Personality Psychology Chapter 1

trait-descriptive adjectives

Words that describe traits or attributes of a person that are reasonably characteristic of the individual and perhaps even enduring over time.

personality

the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with and adaptations to the environment (including the intrapsychic, physical, and social environment)

psychological traits

Characteristics that describe ways in which people are unique or different or similar to each other. They include all sorts of aspects of a person that are psychologically meaningful and are stable and consistent of a personality

average tendencies

Tendency to display a particular psychological trait with regularity.

Psychological mechanisms

similar to traits except that mechanisms refer more to the processes of personality. Most personality mechanisms involve some info-processing ability. A psych mechanism may make people more sensitive to certain kinds of info from the environment (input), may make them more likely to think about specific options (decision rules), or may guide their behavior toward certain categories of action (output )

Within the Individual

the important sources of personality reside within the individual-that is people carry the sources of their personality inside themselves and hence are stable over time and consistent over situations

organized

psychological traits and mechanisms for a given person are not a random collection of elements

enduring

when psychological traits are stable over time

influential forces

personality traits and mechanisms are influential forces in peoples lives that influence our actions, how we view ourselves, think about the world, interact with others, feel, selection of our environments, what goals and desires to pursue, and how to react to circumstances include sociological, physical and biological forces

person-environment interaction

a person’s interactions with situations include perceptions, selections, evocations, and manipulation

perception

how an environment is interpreted

selections

how situations are chosen

evocations

reactions we produce in others

manipulation

we attempt to influence others

adaptation

solutions to the survival and reproductive problems posed by hostile forces of nature

human nature

the traits and mechanisms of personality that are typical of our species and are possessed by everyone or nearly everyone

individual differences

all the ways in which individual differ from one another

differences among groups

people in one group may have certain personality features in common and these common features make that group different from other groups

nomothetic

general characters of people as they are distributed in the population, usually through statistical comparisons of individuals or groups

idiographic

single individuals with an effort to observe general principles as they manifest over time

dispositional domain

personality influenced by traits the person is born with and how they develop over time, ways in which individuals differ from one another

biological domain

personality is a collection of biological systems that provide building blocks for behavior, thought, and emotion

intrapsychic domain

mental mechanisms of personality many of which operate outside consciousness awareness

cognitive experimental domain

cognition and subjective experience like conscious thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and desires

social and cultural domain

personality is affected by the social and cultural context in which it is found

adjustment domain

personality plays a role in how we cope, adapt, and adjust to the ebb and flow of events in our day to day lives

good theory

a theory that serves as a useful guide for researchers, organizes known facts, and makes predictions about future observations

theories and beliefs

beliefs based not on reliable facts and observations

theories are based on observations that can be repeated and yield similar conclusions

scientific standards for evaluating personality theories

comprehensiveness, heuristic value, testability, parsimony, and compatibility and integration

comprehensiveness

explain more data have more findings better than fewer findings

heuristic value

steer scientists to new discoveries better than those that fail to provide guidance

testability

render precise predictions that scientists can test empirically

parsimony

fewer assumptions made the greater the parsimony

compatibility and integration

takes into account principles and laws of other scientific domains

physical environment

external conditions and surroundings

example) extremes of temperature creates problem of maintaining thermal homeostasis

social environment

the physical and social setting often include relationships with other and outside influential forces

intrapsychic environment

the internal psychological processes that occur within a person’s mind

self report data (S-data)

info a person verbally reveals about themselves, often by questionnaire or interview

unstructured

tell me/open ended questions

structured

true or false, defined boundaries of measurement

Likert rating scale

rating scale when numbers are attached to descriptive phrases

experience sampling

people answer some questions everyday for several weeks or longer

observer-report data (O-data)

evaluations others make of a person of whom they come in contact with

inter-rater reliability

multiple observers gather info then investigators evaluate the consensus among the observers

multiple social personalities

display different sides of ourselves to different people

naturalistic observation

observers record events that occur in the normal course of lives of the participant

Test Data (T-data)

info comes from standardized tests

functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

identifies specific areas of brain activity by blood rushing to the stimulated areas resulting in an increase of iron which the fMRI detects

projective techniques

presented with ambiguous stimulus and then is asked to impose some order on the stimulus

Life-Outcome data (L-data)

info gleaned from the events, activities, and outcomes in a person’s life that are available to public scrutiny

reliability

the degree to which an obtained measure represents the “true” level of the trait being measured. Consistency

repeated measurement

repeat the same measurement over time a way to estimate the reliability of a measure

test-retest reliability

the same test in administered to the same individuals on two separate occasions, and the results from both tests are compared to see how closely they correlate. Two tests are highly correlated similar scores for most people

internal consistency reliability

if all items within a test correlate well with each other. The degree to which different items on a test designed to measure the same construct produce similar results, indicating that the items are consistently assessing the same underlying characteristic

inter-rater reliability

when different observers agree with each other

response sets

the tendency to respond to the question on some basis that is unrelated to the question content (noncontent responding)

acquiescence

(yea-saying) a response set that refers to the tendency to agree with the questionnaire items regardless of content

extreme responding

tendency to give end point responses and avoid middle part response sets

social desirability

tendency to answer items as to some across socially attractive or likable

forced-choice questionnaire

pairs of statements and asked to indicate which of the two is most true

validity

the extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure

face validity

the test on the surface measures what it appears to measure

predictive validity

whether a test predicts criteria external to the test (future outcomes or behaviors) (criterion validity)

convergent validity

whether a test correlates with other measures that it should correlate with

discriminant validity

what a measure should not correlate with

construct validity

test measures what it claims to measure correlates what it is supposed to correlate with and doesn’t correlate with what it isn’t supposed to

theoretical constructs

hypothetical internal entities useful in describing and explaining differences between people. A complex idea that’s used to explain a phenomenon or behavior within a theory

example) neuroticism, a personality dimension, is a theoretical construct of the 5 factor model that can be measured

generalizability

the degree to which a measure retains its validity across different contexts

experimental methods

used to determine causality to find out if one variable influences another variable

manipulation*

used to evaluate the influence of one variable (IV) influence on (DV)

random assignment

assignment conducted randomly

counterbalancing

a technique used to control for order effects in experiments. It involves presenting conditions to participants in different orders.

statistically significant

probability of finding the results of a research study by chance alone (5%)

correlational method

determining a relationship between 2 variables not causality

correlation coefficient

a measurement that indicates the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables

directionality problem

correlations never prove causality. If A and B are correlated A or B could be the cause

third variable problem

2 variables are correlated because of a 3rd unknown variable

case study

examining one person in depth and can be used to formulate a more general theory that is tested in a larger population