Psych -- personality psychology

how did we wittle down traits

allport and odbert — filitered peoples traits surverys to 4,500 terms

raymond cattell — found a lot of synonyms so made 16 factors of scales, such as reserved to outgoing

some of these overlap, so ended up with the “big five” — openness to expeerience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism (each has low level facets) but it provised a frameowrk for mapping personality traits, such as shyness having low extraversion but high neuroticism

Hans eysenck found a 3-factor model (extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism)

critiques in triat psychology

1. are individual differences consistent? should look at peoiple as a distribution of their behaviours

2. is the strucutre of personality universal? translation and indigenous personality systems that critique cultures effect on traits

3. is personality a matter of traits or types?

4. are traits enough? other aspects such as values, interests, strengths should be considered — Schwartz value circle and Hollands RIASEC model

biological approaches to personality

genetics, hormones, brain functioning — to compare this nature to nurture there are twin and family studiesa

adoption study

comparing adopted children to adopted partents and biological parents, however adoption may occur early with biological mothers providing a prenatal environment and selective placement

heritability for personality traits

behavioural genetic studies estimate heritability based on the variance of a trait, most personality is from 0.3 to 0.5 heritability (however, this does not mean parents are always the same, it’s within a population and is assumng personalities fixed)

shared vs non shared environemnts

shared environments influences tend to be weak, while non shared environment differences (what makes siblings more different) are much stronger

eysenck’s theory of brain functioning

extraversion and low cortical arousal lead to a desire for stimilation, and neuroticism and limbic system reactivity lead to greater autonomic NS arousal to threat and stress

Gray’s theory of brain functioning

impulsivity and behavioural activation system is linked to sensivity to reward and pleasure. Anxiety and behavioural inhibition system lead to sensitivity to punushment and pain

do hormones and structures in the brain impact personality

yeah, most likely. Neutoricism is linked with high resting activity of the amygdala, and chemicals such as extraversion and dopamine or agreeableness and opiods are found. 

lower 2D and 4D ratio for men and women meaning

men — more physcial agression and masculine carreees, in women is more indirect agression and masculine interests

cognitive explanations to personality

thoughts, plans, memories, ebliefs, focuses on ways of thinking and the construction of meaning (having vs doing, personal as a scientist)

personal contructs approach to CT

george kelly proposed that humans are driven to understand, predict, and control their environment (personal contructs). Were always in the process of building personal construct on our sense of the world. Human cognition is contrastice, each persons own personality could only be understood by their words

attribution style approach to CT

about how we expalin the world on several dimensions (external vs internal, global vs specific, stable vs unstable) — predicts things like academic performane, life span, health

emotional intelligence approach to CT

percieving emotion, using emotion to plan behaviour understanding emotion, and managing/regulating emotion — correlated with openess and agreeableness, as well as social sensiitivity, job performance, and academics

the self approach to CT

two variables — self-complexity (degree to which the selfs structure is complex — buffers people against life events but also implied incoherent or confused selves) and self-esteem (degree to which the self is positively valued — stability and consistency matters more than it’s level)

consistency vs reliability vs validity

internal consistency — do all the components of the test cohere/correlate

inter-rater reliability — does the test provide the same information when different epople administer it?

re-test reliability — does the test yeild similar scores when it is aminiserted by the same person different occassions

validity — does the measurement assess hwat it is intended to assess and is it usefull

inventories

self report personality tests, using scales, composed of multiple items, such as the MMPI

projective tests

aims to penetrate deep levels of personality, allied with the psychoanalystic approach, involves deliberate ambiguity and open-endedness, such as thre tematic apperception test (however, it is time consuming, has a lower inter-scorer validiity, and encourages uncontrained interpretation)

why is personality fixed in adulthood

trait theory is stable, biological appraoches are matures, psychoanalysis is childhood determinism, and cogniitve approaches consider the personality malluable

why does stability increase over time

genetic influences, environmental channelling and selection, identitfy formation, psychological rescources

stability and changes two meanings

correlation — peoples personality is or isnt highly correlated over time

mean level — peoples average level of personality is or isnt stable over time

these can occur in any combination

eriksons life stages

1. basic trust and mistructs

2. autonomy and shame

3. initiative and guilt

4. industry and inferiority

5. identity and confusion

6. intimacy and isolation

7. generativity and stagnation

8. integrity and despaire