The Science of Personality: Methods & Assessment

Funder highlights the distinction between scientific education and technical training. Which does he say is more important?

neither (they are both equally important)

What is funders second law?

there are no perfect indicators of personality; there are only clues, and clues are always ambiguous

What is S data?

self judgements

Who is the target of S data?

person

Who is the data source of S data?

person

How is S data obtained?

questionnaires, interviews, open-ended questions, etc.

What is I data?

informant judgements

Who is the target of I data?

Person

Who is the data source of I data?

informant

How is I data obtained?

questionnaires, interviews, open-ended questions, etc.

What is L data?

life outcomes

Who is the target of L-Data?

person

Who is the data source of L data?

public documents

How can L-data be obtained?

records, social media, etc

What is B data?

behaviors

Who is the target of B data?

person

what is the data source of B data?

observable action

What is natural B data?

observations in “real world” settings

What is laboratory b data?

observations during study sessions

What is funders 3rd law?

something beats nothing, two times out of three

What does funders 3rd law mean IOW?

having systematic data - whatever kind and however gathered - will help you understand something better than if you had no data at all

What should inform your choice of method?

the kind of data you want to collect

What is a case method?

gather in depth data about a single individual or a very particular group

What can a case method be helpful for?

generating new ideas

Why do we need to exercise caution with case methods?

generalizability

What does a correlational method look at?

a relationship between variables (as they already are)

What does an experimental method look at?

a relationship between variables (after manipulating one of them)

Can you prove causation with an experimental method

not really

Why can’t you prove causality with experimental methods?

We don’t know that we manipulated what we think we did and we may be creating artificial circumstances

What is reliability?

consistency over time, raters, contexts, etc.

What is test, retest reliability?

Does the person provide similar data over the course of time?

Do we expect to see test-retest reliability for traits or for states?

traits

What is internal consistency?

do all the data points on a single measure “hang together”?

What is validity?

ability to use the data to come to accurate conclusions about persons

What is a construct?

abstract concept/feature/characteristic that cannot be objectively sensed

What are projective hypotheses?

if you are given something that has no meaning, your personality should “leak” out

What are objective tests?

require scorers who are trained in the use of standardized ways of scoring the measure

Objective tests are not without _______

subjectivity

What is generalizability?

applicability of your data across persons

What are some common generalizability problems in psychological science?

gender bias, conscientiousness bias, and WEIRD samples

What does WEIRD samples stand for?

White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, & Democratic

What is null hypothesis significance testing?

typical way of determining if a result is statistically important

What is type 2 error?

false negative (H is true but you missed it)

What is type 1 error?

false positive (you mistakenly believe that H is true, when it isn’t)

What is type 1 error also known as?

Alpha

What is type 2 error also known as?

beta

P-values reflect the _________ of the hypothesis, given the data

likelihood

Effect sizes reflect the _______ of the hypothesizes relationship

magnitude