personality psych exam1

personality

An individual’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms behind those patterns.

basic approach (to personality)

A theoretical view of personality that focuses on some phenomena and ignores others. The basic approaches are trait, biological, psychoanalytic, phenomenological, learning, and cognitive

personality processes

The mental activities of personality, including perception, thought, motivation, and emotion

individual differences

enduring characteristics of individuals

traits

characteristic over a long period of time

• are a spectrum (extroversion ranges from not extroverted to extremely extroverted)

state

characteristic just at a particular moment

• temportary psychological event (emotions, thoughts, perception)

item

each question/statement in a personality questionnaire

scale

consists of multiple items measuring the same characteristic in a personality quesionnaire

inventory

a questionnaire that measures multiple characteristics

• has multiple scales or subscales

personality types

categorical

• ex: classify the person as either introvert or extravert

research

exploration of the unknown; finding out something that nobody knew before one discovered it

s-data

self-judgements, or ratings that people provide of their own personality attributes or behavior

I-data

informants’ data or judgemenets made by knowledgeable informants about general attributes of an individual’s personality

L-data

life data, or early varifiable, concrete, real-life outcomes, which are of possible psychological significance

B-data

behavioral data, or direct observations of another’s behavior that are translated directly or nearly directly into numerical form

• can be gathered in natural experimental settings

self-verification

the process by which people try to bring others to treat them in a manner that confirms their self-conceptions

expectancy effect/behavioral confirmation

the tendency for someone to become the kind of person others expect them to be

projective tests

a personality test that asks the client to interpret a meaningless or ambiguous stimulus

projective hypothesis

the idea that if a person is asked to interpret an ambiguous stimulus, the answer will indicate the person’s needs, feelings, thought processes, or other hidden aspects of the mind

rational method

a method of personality test construction in which items are grouped together on the basis of factor analysis

factor analytic method

a method of personality test construction in which items are grouped together on the basis of factor analysis

empirical method

a method of personality test construction based on comparing answers given by members of different criterion groups

face validity

the degree to which an assessment instrument, such as a quesionnaire, on its face appears to measure what it is intended to measure

• ex: a face-valid measure of sociability might ask about attendance at parties

fish-out-of water effect

compares the fact that fish do not notice they are wet to the fact that people have difficulty recognizing consistent aspects of their personality because they are alway present

factor analysis

a statistical technique for finding clusters of relatedd traits, tests, or items

psychometrics

the technoology of psychological measurement

reliability

in the measurement, the tendency of an intrument to provide the same comparative information on repeatedd ocasions

measurement error

the variation of a number around its true mean due to uncontrolled, essentially random influences; also called error variance

state

a temporary psychological event, such as emotion, thought, or perception

trait

a relatively stable and long-lasting attriubute of personality

aggregation

the combining together of different measurements, such as by averaging them

validity

the degree to which a measurement actually reflects what it is intended to measure

construct

an idea about a psychological attribute that goes beyond what might be assessed through any particular method of assessment

construct validation

the strategy of establishing the validity of a measure by comparing it with a wide range of other measures

generalizability

the degreee to which a measure can be found under diverse circumstances, such as time, context, particular population, etc

• in modern psychometrics, the term includes both reliability and validity

case method

studying a particular phenomenon or individual in depth both to understand the particular case and to discover general lessons or scientific laws

experimental method

a research technique that establishes the casual relationship between an independent variable (x) and dependent variable (y) by randomly assigning participants to experimental groups characterized by differing levels of x, and measuring the average behavior (y) that results in each group

correlational method

a research technique that establishes the relationship (not necessarily casual) between two variables, traditionally denoted x and y, by measuring both variables in a sample of participants

correlational coefficient

A number between –1 and +1 that reflects the degree to which one variable, traditionally called y, is a linear function of another, traditionally called x. A negative correlation means that as x goes up, y goes down; a positive correlation means that as x goes up, so does y; a zero correlation means that x and y are unrelated.

4 sources of personality data

• self-report/judgement (s)

• informant (I)

• Life (L)

• Behavioral observation/interpretation (B)

3 methods of test construction

• rational/theoretical

• emperical/criterion

• factor analysis

Three ways of assessing reliability

1. inter-item

2. test-retest

3. inter-rates

inter-item

responses to similar items are consistent

test-retest

responses to the same test given multiple times are consistent

inter-rates

responses made by different independent rates are consistent

typical ways of examining validity

• criterion

• convergent validity

• discriminant validity

• face validity

criterion

how well what you’ve measured predicts a different, well-accepted measure of the construct

convergent validity

how well what you’ve measured predicts a different, well-accepted measure of the construct

discriminant validity

how well what you’ve measured is NOT associated with conceptually irrelevant measures (doesn’t measure unintended qualities)

face validity

how well your measure APPEARS to measure what it is intended to

third-variable problem

an unmeasured variable (Z) is the underlying cause for changes in both X and Y

p-level

in null hypothesis statistical testing, the calculated probability that an effect of the size obtained by a study would have been found if the actual effect of the population were zero

effect size

a number that reflects the degree to which one variable affects, or is related to, another variable

replication

doing a study again to see if the results hold up

• are especially persuasive when done by a different researcher in different labs than the original study

publication bias

the tendency of scientific journals preferentially to publish studies with strong results

questionable research pracites (QRP)

research practices that can increase the chances of obtaining the result the researcher desires

• includes:

• deleting unusual responses

• adjusting results results to remove the influence of extraneous factors

• neglecting to report variables or experimental conditions that fail to yield expected results

p-hacking

analyzing data in various ways until one finds the desired results

deception

purpose is to make research realistic

• involves correlating personality measures with behavioral life outcomes

open science

a set of emerging principles intended to improve the transparency of scientific research and that encourage fully reporting all methods and variables used in a study, reporting studies that failed as well as succeeded, and sharing data among scientists