Personality test one
Funders definition of personality
"an individuals characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms-hidden or not-behind those patterns"
What four things can cause an error to reliability?
-Low precision -State of the participant -State of the experimenter -Environment
What do certain responses on the rorschach mean?
-two animals fighitng may reveal underlying personal conflcits -explosinos may symbolize hostility -pigs may symbolize selfish or gluttonous tendencies -foxes may symbolize crafty tendencies -spiders, witches and octopi may symbolize intrusion or domination -gorillas and giants may symbolize dominating parents -ostriches may symbolize hiding from conflicts
Q-sort measures of personality What are they
100 cards that have various traits and qualities on them. To begin you read each card and sort them into three broad categories (non characteristic, neutral and characteristic) Then you take the cars and re sort them in each category to make the experiment more refined.
Agreement/ disagreement among providers of I data about a persons behavior
A person brought into the lab might detest the person being spoken about or be infatuated (unbeknownst to the experimenter)
Authoritarianism
A personality trait characterized by strong respect for authority, contempt for those lower on the social hierarchy and in some cases racial prejudice.
Basic approach
A theoretical view of personality that focuses on some phenomena and ignores others. The basic approaches are trait, biological, psychoanalityic, phenomenological, learning and cognitive (the last two being closely related)
Advantages and disadvantages to self reports according to BLIS model
Advantages- each person may be his or her own most knowledgable informant. Easy to gather data Causal force-because this data reflects what you think of yourself, they have a way of creating their own reality. Disadvantages-people sometimes will not or cannot tell researchers what the researchers want to know, and the S data may be so easy to collect that researchers over rely on them, losing the advantage of multiple perspectives.
Advantages and disadvantages of Life according to BLIS
Advantages-intrinsically important and potentially psychologically relevant. Publicly available record. Disadvantages-the data might not be psychologically relevant or meaningful. Trying to establish direct connections between specific attributes of personality and life outcomes can be extraordinarily difficult.
Pros and con to behavior observation
Advantages-we can observe a ton of different kinds of beahvior and this data is likely to be objective. Disadvantages-its not always clear what these observations mean psychologically.
Relation between "aggregation" and reliability
Aggregation is adding or averaging scores on several different items or measures of a particular trait. Over the long haul, random influences tend to cancel one another out. When you average out a bunch of scores you are likely to cover up error. The answer to a single question could be unreliable but if a group of similar questions is asked the average of the answers ought to be much more stable or reliable because random fluctuations tend to cancel each other out and are thus more reliable.
Personality predictors, or correlates, of liberal and conservative political preferences
An experiment that tracked childrens political beliefs for 20 years found that children who grew into political conservatives were likely to have been described almost 20 years earlier as tending to feel guilty, as anxious in unpredictable environments, and as unable to handle stress well. Those who grew into liberals, by contrast, were more likely to have been described years earlier as resourceful, independent, self reliant and confident.
What is reliability?
An index of the consistency of scores on a test. High reliability indicates that a test measures "something" (whatever it actually measures) relatively consistently and reasonably free of error
Describe the factor analytic self report measure
Based on statistics Factor analysis is a statistical method for finding order amid seeming chaos-it is designed to identify groups of things-such as test items-that seem to be alike. The properties that makes these things alike are factors. A CORRELATIONAL TECHNIQUE THAT ALLOWS ONE TO IDENTIFY GROUPS OF ITEMS THAT CLUSTER OR "BELONG" TOGETHER, FORMING A SINGLE DIMENSION.
Problems with the MMPI
Because the items were derived empirically rather than theoretically, they can seem arbitrary or absurd The value of this kind of test depends heavily ont he criterion groups used to create it, and they may not have been the best for the purpose Some of the items have different meanings to different ethnic groups Some scales have low test-retest reliability or low internal consistency reliability.
Four kinds of clues to understand personality data BLIS
Behavior, Life, Informants, Self Judgment
Describe the second wave of research on media violence
Collected quantitative data from a large and representation of youth The researchers studied the link between TV viewing habits and deviant behavior in 2300 junior/senior high school students who listed 4 favorite TV shows. Each show had a Nielson "violence" rating, so a total violence score could be assigned to each perosn. The subjects also completed a deviant behavior checklist so there was 2 measures 1. degree of violence with their four favorite shows 2. amount of reported deviant behavior. Found that these measured were correlated at about r=.40.
What is the value of measuring conscientiousness as a trait?
Conscientiousness predicts a lot of valuable things like integrity at work, job performance, success in college and even longer life expectancy. These reasons make it valuable to measure.
Q-sort what value they have
Delay of gratification studies - there were gender similarities and differences in Q sort predictors of delay of gratification even years after the test-meaning personality is stable -Girls and boys show a similar pattern in that those whoa re planful, reflective, reasonable and not emotionally unstable are likely to delay most in the experimental tests. -Ego resiliency was a predictor for girls (perhaps because delaying-"behaving properly" is more a part of the normal little girl role -Intellectual ability-intelligence was also important when the rewards were large
External validity
Do research findings in the lab or in a survey generalize to real world settings?
More on the person situation debate
Does an individuals personality transcend the immediate situation and provide a consistent guide to understanding and predicting his or her actions, or is a persons behavior mostly dependnet on the situation at a particular moment in time? Are common, ordinary intuitions about people fundamentally flawed, or basically correct? Why do psychologists continue to argue about the consistency of personality, year after year, decade after decade, whent he basic empirical questions were settled long ago?
What are some other behaviors that have been seen absed on the results of the california q-set
Drug abuse at age 14 was predicatble from the q-sort items such as restless and fidgety, emotionally unstable, disobedient, domineering and aggressive 10 years earlier Depression at age 18 Political orientation
What makes a person a good or poor judge of others personalities
Early findings-depends on the context or trait; intelligent and conscientious people are generally better Accuracy of men and women-women are better at judging extraversion and positive emotionally at zero aquaintance For males-good jusges are extraverted, well-adjusted, unconcerned with what others think of them For females-good judges are open, have a wide range of interests, value independence, are high in communion (invested in developing and maintaining interpersonal relationships), socially skilled, agreeable, and well adjusted.
What are the main criteria to evaluate personality judgments or assessments?
Evaluations of professional personality judgments or personality tests are said to appraise their validity; whereas evaluations of amateur judgments generally use the term accuracy. The basis of the evaluation is the same either way. Two basic criteria are available: agreement and prediction. The agreement criterion asks: Does this judgment agree with other judgments obtained through other techniques or from other judges (whether professional or amateur)? The prediction criterion asks: can this judgment of personality be used to predict behavior or other life outcomes?
Other visible signs of personality
Extraversion-fashionable dress, stylish haircut, speaking in a relatively loud voice openness-variety of reading material conscientiousness-neatness of bedroom musical preferences-inventive, imaginative, tolerant and liberal; curious, risk taking and physically attractive handshakes-extraversion and emotional expressiveness; shy and anxiety
Phenomenological approach
Focus on peoples conscious experience of the world, their phenomenology. Two directions Humanistic psychology-pursues how conscious awareness can produce such uniquely human attributes and tries to understand the meaning and basis of happiness. cross-cultural personality- the degree to which psychology and the very experience of reality might be different in different cultures.
What is Funder's Realistic Accuracy Model?
For a personality trait or attribute to be judged accurately, four things must usually happen 1. The person must do something RELEVANT to the trait or attribute 2. The information must be AVAILABLE to the judge 3. The judge must DETECT the information 4. The judge must USE the information correctly This is all easier to do if you create an environment in which a person can be him-herself and if you the judge remember to be alert, attentive and observant.
According to Funder how can personality research be improved?
Get out of the laboratory-measure personality traits and predicts behavior that are important in real life. Include moderator variables (i.e., variables that interact with traits to determine behavior in particular situations Focus on behavioral trends, use aggregation across situations
Summarize Mischels 1968 book Personality and Assment
He argued that behavior is too inconsistent from one situation to the next to allow individual differences to be characterized accurately in terms of broad personality traits. He basically preached the situation side of the person-situation debate Mischels review of the personality research literature seemed to reveal an upper limit to how well we can predict what a person will do based on measuring his/her personality, and Mischel claimed that the upper limit was low (a small correlation of r=.30) -he concluded that situations are more important than personality in determining behavior. He thought that the trait words used to describe people are not reliably descriptive, and people generally see others as more consistent across time and situations than they really are.
Differences between S (self-reports) and B data (e.g., performance on the IAT) related to the trait of shyness
Implicit association test (IAT) measures how quickly participants respond to instructions to discriminate between terms that apply to "me" or to "others" and between terms that are relevant or not to the trait being measured. For the shyness study each participant say at a computer and responded as quickly as possible to whether such terms as "self" or "them" referred to "me" or "others" and then to whether such other terms as "inhibited" or "candid" referred to "shy" or "nonshy". Finally, participants did both tasks at the same time. Also had subjects do a self report and talk to an attractive member of the opposite sex. Results were that aspects of shyness that participants consciously controlled could be predicted by the S data shyness scores while the more spontaneous indicators of shyness (like body postures) were predicted much better by the IAT measures. This result suggests that although peoples awareness of their own shyness is only partially conscious, their deeper, underlying knowledge can not only be measured, but also used to predict behavior.
How a persons own judgments about his or her personality might differ from those of observers (example shy people)
In a study shy and nonshy people called individuals of the opposite sex and asked them to reutrn a simple questionnaire. While everyone promised to return the questionnaire, the people called by the shy people were less likely to actually do it, apparently because the shy person was hesitant and halting. This negative response reinforces peoples perceptions of shy people-people perceive them as being cold and aloof. It is more likely that they are just afraid of social interaction and do not mean to come off that way.
Predictability of personality from faces and first impressions
In a study, after undergraduates sat together in small groups for only 15 minutes without talking their ratings of each other correlated better than .30 for extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to new experience. Judging just from the face, people can judge how dominant vs. submissive a person is and whether s/he is heterosexual or homosexual. From composite faces of extreme scorers, people can differentiate between low vs. high agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness for male faces, and between low vs. high agreeableness and extraversion for female faces.
Informants according to BLIS model
Informants are other peoples reports about the target person
Rorschach Inkblot test
It is an unstructured disguised and designed to access and covert unconscious perceptual schemas and motivational forces that may guide behavior. -generate rich and varied responses symetrical ill defined inkblots in which people describe what they see in each one. Rorschach thought that projections could reveal unconscious aspects of personality and unconscious determination of social behavior.
What is the MMPI
It was developed empirically as a screening device for psychiatric patients It generated a large and very diverse pool of self report items that could be answer T/F/cannot say format They used several criterion groups (e.g., normal people, psychopaths, schizophrenics, depressives) They selected items that best distinguished normal people from those in the clinical criterion groups and distinguished the clinical groups from each other Items on each scale were the validated against clinical interviews and actual behavior in test situations. Despite the difficulties, rationally constructed psychometric tests tend to have higher reliability and validity than either projective tests or empirically constructed tests that lack face validity, such as the MMPI.
Reasons why behavior in a particular situation is often not easy to predict accurately from personality variables
Most people are somewhat consistent and somewhat inconsistent. Personality consists of -characteristic patterns -relatively consistent patterns; over time, across situations. But personality is not the only factor that influences behavior: -there are differences over time (development, maturation, education, socialization) -There are differences across situations (social pressures, social/situational roles, imitation of others behavior)
Thematic apperception test
Most widely used projective test Consists of a series of drawings that depict individuals facing important life situations Respondents tell a story about each scene, describing what is going on, what the people are thinking and feeling, what led up to the situation and what is likely to happen henceforth.
Life according to BLIS
Objectively measurable features of the persons life, such as educational attainment, athletic achievements, job titles and performance, marital history, having been a prisoner of war, having had skin cancer.
The big 5 personality traits
Openness to new experience-wide interests, imaginative, intelligent, insightful, curious, sophisticated Conscientiousness-organized, thorough, efficient, responsible Extraversion-talkative, assertive, energetic, outgoing, dominant, enthusiastic, sociable, spunky, adventurous Agreeableness- sympathetic, kind, appreciative, affectionate, soft-hearted, warm Neuroticism-tense, anxious, nervous, moody, worrying, touchy
Personality types vs personality traits
Personality traits develop from a combination of genetic factors and early experience Personality just keeps developing as a function of physical and psychological maturation and the different experiences and challenges that characterize different periods of the life span. RANK ORDER STABILITY-ones relative position on a personality trait, such as extraversion, doesn't usually change much over time But there is considerable age related change with most of the change occurring in some traits but not others.
Explain the study in which teachers were told that some children were "bloomers"
Researchers conducted a battery of tests and told teachers that certain children were "bloomers" meaning that they were really intelligent and were going to experience an intellectual growth spurt in the near future (this was in fact randomly assigned and not true). However, when compared with children at the end of the school year, the bloomers had actually bloomed-their IQ's had actually significantly gone up. This could have happened for four reasons- climate, refering to the ways that teachers project a warmer emotinal attitude toward the students that they expect to do well, feedback, refers to feedback being clearer and more differentiated, input, for example, extra help and extra challenges and output- chances to demonstrate skills
What happened during the study in which participants walked more like an elderly person if they and just solved puzzles with the words gray, wise, retired and Florida?
Researchers primed subcounscious thoughts about old age by having participants solve puzzzles that included the words gray, wise, bingo, forgetful, lonely, retired and Florida. After subjects were primed they were sent down the hallway and the B data collected recorded their walking speed. The results showed that people high in "self consciousness" walked more slowly compared with people high int his trait who had read neutral words, whereas people low in this trait were unaffected. These results imply that self conscious people translated these elderly relevant words into thoughts about themselves, and this unconsciously caused them to walk slower, as if they were elderly.
Describe empirically constructed self report measures
STRUCTURED AND DISGUISED These tests force people to respond to a limited number of response options, the true purpose of which is concealed. Example is the MMPI. Such tests are used by empirically oriented researchers who accept self-reports as useful but worry about socially desirable responding, faking or lying, and self deception.
Describe the rational self-report measure
STRUCTURED AND NON-DISGUISED TESTS The basis of this approach is to come up with items that seem directly, obviously, and rationally related to what the test developer wishes to measure. Example-the 16PF and Big five trait tests. These are used by empirically oriented researchers who accept self-reports as useful and dont worry too much about self report biases.
What are the four scales of MMPI?
Scale 1-hypochondriacs Scale 2-depression Scale 3-Hysteria Scale 4-Psychopathic Deviate The other scales include Masculinity-Femininity, paranoia, psychasthenia, schizophrenia, hypomania, and social introversion as well as 4 validity scales.
Trait approach
Some personality psychologists focus their efforts on the ways that people differ psychologically and how these differences might be conceptualized and measured. measure individual difference traits reliably and validity. Use these measures to predict and explain behavior.
What are the three kinds of reliability?
Test-retest Interrater (inter-judge) Internal consistency-how much do scores on the measure correlate with each other
More detail about the empirical approach
The MMPI was developed empirically as a screening device for psychiatric patients 1. Generated a large and very diverse pool of self report items that could be answered in a "true/false/cannot say" format 2. They used several criterion groups (e.g., normal people, psychopaths, schizophrenics, depressives, hypocondriacs) 3. They selected items taht best distinguished normal people from those in the clinical criterion groups and distinguished the clinical groups from each other. 4. Items on each scale were then validated against clinical interviews and actual behavior in test situations. basic implication is that certain kinds of people have a way of answering certain types of questions.
Predictive validity
The degree to which a test accurately predicts what it was intended and designed to predict Example-The SAT was designed to predict grades in, and graduation from college. Because it does this fairly well, the SAT has good predictive validity
Concurrent validity
The degree to which a test can serve as a substitute or "stand in" measure for another longer or more costly test that could be conducted at the same time or in the same situation Example-To assess brain damage, one might use a simple psychological test rather than a more costly and dangerous test. Because the costly test does a pretty good job of assessing brain damage when its results are compared with those of a concurrent neurologicale xam, it his high concurrent validitty.
Construct validity
The degree to which a test is meaningfully correlated with tests that measure similar constructs and is unrelated to conceptually dissimilar or irrelevant measures Example-our avoidant attachment scale predicts avoidant behaviors in actual relationships an in various laboratory situations, and it does so better than related Big Five trait scales, such as those for introversion and agreeableness. If a test consistently confirms specific patterns or associations derived from a theory, it has high construct validity.
Content validity
The degree to which a tests content is specifically relevant to what it is designed or intended to measure Example-IQ tests: does a given IQ test actually measure IQ rather than something else, such as motivation to succeed?
What does correlation mean
The extent to which two or more variables are associated with one another
Performance on IAT in relation to shyness
The implicit association test measures how quickly participants respond to instructions to discriminate between terms that apply to "me" or "others" and to terms that are relative or not to the trait being measured.
Scales included in some inventories to detect lying, faking, erratic responding, etc. (e.g., the commonality scale of the CPI)
The inventor of the CPI included on his test a scale called commonality, which consists solely of items that are answered in the same way by at least 95% of all people. Basically if you are illiterate and guess on the test you will probably get 50%. It is easy to throw this test away.
What was problematic about the wave one studies?
The list of problems is long (special samples, no quantitative measures, interviewers' subjective impressions and biases.
Problems with second wave of studies
This doesnt tell us whether watching more violent TV actually causes increased aggression. Being more aggressive may cause individuals to watch more violent TV, or some other variable amy explain the association.
The F scale
This scale aimed to measure the basic antidemocratic psychological orientation that these researchers believed to be the common foundation of anti-semitism, racial prejudcie, and political pseudoconservatism
Describe the third wave of studies on media violence
This used experimental studies Tested whether 5-9 year old children who watched a violent video were more willing to hurt others compared with children who did not watch the violent video Half of the children watched a violent 3 minute sport clip while the other group watched a nonviolent 3 minute sport clip. (manipulated independent variable) Children were led to another room and seated in from of a help/hurt box in which the child thought that they could either help or hurt another child. "help button" made the handle easier to turn and the hurt button" made it hot and painful Results-children who saw the violent film were about 3 times more likely to hurt others than children who saw the non violent film.
What are the three basic measures commonly used for constructing personality tests?
Three basic measures are commonly used for constructing objective personality tests: the rational method, the factor analytic method, and the empirical method
What does the term "correlation is not necessary causation" mean
To determine causality, we have to use experimental methods. Just because ice cream sales are increased on days when there are more drownings does not mean that there is a link between the two.
Explain what happened in the experiment about ones supposed attractiveness and social communication
Two opposite sex college students were brought into the lab-entering from opposite ends and never actually seeing one another. The experimenter took a picture of the female participant and told her that you are going to meet someone over the phone and we are going to give this picture to them so they can visualize who you are. The male was given a picture of either a really attractive woman or non attractive woman (not the actual photo of the person he was talking to). They told him that he was going to be talking to the girl in the photo. After they deleted the male part of the conversation and showed another group of males just the female voice and asked them to rate it. Results-if the male had seen an attractive photo the female was more likely to have behaved in a manner rated as warm, humorous, and poised than when he saw an unattractive photo. His behavior caused her to be this way.
Describe subjective tests
UNSTRUCTURED AND NON-DISGUISED Allows individuals to respond freely and the true purposes of the test are not concealed
What is the person situation debate?
What is more important in determining what people do, the person or the situation?
What is the goal of the TAT?
When interpreting ambiguous situations, people reveal their goals, needs, worries and concerns by projecting them onto the story characters. They usually arent aware that they're talking about themselves, and thus their defenses are somewhat relaxed. The TAT really does seem to reveal partly unconscious or inhibited, or conflicted, or socially undesirable motives.
Differences between S and B data (assessed with the TAT) when it comes to predicting aspects of motivation
When the TAT is administered psychologists can use the data to determine and assess the clients motivational state. If a person looks at an ambiguous drawing of two people and thinks they are fighting, for example, this might reveal a need to be aggressive; if the two people are described as being in love, this might reflect a need for intimacy, if one is seen as giving orders to the other it might reflect a need for power. All projective tests provide B data
Describe the first wave of research on exposure to media violence
Youth were classified into 1 of 4 categories 1. aggressive kids who watched violent TV 2. Agressive kids who did not watch violent TV 3. Non-aggressive kids who watched violent TV 4. Non-aggressive kids who did not watch violent TV Interviewing them led researchers to believe that watching violent TV probably contributed to kids violent behavior.
What does statistically significant mean?
a result that probably did not occur by chance, suggesting that it is reliable and would happen again if the study was repeated. -a somewhat arbitrary cutoff for reporting findings as significant "0.5%" (basically the likeliness of this finding as being a result of chance is 5%)
Biological approach
address biological mechanisms such as anatomy, physiology, genetics even evolution and their relevance for personality.
Advantages and disadvantages of informants according to BLIS model
advantages-have relevant information based on real life and are likely to use common sense . Their judgments are relevant to a persons reputation, opportunities and expectations and they have a large amount of information. disadvantages-no informant knows everything about a person. Their reports may be influenced by biases or distorted memories and not all informants have common sense.
High self monitors
carefully survey every situation looking for cues as to the appropriate way to act, and then adjust their behavior accordingly -socially skilled -talkative -self dramatizing, histrionic -iniates humor -verbally fluent -expressive in face and gestures -having social poise and presence
What are the five types of validity?
content, concurrent, predictive, construct and external
Comparative effect sizes in personality studies and social psychological experiments
effect size- a number that reflects the degree to which one variable affects, or is related to, another variable. -is a measure of the strength of the relationship between two variables. Correlational research in personality and in experimental research r rarely exceeds 0.4 average 0.21
Learning and cognitive approaches
learning approach-people change their behavior as a result of rewards, punishment and other experiences in life. cognitive approach-the theoretical view that focuses on the ways in which basic processes of perception and cognition affect personality and behavior.
Self reports according to BLIS model
reports of the self
What is the meaning of reputation in personality research?
reputation affects opportunities in many ways and a person is more likely to hire you if you are competent and conscientious (even if you really arent)
Behavior according to blis
such as observable friendliness, observable speaking skills or lack thereof, record of selfishness or having volunteered to help others-and in psychological research: performance on lab tasks, performance on psychological tests that require behavior.
Low self-monitors
tend to be more consistent regardless of the situation because their behavior is guided more by their inner personality -distrustful -perfectionist -touchy and irritable -anxious -introspective -independent -feeling cheated and victimized by life
What is validity?
the degree to which a test measures what it was intended to measure (a measure can be reliable without being valid for its intended purpose)
Psychoanalytic approach
these psychologists are concerned with the unconscious mind, and the nature and resolution of internal mental conflicts.
What kinds of personality tests are there?
unstructured and disguised unstructured and not disguised structured and disguised unstructured and not disguised structured and behavioral