Theories of Personality Quiz Review 1

Funder and Ozer (1983) examined the results of three classic social psychological studies. They converted the results to effect sizes and fund that the effects were equivalent to correlations in the range of _______ (in absolute value).

.30 to .40

A recent review of the entire literature on social psychology concluded that the situational effect was about _______.

20

Johnny just lost his job. What change in personality is he likely to undergo?

A decrease in agreeableness

Why haven't personality psychologists combined all paradigms into "One Big Theory"?

A theory that tries to explain everything would probably not provide the best explanation for any one thing

Sally found that neither caffeine not extraversion individually predicted problem solving; however, she found that they both worked together to predict problem solving. This is an example of what kind of an effect?

A true interaction

Dr. Grant is creating a new measure of shyness, and she decides to include more than one item in her scale. She believes that using multiple items will lead to a more reliable measure. r. Gran is following which principle of measurement?

Aggregation

What is the best summary of the current state of knowledge about personality types?

Although types add little for psychometric purposes of measurement and prediction, they still may have value as aids in education and theorizing.

What is a primary goal of the learning and cognitive approaches to personality?

Applying principles of associationism to help reduce negative behaviors

In his book, Personality and Assessment, Mischel argues that _______.

Behavior is too inconsistent to predict using broad personality traits

What definition best describes the meaning of a cross-sectional consistency coefficient of r= .70?

Behaviors in one situation strongly predict behaviors in another situation

In Leikas, Lonnqvist, and Verkasalo, participants interacted with trained actors. What was one of the major conclusions from this stud?

Behaviors with more situation variance has less person variance

The judgments that others make of your personality affect your opportunities and expectancies. Thus, these judgment have _______.

Causal force

In order to improve personality research, researchers can _______.

Check for factors that predict consistency Measure behavior in real life Predict behavioral trends rather than single acts (All the above)

According to a classic study, individuals who grew up during the Great Depression had different attitudes regarding work and financial security than those who did not grow up during this time. These findings provide evidence for _______.

Cohort effects

When gathering data or clues about personality, the best policy is to _______.

Collect as many clues as possible

According to one survey of employers, seven out of the top eight qualities sought in new employees involved _______.

Conscientiousness

The avoidance of drug abuse is associated with what trait?

Conscientiousness

The trait approach is based on empirical research that is mostly from _______.

Correlational studies

A correlational study is surveying people of different ages in order to understand whether or not individuals' levels of subjective well-being change across the life span. What type of developmental study is this?

Cross-sectional

Between ages 10 and 20, levels of extraversion tend to _______ and then _______.

Decrease; stay the same

To obtain S data, a psychologist can ________.

Develop a questionnaire

What is NOT an advantage of B data?

Direct observations require little in the way of psychological interpretation

Given Snyder's description of self-monitoring you would expect someone who is low in self-monitoring to be _______ than someone high in self-monitoring.

Easier to judge

Good coping is positively associated with what trait?

Emotional stability

A researcher who tries to discover the most important or basic personality traits that exists is taking a _______ approach.

Essential-trait

What is another term for behavioral confirmation?

Expectancy Effect

What design is best suited for addressing the third-variable problem?

Experimental

The unique mandate of personality psychologists is to attempt to _______.

Explain whole, functioning persons and real life concerns

People tend to blame negative experiences on _______ rather than recognizing the effects of _______.

External factors; their own personality

The most important advantage of Q-sorting is that it _______.

Forces the judge to compare all the items directly against each other

What characteristic is positively associated with personality consistency?

General mental health

The lower your score is on measures of psychological health and well-being, the _______.

Higher your score is on neuroticism

What term describes the notion that people act differently in different situations?

Inconsistency

Walter Mischel and his 1968 book Personality and Assessment are noteworthy because this work _______.

Is credited with starting the person-situation debate by claiming that traits are not as important as situational factors in behavioral prediction

What is the best example of a situationist argument?

Knowing Robert's extraversion doesn't really let us predict his behavior

Political liberalism is associated with what trait?

Openness to experience

Funder and Colvin brought participants to the lab for two interactions with different people. What result shows the power of the situation?

Participants were more relaxed at session 2 than session 1.

A fundamental problem for the trait approach is that _______.

People are inconsistent

What paradox is central to the study of personality development?

People change throughout their lives yet fundamental personality traits maintain rank-order stability in relation to others in their age group

Personality psychology and clinical psychology overlap most often when approaching which topic?

Personality disorders

What is NOT one of the responses to the situationist argument?

Personality researchers worked harder to find single traits that could strongly predict single responses at a particular point in time

In one study, researchers found that personality trait scores from the same people measured 10 years apart correlated between r= .60 and r= .90. This is evidence for _______.

Personality stability

The processes by which people respond to seek out, and create environments that are compatible with their personalities are called _______.

Personality-environment transactions

What characteristic seems to predict increased consistency?

Preference for consistency

Which reason describes why averaged (aggregated) behaviors are more strongly related to personality traits than individual behaviors1/

Random variations tend to cancel out when aggregated

Jane recently completed a new test hat was designed to measure her IQ. She took the test twice and each time received the same score. The test administrator told her that her scores indicate she is extremely intelligent. However, Jane scored well below average when she completed the Stanford-Binet and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, two well-established intelligence tests. Based on this pattern of results, it appears that the new measure of IQ was a _______.

Reliable but not valid measure of intelligence

What conclusion does Funder draw about the role of persons vs. situations in affecting behavior?

Situations have an important influence on behavior, but people also tend to be consistent

Situationism is the position that _______.

The ability of personality to predict behavior is severely limited

Sally is a strong proponent of the lexical hypothesis. Where would she likely begin her search or the essential traits of personality?

The dictionary

One response to Mischel's critique asserts that a fair review of the research on the predictability of behavior from personality traits indicates that ________.

The predictability of behavior from personality traits is better than is sometimes acknowledged

What is NOT a reason the older people believe their personalities are more consistent than those of younger people?

They have more wealth accumulated

What part of the psychological triad corresponds to cognitions about the self?

Thoughts

A researcher is interested in identifying common patterns of trait variation that characterize whole persons is using a _______ approach.

Typological

In observing human behavior, it is impossible to _______.

Understand everything about a person all at once

What is a primary goal of the psychoanalytic approach to personality?

Understanding mental conflicts

Personality psychology emphasizes how people are _______, whereas subfields such as cognitive and social psychology emphasizes how people are _______.

different from each other; similar to each other