Personality Psychology Exam Review

A collection of flashcards designed to cover key concepts and vocabulary from personality psychology based on lecture notes.

Three levels of personality (McAdams)

The three levels are: dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and life narratives.

Personality

An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Perfect indicators of personality

Funder's statement means that while we try to measure personality, no tool is flawless. It doesn't doom personality research but highlights its complexity.

BLIS acronym

The four sources of data: Behavior, Life outcomes, Informant reports, and Self-reports.

Reliability

The consistency of a measure over time.

Validity

The extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure.

Projective hypothesis

The idea that people's responses to ambiguous stimuli reveal their personality.

Projective test

A test where individuals project their personality through their interpretations of ambiguous stimuli, such as the Rorschach inkblot test.

Objective test of personality

Standardized psychological tests that measure personality traits, such as the MMPI or Big Five inventory.

Methods of test construction

Three methods include: empirical, rational, and factor analysis.

Binomial effect size display

A visual representation of effect sizes that helps understand the practical significance of statistical results.

Generalizability

The extent to which findings can be applied to settings, groups, or measures other than those specifically studied.

WEIRD samples

Participants from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies.

Experimental vs. correlational methods

Experimental methods determine cause-and-effect relationships; correlational methods identify relationships but do not imply causation.

Trait approach to personality

An approach that focuses on individual traits as defining aspects of personality.

Trait

A stable characteristic that causes individuals to behave in certain ways.

State

A temporary psychological condition that can influence behavior.

Lexical hypothesis

The idea that the most important personality traits are encoded in language.

Continuous vs. types

Treating traits as continuous allows for a more nuanced understanding of personality variations.

Cardinal trait (Allport)

A dominant trait that defines a person's personality, such as altruism.

Factor analysis

A statistical method used to identify underlying relationships between traits.

Big Five traits

The five major dimensions of personality: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.

Self-monitoring

The ability to adjust one's behavior in response to social cues.

Situationist argument

The idea that situational factors outweigh trait influences in determining behavior.

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to overemphasize personality traits in explaining others' behavior while underemphasizing situational factors.

Absolute vs. relative consistency

Absolute consistency refers to stability in traits over time, while relative consistency refers to maintaining rank order among individuals.

Interaction of traits and situation

Personality traits influence behavior, but situational contexts also shape how traits are expressed.

Aggregation

Combining multiple observations to improve the reliability of behavioral predictions.

Hierarchical structure of personality

A model that organizes traits from broad meta-traits down to specific traits.

Compound trait

A trait formed by the combination of other traits, such as introversion with a tendency towards anxiety.

Personality traits and life outcomes

Research shows that personality traits can predict various life outcomes, including health and job performance.

Testing tests

Investigating the reliability and validity of psychological assessments.

Personality change over time

Research suggests that while personality traits remain stable, they can also change due to life experiences.

Changes in Big Five traits

Big Five traits typically show variations throughout the lifespan, such as increased agreeableness with age.

Short-term changes in traits

Studies suggest that personality traits can indeed change meaningfully in shorter periods.