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Personality Final pt 1 - part 1 of the hardest concepts in the course
Psychology Of Personality (PSYC2054)
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● Paradigm (basic approach, theory): systematic, self-imposed limitation; use of certain kinds of observations, patterns, and ways of thinking about these patterns ● Trait approach: how people differ psychologically and how these differences might be conceptualized, measured, and followed over time ○ largest and most dominant approach in contemporary personality psychology ○ Helps organize other approaches because individual differences are central ● Biological approach: understand the mind in terms of the body ○ EEG; activities of the brain connected to behaviors ○ concentrating on: anatomy, physiology, genetics, evolution ● Psychoanalytic approach: focus on the unconscious mind and the internal mental conflict ● Phenomenological approach: focus on people’s conscious experience of the world Emphasis on awareness and experience– ● Humanistic: how conscious awareness produces uniquely human attributes; understand meaning and basis of happiness ○ existential anxiety, creativity, and free will ○ Explain why humans aren’t all heroes ● Cross-cultural: how the experience of reality might be different across cultures
Pigeonholing versus Appreciation of Individual Differences Personality psychologists emphasize individual differences. Other areas of psychology treat people as if they were the same. ● Negative effect: pigeonholing ○ Pigeonholing is too simplified, doesn’t take into account for flexibility/change ■ Very similar to stereotyping ● Positive effect: can lead to sensitivity and respect for individual differences
Funder’s Laws 1. “In life and in psychology, advantages and disadvantages have a way of being so tightly interconnected as to be inseparable. Great strengths are usually great weaknesses, and surprisingly often the opposite is true as well” –Funder’s First Law ➢ applies to fields of research, theories, and individual people
“There are no perfect indicators of personality; there are only clues, and clues are always ambiguous –Funder’s second law
“Something beats nothing, two times out of three” –Funder’s third law
Types of Personality Data (The Four Clues)- BLIS ● B- Behavioral data Natural B: ■ Diary and experience-sampling methods ■ EAR: electronically activated recorder ■ Wearable cameras ■ Ambulatory assessment: using computer-assisted methods to assess behavior, thoughts, and feelings during normal daily activities ● L- Life outcome data ○ Obtained from archival records or self-report ○ Multipledertermination ■ Many causes ● I- Informant Report ○ Expectancy effects or behavioral confirmation ■ Expectancy effect: The tendency for someone to become the kind of person others expect him or her to be; also known as a self-fulfilling prophecy and behavioral confirmation. ■ Behavioral confirmation: The self-fulfilling prophecy tendency for a person to become the kind of person others expect him or her to be; also called the expectancy effect ● S- Self-judgement data ○ Fish-and-water effect: aspect of their own personality becomes invisible to their self
Validity vs Reliability ● Validity- The degree to which an assessment instrument, such as a questionnaire, on its face appears to measure what it is intended to measure ■ Reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity ■ Validity invokes the idea of “ultimate truth”, but personality constructs cannot be seen directly ○ Construct validation ■ Gather as many measurements as possible to verify validity ○ Four conditions for validity ■ Items mean the same thing to the test taker and test creator ■ Capability for accurate self-assessment ■ Willingness to make an accurate and undistorted report ■ Items must be valid indicators of what is being measured ○ Criteria for accuracy are the same as that for assessing the validity of a test ○ Convergent validation: The process of assembling diverse pieces of information that converge on a common conclusion. ● Interjudge agreement ○ The degree to which two or more people making judgments about the same person provide the same description of that person’s personality
Personality Tests Widely used tests: ● MMPI- Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory ○ clinical assessment of individuals with psychological difficulties ● CPI- California Psychological Inventory ○ designed for use with so-called “normal” or nondisturbed individuals Ones often used by employers for personnel selection: ● 16PF- Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire ● SVIB- Strong Vocational Interest Blank ● HPI- Hogan Personality Inventory
● Omnibus inventories ○ measure a wide range of personality traits ○ Ex: NEO ● One-trait measures ● Most tests provide S data ● Some tests provide B data ○ MMPI ○ Intelligence (IQ tests) ○ IAT tests ○ Includes “projective tests” ○ Also known as performance-based instruments
Evaluating Assessment and Research: Significance Testing (1) ● Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST): the traditional method of statistical data analysis that determines the chance of getting the result if nothing were really going on ○ Possibility of 0? ● p-level: probability level of obtaining a result from a statistical test if there really is no difference between the groups or relationship between the variables ○ Addresses only the probability of one kind of error, typically Type 1 Error ■ involves deciding that one variable has an effect on, or a relationship with, another variable, when really it does not ■ Type 2 error: nvolves deciding that one variable does not have an effect on, or relationship with, another variable, when it really does ● The criterion for significance (p<.05) is an arbitrary rule of thumb ● Statistical significance: a result that would only occur by chance less than 5% of the time
Evaluating Assessment and Research: Effect Size (1) ● More meaningful than significance (p) level ● Many effect-size measures have been developed ○ Correlation coefficient: A number between –1 and +1 that reflects the degree to which one variable (y) is a linear function of another (x). ■ negative correlation= x goes up, y goes down
■ positive correlation= x goes up, so does y ■ zero correlation= x and y are unrelated. ■ Can be used for correlational and experimental studies
Evaluating Assessment and Research: Effect size (3) ● Can be used for prediction ● Interpreting correlations ○ Look at the actual size ■ .6→.8 is “quite strong”, .3→.5 is “weaker but still important” ○ r^2= percentage of the variance explained; “a terrible way to evaluate effect size”
Evaluating Assessment and Research: Effect size (4) Binomial effect size display (BESD): A method for displaying and understanding more clearly the magnitude of an effect reported as a correlation, by translating the value of r into 2 × 2 table comparing predicted with obtained results. ● Concrete display of what a correlation means in terms of specific outcomes ● Assume you have 200 participants, with 100 in each of two groups, and 100 with each of two outcomes
Predictability: The Situationist Argument 1. There is an upper limit to how well one can predict what a person will do based on any measurement of that person's personality, and this upper limit is low ○ Rarely better than .3/.
People can flexibly adapt to situations AND have a generally consistent personal style
Conclusion: people are psychologically different and these differences matter
Interactionism recognizes ● The effect of a personality variable may depend on the situation, or vice versa ● Certain types of people go to or find themselves in different types of situations ● People change the situations that they are in
● Hedging- a word or phrase that limits a trait’s applicability ● Behavioral Signature - Patterns of linkages between situations and behavior that are unique to each person
● Intellectual expectancy effects ○ Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968): gave teachers false feedback on the intelligence that resulted in increased IQs when students tested later ● Social expectancy effects ○ Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid (1977): manipulated whether male participants thought they were interacting with someone more or less attractive - how did it affect the behavior of the female during a phone conversation?
The Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM) (1) describes accuracy as a function of the relevance, availability, detection, and utilization of behavioral cues One explanation for how accurate judgment is possible Four moderators of accuracy (stages):
● Basis of self-knowledge can be explained by RAM, especially at the relevance, detection, and utilization stages.
○ HEXACO adds honesty/humility
■ honesty-humility (H)
■ emotionality (E)
■ extraversion (X),
■ agreeableness (A)
■ conscientiousness (C)
■ openness (O)
Myers-Briggs
○ Extroversion (E) vs Introversion (I)
○ Sensing (S) vs Intuition (N)
○ Thinking (T) vs Feeling (F)
○ Judgment (J) vs Perception (P)
○ 16 possible personality types
Four Ways to Study Personality Traits
1. Single-trait approach
○ Studying a singular trait that you’re interested in
○ Examine trait-behavior relationship
○ Used to study self-monitoring and narcissism, among others
2. Many-trait approach
○ Who does that important behavior?
○ Examine correlations between one behavior and many traits
○ Seek to explain the pattern of correlations
○ California Q-Set/ California Q-sort
● 100 personality descriptions (phrases)
● Sort into a forced choice, symmetrical, and normal distribution
○ Items sorted into 9 categories ranging from highly uncharacteristic of the
person being described (Category 1) to highly characteristic (Category 9).
● Compare characteristics within an individual
3. Essential-trait approach
○ Which traits are the most important? Which traits really matter?
○ Theoretical approaches to reducing the many to a few
■ Henry Murray: 20 needs
● aggression, autonomy, exhibition, order, play, sex, etc.
■ Jack and Jeanne Block: ego-control (impulse control) and ego-resiliency
(psychological adjustment)
● “undercontrol gets you into trouble, but resilience gets you out.” (p. 448) ● Resilience: Ability to adapt to difficult situations
■ Factor analytic approaches to reducing the many to a few
■ Factor analysis involves correlating every measured variable with every other variable**
● Cross-sectional studies: mean-level changes on the Big Five
● Cohort effects: The tendency for a research finding to be limited to one group, or cohort
Personality continues to change across the lifespan, on average. Trait levels are shown in terms
of T-scores, which have a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10.
Longitudinal studies: A study of personality development in which the same people are assessed
repeatedly over extended periods of time sometimes many years
● Consistent with the maturity principle
○ The idea that traits associated with effective functioning increase with age
● Findings refer to mean levels of traits.
● Not everyone changes in the same way.
● Personality continues to change, even in old age.
● Erikson’s theory of development
Self-regulation is paying attention to what you’re doing and changing according to your goals;
repeat until it becomes habitual
Rank-order consistency: The maintenance of individual differences in behavior or personality
over time or across situations
Behavioral Genetics
● Epigenetics facing controversy for associations with eugenics and cloning
○ Modern research is not concerned with these issues
○ Identify variation in personality across people related to inherited genes
Epigenetics: Experience affects biology
● May be possible to help people find environments that will lead to good outcomes
● Finding that the kind of experience affects biology and how/when genes are expressed
● Choice of environments (niche picking)
Personality Final pt 1 - part 1 of the hardest concepts in the course
Course: Psychology Of Personality (PSYC2054)
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