Clues to Assessing Personality

These flashcards cover key concepts related to personality assessment and the various types of data used in psychology.

S-data

Self-reports or self-judgments from an individual about their own personality.

I-data

Informant reports, which are evaluations of a person's personality by others who know them well.

L-data

Life outcomes, which refer to verifiable, concrete facts relating to an individual's life experience.

B-data

Behavioral data, which includes direct observations of an individual's actions and reactions.

Psychology’s emphasis on (research)methods

• Psychologists sometimes seem to know more about research methods than about the mind and behavior.

 

• Goal: Continuously improve on tentative answers to questions

 

• Question everything, be skeptical, think analytically, open mind

 

• Research: the exploration of the unknown

 

-> Requires gathering data (in various ways )

 

Use personality "clues"

• Clues: the observable aspects of personality Which are always incomplete

• Eg Self Report, or others describe you, what you see

• 4 types of clues

• Close might include individuals behaviour, test scores, degree of success and daily living or response to a laboratory procedure

• As a psychologist, you have to solve the mystery where you gather as many clues as possible And then try to solve them

Reliability

The consistency of a measure; a reliable measure produces similar results under consistent conditions.

S Data

Self-report or self-judgement

• a person's evaluation of her or his own personality

• Usually questionnaires or rating scales

• Self-ratings often match descriptions from other people

 

High Face validity

• The degree to which an assessment or measure actually appears to measure what we intend to measure

• Eg extroversion questionnaire measuring extroversion

 

Advantages

• Simple and easy: based o lots of information:, it’s cost-effective because it only needs questionnaires

 

• Definitely truth (our self-reported data is true by definition because it’s what we think about ourselves) ;

• large amount of information ; We ourself have the most information about our self’s Because we are always there in every situation

• Easy access to thought and feelings And intentions; Much if not all of you’re in a life is only visible to you such as fantasies hopes dreams etc

• causal force; what people think about themselves influences how they behave, self-effacing, People try to bring others to see them as they see them themselves the phenomenon and Called self verification

 

Limitations:

• Self representation bias (we can lie etc, concious and unconscious , because we want to describe ourselves as smarter kind etc than we really are which is particularly strong in narcissists, The other distortion is in the opposite direction where we describe ourselves more negatively than other people do),

• error, we just don’t know it about ourselves (fish in the water Effect = The presumed fact that the fish does not notice that they’re wet for example universal kindness to persist richness might be difficult for you to see because they’re always present or other aspects of personality might be too painful to recognise

•  

•  too simple and too easy  eg being too careless or someone lack insight into their own personality x because it’s been used so many times

 

I Data

Informant reports

judgments by knowledgeable informants about general attributes of the individual's personality Eg people who know us well (friends, family , coworker )   No training or expertise needed (we do it all the time) In some cases more accurate than s data especially with trades that are extremely desirable or undesirable Informant data is tied into reputation & behaviour   Advantages : Large amounts of information; through every day encounter such as working relaxing interacting, etc    Real-world basis from informant ; takes context and different situations into account   Objectivity Common sense and context,  Informed considers to kind of context, first is the immediate situation, for example the psychological meaning of an aggressive behaviour can change radically as a function of the situations that prompted it Second kind of context is provided by the persons other behaviours   Definitional truth Some i-data are true, by definition of eg. Likability Because it resides in the reaction of others, If other people think you’re charming, then you are     Casual forces, The opinions of others greatly affect both opportunities and expectancies, If others expect you to be sociable or intelligence you might tend to become just that, (expectancy effect)     Disatavtages Can be based on limited behavioural information, To some degree may be a different person in each of these different environments therefore I Data provided by any person will have limited accuracy as a description of what you like in general\   biased by rater: personality judgements can be unfair as well as mistaken e.g. informant is racist or sexist, or you only choose an informant that you know will Assess you well     Lack of access to private experience: solely view from outside and in a psychology satisfies in hopes must be assisted in some other manner   Error, Because Informant are only human, their judgement will sometimes be mistaken

L data

Life outcomes

• verifiable, concrete, real-life facts that may hold psychological significance

• Eg someone’s education or if they have been to jail

• Salary

• Hospital visits

• Tax

• Age

• Gender

• What’s your bedroom like?

• GPA

 

• Obtained from archives & self-report

 

 

L data is The results of "residue" of personality:

 

• How a person has affected the world eg the footprint you have left

 

Advantages of life data:

 

• Objective and verifiable; images of outcome such as income, marital status can be admiringly concrete and expressed an exact numeric form

 

• intrinsically important to the person,  The goal of area applied psychologist is to predict and have a positive effect on real life consequences

 

• psychologically relevant , l data  can be strongly affected by a uniquely informative about psychological variables e.g. some characteristics promote career success

 

Disadvantage of life data

 

• It’s Highly multi-determined, meaning that our data may have many causes  so trying to establish direct connections between specific attributes of personality and life of comes is chancy

• Eg, influeced by genetic illness , upbringing , toxins

 

• Possible lack of psychological relevance

 

B data

Behavioral data

Natural B Data

"The most visible indication of an individual's personality is what she does" (p. 38).

 

• Real life,

• Diary, were you reported what you did and say all day

 

• experience-sampling, Pages that beep several times a day and participants wrote down what they were doing

 

• observations,

-

• lab

 

 

• EAR: electronically activated recorder; an app and you attach it to your clothes , tracks interactions, behaviours etc , turns audio on and off ,tracks social interactions , ty time etc

 

• wearable cameras; Ambulatory assessment

 

• Social Media, Facebook, Twitter, etc

• Highly realistic

 

Disadvantages

•  Difficult to obtain,

• time-consuming,

• context-dependent

• Expensive

• Uncertain interpretation

B Data

Behavioural Data:

Laboratory B Data

• Experiments

 

• Behaviour during an experiment; performance on a computer task etc, reporting if you see smoke in an experiment

 

• Physiological measurement of biological "behaviour"

• Eg bloddpressure ,heart rate, Galvanic skin response, hormonal response

 

 

Advantages

 

Range of contexts;

• Researchers don’t have to wait for someone to show their personality in certain situations. They can just create the situation.

 

•  b data has the appearance of objectivity (less distorted, Because B day is based on direct observation)

• But research’s still have to interpret behaviour

 

Disadvantage

• Difficult, expensive, E.g. special equipment sampling methods setting up testing situations

 

• uncertain interpretation (eg behaviors don’t always mean what they thing they mean )

• Interpretation of behaviours can be Amibigous and wrong

Validity

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

Generalisability

The degree to which findings from a sample can be generalized to a larger population.

Funders' Second Law

There are no perfect indicators of personality; there are only clues, which are always ambiguous.

Funders' Third Law

Something beats nothing, two times out of three; some data is better than none, even if it's imperfect.

Behavioroid

A hybrid data type where participants report what they think they would do in a situation.

Face validity

The degree to which an assessment appears to measure what it intends to measure.

Self-representation bias

The tendency to present oneself in a more favorable light, which can distort self-reported data.

Expectancy effect

The phenomenon where an individual's performance or behavior is influenced by others' expectations.

Informant data advantages

Provides a large amount of real-world information, considering context and different situations.

Life data advantages

Objective, verifiable outcomes that can be measured and assessed for psychological significance.

Ambulatory assessment

An observational method that involves tracking behaviors and interactions in real-time using wearable technology.

Experiments in personality assessment

Controlled tests that create specific situations to observe and measure personality traits.

Combining Types of Data

 

Specific data are always limited & always ambiguous -> use multiple source of data \

 

Data do not always fit into only one category

•Multiple data sources allow aggregation & comprehensiveness

•Consistency increases confidence

•Discrepancies are informative