Psych of personality midterm

According to psychological standards, a p-value of .01 implies a. a large effect size b. statistical significance c. lack of statistical significance d. a small effect size

b

Which of the following is an aspect of a 'good' trait with regard to judgment? a. moderation b. unpredictability c. visibility d. acquaintanceship

c

A theory is ____ and is always potentially ____. a. a philosophical perspective; foolproof b. an explanation for how a phenomenon works; falsifiable c. falsifiable; able to be replicated d. a prediction of study outcomes; generalizable

b

. A variable that affects the relation between two other variables is known as a a. moderator b. catalyst c. transmitter d. residual

a

According to the text, what paradox is central to the study of personality development? a. People change throughout their lives yet fundamental personality traits maintain rank-order stability in relation to others in their age group. b. People's personality changes both across their entire lives and in response to specific events. c. People develop their personalities according to both nature and nurture. d. Some people's personalities change dramatically over the life span, and some people don't change at all

a

According to your textbook, the goal of a scientific education is ________. a. to ask questions and explore the unknown b. to convey what is known about a subject so it can be applied in a medical context c. to train individuals to exclusively rely on deductive reasoning to solve problems d. all of the above

a

At the heart of aggregation is the idea that ________. a. random errors cancel each other out b. random errors never cancel each other out c. reliable errors cancel each other out d. a sufficiently precise measure has no reliable error

a

If everybody read, interpreted, and answered an item in exactly the same way, then that item ________. a. would not be very useful for the assessment of individual differences b. would be very informative about personality c. was developed using the rational method of test construction d. is empirically derived

a

Someone who is ________ is likely to express his or her personality consistently from one situation to the next. a. low in self-monitoring b. high in self-monitoring c. low in self-efficacy d. high in self-efficacy

a

The process by which a person seeks out compatible environments and avoids incompatible ones is called ________. a. active person-environmental transaction b. reactive personal-environment transaction c. evocative person-environment transaction d. heterotypic continuity

a

The technical meaning of reliability refers to ________. a. how much measurement error is present in your assessment instrument b. whether an instrument accurately assesses the construct it is intended to measure c. whether an instrument correlates with a similar measure of the same construct d. whether a sample of participants reasonably represents the population of interest

a

What was suggested as one of the first things you can do to check the validity of data you have gathered? a. graph the data b. conduct interviews c. replicate the study d. re-administer the measure to the same participants

a

Whatever may systematically skew responses on a personality assessment in a certain direction is considered a. bias b. personality c. a correlation d. random error

a

Which of the following is NOT an advantage of B data? a. Direct observations require little in the way of psychological interpretation. b. Direct observations are easily quantifiable. (You can code behaviors by frequency and thus quantify them. YES) c. Direct observations can be made with extreme precision, as in the case of reaction times. (YES, using a stopwatch) d. Psychologists can construct situations to elicit particular behaviors. (YES, they use prompting situations all the time.)

a

Which of the following is NOT one of the Big Five? a. psychoticism b. conscientiousness c. neuroticism d. agreeableness

a

. (True or False) People, on average, think their personalities will change a lot in the future. a. True b. False

b

10. If test scores decrease as anxiety increases, then ________. a. test scores and anxiety are positively correlated b. test scores and anxiety are negatively correlated

b

According to the text, what trait refers to individual differences in the willingness to engage in sexual relations with minimal acquaintanceship? a. sexual constraint b. sociosexuality c. socio-openness d. sexual openness

b

According to your textbook, there are no perfect ________ of personality, only ________. a. measures; devices b. indicators; clues c. theories; hypotheses d. reliable measures; valid measures

b

Because each kind of data has limitations, personality psychologists should ________. a. not bother collecting data b. gather as much data as possible c. only use L data, which are the most reliable d. use only one source of data and control for its limitations

b

I have a correlation coefficient of r=-.70. Describe the correlation. a. It is weak and negative. b. It is strong and negative. c. It is weak and positive. d. It is strong and positive.

b

Over the last 10 years, Victor has become more agreeable, conscientious and emotionally stable. What principle best describes Victor's development? a. the cumulative continuity principle b. the maturity principle c. the plasticity principle d. the social investment principle

b

. As a child, Jay was always bouncing off the walls at his parents' social gatherings. As an adult, he is the life of every party. This is an example of ________. a. personal-environment transactions b. temperament c. heterotypic continuity d. cumulative continuity

c

1. Personality entails characteristic patterns of thoughts, behavior, and ______. a. social relations b. movement c. emotion d. neural impulses

c

A construct is a. an idea that doesn't exist b. a personality measure c. an intangible concept that can't be directly perceived d. a building block of personality traits

c

A fundamental problem for the trait approach is that ________. a. individual differences cannot be measured reliably b. situations do not affect behavior c. people are inconsistent d. correlational methods do not clearly indicate effect size

c

A researcher using factor analysis to identify basic traits is likely to favor the ________ approach. a. single-trait b. many-trait c. essential-trait d. typological

c

According to your textbook, ________ describes a context where social norms tend to restrict what people do. a. a weak situation b. a socially constrained situation c. a strong situation d. situationism

c

Development can be both continuous, indicating that change is _____, and discontinuous, indicating that change is ______. a. unending, temporary b. forward-moving, backward-moving c. gradual, abrupt d. short-term, long-term

c

If a psychologist describes a research result as statistically significant, what does he or she typically mean? a. The result is important. b. The result is large and dramatic. c. The result is unlikely to have occurred by chance. d. The result will likely revolutionize the field.

c

In order to examine the relationship between early life experiences and adult criminality, Dr. Robbins asks his research participants to fill out questionnaires describing their early life. He then obtains copies of their arrest records from the county courthouse. The questionnaires used in Dr. Robbins' study would be ________ data, whereas the arrest records would be ________ data. a. L; B b. S; I c. S; L d. B; L

c

Many psychologists tend to use college students as participants in their research and then assume that what they learn applies to people in general. However, this common practice may limit ________. a. the ecological reliability of their research b. the internal validity of their studies c. the generalizability of their findings d. the construct validity of their studies

c

Measurement error is ______ and _______. a. systematic, expected b. systematic, unexpected c. random, expected d. random, unexpected

c

This method of test construction derives questions from testing them on pre-defined groups of people a. rational method b. factor analytic method c. empirical method d. projective method

c

Validity is the degree to which a measurement ________. a. is consistent and stable b. provides the same result if repeated c. actually reflects or measures what you think it does d. is reliable

c

What is the correct definition of the p-value? a. probability that the null hypothesis is true b. probability that the null hypothesis is false c. probability that the observed result occurred by chance if the null hypothesis is true d. probability that the observed result occurred by chance if the null hypothesis is false

c

What method is used in replication? a. administering a measure to participants more than once b. interpreting results so that they generalize to a larger population c. running the same study on a different sample of people d. devising an alternative study design

c

What minimum sample size is encouraged to increase statistical power? a. 50 b. 100 c. 200 d. 500

c

What was the central focus of Jussim et al.'s (2016) article? a. demonstrating the bias in acceptances to psychology research journals b. explaining the most updated understanding of personality development c. preventing bias in researchers' interpretations of their data d. improving replication of psychology studies

c

What was the issue with Verhulst, Eaves & Hatemi's (2012) findings between political orientation and personality (e.g., psychotism, neuroticism, social desirability)? a. they were not generalizable to male participants b. they were based on an outdated theory c. the correlations were mismatched or backwards d. they didn't have enough statistical power

c

What would we call a population's increase in a particular trait over time? a. rank-order stability b. longitudinal c. development (*also accepted this time - though development usually does not refer to change in one trait over time.) c. mean-level change

c

Which of the following is an example of interjudge agreement in the context of accuracy judgments? a. Your own ratings of your conscientiousness predict your class attendance. b. Your friends' ratings of your agreeableness do not predict your neatness. c. Your friends' ratings of your extraversion converge with your parents' ratings. d. high in self-efficacy

c

A long life is associated with what trait? a. openness to experience b. self-monitoring c. neuroticism d. conscientiousness

d

According to one survey mentioned in the textbook, what trait did the greatest number of people report wanting to change? a. agreeableness b. extraversion c. openness d. neuroticism

d

According to your textbook, eliminating the use of personality tests in employment screening will ________. a. prevent biases from affecting hiring decisions b. decrease the likelihood that certain groups of people will be discriminated against in hiring c. increase the use of lie detector tests and drug tests in employment screening d. not prevent traits from being judged but will change the ways traits are judged

d

Research regarding the person-situation debate indicates that ________ are relevant to how people will act under specific circumstances and that ________ are better for describing how people act in general. a. S data; I data b. S data; B data c. personality traits; situational variables d. situational variables; personality traits

d

The responses to a projective test are considered ___ data. a. S b. I c. L d. B

d

What did your professor warn might occur if there's a lack of knowledge on a topic that's not investigated? a. policymakers will be unable to promote new policies. b. researchers will be forced to acknowledge they don't understand a phenomenon c. people in other countries will gather data but not us d. people will fill the void with assumptions

d