The Personality Puzzle - 7th ed. - Ch 1

Psychological Triad

The three essential topics of psychology: how people think, how they feel, and how they behave, the Three don't always agree with Each other

Cognitive Dissonance

conflict between how you feel and what you think

Personality (Funder)

An individual's characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms—hidden or not— behind those patterns.

Personality (Goasling)

Those characteristics of individuals, that describe and account for temporally stable, patterns of affect, cognition, and behavior

Personality (Larsen and Buss)

Personality is the set of psychological traits and, mechanisms within the individual, that are organized, and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with and adaptations to the environment.

Personality (McAdams)

An individual's unique variation on the general evolutionary design for human nature expressed as a developing pattern of dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and integrative life stories, complexly and differentially situated in culture.

Psychology (General)

Something inside the person and enduring, Both a description (patterns/consistency) and an explanation (mechanisms) There is variability across individuals Functional: how you engage with your environment(s). Personality addresses challenges of adaptation.

Mission Impossible

Personality Psychologist are suppose to put together the pieces of the puzzle contributed by various other subfields of psychology, as well as by their own research, to assemble and integrate the view of whole, functioning individuals in their daily environments. Explain the whole person in his or her daily environment

basic approach

focuses on some phenomena and ignores others. The basic approaches are trait, biological, psychoanalytic, phenomenological, learning, and cognitive (the last two being closely related). Also known as Paradigm

Paradigm

Also Known as Basic Approach is A theoretical view of personality that focuses on some phenomena and ignores others. The basic approaches are trait, biological, psychoanalytic, phenomenological, learning, and cognitive (the last two being closely related).

Trait approach

measuring the degree to which (and ways in which) people differ from each other.

Biological approach

The view of personality that focuses on the way behavior and personality are influenced by neuroanatomy, biochemistry, genetics, and evolution. understand the mind in terms of the body

Psychoanalytic approach

The theoretical view of personality, based on the writings of Sigmund Freud, that emphasizes the unconscious processes of the mind. Psychologists who use the psychoanalytic approach focus on the unconscious mind and the nature and resolution of internal mental conflict, internal mental conflict. This tradition has also informed cognitive approaches examining differences in perception, motivation, emotion. Some mechanisms represent "unconscious" knowledge.

Phenomenological approach

The theoretical view of personality that emphasizes experience, free will, and the meaning of life. Closely related to humanistic psychology and existentialism. The phenomenological approach to psychology is invested in a person's immediate, conscious self. Focus on people's conscious experience of the world

humanistic

pursues how conscious awareness can produce such uniquely human attributes as existential anxiety, creativity, and free will, how conscious awareness produces uniquely human attributes; understand meaning and basis of happiness

cross-cultural

the degree to which psychology and the very experience of reality might be different in different cultures. Interest in this topic has led to an explosion in recent years of

learning

In behaviorism, a change in behavior as a result of experience.

learning and cognitive approaches

The theoretical view that focuses on how behavior changes as a function of rewards and punishments; also called behaviorism. How behavior changes as a result of rewards, punishments, and other life experiences

The learning approach

focuses on how people change their behavior as a result of rewards, punishments, and other experiences in life.

The cognitive approach

focuses on studying perception, memory, and thought.

Social learning theory

Social learning theory draws inferences about the ways that mental processes such as observation and self-evaluation determine which behaviors are learned and how they are performed.

Funder's First Law

great strength are usually great weaknesses, and surprisingly often the opposite is true as well

whole person, appreciation of individual differences

inclusive, interesting, and important

personality psychology advantages (5)

unfocused research, pigeonholding, over inclusiveness or unfocused research

personality psychology disadvantage (2)

The Advantage and Disadvantage

However, not only is taking the whole person into account an advantage of personality psychology, it is also a disadvantage. Goal is to account for the whole person and real-life concerns

trait, biological, psychoanalytic, phenomenological, learning and cognitive

all approaches (5)

behaviorism, social learning theory, cognitive personality psychology

elements of learning and cognitive approach (3)

classic behaviorist

focus tightly on overt behavior and the ways it can be affected by rewards and punishment

triad, overlap with clinical and Social work, whole person

things that personality psychology studies (3)

Personality psychology concerns how each person is....

like every other person human universal, like some other people human variation ("individual differences"), unlike any other person human uniqueness

Classic behaviorism

focuses on overt behavior

Social learning

learning through observation and self-evaluation

Cognitive personality

focuses on cognitive processes including perception, memory, and thought. Often, these are generative mechanisms!

Basic Approach Advantages

good at addressing certain topics

Basic Approach Disadvantages

poor at addressing other topics or ignores them

What do other sub categories of psychology do?

treat everyone as the same

Overlap with clinical psychology

Both have unusual goal of describing & understanding individuals, the whole person. (although research is often narrow & comparative). Normal vs. extreme patterns of personality

Overlap with social psychology

Sociality as human nature vs. individual differences Situations as equalizers vs. something distinguishing

One Big Theory

A theory that would explain everything about why people do what they do Its difficult to do everything

Murray's tripartite model of personality topics/concerns

human universals, individual differences, and personal uniqueness.

individual differences

Like some other people, How you are like some people but no other

Nomothetic Approach

how people in general deal with conflict in group extroverts vs. Introverts

personal uniqueness

unlike any other person

McAdams & Pals (2006) "5 Principles

(1) Evolutionary pressures on humans (survival, reproduction) promoted certain universal mechanisms. (2 - 4) It is useful to recognize/conceptualize 3 different "Levels" of individual variation (2) Broad Dispositional Traits (Esp. "Big 5")(3) Characteristic Adaptations (more contextualized) Relevant to most daily behavior, specific situations) (4) Personal Narratives/Life stories (5) Culture/Context likely has differential effects on these levels.

What does it mean to be human

is to get along with other and trying to get ahead

Universal Need

a need to belong or to want to have someone. People are concern that cheaters exist. Having social status( noting the punch line of joke). Have animal instincts.

the first Level the psychology of the stranger.

Broad dimensions of socially relevant variation, mostly descriptive, uses semantic memory ( example amnesia), Stable ways people differ from each other, Observable behavior and Feelings, thoughts (example: multiple answers or one answer) , Relatively enduring and stable over time (might depend on person) Big 5 OCEAN

Characteristic adaptations(personal concerns)( time dependent) the second level

How to do things, when, why) Mental models/beliefs, Coping strategies, You can change how you are motives and values Fame, Family life stage concerns/tasks, Cultural matters a lot : differences in values, goal, preferred strategies, meaning—making

life stories Level 3

Often only know to the person of observation.Not like a video record A personal attempt at unity, integration, and finding meaning with reconstructive past, perceived present, imagined future Goal: Positive identity/Integration and motivation for future. A continued purpose instead of thinking of what ifs

Trait approach Focal Point

Conceptualization of individual differences Measurement of individual differences

Biological approach Focal Point

Anatomy Physiology Genetics Evolution

Psychoanalytic approach Focal Point

Unconscious mind Internal mental conflict

Phenomenological approach Focal Point

Conscious awareness and experience Humanistic psychology Cross-cultural psychology

Learning and cognitive approaches Focal Point Behaviorism Social learning theory Cognitive personality psychology

Which of the following is NOT an advantage of self-report data?

Participants always provide accurate accounts of their personalities.

Imagine an employer who uses two personality tests to screen for social anxiety in candidates interviewing for a sales position. One test asks a variety of questions related to social anxiety—for example, "Do you feel anxious when you meet someone for the first time?"—and is scored by adding up the test taker's responses. The second test asks seemingly unrelated questions—for example, "Do you enjoy foggy or sunny mornings?"—and it is scored for the degree to which the test taker's answers are similar to socially anxious people. What kind of data tests are these?

The first is a self-report, and the second is a behavioral data test.

A hybrid of S data and B data is called ______, in which participants report what they think they would do under various circumstances.

Behavioroid

S data are used very frequently because:

People are the best experts on their own opinions and behaviors.

Data gathered from direct observations of participants' behavior as they go about their daily activities is what type of B data?

Natural B data

Which is NOT a type of laboratory B data?

Experience sampling

Which type of data is an infallible indicator of personality?

S data

B data

L data

None of the above

Because any piece of L data can have many different causes, it is extremely difficult to directly connect life outcomes with specific personality traits. This key disadvantage to L data is referred to as:

Multidetermination.

Informant-report data can best be defined as:

Judgments by knowledgeable human informants of general attributes of the individual's personality made through observation.

Experiments and personality tests such as the Rorschach test are ways to yield:

B data.

S data have ______________, meaning they ask questions that are directly and obviously related to the construct they are designed to measure.