Prof. Linell Psych of Personality Midterm - Cedarville

Psychoanalytic approach

concerned primarily with people's unconscious mind and internal conflict

Biological approach

concerned primarily with how a person's genes, physiology, and brain anatomy are related to his or her personality

How do clinical psychology and personality psychology overlap

They share a common responsibility to understand every feature of an individual, not just single aspects about them

What is the psychological triad?

How people feel, think, and behave

Is stubbornness a good trait to have?

Yes and no; it can be a strength in some situations and a weakness in others - funder’s law

What are the two branches of the phenomenological approach?

-focuses on how conscious awareness produces uniquely human attributes

- focuses on the degree to which the experience of reality may be different in different cultures

What is a big disadvantage to making One Big Theory of personality?

It would explain some parts of behavior well and other parts not as well

Why is the fact that personality psychology emphasizes individual differences a strength of it?

It leads personality psychologists to be extremely sensitive to the fact that people really are different from each other

What is personality psychology's biggest advantage over other areas of psychology?

the psychology of whole persons is taken into account

The different approaches to studying personality ____ rather than ____ each other?

Complement, compete with

Are the three parts of the psychological triad always consistent?

No, they are not always consistent

The trait approach to personality psychology best describes what situation?

a psychologist focusing on ways that people differ from one another in behavior and disposition, and how these differences might be measured

When defining personality, we could say that personality is best described as

people's characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior together with the psychological mechanisms, hidden or not, behind those patterns (basically just the triad)

When patterns of behavior are extreme, unusual, and problematic, personality psychology overlaps with

Clinical psychology

Is the psychoanalytic approach an example of a basic approach, or paradigm, of personality psychology?

Yes, it is an example

According to the text, what is the central principle behind the use of S data?

People are the best experts on their own opinions and behaviors

Both experimental and correlational methods assess the relationship between variables. The two methods are different in that

the variable that is thought to be causal is manipulated in the experimental method, whereas it is measured without being manipulated in the correlational method

What do correlational methods do?

-Allow constructs to be studied in a variety of settings

-allow researchers to find a relationship between two variables

-require reliable measures of both variables

What does generalizability allow us to do?

apply our results to populations or situations outside of an experiment

Informant-report data can best be defined as

judgments by knowledgeable human informants of general attributes of the individual's personality made through observation (like parents evaluation of their child’s behavior)

Of the four types of data, which ones call for individuals to directly answer questions about themselves or other people

informant reports and self-reports

(T/F)  low precision, variation in the participant and environment, state of the experimenter are all factors that commonly undermine reliability

True! Those all undermine reliability

Reliability and validity are both part of a larger concept called

generalizability

The main difference between state and trait reliability is that

states lack consistency across time and situations, whereas traits produce reliable measures across time and situations

What is an example of a construct, something that cannot be directly seen or touched, but that affects and helps to explain many different things that are visible?

Intelligence

What are some advantages of self-report data?

It’s easy to collect, cost effective, and the person being questioned is the best expert on their own behavior

A researcher shows you various cards with pictures on them and asks you to tell a story about the scene and people in the pictures. What kind of test is this?

projective test

If a test consists of a list of questions that can be answered yes or no, true or false, or on a numeric scale, and especially if the test uses a computer-scored answer sheet, then it is what kind of test?

Objective test

According to the text, why might older people be more inclined to believe that individuals generally possess consistent personality traits?

As people age, they develop consistent personalities for themselves through embarking on a career track, starting families, and undertaking roles and responsibilities

In the end, what might be a good way of understanding the relationship between situational variables and personality traits?

Situational variables tell us about how people will act under certain circumstances; personality traits tell us about how people act in general

In the end, according to Funder, which is more important for determining what people do, the individual's personality or the situation?

Both lol

Openness is related to

forgiveness, political liberalism, and artistic interests

The _______ view says that under the right circumstances, anybody could be rich, popular, and successful. The ______ view says that that some people possess characteristics that make bad outcomes relatively likely

situationist, trait

The idea that people are psychologically different and that it is important and interesting to note these differences is made evident by?

words arising to describe individual differences

The idea that persons and situations constantly work together to produce behavior is called?

interactionism

The person-situation debate focuses on which question?

Which is more important for determining what people do, the person or the situation?

The pro-personality response to the situationist argument hinged on three points. What were the counterarguments?

-If research methods were improved, they could yield higher correlation coefficients

-A correlation of .40 is not small

-Mischel's review of personality research did not present a fair representative sample of the aggregated literature

The trait approach to personality psychology can best be described as?

processing personality differences quantitatively to predict and explain human behavior

Unhappiness, poor family relations, and occupational dissatisfaction characterize which of the Big Five personality traits?

neuroticism

What are the three main facets of interactionism; that is, the way in which persons and situations produce behavior together?

-Situations tend to be self-selected; in other words, certain types of people tend to find themselves in certain types of situations

-The effect of a personality variable may depend on the situation, or vice versa

-People change situations by virtue of the actions they take in them

Which personality trait is associated with poor coping, criminal behavior, and poor family relations?

neuroticism

Which personality trait is related to happiness, attractiveness, and leadership?

extraversion

Why might adults tend to be more stable when it comes to personality and decision making, whereas adolescents and children tend to be more erratic and fluctuating?

Adults tend to be more consistent than younger people because they have undertaken adult responsibilities and have established consistent identities

"Self-fulfilling prophecies" in the realm of psychology are referred to as?

expectancy effects

In psychological research, what is something that affects the relationship between two variables?

a moderator variable

In Rosenthal's four-factor theory of expectancy effects, ______ refers to the way that teachers project a warmer emotional attitude toward the students they expect to do well

climate

In Rosenthal's four-factor theory of expectancy effects, ______ refers to the way that teachers give their high-expectation students extra opportunities to show what they have learned

output

In Snyder's study on social expectancies, the results indicated that if a male participant saw an __________ photograph, the female participant was __________ likely to have behaved in a manner that was rated as warm, poised, and humorous

Attractive, more

In studies on the amount of information needed to make accurate personality judgments, when more information was given, the level of consensus or agreement among judges in their personality judgment__________ across time. However, the level of accuracy__________

Did not change, increased

It tends to be more informative to observe a person in a __________ situation, in which people do different things, than in a __________ situation, in which social norms or other expectations restrict what people do

Weak, strong

One of the consequences of everyday personality judgment is

your reputation

Recent studies have shown that expectation effects are stronger when more than one important person in someone's life holds the expectation for a __________ time; however, it seems that this appears to be especially true for __________ expectations

Long time, negative

Research finds that by looking at someone's face

we detect with some accuracy the difference between extremes of certain personality traits such as extraversion and agreeableness

The greater the amount of diverse information that points to the same conclusion, the more valid a test is likely to be. To put it another way, if something walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and sounds like a duck, then it is very probably a duck. This method of assessing test validity is called

convergent validation

Two opposing philosophical points of view have important implications for psychological research into the accuracy of personality judgments. __________ argues that all interpretations are simply social constructions, and therefore there is no way to regard one interpretation as more or less accurate than another. __________ holds that although all interpretations of reality are fallible, not all interpretations are equally correct

Constructivism, Critical realism

Which answer below represents the proper sequence in which the four conditions of personality judgment must be met according to the Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM)?

relevance, availability, detection, utilization

Which of the following answers is NOT one of the primary moderator variables on which research on personality judgment accuracy has focused?

the situation surrounding the judgment

(it’s the target[person being judged], the judge of the trait, and the trait in question)

Which traits are easier to judge accurately?

more visible traits (e.g., extraversion)

According to Jack and Jeanne Block's theory of personality as based on ego resilience and ego control, overcontrolled people tend to ______ impulses, while undercontrolled individuals are more prone to_______ impulses?

inhibit impulses; act on them immediately

According to psychologist Jonathan Haidt, conservatives are likely to strongly value?

in-group loyalty

High self-monitors are likely to be described as

skilled in social techniques of imaginative play, pretending, and humor (They will survey every situation, looking for cues as to the appropriate way to act)

Low self-monitors are likely to be described as

touchy or irritable, perfectionists, and independent (They tend to be more consistent regardless of the situation)

In a previous study, the use of certainty words (such as "exactly" or "absolutely") was NOT found to be associated with which of the following characteristics?

emotional instability

People who score high on the openness to experience/intellect trait are?

more likely to play a musical instrument

The __________ is the idea that the important aspects of human life will be labeled with words, and that if something is truly important and universal, many words for it will exist in all languages?

lexical hypothesis

The concept of self-monitoring states that some individuals have very different "inner" and "outer" selves. __________ are individuals who really do vary in their inner and outer selves and who modulate their personalities greatly depending on their setting; __________ are largely the same outside as they are inside and do not vary much from one setting to another?

high self-monitors; low self-monitors

Using the typological approach, research has focused on which three personality types?

well-adjusted, overcontrolling, and undercontrolling

What does the single-trait approach examine?

It examines the link between personality and behavior by asking, “What do people like that do”?

What does the many-trait approach examine?

It asks, Who does that?

What does the essential-trait approach examine?

It asks, What traits are the most essential?

What does the typological approach ask?

It asks, Does it really make sense to array everybody in the world along the various trait scales that psychologists have adopted?

What method of research examines the behavior patterns of certain types of individuals?

single-trait approach

What method of research focuses on the patterns of traits that characterize whole persons, rather than focusing on the traits directly?

typological approach

What method of research seeks to explain the pattern of correlation between certain traits and specific behaviors?

many-trait approach

Which of the Big Five personality traits is associated with a tendency to be cooperative?

agreeableness

Young men who were depressed at age 18 were more likely to have been labeled at age 7 or age 3 with all the following characteristics?

unsocialized

aggressive

undercontrolled

Cumulative Continuity Principle

personality traits increase in rank-order consistency as people get older

Maturity Principle

people become better equipped to deal with the demands of life as they acquire experience and skills

Plasticity Principle

personality can change at any time (but such change may not be easy)

Role Continuity Principle

taking on roles or images such as being a "jock" or a "brain" can lead personally to be inconsistent over time

Identity Development Principle

people see to develop a stable sense of who they are, and then strive to act consistently with this self-view

Social Investment Principle

changing social roles at different states of life, such as becoming a spouse, parent, or boss, can cause personality to change

Corresponsive Principle

person-environment transactions can cause personality traits to remain consistent or even magnify