PSY 352 Exam 1 Study Guide
What is self-report data? what are its strengths and weaknesses?
Ask person; Open-ended questions, true/false, adjective checklist, etc. Strengths: access to info that others don't have, easy to measure Weaknesses: accurate self knowledge? Honesty?
What is observer-report data? what are its strengths and weaknesses?
Ask someone else about person Strengths: access to info not available to person, even with extremely short exposure, can use multiple observers Weaknesses: biased by own personality experiences with person?
Eysenck's hierarchical model What are the three traits that are included in Eysenck's hierarchical model? What is the "dark triad", and what do these traits predict about people? Which trait in Eysenck's taxonomy is most related to the dark triad? According to Eysenck, what is the physiological basis for each of the traits in his taxonomy?
Believed these traits were highly heritable (PEN) Psychoticism Extraversion - introversion Neuroticism- emotional stability Psychopathy Narcissism Machiavellianism predicts people are arrogant, conceited, greedy, pompous, self-important, egotistical Psychoticism Heritability and Identifiable physiological substrate
What does it mean to say that a psychological measure is generalizable? Why is generalizability an important aspect of a psychological measure?
The degree to which the measures retains its validity To ensure its not only applicable to a specific group of people
What does it mean to say that a psychological measure is valid? Why is validity an important aspect of a psychological measure?
test measures what it claims to measure To ensure that the test is testing what you want it to be
Wiggins' circumplex taxonomy Describe the advantages and limitations of circumplex taxonomies.
trait terms describe different ways of differing - 2 ways that interpersonal traits vary: Social status & Emotional love Advantages: provides explicit definition of interpersonal behavior, specifies the relationships between each trait and every other trait within the model, & alerts investigators to gaps in investigations of interpersonal behavior Limitations: the interpersonal map is limited to two dimensions
What is interactionism and how does it relate to the person-situation debate?
view that personality and situation drive behavior together. Average tendencies shape situations, situations shape personality
Describe Gordon Allport's contributions to the field of personality psychology
Founder of modern personality psychology Thought psychoanalysis = too deep, behaviorism = not deep enough Describes personality in terms of traits
What trait was added to the Big Five to create the HEXACO model? What does it mean to be high or low in that trait? How does that trait relate to other concepts in this chapter?
Humility-Honesty High: Honest, sincere, trustworthy, unselfish, cooperative Low (dark triad): Arrogant, conceited, greedy, pompous, self-important, egotistical Relates to the dark triad
Describe the concept of interactionism. Why is interactionism considered to be a response to situationists' criticisms of personality psychology?
Interactionism B=f (PxS) Behavior as function of personality and situation, together Maybe both of them influence who you are together Both of these things work together to change you Strong vs weak situations influence weighting
describe the differences between internal reliability, test retest reliability, and inter-rater reliability
Internal reliability: all questions should measure the same thing (answers will be correlated) test-retest reliability: taking test at different times produces roughly the same result inter-rater reliability: consistent measure form multiple observers
• What is personality change?
Internal, enduring changes to the person over time External, temporary changes /=(not equal) personality change (getting a concussion that makes you act differently than you normally do)
What is personality coherence?
Maintaining rank order but changing behavioral manifestations of trait (e.g aggression when you are 8 vs. 40)
What does it mean to say that a psychological measure is reliable? Why is reliability an important aspect of a psychological measure?
Meaning there is consistent results from a measure So the scores accurately measure each person's true level of the personality category
What is experimental research? Be able to identify the independent variable (IV) and dependent variable (DV) in an experiment. How do random assignment and random sampling help ensure an experiment's validity? What are the strengths and weaknesses of experimental research?
Measures causality IV)= manipulated variable (DV)= dependent on IV, scores measures whether manipulation of IV has an effect Ensuring each group is the same to limit the chance of third variables Strengths: establishes causation groups start the same -> treated differently -> groups now different control of situation Weaknesses: cannot experimentally control everything artificial situations?
What is correlational research?
Measures how much to variables are related
• Describe the behavioral manifestations of Big Five traits that were presented in class, including: o in-person behaviors associated with each of the Big Five traits (Chapman & Goldberg, 2017) o online language associated with each of the Big Five traits (Kern et al. 2014)
Measuring Big 5 Traits traditionally: NEO-PI-R Soto and John (2017): Big Five Inventory (BFI-2) Behavioral manifestations of big five traits Chapman and Goldberg (2017): Behavioral act inventory (BIA): self-reported frequency of 400 behaviors Kern et al (2014): BIg 5 and online environments "My Personality" facebook app
Describe the differences between cross-sectional studies and longitudinal studies. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each?
Measuring personality change over time 2 approaches: Longitudinal study: collect data over a long period of time, following same group of participants strengths: change within an individual over time (lots of info and depth) Weaknesses: takes a long time, expensive, difficult to maintain Cross-sectional study: collect data at one time, comparing people of different ages Strengths: allows immediate age comparisons Weaknesses: different people in different groups (different cohorts?)
• What is personality stability? o What is the difference between mean-level stability and rank-order stability?
Personality stability Mean level stability: maintaining consistent levels of a trait (e.g. being as conscientious as you ever were) Rank order stability: maintaining individual position within group (e.g. height-- will usually always be tall for their age if they are the tallest in their class at a young age)
What is a trait taxonomy? Describe the lexical approach to creating trait taxonomies. Describe the statistical approach to creating trait taxonomies. Describe the theoretical approach to creating trait taxonomies.
list of the most important traits in defining a personality hypothesis that all important individual differences have become encoded within the natural language People rate selves on a pool of personality items - Factor analysis: essentially identifies groups of items that go together but are relatively independent of other groups theory determines which traits are important to measure
Define each of the following terms, and describe how each is an example of interactionism: § situational selection § evocation § manipulation
3 examples if interactionism Situational selection Personality drives person to choose certain situations, which in turn influence trait expression Extroverts are more likely to be in a party situation personality→ situations, but also situations→ personality Situations can also change your personality E.g. fleeson et al (2002) Strong pos correlation between extraversion and positive emotions IVs: extraverts/introverts act extraverted/ introverted during small group discussions (at some point, each person will be acting how they normally do and at some point they will act the opposite) DVs: self-reported positivity, positivity of other group members Both introverts and extroverts reported being happier when they had to be extraverted Evocation Certain traits may evoke certain reactions Expectations matter 4 steps to self-fulfilling prophecy: Perceiver: has expectations about how target will behave (someone has told you something about them, group stereotypes, etc) Perceiver behaves in a way that evokes the expected target behavior Target behaves in a way that confirms perceivers expectations Perceiver sees predicted behavior, confirms belief. Pygmalion effect: higher expectations often lead to better performance Manipulation Intentionally influencing/changing others' thoughts, emotions, beliefs, behaviors, etc foot -in-the-door phenomenon Tendency for people who first agree to small request to later comply with smaller request Freedman and fraser (1966): Asked people to put.large poorly-lettered "Drive Carefully" sign in front yards IV: request alone/ foot in the door DV: % who agree to ugly sign When there was no foot in the door question of presenting the sticker, less people went along with putting the sing in the door
What is personality?
A set of psychological traits that influence an individual's pattern of thinking, acting, and feeling within the environment
Describe the concept of aggregation. Why is aggregation considered to be a response to situationists' criticisms of personality psychology?
A solution to the person-situation debate? Adding up multiple observations of personality Uses larger sample size to describe typicality Self report measures? Ask more questions...
Explain each of the following potential issues with self-report data, and how personality psychologists try to handle these issues: o carelessness o faking o Barnum statement
Carelessness Low motivation, in a hurry, etc. Possible solutions: Infrequency scale: questions that nearly everyone will answer the same way→ uncommon answers= invalid questionnaire data? E.g I make all of my own clothes and shoes (if someone says yes, you know they are probably not taking the survey seriously) Request questions, look for very different answers Faking Purposely distorting answers Perceptions of others, perceptions of self, job applications, applying for parole, etc. Possible solutions: Crowne-Marlow scale Create "faking good" and "faking bad" profiles to use as comparison Can then compare to actual answers and see if there are similarities Barnum statements: Vague, general statements that could apply to anyone Especially likely to be believed if: Person believes analysis only applies to them (especially if it contains person's name) Person find evaluator believable Analysis lists many positive traits
What are the traits? What is situationism? How would you describe the person-situation debate?
Characteristics that describe the ways people are similar or different from each other the theory that behavior is determined more by situations than by personality traits a controversial debate centering on whether people really do behave consistently across situations
What are the five traits that are included in the Big Five? What does it mean to say that a person is high or low in each of these traits? Describe the research on the stability, universality, and applicability of the Big Five. What theoretical questions remain about the Big Five?
Conscientiousness High: organized, neat, older, keeps a schedule Low: disorganized, disorderly, careless, prefers less structure Agreeableness High: compassionate, cooperative, eager to avoid conflict, submissive Low: suspicious, less interest in others, argumentative, competitive Neuroticism High: moody, anxious, insecure Low: calm, relaxed, stable Openness High: creative, imaginative, intellectual, likes change Low: less creative & imaginative, practical, set in their ways, preference for routine & habit, dislikes change Extraversion High: talkative, assertive, prefers being around people, feels energized by large groups Low: shy, quiet, inhibited, prefers being alone or with a small group, feels exhausted by large groups
Describe face validity, predictive validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity
Face validity: it seems like it addresses the subject... (simple) Predictive validity: results predict other criteria, external to test Convergent validity: test correlates well with other measures that it should correlate with Discriminant Validity: test doesn't correlate well with other measures that it shouldn't
Describe the dispositional, biological, intrapsychic, cognitive-experiential, social and cultural, and adjustment approaches to understanding personality.
Dispositional: traits Biological: inherited predispositions Intrapsychic: processes within the mind Cognitive-experiential: thoughts and subjective experiences Social and cultural: society, culture, and gender Adjustment: coping adapting, and adjusting to life
what is descriptive research? what is a case study? strengths and weaknesses?
Essentially qualitative research in depth examination of an individual's personality Strengths: lots of details good source for ideas to test in larger groups Weaknesses: Low generalizability
What is life outcome data and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
Examine life events that are available to the public (marriage, divorce, jobs) often uses s-data and o-data to predict l-data Strengths: can serve as an important source of real-life information about personality Weaknesses: caused by an abundance of factors, like race, gender, etc., personality is only one cause of L-data
Describe the design and purpose of the following personality tests: o Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) o Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) o Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI)
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) 388 item survey Most widely-used and researched clinical assessment tool in mental health Used to detect mental illnesses (10 subscales) Clinical psychology uses this in working with the idea of mental illness Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Based on Carl Jung's archetypes People fall into different buckets of personality Often used in employment settings Gives you forced choice questions and you have you choose which you are "more of" Extraversion (E) vs. Introversion (I) Energized by socialization vs. internal thoughts and ideas Sensing (S) vs. intuition (N) Attending to sensory info vs. "sixth sense" Thinking (T) vs. feeling (F) Preferring logic and structure vs. value-oriented thinking Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P) Perferring well-ordered life vs. spontaneity Issues with MBTI and "types" Most traits normally distributed→ what is the cutoff? Small variations→ different type (low reliability) McCarley and Carskadon (1983): 50% of Ps get different categories on retesting 5 weeks later Assumes between category differences, not within Low vs. high scores within category? (still described the same way) Low predictive validity Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) Personality test designed for employee selection Advantages: Based on big five High test-retest reliability r=+.74 to +.86 Fairly high validity Predicts employee turnover, absenteeism, sales performance, customer service, employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, etc. brief, non-intrusive
Describe the relationship between self-esteem level and self-esteem variability. What does each predict in a person's life?
Personality change Self-esteem: Overall evaluation (positive, negative) of oneself Block and Robbins (1993): tested SE at 14, 23 YO Actual vs. ideal vs. feared selves No overall SE change, but male SE rose, female SE fell (with rank-order stability) Is self-esteem more nuanced? Traditional view: stable characteristic, distinguishes people (and a good thing!) Pos. correlations: physical and mental health, optimism, academic and career success, etc Neg. correlations: aggression, substance abuse, marital dissatisfaction, etc (not aggressive, low substance abuse, low marital dissatisfaction) Self-esteem variability: extent to which self-esteem changes, is susceptible to outside influence High variability= fragile SE Stress vulnerability When good things happen, high self-esteem. When bad things happen, low-self esteem and susceptible to stress etc. Low variability= stable SE Less impact of stress, context SE level, SE variability are separate constructs, and NOT correlated Fragile SE → social anxiety, public self-consciousness, fewer social interactions, depression
How has personality coherence been demonstrated in relationships, education, and health?
Personality coherence over time Personality coherence: predictable, changing behaviors over time, even with stable underlying trait Coherence and relationships Kelly and Conley (1987): longitudinal study of 300 engaged couples (1930s-1980s) → friends rated personalities 22 broke engagements, 50 got divorced, 228 remained married Who got divorced? High neuroticism (both partners) Pos correlated with marital dissatisfaction over time Low impulse control (husband) More likely to have affairs Other things about neuroticism... Death of spouse + high neuroticism→ More grieving, more depression, slowest recovery Low impulse control + high neuroticism→ higher rates of alcoholism Coherence and education Impulsivity Kipnis (1971): Low SAT scores→ no correlation b/w impulsivity and GPA high SAT scores→ neg correlation Conscientiousness Abe (2005): 3YO conscientiousness pos. Correlated with middle school performance Sinner et al. (2003): Conscientiousness at 8-12→ academic attainment 20 years later Coherence and health Best personality predictors of long lifespan: High conscientiousness High extraversion High agreeableness (low hostility) Low neuroticism Why? conscientiousness→ better health habits (diet, exercise, substance use, doctor visits, etc.) extraversion→ healthy social life Low hostility, neuroticism→ less stress, cardiovascular problems
what is test data and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
Put people in standardized situations, look for similarities/differences strengths of T-data: controlled situations and allows hypothesis weaknesses of T-data: participants and/or research bias
Be able to interpret a correlation coefficient. Describe the difference between positive, negative, and zero correlations. What are the general guidelines for interpreting a correlation coefficient as a small, medium, or large effect? What are the strengths and weaknesses of correlational research?
Range of -1 to +1 (+) when one is high the other is high (-) when one is high the other is low (0) there is no relation what-so-ever Small ~0.1 Medium ~0.3 Large ~0.5< Strengths: Low cost, easy Shows magnitude of relationship Good when a variable cannot be manipulated (i.e gender or race) Weaknesses: Directionality problem: can't tell if A causes B, or B causes A Third variable problem: something else can cause both of them to relate
What is a likert scale? What is experience sampling? How does social desirability influence the validity of self-report data? How do personality psychologists manage the effects of social desirability?
Range of numbers representing answers on a scale Experience sampling: report experiences repeatedly over time (detects patterns) People answer questions how they want to be viewed instead of how they actually are Crowne-marlow scale: tests for whether the person is susceptible to social desirability/forced choice questionnaire: picking between two options
How stable are the Big Five personality traits? Which of the Big Five traits tends to change the most with age?
Rank order stability: Adulthood Costa and McCrae (1994): review of Big 5 Self-report studies→ average correlation +.65 (over 3-30 years) Big 5 is very consistent When we look at a lot of people over a long period of time, we see a lot of personality stability Similar correlations for self-esteem, prosocial orientation, empathy (all stay fairly stable) Mean level stability: adulthood Could we change personality through adulthood? Piedmont (2001): collected Big 5 data in outpatient drug rehab programs Significant decrease in neuroticism Significant increases in agreeableness and conscientiousness
• What is sensation-seeking? o When does sensation-seeking peak in a person's life, and what other traits is it correlated with? o What types of life outcomes are more likely for people high in sensation-seeking? o How does the concept of optimum arousal relate to sensation-seeking level?
Sensation seeking: preference for thoughts/ experiences that are varied, novel, risky, complex, and intense Big 5: Pos. correlation with openness to new experiences Neg. correlation with agreeableness (people who are sensation seekers score lower in agreeableness) 4 components: Thrill and adventure seeking (skydiving, roller coasters, danger) Experience seeking (want to try and see new things) Disinhibition (act on feelings and impulses) Boredom susceptibility Rises until late adolescence, then drops Except boredom susceptibility...that stays stable More common in men Sensation seeking and life outcomes Roberti (2004): Divorced males typically higher SS than single, married men More likely to speed, ignore traffic laws Higher alcohol, drug use rates Riskier sexual behavior, more permissive sexual attitudes, more likely to cheat in relationships Perfer energetic music (e.g. rock, rap) over calm music (e.g. jazz or classical) Job choices (want something exciting and different instead of knowing what you will be doing each day) Where does sensation seeking come from? Genetic component? Sensation seeking parents are more likely to have sensation seeking kids Different levels of optimum arousal? Desire to avoid stimuli that are too boring or too stimulating Best performance at intermediate level of arousal (aka. Yerkes-Dodson law) Predicts preference for patterns, art, music People perform better when they are moderately stimulated and like thinks best that moderately stimulate them
Describe the concept of temperament. What does it predict about adult personality? What are the 6 components of temperament?
Temperament: genetically- based behavioral tendencies in young children Consistent across situations over time How you felt being left alone with a babysitter Rothbart and Bates (2006) 6 components of temperament: Fear, inhibition→ amount of withdrawal, distress in new situations Distress to limitations→ anger, frustration if child can't' do what they want to Attention span and persistence→ habituation, length of interest (some lock onto new things and some are quickly ready for the next new thing) Activity level→ physical movement Positive affect/ approach orientation→ smiling, laughing soothability→ easy to calm Who cares about temperament? Its stable! It's who we are! Everything starts with temperament when we are young Infancy inhibition/ distress→ fear of new situations at 2 YO → social inhibition at 4-5 YO Negativity at 3Yo→ negativity at 6, 8 YO Early observations of temperament can predict older temperament once the person ages Influence social adjustment Caspi et al. (1995): childhood negativity, low control Did a longitudinal study and found→ adolescence: more social, more likely to have legal issues, 20s: more roommate issues, higher unemployment, less social support , 30s: worse health, fewer resources, more substance abuse, more criminal offenses, more gambling issues So is a negative child doomed? Not necessarily...person AND situation Goodness of fit: how well temperament fits with environment Difficult babies + supportive consistent parents= better adjustment (vs. unsupportive) Reciprocal relationship between temperament and parents Difficult children→ frustrated parents→ harsher discipline→ negativity in children
What is a trait? Describe the act frequency approach to defining traits. What is a prototype, and how do prototypes influence our perceptions of others? what is act nomination?
a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act a certain way The act frequency approach starts with the notion that traits are categories of acts. most typical example of a category - closer to prototype = faster to identify, more confident in labeling object as part of concept A procedure designed to identify which acts belong in which trait categories
