Psych Week 4

Life outcomes

looking at records (ex: marraige, hospital visits)

How do we assess personality?

• Projective tests

• Subjective

• Objective

• Semi-structured interviews

Projective Tests

• Meant to uncover unconscious feelings and personality

• Rorschach (ink blots)

• Highly controversial in regard to validity

TAT (Thematic Apperception Test)

• 5-20 cards chosen based on the situation

• No good data on validity or reliability

• Potential bias from clinician choosing cards

Subjective tests

• Ex: Interviews

• allows you to see whole person

• individual can shape time and impression

Subjective tests are favored by

Psychodynamic, individualists, humanists, existentialist

Objective tests

• Self reports

• Informant reports

Implicit tests

• Performance based test

• Lexical decision test

• Implicit association test

Performance based test

measures reaction times as indirect assessment of associations

Lexical decision test

What’s on someone’s mind (ex: word associations)

Implicit association test

Going back and forth between 2 things (contraversial for capturing implicit bias)

Semi-structured interview

• common in clinical settings

• used in many longitudinal studies

• Guided set of questions with flexibility

• Ex: Eriksonian Stages, Life narrative approach

Life narraitve perspective views

trait perspective as reductivist

3 levels to personality

• Actor

• Agent

• Author

Self as actor

• Infant temperament

• Dispositional traits

• Begins at age 2 (theory of mind)

• Focus on the present

• How do I act and feel?

Theory of the mind

I have a mind that’s different from everyone else’s

Self as Agent

• Development of characteristic adaptations (goals, values …)

• Age 7 through adolescence

• What do I want and value?

Mid-range goals

Goals that are broad and stable enough to organize people’s future selves while still being immeadiate enough to reflect current behavior

Mid range goals also called

• personal striving

• personal projects

• life belongings

Self as storyteller

• Narrative identity

• Late adolescence to early adulthood

Narrative Identity

an internalized and evolving story of the self

Causal Coherence

explaining how one event caused, or is related to, subsequent events in life

Thematic coherence

when over arching themes or values is used to integrate different selected experiences

Agency

Can you affect change in your life

Communion

Do you experience interpersonal connection and intimacy

Redemption

Scenes where bad events lead to good outcome

Contamination

scenes where good things turn bad

Meaning making

Degree to which a leasson was learned

Exploratory narrative processing

extent of self-exploration

Coherent positive resolution

extent to which tensions are resolves to produce closure and a positive ending

Stability in temperament across time

is genetics

unique environmental influences

account for change

Tempermant influences _ reinforcing your temperament

• How others treact you

• the environments you select

positivity in childhood

results in extraversion and positive domain

anxiousness and fear in childhood

results in neuroticism or negative emotionality

Childhood capacity for focus and effortful control

results in conscientiousness and agreeableness

Maturity principle

People become more dominant, agreeable and stable over course of adult life (until middle age)

Roberts argued

maturing is from increased investment in social roles

Costa argued that

maturing is from genetics

Trait stability Correlations

• Kids (0.41)

• Young adults (0.55)

• 30+ (0.7)

Big 5 longitudinal study

extraversion was the most predictive, neuroticism was the least

mature kids

change less

young adults in serious relationships

show a decrease in neuroticism and increase in conscientiousness

Increase in occupational success and satisfaction

linked to increases in extroversion

Narrative perspective milestones

• 2 years old

• transition to adolescence

• emerging adulthood

• midlife

• old age

Age 4-7

identifiable and well articulated short term goals

Ages 7-8

second layer of personality has begun to form

Goals as young adults

• education

• intimacy

• friendships

• careers

Goals as middle adults

• children’s futures

• security

• property concerns

Goals as older adult

• Health

• retirement

• leisure

• current events

As we age

increase of prosocial societal engagement goals

Goal pursuit for young adults

• comfortable with goal conflict and many goals

• change environment to fit goals

Goal pursuit for older adults

• avoid goal conflicts

• more readily adjust or drop goals

• change self or alter expectations

• fewer goals in order to prioritize

childhood storytelling

rarely shows thematic or causal coherence

young adult storytelling

connect scenes to larger life themes

middle age storytelling

more interpretive and psychologically sophisticated

older adult storytelling

more positive narrative tone and greater integrative meaning

Where to self perceptions come from

• Experiences

• Feedback

• Motivated reasoning (bias in different directions)

Self-verification motive

tendency to seek out information or feedback the confirms our pre existing beliefs

Positive Illusions

people generally hold unrealistic positive views of the self and exaggerated perceptions of personal control

self-enhancement motives

we are motivated to see the self in a postive light

self serving attribution bias

tendency to attribute own positive behavior to self and negative behavior to environment

Better than average effect

people engage in biased evaluation of own skills but not others

ones’s flaws

are common, but our strengths are unique

Temporal Self Appraisal Theory

• Many of us feel like we’re getting better over time

• past selves provide easy downward comparison

Exaggerated perceptions of control

people believe the can exert control over chance events

Planning Fallacy

individuals underestimate the time it will take them to complete a project

Dunning-Kruger Effect

more accurate self assesment the more they know about the abilty

Blind Spot Bias

individuals continue to think own assessment is accurate after learning about self biases

personality disorders

long term patterns of thinking or feeling that are maladaptive and deviate from cultural norm

Talk and psychodynamic therapy

client talks therapist analyze to help find solutions

Cognitive Behavior Therapy

• For treating anxiety, phobias and depression

• conditioning body

Dialectical behavior therapy

treat borderline personality disorder, stop seeing world in black and white

3 parts of well being

• Happiness

• meaning

• psychological richness

Happiness

feeling more positive emotions than negative ones

Older definition of happiness

good luck and fortune

The more you pursue happiness

the farther it gets

Social connection impacts

• all 3 aspects of well being

• self regulation