Psych Test 3

Person-Environment: Perceptions

People will perceive the same environment differently depending on personality

Person-Environment: Selection

Personality can cause us to select different environments

Person-Environment: Evocation

Our personalities evoke different reactions from others

Person-Environment: Manipulations

We intentionally attempt to influence others in different ways, depending on our personalities

Most common way of operationalizing personality traits uses…

self report, with observer reports being second

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

• Designed to measure people’s preferences in how they percieve the world and make decisions

• Developed in 1944 based on Carl Jung’s ideas from 1921

• Given out 2 million times a yr

• Internet has given access for free

Myers Briggs Types

• Extraversion versus Introversion (E/I)

• Sensing versus Intuition (S/N)

• Thinking versus Feeling (T/F)

• Judging versus Perceiving (J/P)

Where did the Big Five come from?

Lexical hypothesis: important personality differences get words in everyday language

• alport & odbert (1936) searched the dictionary: about 18,000 personality words

Factor analysis: statistics group the words that go together

• eg., sociable, friendly, gregarious —> extraversion

Result: five broad, largely independent factors

The “Big Five” (OCEAN)

• Openness

• Conscientiousness

• Extraversion

• Agreeableness

• Neuroticism (emotional stability vs instability)

Openness (to experience)

Higher on openness:

• imaginative, prefers for variety, curious, artistic, flexibility

Openness to experience:

• practical, preference for routine

Conscientiousness

Higher on conscientiousness:

• Organized, careful, disciplined, self-control

Lower on conscientiousness:

• more careless, more impulsive. disorganized

Extraversion

• the tendency to seek stimulation and enjoy energetic engagement with people. activities, and the external world

Agreeableness

• trusting, cooperative, modest, sympathetic, etc.

People lower on agreeableness

• realistic and independent minded

• skeptical, prefers evidence over trust

• less emotionally reactive

Neuroticism

• A broad tendency to experience negative emotions

Lower on neuroticism:

• calm, less reactive

high on neuroticism:

• frequently stressed, more negative emotions, likely to worry/experience depression, etc.

HEXACO

• the broad Big Five factors don’t capture well the traits associated with truly antisocial behaviour

  • Subclinical levels of Narcissism, Machiavellianism, Psychopathy = the Dark Triad

Narcissism

• An inflated sense of self-importance, a need for admiration, and a lack of empathy for others

• High: crave attention and praise, believe they are special or superior, may exploit others to maintain their self-image

Machiavellianism

• Manipulation, cynicism, and a focus on personal gain

• HighL see others as tools to achieve their goals, use deceit or flattery strategically, and prioritize results over morality

Psychopathy

• Impulsivity, lack of guilt or remorse, shallow emotions, and antisocial behaviour

• High: often charming on the surface but disregard others’ rights and social rules, showing little empathy or fear of punishment

The Dark Triad continued…

• seek out multiple, causal sex partners

• do not mind exploiting people

• act aggressively to take what they want

• more common in men

• lacking a conscience

• low agreeableness

HEXACO

• Honesty-Humility

• Emotionality

• Extraversion

• Agreeableness

• Conscientiousness

• Openness to Experience

Honesty-Humility

Sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance, modesty

Buckels et al. 2013

• Measured students’ levels of sadism with a paper-and-pencil scale

• Gave them a choice of jobs: exterminator, exterminator’s assistant, sanitation worker, a worker in cold environments

• The higher they scored on sadism, the more likely they were to choose the job that required sadistic behaviour

Buckels et al. 2013 pt 2

• IF they chose the sadistic behaviour, they were measured on how many bugs they killed and their pleasure afterward

• The higher they were on sadism, the more bugs they killed, and the higher their pleasure was afterward

Eysenck’s three factor model

Psychoticism (low agreeableness+low conscientiousness), Extraversion, Neuroticism

Personality Traits

Characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Imply consistency and stability

Trait Psychology

Holds that people differ in where they stand on a set of basic trait dimensions that persist over time and across situations

3 Criteria for a Trat

1. Consistency (across situations)

2. Stability (over time)

3. Individual differences (people must differ on it)

• I.e. speaking and walking on two feet are not traits

Lexical hypothesis:

• all important personality characteristics should be reflected in the language we use to describe people. 

• Many descriptors overlap because many words are synonyms. If people who say they're "friendly" also say they're "sociable," one trait can capture both.  

  • Example: someone sociable, friendly, and gregarious is an "Extravert," and knowing that lets us assume the rest. 

Factor analysis

• is the statistical technique used to see whether a small number of dimensions underlies the many descriptors. 

• This produced the Big Five / Five-Factor Model

Walter Mischel, Personality and Assessment (1968)

consistency isn't impressive.  

• Example: a child who cheats on tests may follow all rules in games and never lie to parents, so there may be no general trait of honesty linking these behaviors. 

• He also suggested the belief in broad traits is an illusion in observers. 

Person-situation debate

• he power of personality vs. the power of situational factors in determining behavior. 

• Mischel's alternative: study people's distinctive reactions to specific situations instead of broad, context-free traits.  

• Behavior is driven by the interaction of three things: specific, psychologically meaningful features of the situation; the person's unique way of perceiving it; and their abilities for dealing with it. 

Humanistic models

people have clear, well-defined goals and actively strive for them (McGregor, McAdams, & Little, 2006), so it makes sense to ask them directly. 

Psychodynamic theories

people lack insight into their feelings and motives, and behavior is influenced by processes outside awareness (McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989; Meyer & Kurtz, 2006), so asking directly makes no sense. A completely different approach is needed to identify these nonconscious factors.

Objective Tests

• The most familiar and widely used approach (Loevinger, 1957; Meyer & Kurtz, 2006). 

• They administer a standard set of items, each answered with a limited set of response options (true/false; strongly disagree → strongly agree). 

• Responses are scored in a standardized, predetermined way.  

  • Example: self-ratings on talkativeness, assertiveness, sociability, adventurousness, and energy are summed into an overall extraversion score. 

• "Objective" refers to the scoring method, not the responses.  

Type A: Self-Report Measures

• Most widely used

• Advantages  

  1. Unparalleled information: Self-raters have direct access to their own thoughts, feelings, and motives, which others may not see (Oh, Wang, & Mount, 2011; Watson, Hubbard, & Weise, 2000). 

  2. Simplest, easiest, most cost-effective.

• Item formats: single words ("assertive"), short phrases ("am full of energy"), or complete sentences ("I like to spend time with others"). Modified from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP)

Strengths of Self-Report

• self rated conscientiousness predicts academic performance & job performance

• self rated personality predicted occupational attainment, divorce, mortality as well as health/wellbeing & mortality risk assessed decades later

• strong links to psychopathology; self rated neuroticism is associated with mental health disorders & substance use

Limitations of Self-Report

1. Socially desirable responding: presenting oneself in an overly favorable way (Paunonen & LeBel, 2012). This is a particular concern in high-stakes testing, where scores are used for important decisions (e.g., job applications). 

2. Self-enhancement bias (Vazire & Carlson, 2011): people ignore or downplay undesirable traits and focus on positive ones. 

3. Reference group effect (Heine, Buchtel, & Norenzayan, 2008): self-perception is partly based on comparison to one's sociocultural reference group.