personality psychology test one!! :)

all trait theories have... (theoretical issues)

*meaningful differences between individuals *consistency over time *consistency across situations *person-situation interaction *aggregation

dynamic interactionism

1. proactive 2. evocative 3. manipulation

cattrell

35 clusters of personality traits

the power of first impressions

trustworthiness, extraversion- can make you form a snap judgement about a person

intraversion

NOT the same as shyness or social anxiety. prefer solitary activities to social ones. intelligence is higher

infrequency scale

a common method for detecting measurement technique problems within a set of questionnaire items. the infrequency scale contains items that most or all people would answer in a particular way if a participant answered more than one or two of these unlike the rest of the majority of the participants, a researcher could begin to suspect that the participant's answers do not represent valid information. such a participant may be answering randomly, may have difficulty reading, or may be marking his or her answer sheet incorrectly

twin studies

a common method of investigating whether nature or nurture affects behavior

positive correlation

a correlation where as one variable increases, the other also increases, or as one decreases so does the other. both variables move in the same direction

negative correlation

a finding that two factors vary systematically in opposite directions, one increasing as the other decreases

situational selection (dynamic interactionism)

a form of interactionism that refers to the tendency to choose or select the situations in which one finds oneself. in other words, people typically do not find themselves in random situations in their natural lives. instead, they select or choose the situations in which they will spend their time ex: the need for achievement is correlated with spending more time in work situations

a heritability of .50 means... a heritability of .20 means...

a heritability of .50 means that 50 percent of the observed phenotypic variation is attributable to genotypic variation a heritability of .20 means that only 20 percent of the phenotypic variation is attributable to genotypic variation

the five factor model

a model developed to explain personality using five overarching personality traits which include extroversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreableness, and concentiousness this was developed by costa and mccrae

eyesenck's biological trait theory

a model of personality created on traits he believes are highly heritable and had a likely psychophysiological foundation ex: neuroticism, psychoticism, extraversion-intraversion

conscientiousness

a personality dimension that describes someone who is responsible, dependable, persistent, and organized high: good grades! obedience to authority low: academic dishonesty, risky sexual behaviors

cognitive behavioral therapy (psychotherapy)

a popular integrated therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior)

mean level stability

a population that maintains a consistent average level of a trait or characteristic over time ex: if the average level of liberalism or conservatism in a group remains the same over time, the group exhibits high mean level stability if the average degree of political orientation changes—for example, if people tend to get increasingly conservative as they get older—then that population is displaying mean level change VERY little fluctuation in personality after age 50. increases in agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability

1. act nomination (act frequency approach to traits)

a procedure designed to identify what acts belong in what trait categories ex: the trait "impulsive" might have acts like doing something dangerous without considering the consequences

heritability

a statistic that refers to the proportion of observed variance in a group of individuals that can be accounted for by genetic variance it describes the degree to which genetic differences among individuals cause differences in an observed property, such as height, extraversion, or sensation seeking ***the proportion of phenotypic variance that is attributable to genotypic variance ex: .30 = genetics plays 30% in the role

factor analysis

a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person's total score identifies groups that covary with one another (go together), but tend not to covary with other groups of items ex: might reveal three clusters of professors

comprehensive taxonomy

a system that includes within it all of the major traits of personality taxonomy- an organized scheme

adoption studies

a way of disentangling environmental & genetic influences

habitual acts (eyesenck)

acts repeated frequently become habitual acts on the third level clusters of habitual acts become narrow traits clusters of narrow traits become super-traits at the top of the hierarchy

spurious correlation

an apparent but false relationship between two (or more) variables that is caused by some other variable ex: violent crime and ice cream sales seem to have a correlation, but both happen during the summer

exposure therapy (psychotherapy)

an approach to treatment that involves confronting an emotion-arousing stimulus directly and repeatedly, ultimately leading to a decrease in the emotional response

heritability always....

applies to the population, never an individual

population level

applying theories about changes we ALL go through ex: freud's psychosexual stages are presumed to apply to the whole population

lexical approach

approach proposing that the most crucial features of personality are embedded in our language all important individual differences have been encoded within the natural language embedded in our culture critiques: a good starting point, but should not be the only approach used

only 2% of the human genome...

are protein-coded genes

walter mischel

believes human behaviour is largely determined by the situation rather than traits behavior is way too inconsistent across situations for traits to exist. situationism situational differences, not traits. this caused personality psychology to suffer, & social psychology to flourish

descriptive summaries

no assumptions about the internality or causality of traits

group differences level

changes or constancies that affect different groups differently ex: sex differences in development, cultural or ethnic differences, etc.

the dispositional domain

deals centrally with the ways in which individuals differ from one another. as such, the dispositional domain connects with all the other domains in the dispositional domain, psychologists are primarily interested in the number and nature of fundamental dispositions, taxonomies of traits, measurement issues, and questions of stability over time and consistency over situations traits that are stable over time, in many different situations, make people different from each other

genotype-environment correlation

differential exposure of individuals with different genotypes to different environments ex: a child who has a genotype for high verbal ability. her parents may notice this and provide her with lots of books to read, engage in intellectual discussions with her, and give her word games and crossword puzzles

tupes and christal

emerged with the 5 factor model: surgency, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and culture

individual differences level

ex: can we predict, based on their personalities, which individuals will go through a midlife crisis? can we predict who will be at risk for a psychological disturbance later in life based on earlier measures of personality?

intentional personality change

general interventions for life outcomes; can address specific personality traits (self-affirmations, mindfulness)

barnum statements

generalities or statements that could apply to anyone. a good example is the astrology column published in daily newspapers

the most important traits conducive to living a long life are...

high conscientiousness, positive emotionality (extraversion), low levels of hostility, and low levels of neuroticism

monozygotic twins

identical twins formed when one zygote splits into two separate masses of cells, each of which develops into a separate embryo

Allport and Odbert

identified almost 18,000 words representing traits divided them into four lists: 1. stable traits, 2. temporary states, moods, & activities, 3. social evaluations, 4. metaphorical, physical, & doubtful terms

2. prototypically judgement (act frequency approach to traits)

identify what acts are more central to, or prototypical of, each trait category

selective placement

if adopted children are placed with adoptive parents who are similar to their birth parents, then this may inflate the correlations between the adopted children and their adoptive parents

situation specificity

in many situations the strength of the environmental conditions are so strong that the influence of the personality is minimal a behavior is caused by a situation

cross-cultural universality

in the lexical approach, cross-cultural universality states that if a trait is sufficiently important in all cultures so that its members have codified terms within their own languages to describe the trait, then the trait must be universally important in human affairs. In contrast, if a trait term exists in only one or a few languages but is entirely missing from most, then it may be of only local relevance

synonym frequency

in the lexical approach, synonym frequency means that if an attribute has not merely one or two trait adjectives to describe it, but rather six, eight, or ten words, then it is a more important dimension of individual difference

psychoticism (eyesenck)

in trait theory, the measure of nonconformity or social deviance of an individual egocentric, cold, impulsive, apathetic, aggressive

factor loadings

indexes of how much of the variation in an item is "explained" by the factor. how much an item correlates with an underlying factor

sociosexual orientation

individual differences in the tendency to prefer either unrestricted sex (without the necessity of love) or restricted sex (only in the context of a long-term, loving relationship)

manipulation (dynamic interactionism)

intentional use of certain tactics to coerce, influence, or change others

personality changes are typically...

internal to the person, not merely changes in the external surroundings, such as walking into another room second, the changes are relatively enduring over time, rather than being merely temporary

cortical arousal

introverts- doesn't take much to get them to a higher level of cortical arousal extraverts- often pursue thrill-seeking behaviors to reach this higher level of cortical arousal

the other 98% are NOT...

junk genes

extraversion

leadership positions, physically strong, happier, less likely to save money, more likely to get into car crash

personality coherence

maintaining rank order in relation to other individuals but changing the manifestations of the trait. trait looks different at different developmental stages ex: 8-year-old boys manifest their dominance by showing toughness in rough-and-tumble play, and insisting on monopolizing the computer games. at the age of 20, they manifest their dominance by persuading others to accept their views in political discussions, boldly asking someone out on a date, and insisting on the restaurant at which the group will eat the manifestations may be so different that there is literally no overlap between age 8 and age 20. the act manifestations have all changed, but something critical has remained the same—the overall level of dominant acts

criticisms of eyesenck

many more traits are heritable- not just those 3 may have missed some important traits in his taxonomy

neuroticism

more fatigue, alcohol & drug use, chaotic relationships, better in busy work environments

phenotypic variance

observed individual differences, such as in height, weight, or personality.

active genotype-environment correlation

occurs when a person with a particular genotype creates or seeks out a particular environment

reactive genotype-environment correlation

occurs when parents (or others) respond to children differently, depending on the child's genotypes based on your environment, you are going to evoke different reactions ex: imagine that a mother starts out touching and hugging each of her two children a lot. one child loves it; the other hates it. over the course of several months, the mother reacts by continuing to hug the cuddler but cuts down on hugging the noncuddler. this example illustrates the reactive genotype-environment correlation, which is achieved because people react to children differently, based in part on the children's heritable dispositions

passive genotype-environment correlations

occurs when parents provide both genes and the environment to children, yet the children do nothing to obtain that environment ex: parents who are verbally inclined pass on genes to their children that make them verbally inclined

dizygotic twins

often called fraternal twins, occurring when two eggs each get fertilized by two different sperm, resulting in two zygotes in the uterus at the same time

identifiable physiological substrate (eyesenck)

one can identify properties in the brain and central nervous system that are presumed to be part of the causal chain that produces personality traits ex: nervous system link to extraversion & arousal

there are two major foundations of traits...

one considers traits to be internal causal properties of persons that affect overt behavior the second considers traits to be descriptive summaries of overt behavior

strong situation

overwhelms the effects of individual personalities by providing strong cues for appropriate behavior when situations are weak or ambiguous, personality has its strongest influence

environmentalist view

personality was determined by socialization practices, such as parenting style

family studies

researchers assess hereditary influence by examining blood relatives to see how much they resemble one another on a specific trait as genetic similarity increases, similar traits are shared more often

MBTI

psychological test based in junian theory; four categories 1) extroversion - introversion: where do you prefer to focus your attention?: where do you get your energy? 2) sensing - intuition: how do you prefer to take in information? 3) thinking - feeling: how do you make decisions? 4) judging - perceiving: how do you deal with the outer world?

genotypic variance

refers to individual differences in the total collection of genes possessed by each person

genotype-environment interaction

refers to the differential response of individuals with different genotypes to the same environments ex: consider introverts and extraverts, who have somewhat different genotypes. introverts tend to perform well on cognitive tasks when there is little stimulation in the room, but they do poorly when there are distractions, such as music blaring or people walking around. in contrast, extraverts do just fine with the music blasting, the phone ringing, and people walking in and out. but the same extraverts make a lot of errors in these cognitive tasks when there is little stimulation—when the task they are working on is boring or monotonous

percentage of variance

refers to the fact that individuals vary, or are different from each other, and this variability can be partitioned into percentages that are due to different causes behavioral geneticists also are interested in determining the ways in which genes and the environment interact and correlate with each other

theoretical approach

researchers rely on theories to identify important traits critiques: a good starting point, but identifies what variables are important from the beginning

3. recording act performance (act frequency approach to traits)

securing information on individuals in their daily lives ex: self-reports or reports from spouses and friends

agreableness

softhearted or ruthless, trusting or suspicious, helpful or uncooperative low: academic dishonesty, risky sexual behaviors, yelling, being rude high: obedience to authority, smoke less

carelessness on trait questionnaires

some people do not respond carefully or truthfully

internal properties

some psychologists believe that there are hidden traits that cause us to behave in a certain way; they are causal properties. doesn't rely on observable behavior to examine traits, rules out other causes of behavior ex: a "need" for power might cause an individual to act in a certain way **psychologists who view traits as internal dispositions do not equate traits with external behaviors in question. for example, someone who desires to take charge in a social situation, but does not due to an already defined leader (such as a professor)

situationism

the theory that behavior is determined more by situations than by personality traits ex: being friendly at school but not friendly with strangers

HEXACO model

the HEXACO model is an alternative to the five-factor model. the HEXACO model includes six traits, five of which are variants of the traits included in the big five (emotionality [E], extraversion [X], agreeableness [A], conscientiousness [C], and openness [O]). the sixth factor, honesty-humility [H], is unique to this model

nature-nurture debate

the arguments about whether genes or environments are more important determinants of personality. the clarification comes from clearly distinguishing between two levels of analysis: the level of the individual and the level of a population of individuals

equal environments assumption

the assumption that the environments experienced by identical twins are no more similar to each other than are the environments experienced by fraternal twins if they are more similar, then the greater similarity of the identical twins could plausibly be due to the fact that they experience more similar environments rather than the fact that they have more genes in common

OCEAN

the big five traits

personality development

the continuities, consistencies, and stabilities in people over time and the ways in which people change over time ***three most important forms of stability are rank order stability, mean level stability, and personality coherence

self-esteem

the extent to which one perceives oneself as relatively close to being the person one wants to be and/or as relatively distant from being the kind of person one does not want to be, with respect to person-qualities one positively and negatively values

emotional stability

the extent to which people feel secure and unworried and how likely they are to experience negative emotions under pressure

differential psychology

the field of psychology that studies aptitudes, abilities, and intelligence- instead of just traits

intellect openness

the fifth personality trait in the five-factor model, which has proven to be replicable in studies using english trait words as items. some of the key adjective markers for openness are "creative," "imaginative," "intellectual." those who rate high on openness tend to remember their dreams more and have vivid, prophetic, or problem-solving dreams

selective breeding

the human practice of breeding animals or plants that have certain desired traits

evocation (dynamic interactionism)

the idea that certain personality traits may evoke specific responses from the environment

temperament

the individual differences that emerge very early in life, are likely to have a heritable basis and are often involved with emotionality or arousability

person-situation interaction

the influence of the situation on the stability of traits; when in the same situation, we display similar behavior, but when the situation is different, behavior may change

rank order stability

the maintenance of individual position within the group. ex: the most shy at 20 within a group will be the most shy at 50 within in that same group if people tend to maintain their positions on dominance or extraversion relative to the others over time, then there is high rank order stability to those personality characteristics conversely, if people fail to maintain their rank order—if the submissive people rise up and put down the dominants, for example—then the group is displaying rank order instability, or rank order change

experimental method

the method in which the researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions and ensures that these conditions are identical except for the independent variable (the one thought to have a causal effect on people's responses) advantages: can establish correlations disadvantages: ethics, can't manipulate some variables

faking on questionnaires

the motivated distortion of answers on questionnaires

eugenics

the notion that we can design the future of the human species by fostering the reproduction of persons with certain traits and by discouraging the reproduction of persons without those traits sir francis galton

aggregation

the process of adding up, or averaging, several single observations, resulting in a better measure of a personality trait than a single observation of behavior ex: tests with more items are more reliable than tests with fewer items traits are best at predicting trends or averages, and will never be good at predicting single behaviors on single occasions

molecular genetics

the subfield of biology that studies the molecular structure and function of genes identifies specific genes or combinations of genes associated with personality

honesty-humility

trait people think is missing from big five

statistical approach

uses factor analysis, or similar statistical procedures, to identify major personality traits

phenotype

visible manifestation of genetic makeup

criticism about act frequency approach to traits

what about failures to act? does not take this into consideration. also does not specify how much context should be included in the description of a trait-relevant act however, helps to explicitly point out behavioral phenomena & regularities. help with cultural similarities & differences

trait-descriptive adjectives

words that describe traits, attributes of a person that are reasonably characteristic of the individual and perhaps even enduring over time