Individual Differences: Personality Measurement, Outcomes, and Development

Flashcards covering personality measurement issues, the impact of traits on academic and health outcomes, and the nature of personality stability and change over time.

Infrequency scales

Items embedded in self-report tests that ask relatively obscure things most people would answer in a particular way to detect carelessness.

Duplicate items

A method for detecting carelessness by including the same item two or three times in a large survey, spaced far apart to check for consistent responses.

Reverse scoring

A technique where items are phrased in the opposite direction to counteract response sets like acquiescence and detect carelessness.

Faking good

A behavior where a person attempts to appear better off or better adjusted on a questionnaire than they are in reality.

Faking bad

A behavior where a person attempts to appear worse off or less adjusted than they are in reality, sometimes to receive benefits or resources.

Disclosure index

An index in the MCMI-III indicating whether a client was inclined to be frank and self-revealing or reticent and secretive.

Desirability index

An index in the MCMI-III measuring the degree to which results were affected by a client's inclination to appear socially attractive or morally noble.

Debasement index

The tendency to deprecate or devalue oneself by presenting more troublesome emotional and personal difficulties than are likely to be uncovered objectively.

Acquiescence

A response set characterized by the tendency to agree with items regardless of their specific content.

Extreme responding

The tendency for a participant to give endpoint responses, such as selecting only the highest or lowest options on a scale.

Social desirability

The tendency to answer items in such a way that the respondent comes across as socially attractive or likable.

Forced choice format

A survey design, such as the NPI-16, that forces a participant to choose between two statements rather than allowing a middle-ground response.

Conscientiousness

A Big Five trait that is a significant predictor of SAT and GPA scores, and serves as a primary protective factor for longevity and health.

PAI (Personality Assessment Inventory)

A measure used for job entry selection that offers ranges of scores rather than categorizing people into boxes.

Odds ratio

A statistical score used in health studies where a value above $1.00$ indicates an increased chance of having a disease based on a trait.

Cortisol

A stress hormone released during anxiety that can attack the immune system and strip calcium from bones, potentially leading to arthritis.

Rank order stability

The maintenance of an individual's relative position within a group over time regarding a specific trait.

Mean level stability

The constancy of the average level of a trait within a general population over time.

Personality coherence

Maintaining rank order relative to others while changing the behavioral manifestations of the trait along the lifespan.

Internal change

Personality changes that occur within a person, such as increased neuroticism following a traumatic event, rather than changes in external surroundings.

Population level

A level of stability or change that applies more or less to everyone, such as changes in attitudes toward driving or crime as people age.

Group differences level

A level of stability or change that affects different groups differently, such as differing body image concerns between males and females.

Temperament

Individual differences that emerge very early in life, are generally heritable, and are closely linked with emotionality.

Sensation seeking

A trait that typically increases from childhood to adolescence, peaks around age $18$ to $20$, and falls continuously after the twenties.