc.

Learning

how behavior changes as a result of rewards, punishments, and other life experiences

Comparison to a relative standard

how well situations predict behavior

The trait approach weaknesses

neglects aspects of personality common to all people and how each person is unique

What criteria do constructivists' think can be used to assess accuracy?

none; personality is a social construction

Comparison to an absolute standard

number of correct and incorrect predictions

role continuity principle

older adults will usually maintain the same activities, behaviors, relationships as they did in their earlier years of life

identity development principle

people seek to develop a stable sense of who they are, and then strive to act consistently with this self-view

Rank-order consistency

people tend to maintain the ways in which they are different from other people of the same age

person-environment transactions

people tend to respond to, seek out, and create environments that are compatible with, and may magnify, their personality traits

corresponsive principle

person-environment transactions can cause personality traits to remain consistent or even magnify over time

plasticity principle

personality can change at any time (but such change may not be easy)

Omnibus

personality tests that measure a wide range of personality traits

Social clock

places pressure on people to accomplish certain things by certain ages; traditional expectations of society for when a person is expected to achieve certain steps in life

3 basic aspects of childhood temperament

positive emotionality, negative emotionality, effortful control

longitudinal study

similar findings to those of cross-sectional studies; people become more socially dominant, agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable

Higher-order factors of personality

stability and plasticity

cross-sectional study

surveys people at different ages; good way to chart personality development

discriminant validity

tests whether concepts or measurements that are not supposed to be related are actually unrelated

heterotypic continuity

the effects of temperamental tendencies change with age, but temperament and personality stay the same; behaviors associated with traits change.

cumulative continuity principle

the idea that personality becomes more stable and unchanging as a person gets older (psychological maturity)

Temperament

the personality one begins with; partially determined by genetics

Population value

the real value

Narrative identity

the story one tells oneself about who one is; actor, agent, and author

cohort effects

the tendency for a research finding to be limited to one group, or people, such as people living in a particular era or location

Reactive P-E transactions

Different people respond differently to the same situation

Criterion validity

Does the criteria of the tool match other tools?

The whole person

How all other areas of psychology come together

Social Learning Theory

How observation and self-evaluation determine behavior

Learning and cognitive approaches

How people change their behaviors as a result of rewards, punishments, and life experiences -Behaviorism, social learning theory, cognitive personality psychology

Performance-based assessment

IAT, MMPI, IQ (these all yield B-data)

General arousal theory of criminality

Idea that people who crave extra stimuli (extroverts) are more likely to be criminals/dangerous

General Factor of Personality

Idea that there is only one underlying trait--> emotional intelligence

Lexical hypothesis

Important aspects of life will be labeled with words, and if something is truly important and universal, there will be many words for it in all languages. This aided the development of the Big 5

personality development

Change in personality over time, including the development of adult personality from its origins in infancy and childhood, and changes in personality over the life span.

Predictive validity

Degree to which one measure can be used to predict another

Advantages of basic approaches

Good at addressing certain topics

Funder's First Law

Great strengths are usually great weaknesses, and surprisingly often the opposite is true as well There is no one real answer!

p-hacking

Hacking around one's data in various ways until one finds the desired result

Disadvantages of accounting for the whole person and real-life concerns

Over-inclusiveness or unfocused research

Letter of recommendation effect

Participants tend to nominate informants who think well of them, leading to a more positive picture (Bias for I-data)

Behavioral prediction

The degree to which a judgment or measurement can predict the behavior of the person in question

Self-monitoring

The degree to which inner and outer selves and behaviors are the same or different across situations

Face validity

The degree to which respondents can tell what the items are measuring

Interjudge agreement

The degree to which two or more people making judgments about the same person provide the same description of that person's personality

Interactionism

The effect of a personality variable may depend on the situation, or vise versa -certain types of people go to or find themselves in different types of situations (situations are not randomly populated)

Judgability

The extent to which an individual's personality can be judged accurately by others


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