Psych of Personality Exam 1

Personality

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

Characteristic patterns

Individual differences that are relatively stable across situations and over time

Thinking “Thought”

→ What you think

→ How you think

Feeling (“Emotion”)

→ Mood

→ Motivation

Behaving “Behavior”

→ What you do

→ How you do it

Psychological Triad

Thinking, Feeling, Behaving

What Personality is NOT

physical characteristics → Height, weight

abilities, skills → singing ability, basketball skills

social/demographic attributes → s3x, race, religion

states → hungry, tired

psychological mechanisms

the biological, social, cognitive, motivational, and emotional processes that explain these patterns

Personality psychology

the scientific study of personality

→ gaining knowledge through systemic observation

personality data as clues

→ cannot directly observe personality characteristics and processes. MUST be inferred

types of personality data

S-Data, I-Data, B-Data, L-Data

S Data

Self Judgements

I Data

Informant Judgements

B Data

Behavioral Observations

L Data

Life Outcomes

What is S Data

→ asks person about themselves

→ subjective measurement

→ gathered through: interviews and questionnaires

What is I Data

→ ask knowledgeable informant(s) about target like roommate, friends, family

→ subjective measurement

→ gathered through: interviews and questionnaires

S-data vs I-data

→ Who do we think is the best judge of our behavior?

→ Who really is the best judge?

→ Do peers know something about our behavior that we don’t know?

Lay Perceptions of Accuracy (I vs S)

→ compared accuracy of predictions made by self vs. others

Electronically-Activated Recorder (EAR)

Digital audio recorder with that records ambient sounds of people’s daily lives

Study w/ EAR

→ Wore for 4 days (Fri-Tue); recorded 30s every 12.5 min

→ Participants could not tell when the recorder was on or off

Results of EAR Study

SOKA Model

→ Self-Other Knowledge Asymmetry

What SOKA Model ask

→ When is self-knowledge better?

→ When is other-knowledge better?

→ Some informants better than others

Advantages of S-Data

→ Based on lots of information

→ Filtered through common sense

→ Access to internal states

→ Easy to obtain

Disadvantages of S-Data

→ Can be mistaken, biased, or deceptive

→ Aren’t always aware of own behavior

Advantages of I-Data

→ Based on lots of information (potentially)

→ Filtered through common sense

→ External perspective

Disadvantages of I-Data

→ Can be mistaken, biased, or deceptive

→ Can’t always access internal states

→ More difficult to obtain

What is B-Data?

→ Observe what the person does; how they react

→ Objective measurement of behavior

→ Record behaviors in: Naturalistic settings & Laboratory settings

Naturalistic B-Data

→ Behaviors in everyday life

→ Examples: Daily diary of specific behaviors , EAR , Online environment (e.g., Instagram)

Lab B-Data

→ Behaviors in the ____ : Contrived or more natural

→ Examples: Delay of gratification paradigm , Emotional expressions , Physiological data , Certain personality tests (e.g., TAT, Rorschach)

Is B-Data really objective?

→ Intuitively, it seems to be

→ However, involves many subjective decisions

→ Observers often don’t agree

When is B-data the MOST useful?

→ When participants can’t or won’t tell you

→ When comparing different groups and you are worried about response styles

→ For convergent validity

What is L-Data

Verifiable, concrete, real-life outcomes

→ Reflects past behaviors

Can be obtained from archival records

→ e.g., arrests, GPA, marriage, Facebook friends

Easier to ask the person instead?

→ not necessarily, may be more likely to lie about an arrest record

Behavioral Residue

Physical Space

Advantages of B-Data

→ Are objective

→ Intrinsically important

→ Can create particular situations in the lab

Disadvantages of B-Data

→ Can be difficult to interpret

→ Difficult to obtain

Advantages of L-Data

→ Are objective

→ Intrinsically important

Disadvantages of L-Data

→ Can be difficult to interpret

Mixed Data

→ Not all data fit neatly into one category

→ Many examples of hybrid data

• Roommate’s report of how often you make your bed: L-Data & B-Data

Funder’s 2nd Law

no perfect indicators of personality; only clues

Funder’s 3rd Law

something beats nothing, 2 times out of 3

Henry Murrary

founder of personality psych, commented that in order to understand personality, first have to look at personality

self-verification

people trying to bring others to see them as they see themselves

expectancy effect

others expect you to be sociable, intelligent, aloof, etc, you may become those things

expectancy effect also known as

behavioral confirmation

Duck Test

best to draw on multiple sources

→ Triangulation

personality test

Any standardized procedure for assessing one or more personality characteristics.

→ Same instructions, items, and scoring procedure

what are personality tests good for

→ Psychological research

→ Clinical screening and diagnosis

→ Organizational uses

two types of personality tests

Objective & Projective

objective tests

present items that people respond to using a fixed set of options.

→ Examples: Rating scales, true-false

Adjective Checklist (ACL)

checklist of adjectives, can be used to measure personality

specific example of objective test

the ACL

projective tests

present ambiguous stimuli that people respond to

→ Open-ended responses

→ Responses should reflect their own personalities

→ Responses interpreted by a trained scorer

specific example of projective tests

thematic apperception test (TAT)

what is TAT

Responses scored for motives

TAT Scoring

Identify and count prevalence of narrative themes

→ Need for Affiliation – positive feelings towards others (establish/maintain/restore relationship); negative feelings about separation/disruption of relationship

→ Need for Power – strong actions with inherent impact on others or society at large (influence, persuade, concern for prestige)

→ Need for Achievement – reference to standard of excellence (good/better/best); negative reactions to failure; winning competition/succeeding

Need for Affiliation

positive feelings towards others (establish/maintain/restore relationship); negative feelings about separation/disruption of relationship

Need for Power

strong actions with inherent impact on others or society at large (influence, persuade, concern for prestige)

Need for Achievement

reference to standard of excellence (good/better/best); negative reactions to failure; winning competition/succeeding

stimuli for objective tests

Relatively clear (e.g., adjectives, sentences)

stimuli for projective tests

Ambiguous (e.g., Inkblots, pictures)

response format of objective tests

Fixed (e.g., check boxes, rating scales)

response format of projective tests

Free response (open-ended)

response interpretation of objective tests

Straightforward; not necessarily obvious

response interpretation of projective tests

Complex, uncertain; hidden aspects

why use projective tests

→ Projective tests have generally not been shown to be reliable or valid diagnostic tools

→ Clinicians still find them useful as a springboard to open up conversation with clients

→ Some validity?

• May assess the readiness and frequency with which certain thoughts come to mind (chronic accessibility

three common ways of test construction

→ rational method

→ factor analytic method

→ empirical method

rational method

→ Create items based on theory or definition of a construct

→ Relies on subjective judgments of test writer

• e.g., what would a shy person say?

factor analytic method

→ Identify groups of items that “hang together”

→ Humans interpret factors

• Label in a meaningful way

→ “Garbage in, garbage out”

• Ideally use a large set of representative items

factors

Identify groups of items that “hang together”

empirical method

→ Create scales based on how pre-existing, well- understood groups differ

• e.g., diagnosed depressed vs. not depressed

→ Content of items often ignored

• e.g., “I like hopscotch”

constructing a good personality test

→ combine diff approaches

1. Write a bunch of items that you think should measure the personality characteristic of interest (Rational)

2. Run a factor analysis to see whether the items correlate with each other and form different subscales (Factor analytic)

3. Check whether responses to these items predict relevant behaviors and outcomes (Empirical)

• Cross-validate

data can vary in quality which leads to us _________

needing to be able to tell good from bad

reliability

stability or repeatability

generalizability

applies more broadly

validity

measures what you’re trying to measure

The Reproducibility Project

→ Large scale effort to test whether findings replicate

→ Other labs tried to reproduce studies published in psychology journals

Open Science Movement

→ Increase disclosure in methods, results, and hypothesis presentation

→ Pre-register hypotheses and studies

→ Share data

→ Be a responsible scientist regardless of outcome

what is reliability

→ The extent to which measurements are stable, dependable, and can be replicated

• Assuming your target is stable (trait vs. state)

→ All measurements are somewhat imperfect

• Observed score = “true” score + error

Sources of Error

→ State of the participant

→ Characteristics of the experimenter

→ Experimental environment

→ Low precision

ways to boost reliability

→ Careful control of the setting/experiment

→ Aggregation

Average across multiple items/observations

Random influences cancel out

types of reliability

a. test-restest (stability)

b. internal consistency

c. interjudge agreement

test-restest stability

assesses the stability of a measurement

→ Should get a similar result every time

internal consistency

Correlating every item on a scale with each other

alpha (α) reliability

→ Items on a personality test should “hang together” to measure the construct of interest

inter-judge reliability

agreement or consensus among observers

what is validity

Extent to which a measure captures what it should

evidence of validity

Scores predict expected behaviors or life outcomes

reliability vs validity

→ can be reliable without being valid

→ if something is valid it is reliability

face validity

Does the item/question look valid?

face validity example

“I know that I’m good because everyone keeps telling me so”

content validity

Does the assessment adequately sample the construct you hope to measure?

high content validity = good coverage

predictive validity

Does the assessment predict appropriate outcomes?

generalizability

To what extent to results apply more broadly

→ Other people

→ Other places

→ Other times

steps to research process

1. formulate hypothesis

2. design study

3. collect data

4. analyze data

5. interpret results

research design

A plan for making systematic observations, in order to answer one or more key questions

types of research design common in personality

Case study, Correlational study, Experiment

case study

→ In-depth examination of a particular person or event

→ Usually someone/something interesting or unusual

→ Standard approach for some

• Freud

• McAdams

correlational study

→ Examines the associations between two or more variables, using a sample of participants

→ Variables are measured but not manipulated

→ Variables often referred to as predictors and outcomes

experiment

→ A researcher manipulates one or more independent variables (IV), then observes the effects on one or more dependent variables (DV).

→ Each participant is randomly assigned to a level of the independent variable (i.e., study condition)

→ Compare experimental condition(s) to control condition