Psych of Personality Exam 1

Funder's Second Law

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

Explain limitations to the typological approach to personality traits

personality type does not have indicate the person's behavior. bimodal distribution

Evaluate how values might influence people to support a situationist or pro-personality position.

Figure 4.5

PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH (define; state two components)

Focuses on peoples conscious experience of the world1) HUMANISTIC - How conscious awareness produces uniquely human attributes;understand meaning in basis of happiness2) CROSS CULTURAL - how the experience of reality varies across cultures

Funder's First Law (2 points)

Great strengths are usually great weaknesses, and surprisingly often the opposite is true as wellIn other words, the same personality traits that can make you come off at strong and great can also have you viewed as awful and weak

Recognize theorists and practices associated with the essential-trait approach.

Henry Murray, Jack and Jeanne block. Ego reselience and ego control. Ryan Cattell correlation matrix. Hans Eysenack. Auke tellegan

Distinguish the situationist critique from the personality response

.40 is the upper limit for the predictability of a personality in situations, this upper limit is low.

Explain the situationist position.

1. there is an upper limit to how well once can predict what a person will do based on any measurement of that person's personality 2. situations are more important than personality traits 3.everyday intuitions about people are wrong, personality assessments are a waste of time, because people see others as being more consistent across situations than they really are. THERE IS NO TRAIT YOU CAN USE TO PREDICT SOMEONES BEHAVIOR WITH ENOUGH ACCURACY TO BE USEFUL.

Understand both the applications and criticisms of the Myers-Briggs Type

166 items that force the participants to make decisiosn, scores are distuibuted normally and not bimodally measurements is not reliable, cannot predict if you will puruse in certain fields on work

Recognize strengths and weaknesses of different methods of objective test construction.

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Understand and apply the concepts of cross-situational consistency and stability.

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Understand new concepts and terminology associated with different types of data.

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Understand that people are both consistent and change.

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Understand that personality is not directly observable, and data are clues.

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Understand the theoretical approach to uncovering essential traits.

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B data

Behavioral data, or direct observations of another's behavior that are translated directly or nearly directly into numerical form. B data can be gathered in natural or contrived (experimental) settings.

features of the trait approach

Benefit(s) It allows for a better understanding of how people differ from one another.Trait measurements are almost always made on ordinal scales.There is no zero point of any given trait.An individual's trait level is compared to others' trait level .not benefit. Trait measurements are almost always made on ratio scales.It does not consider personality processes that are universal

Research Design: Case Method

Closely studying a particular event or person of interest in order to find out as much as possible

Identify the basic tenets of Developmental Personality Psychology.

IQ, hormones, social roles and atheltic ability

factor analytic method

Identify which items group together by using the statistical technique of factor analysis

I data

Informants' data, or judgments made by knowledgeable informants about general attributes of an individual's personality.

L-data

Life data, or more-or-less easily verifiable, concrete, real-life outcomes, which are of possible psychological significance.

Understand and give evidence for the pro-personality response

Mischel's review of the literature was selective and unfair, she used very limited resources and only included those that had disappointing results.

Understand projective tests and evaluate their merits

Projective tests are useful because they allow psychologists to assess unconscious aspects of personality. Projective tests are also not transparent: subjects cannot figure out how their responses will be interpreted. Therefore, subjects cannot easily fake personality traits on a projective test.

Use correlational effect sizes to compare the predictive power of person and situation.

Proponents of the personality side of the person-situation debate state that a .40 correlation is a useful one, and could predict 20% better than chance (total predictability = 70%). With this in mind, suppose a benefactor is offering a scholarship, and she has donated enough money for 20 scholarships. She pledges to replenish the money to the fund for each student that gets a good GPA with the scholarship money. However, the benefactor only wants to give the scholarship to hardworking students.By giving students a trait assessment on the trait of conscientiousness, how many scholarships will likely be replenished?

Recognize different life outcomes that are associated with different traits.

Table 4.6

Differentiate between the different stages of the Realistic Accuracy Model

Target ---> do something relevant ---> info must be available to judge ---> judge must detect the information ---> judge must utilize this information ---> judge

Differentiate the goals of scientific training from technical training.

Technical training teaches one to use what is already known, scientific training teaches one to explore the unknown.

validity

The ability of a test to measure what it is intended to measure

Summarize the main objectives of personality psychologyIs the main goal/objective of personality psychology possible or impossible?

The main objective of personality psychology is to explain the WHOLE of a person in his or her daily environmentThis is IMPOSSIBLE bcuz it is impossible to account for everything about the person at the same time all at once

essential trait approach

The research strategy that attempts to narrow the list of thousands of trait terms into a shorter list of the ones that really matter.

typological approach

The research strategy that focuses on identifying types of individuals. Each type is characterized by a particular pattern of traits.

Identify some of the possible questionable research practices and explain how they can be avoided.

Type 1 error: that one variable effects another when it really doesn't type 2 error: thinking one variable doesn't effect another when it really does. Publication bias: when publication companies only want to publish studies that are significant QRPS P hacking

objective test

a limited or forced choice test in which a person must select one of several answers. objective TESTS GIVE US S DATA

the rational method

a method for developing questionnaire items that involves using reason or theory to come up with a question

projective test

a personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics. based on the theory that the stimulus being asked does not actually mean anything, the answer can only come from the the subject. (inkblot). ALL OF THESE TESTS PROVIDE B DATA

Research Design: experimental method

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

correlation method

a research technique that establishes the relationship between two variables by measuring both variables as they occur naturally in a sample of participants and measuring their degree of association.

Understand the properties of and reasons behind the emergence of open science.

a set of practices intended to move research closer to the ideals on which science was founded. Fully describing all aspects of the study, reporting studies that failed along with those that succeeded and freely sharing data with other scientists. Emerged from growing numbers of scientists faking their data, using p hacking and QRP's.

Basic approach (paradigm)

a systematic, self-imposed limitation in which you limit yourself to certain kinds of observations, certain kinds of patterns, and certain ways of thinking about these patterns EASY DEFINITION:Ways to limit what part of personality is examined so the task of personality psychology is not overwhelming and impossible

Evaluate the difficulties in creating accurate personality judgments

accurate personality judgement is difficult, good judge, target, trait and info, situation in which the judgment is made.

Examples of techniques researchers can use to improve measurement quality

aggression

BIOLOGICAL APPROACH

an approach to psychology focusing on the body, especially the brain and nervous system ; understanding the mind in terms of body (such as genetics, evolution, anatomy , physiology)

TRAIT APPROACH

an approach to studying personality that focuses on how individuals differ in personality

self-fulfilling prophecy

an expectation that causes you to act in ways that make that expectation come true.

Define personality assessment and key concepts associated with assessment.

an individuals personality is revealed by characteristic patterns of behavior, thought or emotional experience that are relatively consistent across time and situations. These patterns can include; motives, intentions, goals, strategies and subjective representations.

single trait approach

approach in trait research wherein the focus is on one particular trait

Explain and recognize examples of the many-trait approach

begins from the implicit research question "who does that" figure 6.3

Differentiate between the constructivist and critical realist positions.

constructivist: reality as a concrete entity does not exist and that only ideas of reality exist realist: s a branch of philosophy that distinguishes between the 'real' world and the 'observable' world. The 'real' can not be observed and exists independent from human perceptions, theories, and constructions (definitions in back of book)

Explain how personality changes over the life span in terms of its trends and specific causes

different mean levels of big 5 personaity, agreeableness contcienousness all dip during 10-20 and then reciover at age 20. figure 7.1 extroversion stays consistent women neuroticism drops men stays the same. cohort effect, longitudinal study

Explain the function and usefulness of personality types.

easier to think about psychological dynamics, useful for education and applications

empirical method

gaining knowledge through the observation of events, the collection of data, and logical reasoning

issues related to generalization

generalizability the results of psychological research depend on the people who show up at the laboratory. Most research is based on a limited subset of the modern population-- specifically the predominantly white, middle class college students.

LEARNING AND COGNITIVE APPROACH (define; state 3 components)

how behavior changes as a result of rewards, punishments, and other life experiences1) CLASSIC BEHAVIORISM - Focuses on overt behaviors and how they are affected by rewards and punishments2) SOCIAL LEARNING - Learning through observation and self evaluation3) COGNITIVE PERSONALITY - focuses on cognitive processes including perception, memory, and thought

Describe the ways in which one can improve self-knowledge

introspection, feedback, observe your own behaviors and draw your own conclusions from it

What is the one big theory?Explain why separate approaches to personality are needed?

it's difficult to do everything well;a device that does one thing well tends to be relatively poor at doing anything else Separate approaches to personality or needed because personality psychologist have not figured out how to solve this dilemma. Some would like to find one big theory, some believe their approach is the one big theory, some would like to organize the existing theories into one framework, and some believe that the different approaches address different questions and should be left as is

Understand the process of evaluating research with significance testing.

most commonly used is NHST If the result is significant, the result did not arise by chance. Real value= population value

Summarize how the accuracy of personality judgment is assessed.

must gather all of the information that would make the judgement valid. The accuracy will always be uncertain.

identify and generate examples of the principle of interactionism.

persons and situations constantly interacting to produce behavior together. -effect of a personality variable may depend on the situation and vice versa - situations are not randomly populated -the way people change situations because of what they do in them

PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH

psychological perspective concerned with how unconscious instincts, conflicts, motives, and defenses influence behavior

Describe how personality remains stable over the life course in terms of rank-order consistency.

rank-order consistency,maintain ways they are different from others,

Explain and distinguish different methods of objective test construction.

rational, factor analytic and empirical

Define personality

refers to an individual's characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms - hidden or not - behind those patterns

Recall the proponents (and their arguments) in the person-situation debate.

refers to the controversy concerning whether the person or the situation is more influential in determining a person's behavior. Personality trait psychologists believe that a person's personality is relatively consistent across situations.[1] Situationists, opponents of the trait approach, argue that people are not consistent enough from situation to situation to be characterized by broad personality traits. The debate is also an important discussion when studying social psychology, as both topics address the various ways a person could react to a given situation

Illustrate the use of effect sizes as a means of evaluating research.

reflects the magnitude as opposed to likelihood. most commonly used is the correlation coefficient, which describes the strength of either correlation or experimental results.

Understand the circumstances around high and low accuracy of self-knowledge.

relevance, awareness and detection and utilization

s data

self-judgments, or ratings that people provide of their own personality attributes or behavior

Identify strengths and weaknesses of L data

strengths: intrinsic importance, psychological relevance and objective and verifiable weaknesses: multi-determination, possible lack of psychological relevance

Identify strengths and weaknesses of S data:

strengths: large amount of info, access to thoughts feelings and intentions, some s data are true by definition, causal force, simple and easy weaknesses: error, bias, too simple and too easy.

Identify strengths and weaknesses of I data

strengths: large amount of info, real world basis, common sense, some are true by definition, causal force weaknesses: limited behavioral info, lack of access to private experience, error, bias

Identify strengths and weaknesses B,data

strengths: wide range of contexts and appearance of objectivity weaknesses: expensive and difficult, uncertain interpretation

Distinguish between the seven principles of personality continuity and change

table 7.2

reliability

the extent to which your instrument measures without error.

many-trait approach

the research strategy that focuses on a particular behavior and investigates its correlates with as many different personality traits as possible in order to explain the basis of the behavior and to illuminate the workings of personality

Understand the concept of expectancy effect

think about the study with the school children, randomly chose children who were smarter (they actually weren't they were chose at random) and told their teachers they were bloomers, at the end of the year the bloomers really turned out to have higher IQ levels. climate, feedback, input and output.

Summarize the factor analytic approach to uncovering essential traits.

this method of test construction is an example of a psychological tool based on statistics. The factor analytic technique is designed to identify groups of things, such as test items, that seem to be alike. To use this technique to construct a personality test, researchers begin with a long list of objective items and administer these items to a large number of participants. Then a factor analysis is done to find patterns of co-occurrence in the items. This finds what the items have in common, and then a factor is named. This method also has three limitations that may affect the results of testing. Tests are in a questionnaire format that participants are asked to answer in a true-false format. Examples of tests of the factor analytic method are self-monitoring test.

Explain the principle of replication and evaluate its merit in science.

to redo the experiment, important because this can find publication bias, questionable research practices (QRP'S), P hacking,

What are the five basic approaches to personality? (HINT; TA, BA, PA, PA, LCA)

trait approach biological approach psychoanalytic approac hphenomenological approach learning and cognitive approaches

Recognize and classify outcomes and facets associated with traits in the Big Five framework.

used to predict career success and health, orthological, table 6.3 for facets

Explain how factor analytic methods revealed the Big Five traits.

used to see what the most common answers and they correlate into groups because of their answers.

Understand self-monitoring and narcissism as exemplars of the single-trait approach

what do people like THAT do

Recognize that people judge themselves and others, and these judgments have consequences.

your judgments of someone else could affect their reputation which could come in the way of their own opportunities. Shy people could come off as arrogant, think about the discussion response.