Psych Exam #3

What might help us to understand how situations and traits work together to produce behaviors?

Some situations are strong (limit individual differences in behavior) and others are weak (afford bigger differences across people in their behaviors)

Example of a strong situation

a wedding

In novel situation, behavior change is most common when the situation provides what?

clear info or norms about how to behave

If you do not have a life story that makes sense to you, it is hard to have a _____ identity

coherent

What is the term for a narrative sequence in which a positive circumstance is spoiled and ends in a negative outcome?

contamination

Erikson described late life ego integrity as being the opposite of what feeling?

despair

True or false : individual differences in narrative are more stable than individual differences in motivations

false

True or false: all across cultures people tend to tell redemptive life stories

false

True or false: in actor-partner models, actor effects refer to correlations b/t person A's traits and person B's relationship satisfaction

false

True or false: personality maturation is caused only by entering into adult social roles

false

True or false: there are differences in mean trait levels b/t only children and those w/ siblings

false

What is the word for concern and commitment to promoting the well-being of others and of future generations?

generativity

How does a personal narrative help to shape an adaptive personality structure?

it provides a sense of meaning, purpose and goals

As people age, their goals change towards what?

maintaining and strengthening relationships w/ close others

Compared to younger people, those in late life remember more _________ memories

positive

What is the term that describes how your trait might cause someone to pull you into a situation?

recruitment

Mischel thought that findings showing correlations b/t a trait and a behavior were about .30 demonstrated the importance of situation about traits. Why was he wrong?

thats actually a pretty big effect size, the studies used unreliable trait measures, effects are bigger when you aggregate across situations

If you are in a novel situation, which of your traits will be most important for predicting your behavior?

the traits that are the most central to your personality identity

True or false: identical twins who differ in their outcomes may differ b/c they develop different motivations and goals that set them on different trajectories

true

True or false: in more western industrialized nations, being more gender typical on traits (having scores that fall b/t means) is associated w/ better psychological adjustment

true

What kind of situations weak or positive produce the largest individual difference?

weak

What is the mechanism by which your partner's personality can impact your own success?

you can emulate a partner's high C or outsource some of your other responsibilities to a high C partner

According to the reminiscence bump, people recall memories from which developmental period when telling a life story?

-15-30 (adolescence to young adulthood)n

Actor and Partner affects

-2 people in 1 relationship. -Sometimes hard to do research because you can't just ask 1 person Actor effects... -Measuring within one person -Person 1's trait --->Person 1's outcomes -Person 2's trait --->Person 2's outcome -Biases can inflate Partner effects... -Measuring between people -Person 1's trait--> Person 2's outcome -Person 2's trait ---> Person 1's outcome -Biases can cancel each other out Additive effects... -actor + partner effects Interactive effects... -Actor x partner effects -Effect on one is dependent on the other -Example: when both people are neurotic, it's much more than just adding the neuroticism together, it creates a bigger effect because they are dependent -additive effects are a better fit than interactive effects

Autobiographical memory

-Ability to remember things about ourselves over time -Kid's don't have much of this. As you get older, this increases as you have more experiences -Has a special element that helps you remember later in life (It's about yourself)

High generative people correlate with...

-Being engaged in a lot of activities -Having high well-being and adjustment -Being authoritative parents = Warm and firmness with rule

Relationship satisfication

-Best predictor is actor and partner neuroticism -Secondary predictors are positive emotionality and conscientiousness -They matter for actor more than partner

Personality and health

-Best predictors of longevity: high extraversion and conscientiousness -How traits affect health = Physiological responses to stress associated with traits -Chronic stress and neuroticism = shorter longevity -Conscientiousness = longer longevity -Health-promoting or damaging behavior -responses to illness such as treatment

Assortative mating

-Birds of a feather flock together -Not a large effect -Associated with satisfaction -Attractiveness, socioeconomic status, and education have greater effects on choosing partners than does personality

Personality and work

-Conscientiousness is the best predictor of work outcomes (Even after accounting for the education) --Relationships can bleed into work and the other way around... -Stress at home (your partner's mood), financial pressures, and role strain can bleed into work --Partners can also improve work life... -Outsourcing = Helping with tasks at home to reduce burdens -Emulation = Picking up good habits from the partner -Relationship satisfaction -Neuroticism and conscientiousness are most related to these processes

Novelty and uncertainty

-Creates distress -Easiest route is to use automatic responses -Relying on traits turns unpredictable situations in predictable ones -Routine situations provide scripts, which reduce individual differences -The trait you accentuate the most in uncertainty is your most central characterics

Life stories and culture

-Culture provides the outline -Different cultures tell stories differently -There is a template for how a culture tells their story --Master narrative = dominant type of story in your society --Central group identity --Idea of group's history and destiny

Conditions favoring continuity and change

-During transitions into new situations -When there is a strong press to behave -Continuity is favored if = There is no information about how to behave adaptively -Change is favored if = Previous responses are actively discouraged and Clear information is provided about how to behave adaptively

Examples of transitions

-Entering the military -Starting college -New relationship -Getting a new boss

Strong vs weak situations

-Example of strong: sitting in class while the professor lectures = Less individual differences -Example of weak: walking through the hallways with friends after lecture = More individual differences, Reveals our true colors -Traits are relationships between contexts and behaviors -Traits link "if" and "then

Autobiological self

-Facts about your life and perception of yourself -Pieces of information you see as relevant to yourself to include in your story -The story is motivated -People pick and choose aspects of the story to emphasize, and neglect others -People don't pick randomly, and don't tell everything about themselves

What are the brain differences?

-Functional differences instead of structural differences -Sensitivity of brain systems to inputs or differences in strengths of their outputs -E.g. Extraversion has potential relations with the reward processes including dopamine pathways and serotonin pathways. -E.g. Agreeableness is thought to be related to the oxytocin. -E.g. Neuroticism is known to be related to amygdala

The functional neural correlates

-Generally, in areas consistent with the behaviors that define the trait -Small samples (less certain) -Neural imaging data tend to be expensive to collect -Don't always mean more activity in a region -Designs can't determine causality -Other biological markers also of interest -Brain correlates do NOT rule out environmental causes

High levels of generativity are associated with what personality trait?

-High C -High A

Highlights of a narrative

-High point -Low point -Turning point -Early childhood -Values -Challenges -Important characters -Central theme

American generativity

-Includes a redemption story --"I wasn't a great person before so now I'm going to give to others to make up for it" --The foster system wasn't very good when I was a kid, so I decided to spend my adult life trying to improve it for others" -Key elements of a redemptive life story --The protagonist suffers --Suffering leads to positive outcome --Negative events have a positive meaning --The good-self preserves and is enhanced --As a culture, we reject stories that aren't consistent with this story line -Post traumatic growth --We expect people to experience a period of negativity after a traumatic event, however,some people report a period of growth

Erikson: ego integrity vs despair

-Integrity = Accepting your life as having been worthwhile; gratitude -Despair = Regret; recrimination; rejecting one's life of having been good

Measuring generativity

-Measure through list of personal strivings --Broader than a goal --Example of goal: to run a 7-minute mile --Example of a striving: to increase physical fitness -Measure through narrative themes --Caring and productivity --In order to be generative, person needs to actually generate their care into acts into the world -Generativity may not transfer across all domains (activist aren't the best parents)

Solomon and Jackson: Partners and work

-Measured actor and partner conscientiousness and work outcomes -Partner conscientiousness predicts job satisfaction, income, and promotion -Emulation predicts job satisfaction and promotion -Partner conscientiousness predicts outsourcing, emulation, and relationship satisfaction -Effects are significant beyond actor traits -Effects are the same for 1 and 2 incomes households

Personality and relationships

-Most researched relationship types are romantic -Parent-child relationships are also researched, but less often -Personality is also related to friendships, but not as heavily -There are differences between romantic and parent-child relationships -Although, trait relationship quality associations are similar = Neuroticism and conscientiousness = It's hard to cultivate relationships when these traits are at extremes

Erikson's view on generativity

-Opposite of stagnation --Can lead to a very psychologically unhealthy life if you don't care about something anymore -Begin to limit caring about parenting --Activists aren't always the best parents -Begin expanding caring about community/world

Relationship outcomes

-Personality predicts if people are in a relationship or not -Assortative mating: low and high positive emotionality -being in a relationship = high PEM -Personality predicts relationship quality/satisfaction = Biggest effect is high negative emotionality, Also important is conscientiousness, agreeableness, and positive emotionality (organized in the order of the effect size: C>A>E) -personality is more important than looks -Personality predicts relationship longevity = High neuroticism is associated with a shorter relationships

Cumulative continuity principles of personality change

-Processes operate to increase continuity with age -When entering new environments, you in turn enter environments that go along with it, making it difficult to leave one without assessing the others -We select into environments consistent with our traits and those trait-consistent environments stabilize traits -You become more "yourself" over time because your environment encourages it -Identity development stabilizes individual differences -Normative maturation ---> less impetus for change

Study with discordant twins

-Revealing how life paths differentiate the genetically identical -Twin pairs in which one monozygotic twin had a history of depression and the other did not -Qualitative interviews were conducted with each member of the twin pairs -Depression depended on how they viewed the negative event and how they talked about it in their life story

Protagonist of the narrative

-Stories are about a person and they are who we are supposed to identify with -We are the protagonist in our own narrative -We describe others relative to ourselves

Themes of narratives

-Themes of agency and communion -Redemption sequences = Takes a low point and uses it as a basis for personal growth -Contamination sequences = Takes a high point and turns it into something negative, These people tend to have poor psychological functioning -Personal growth -Complexity and coherence

Need for power narratives

-They tell a lot of stories full of themes of mastery, status, and victory -They more easily remember these -Motivations are related to the stories told

Biological basis of traits

-Trait relevant behavior includes... -Emotional reactivity -> N and E -Self-control and attention -> C -Aggression and caring -> A -All species-typical behaviors are rooted in our evolution -Basic systems for emotion, self-control, and aggression have old bases in brain system -Systems preserved across evolution are involved in personality + Individual differences in traits --> Trait differences are shaped by brain differences

corresponsive principle of personality change

-Traits that select you into experiences are the ones that are most influenced by these experiences -Example: High extraversion leads to a leadership position, that position causes an increase in extraversion and not in other traits

Generativity

-Usually after middle age -Service and giving back -Acknowledgement of not being around forever -Sometimes traits and motivations may be in conflict... --Gandhi's activism cannot be predicted by traits alone --Motivations overcome traits -Concern and commitment to promoting well-being of others and future generations -Transfer of energy and resources to caring for others and future -mostly close family

Caspi and Moffitt

-When do individual differences matter? -How important are personality traits? -behaviors are caused by multiple factors -trait stability is not about behaving consistently in all contexts -trait stability is about consistently in how we modify and respond to our contexts -traits matter more to explain your personality in situations that are changing, not routine situations

Your life story

-When life changes, your story changes -New self-understanding leads to a change in story -Less stable than traits and motivations -People want to maintain a sense of psychological integrity and need to find activities to match

Reminiscence bump

-When people are asked about their life story, even at old age, they recall memories from late adolescence and early adulthood -Events at this time set the stage for your life course

The person-situation debate

-a controversial debate centering on whether people really do behave consistently across situations -Walter Mischel 1969 = a time of change and focus on our sociocultural context (such as trying to understand social rights movement and how we interact in groups) -at this time, people thought that interactions of groups (social psychology) was more important than individual people (personality) -Mischel believed that behavior is situationally determined -the situation is primary and not internal psychology -people behave relatively similar in certain situations (EX : prison experiment and Milgrams obedience experiment) = however there were still people who did not conform showing individual differences in responses

Do the effects of personality on marital satisfaction vary by sex?

-actor effects = no -partner effects = small differences

Trait-behavior associations argument against Mischel

-argument against Mischel -personality psychology's understanding of traits is not as narrow as predicting a single behavior in a single situation -trait are about if-then relationship tendencies -personality is stable b/c you have tendency to behave a certain way -there is variability across people and within people

Psychological and social support

-as psychological and physical systems decline, cultural support inc -checking in more with old people -accepting of old people saying inappropriate things or telling the same story again -they provide wisdom in return

Coherent identity

-auhentic self -Describe yourself in a way that is consistent with behavior -Reliable social actor -Behave in ways that others can understand and fit together -when these are low, there is lower psychological adjustment and more mental health problem

Principles of personality change

-become more conscientious and less neurotic over time -social investment -cumulative continuity -corresponsive principle -selection -recruitment -attrition -deselection

Erikson about achieving identity

-becoming adult -without this you cannot go on and complete adult roles

Individual differences are accentuated in situations that are...

-changing -ambiguous -uncertain -novel

Accentuation (emphasizing) of traits

-individual differences across people widen -the most salient trait within a person will become more obvious -because new environments are challenging and confusing, so we revert to what we know

Mischel's arguments about person-situation debate

-individual differences in personality cause behavior, then the correlation b/t traits and specific behaviors should be very high -if people behave differently across different situations, that is evidence against the role of traits and behavior -empirical studies find correlations b/t traits and behaviors around .30 = impact of this paper was that people believed this correlation was useless and personality psychology was useless, so personality psych disappeared for a while -Mischel was not right, he misunderstood the trait-behavior relationship

Traits in late life

-less data available in late life -trait stability declines in the last decades -mean level decline in extraversion -inc in neuroticism (predicts mortality)

Counter arguments to Mischel about person-situation debate

-low correlation b/t traits and specific behavior could be because of unmeasured traits or unreliability of traits (studies that existed then used weak self report measures) -he claimed that situational features cause behavior, but there is little evidence showing they predict specific behaviors -a correlation b/t a trait and behavior of .30 is not small by standards of effect sized in psychology -traits help select people into environments, so situation and traits can not be separated in the real world (situations are not randomly assigned) -trait-behavior associations -aggregation

Sex differences in personality

-mean-level differences in traits: -On self-report, women are higher on extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness -Differences in neuroticism are the largest and most consistent across the lifespan -Depend on which aspects of each trait the measure emphasizes (sub-traits) -Men are higher on dominance; women are higher on affiliation -Men are higher on traditionalism; women are higher on harm avoidance -Men are higher on aggression; women are higher on anxiety -Magnitude: mean differences are small -Pervasiveness: differences are present across many cultures -Sex differences in traits vary across cultures -Sex differences in mean-levels are larger in more industrialized nations and those with less traditional values and more opportunity for gender equity -in cultures with threats to health, fewer educational and economic opportunities, personality traits are less differentiate -extreme environments restrain differences in traits

Myth or fact: Only child is bossy, spoiled, leaders

-myth -birth order has no effect on mean trait levels

Myth or fact: some people are "extroverted introverts"

-myth -many people fall in the middle of distribution -just makes you average

Myth or fact: kids today are more narcissistic

-myth -no evidence

3rd layer of personality psych

-narrative -the way you think about your life -Use narratives and story telling to explain complicated situations -Help explain naturally occurring phenomenon -Relevant to culture = culture emphasizes guidelines for a good story and what is important -The first two layers have small culture differences. -Individual difference

Narrative identity

-not objective -Your description may be very different than how others see you -Internalized, evolving sense of self -It is constructed -Provides unity, purpose, and meaning -You want to engage in behaviors consistent with your narrative identity -Doesn't exist to tell the truth -Exists to help you feel coherent and make sense of your decisions

What is the term for things or goals you try to accomplish in your everyday behavior?

-personal striving -more specific -Ex; motivation for health by personal striving to go to gym

What is true about rank-order stability of personality traits in later life? (after age 75)

-rank-order stability declines at the end of the lifespan

Social investment principle of personality change

-take on role of parenting = conscientious of feeding child the right food

Limitations on relationship personality

-the focus is on married, straight couples -Exclusive focus on traits, leaving out motivations, values, and narrative identity

Aggregation argument against Mischel

-the more you observe people in multiple, you can better predict their behavior -behavior is often highly situationally specific at the level of single instance/items but not at aggregated level -behaviors are complex, multiple traits can each have a small effect

Whose traits are accentuated the most in times of transition?

-those with the most extreme traits -Ex; very extroverted person appears even more extroverted

End of life issues with narrative identity

-understanding we have a beginning and an end -we imagine our ending and incorporate that into our story -generativity is one way to manage mortality by leaving something behind and realizing when things are coming to an end and wanting to wrap things up

In old age...

-we become critics rather than writers of our story -cognitive and physical decline shape our older years and approach to our narrative (cant remember everything anymore) -aging is associated with positive bias in our recollections (this is associated w/ well being) -scaling back and doubling down = neurophysiological changes = memory and planning resources decline, we scale back on agentic pursuits and seek more assistance

Cartensen's model of socioemotional selectivity

-with aging, we narrow down our priorities to the small number of things that matter the most such as family and friends -we hold tight to what gives us the most happiness and meaning

How to make a negative event positive in your life story?

1.) process the event = meaning, role in your life, why it happened 2.) commit to a positive relationship to the event

What is related to personality maturation?

Both brain development and entering into adult social roles

Traits associated with generativity

C and A

deselection principle of personality change

Drift away because of my trait

People with low levels of this trait are the least likely to be in a romantic relationship

E

Why personality effects divorce?

Enduring dynamics = Personality traits correlate with relationship behaviors (how you treat the partner), which impacts relationship quality/satisfaction Emergent distress... -Personality traits impact worsening relationship behaviors which impact relationship quality/satisfaction -Not an ongoing stable thing. If maladaptive, gets worse over time -enduring dynamics have larger effects

True or false: In industrial, Western cultures, being more gender typical on personality traits (similar to the mean scores for someone of your gender on traits, as compared to being closer to the mean of the other gender) is associated with better psychological adjustment

False

attrition principle of personality change

Kicked out because of my trait

selection principle of personality change

My traits make some environmental more appealing

Changes in which big 5 trait predict mortality in the elderly?

NE

The biggest mean level sex differences on any big 5 trait are on which trait?

NE

recruitment principle of personality change

Others pull me into environments because of my traits