The Individual Module 4 Chapter 10 Introduction to Personality Psychology

trait-descriptive adjectives

Adjectives that can be used to describe characteristics of people (e.g., optimistic, lazy, anxiety-ridden).

personality

The set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organised and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptions to, the intrapsychic, physical and social environments.

psychological traits

Characteristics that describe ways in which people are different from each other, but also in which people are similar.

Example: Saying that someone is shy is to mention one way in which he or she differs from others who are more outgoing.

average tendencies

Refers to a person’s typical patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving over time. It’s how they usually act—not in every moment, but on average across situations.

four questions of research on personality

• How many traits are there?

• How are the traits organised? (e.g., How is talkativeness related to other traits, such as impulsivity and extraversion?)

• What are the origins of the traits? (Where they come from and how they develop) (e.g., Does heredity influence talkativeness?)

• What are the correlations and consequences of traits? (e.g., Do talkative persons have many friends?)

three reasons why psychological traits are useful

• They help describe people and help understand the dimensions of difference between people.

• They help explain behaviour. The reasons people act may be partly a function of their personality traits.

• They can help predict future behaviour (e.g., The sorts of careers individuals will find satisfying, who will tolerate stress better and who is likely to get along well with others.).

psychological mechanisms

Like traits, except that the term ‘‘mechanisms’’ refers more to the processes of personality.

Example: Someone who is extraverted may look for and notice oppurtunities to interact with other people.

three ingredients of psychological mechanisms

• Inputs - May make people more sensitive to certain kinds of information from the environment.

• Descision rules - May make people more likely to think about specific options.

• Outputs - May guide people’s behaviour toward certain categories of action.

within the individual

Personality is something a person carries with him or herself over time and from one situation to the next.

organised

The psychological traits and mechanisms, for a given person, are not simply a random collection of elements. Rather, personality is organised because the mechanisms and traits are linked to one another in a coherent fashion.

Our personalities are organised in the sense that they contain decision rules that govern which needs are activated, depending on the circumstances.

influential forces

Personality traits and mechanisms can have an effect on people’s lives

Personality influences how we act, how we view ourselves, how we think about the world, how we interact with others, how we feel, how we select our environments (particularly our social environments), etc.

person-environment interaction

Interactions with situations include perceptions, selections, evocations, and manipulations.

Two people can react and interpret a situation very differently. This difference is a function of their personalities.

Example: inkblot interpretation

three levels of personality analysis

• like all others (the human nature level)

• like some others (the level of individual and group differeces)

• like no others (the individual uniqueness level)

human nature

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

Example: All cultures on earth speak a language, so spoken language is part of the universal human nature.

individual differences

Ways in which each person is like some other people (e.g., extraverts, sensation seekers).

group differences

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

nomothetic research

Involves statistical comparisons of individuals or groups, requiring samples of subjects on which to conduct research.

Typically applied to identify universal human characteristics and dimensions of individual or group differences.

idiographic research

Focuses on a single subject, trying to observe general principles that manifest in a single life over time.

Often results in case studies or the psychological biography of a single person.

(translated literally as ‘the description of one’)

example of the three blind men who were presented with an elephant, what do they mean in the book

Holding personality together as a coherent field rather than seperate topics.

Psychologists often approach the topic of personality from one perspective. Each of the perspectives on personality captures elements of the truth, yet each speciality area alone is inadequate to describe the entire realm of human personality - the whole elephant, so to speak.

response effects examples

• Rewording a question

• Switching the sequence of questions

• Changing response categories

• Using the same question in a different survey

domain of knowledge

A speciality area of science and scholarship, in which psychologists have focused on learning about some specific and limited aspects of human nature.

dipositional domain

• Traits the person is born with or develops.

• Deals centrally with the ways in which individuals are disposed to behave, and why these dispositions differ from one another.

biological domain

• Biological events.

• Core assumption: Humans are, first and foremost, collections of biological systems, and these systems provide the building blocks for behaviour, thought and emotion.

• Three areas of research: genetics, psychophysiology, and evolution.

intrapsychic domain

• Conflicts within the person’s own mind.

• Deals with mental mechanisms of personality, many of which operate outside of conscious awareness.

cognitive-experimental domain

• Personal and private thoughts, feelings, desires, beliefs and other subjective experiences.

• Focuses on cognition and subjective experience such as conscious thoughts, feelings, beliefs and desires about oneself and others.

social and cultural domain

• Social, cultural and gendered positions in the world.

• Personality differences between groups most likely due to cultural influences.

adjustments domain

• The adjustments that the person must make to the inevitable challenges of life.

• Refers to the fact that personality plays a key role in how we cope with, adapt and adjust to the ebb and flow of events in out day-to-day lives.

• Personality is shown to be linked to important health outcomes, such as heart disease.

• Personality is shown to be linked to health-related behaviours, such as smoking, drinking, or risk-taking.

psychophysiology (of personality)

Researchers summarise what is known about the basis of personality in terms of nervous system functioning.

good theory

Three purposes in science:

• Provides a guide for researchers.

• Organises known findings.

• Makes predictions.

Serves as a guide for researchers, directing them to important questions within an area of research.

theories and beliefs

For example, astrology.

Astrology remains a belief, not a scientific theory.

comprehensiveness

• Standard for evaluating personality theories.

• Explains most or all known facts.

• Does the theory do a good job of explaining all of the facts and observations within its domain?

• Theories that explain more empirical data within their domains are generally superior to those that explain fewer findings.

heuristic value

• Standard for evaluating personality theories.

• Guides researchers to important new discoveries.

• Does the theory provide a guide to important new discoveries about personality that were not known before?

• Theories that steer scientists to making these discoveries are generally superior to theories that fail to provide this guidance.

testability

• Standard for evaluating personality theories.

• Makes precise predictions that can be empirically tested.

• Does the theory render precise enough predictions that personality psychologists can test them empirically?

• If a theory does not lend itself to being tested empirically, it is generally judged to be a poor theory.

parsimony

• Standard for evaluating personality theories.

• Contains few premises or assumptions.

• Does the theory contain few premises and assumptions (parsimony) or many premises and assumptions (lack of parsimony)?

• Theories that require many premises and assumptions to explain a given set of findings are judged to be poorer than theories that can explain the same findings with fewer premises and assumptions.

compatibility and integration (across domains and levels)

• Standard for evaluating personality theories.

• Consistent with what is known in other domains; can be coordinated with other branches of scientific knowledge.

• A theory of cosmology in astronomy that violated known laws of physics, for example, would be incompatible across levels and hence judged to be fatally flawed.