Personality Exam 1

Psychological Triad

The 3 essential topics of psychology: how people think, how they feel, and how they behave

Personality’s relation to social psychology

Social psychologists look at the social aspect of personality while personality psychologist examine the individualistic side of personality

“Same people are different in different situations VS different people are different in same situations

Personality’s relation to clinical/abnormal psychology

Study of personality is used to help clarify clinical diagnosis, guide interventions, and can help predict how people may respond in different situations

Allport’s expanded definition of personality

Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual, of psychophysical systems that create (or determine) the person’s characteristic patterns of behavior, thoughts, (and feelings)

2 main issues of psychology

Individual differences and intrapersonal functioning

Individual Differences

No 2 personalities are the same

Two types of techniques for psychology

Idiographic techniques and nomothetic techniqies

Idiographic

Focuses on individual (Clinical)

Nomothetic Techniques

Gain data on personality traits that can be generalized to a population

6 basic approaches or paradigms to personality

Trait, biological, psychoanalytic, phenomenological, learning, and cognitive

Trait Approach

How people differ psychologically (Allport)

Biological Approach

The mind in terms of the body

Psychoanalytic (Neoanalytic) Approach

Unconscious mind; internal conflict (Freud)

Phenomenological Approach

Conscious experience

Humanistic Psychology

Pursues how conscious awareness can produce such uniquely human attributes

Cross-cultural personality

Degree to which psychology and the very experience of reality might be different in different cultures

Learning Approach

Behavior change; reward/punishment (Skinner)

Cognitive Approach

Processes: perception, memory, thought

Goals of Theory

Organize knowledge and guide research

What components of good theories encourage these goals?

Comprehensiveness, parsimony, testifiable, falsifiable, and research relevant

Comprehensiveness

Can encompass a variety of data

Parsimony

Simple; fewest # of assumptions

What are important components that personality theories should address and what are some examples of those

Construct. Examples include structure, process, growth & development and psycholopathology & change

Why is data collection important and despite weaknesses better than having no data?

Because it provides info to study and draw meaningful conclusions.Ambiguous data is better than no data because there is a lot least some progress and ruling out certain possibilities.

What are the 4 different types of data?

S Data, I Data (O Data), L Data, and B Data

S Data

Self-judgement or self reports

Advantage os S data

• Large amounts of info

• Access to thoughts, feelings, and intentions

• Some S data are true by definition

• Causal force

• Simple/easy

Disadvantages of S data

• Error

• Bias

• Too simple/easy

Examples of S Data

Questionnaires or surveys that can include closed or open-ended questions

Informant Report (I) Data (Observer/Other “O” Data)

Ask someone who knows the individual well

Advantages of I Data

• Large amounts of info

• Real-world basis

• Common sense

• Some true by definition

• Causal force

Disadvantages of I Data

• Limited behavioral info

• Lack of access to private experience

• Error

• Bias

Life Outcomes (L) Data

Data from life that might tell us something about personality

Advantages of L Data

• Objective & verifiable

• Intrinsic importance

• Psychological relevance

Disadvantages of L Data

• Multi-determination

• Possible lack of psychological relevance

Behavioral (B) Data

Direct observation of what the person has done in some specified context

Advantages of B Data

• Wide range of contexts

• Appearance of objectivity

Disadvantages of B Data

• Difficult

• Expensive

• Uncertain interpretation

Examples of B Data

SOME personality test, physiological measures, contrived settings (lab) or natural settings

Reliability

Consistent results

Measurement Error

Cumulative effect of extraneous influence

Aggregation and its importance

Averaging different measurements. Important because when measurements are average, errors almost completely cancel each other out.

Techniques to improve reliability

Care with research procedure, standardized research protocol, measure something important, averaging, and have clusters of informants or items

3 types of reliability

Inter-rater reliability, test-retest reliability, and internal consistency

Inter-rater Reliability

Extent to which 2 or more individuals agree

Test-Restest Reliability

Test consistency over time

Internal Consistency

Extent to which items within an instrument measure various aspects of the same characteristics or construct

Validity

Test is measuring what it’s supposed to measure

Relation of validity and reliability

Both about how well a method measures something

What are the 6 types of validity?

Construct, face, content, criterion, convergent, and dsicriminant

Construct Validity

Does the measure accurately reflect the construct the psychologist has in mind

Why is construct validation important?

Makes it possible to reasonably believe you are measuring something real when you can develop a group of different measurements that yield more or less the same result. Must gather as many measurements as possible

Face Validity

Does it look like it measures what it’s supposed to

What is the least important validity?

Face validity

Content Validity

Are you measuring the full range of elements related to the construct

Criterion Validity

Assessment’s correlation with non-test outcome variables (criterion)

Convergent Validity

Measure of contrast relates to other measures of the construct

Discriminant Validity

Measure of construct NOT related to measures of different constructs

Convergent Relations (Triangulation)

Does data transcend method?

Discriminant Realtions (Differentiation)

Can measurement discriminate between people?

Predictive Realtions

Does the measurement have practical utiltiy?

Generalizability

Across different people, different contexts, gender & culture

What is the relation between generalizability and reliability and validity?

Reliability and validity are aspects of a single broader concept; generalizabaility

Case Method

In depth look of an individual

Advantages of case method

• Does justice to topic

• Source of ideas

• Sometimes necessary

Disadvantages of case method

Degree of generalization of findings is unknown

Experimental Method

Establishes the causal relationship between an independent variable (x) and a dependent variable (y) by randomly assigning participants to experimental groups characterized by differing levels of x, and measuring the average behavior y that results in each group

Which research method is th only method that can provide causal interpretation of the results?

Experimental method

Advantages of experimental method

Ability to ascertain what causes what

Disadvantages (Complications) of experimental method

• Never be sure what has been manipulated → unknown location of actual causality

• Creation of variable that is unlikely or impossible

• Experiments often require deception

• Sometimes experiments are not possible

Correlational Study

Degree to which 2 variables are related in a linear fashion

Disadvantages of correlational study

3rd variable problem and unknown direction of cause

Magnitude Stengths

|.10| = weak

|.30| = moderate

|.50| = strong

Postive Correlation

As variable A increases, variable B increases

Negative Correlation

As variable A increases, variable B decreases

Why can a scatterplot be important?

Provides a visual and statistical means to test the strength of a relationship between two variables

Projective Tests

Meant to try to see into someone’s mind

Projective Hypothesis

If somebody is asked to describe or interpret a meaningless or ambiguous stimulus her answer cannot come from the stimulus itself because the stimulus actually does not look like, or mean, anything. Answer must instead come from her needs, feelings, experiences, thought processes, and other hidden aspects of the mind

Examples of projective tests

Inkblot test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT

Objective Tests

Questions seem more objective and less open to interpretation

Why is aggregation Important in objective tests?

Items are still not absolutely objective

What are the 3 different methods that objective tests are constructed?

Empirical objective test construction, rational objective test construction, and factor analysis objective test construction

Empirical Objective Test Construction

An attempt to allow reality to speak for itself

Steps of empirical objective test construction

1. Gather lots of items

2. Have a sample of people divided into groups

3. Administer the test

4. Compare the answers of the different groups

5. Cross-validation

Advantages of Empirical objective test construction

• Easy to construct w/out computer

• Has one goal (does not discriminate between 2 groups)

• Low face validity

• Useful in making practical decisions

Disadvantages of empirical objective test construction

• A-theoretical

• Items can be heterogenous (measure lots of different things, encompasses a variety of traits)

• Scale is only as good of classification of groups (needs to constantly be revalidated)

Rational Objective Test Construction

Create items you think measure, or seem to measure, the target construct

Type of validity rational objective test construction show

Face validity but does not assume construct validity

Steps of factor analysis

1. Generate a long list of objective items

2. Administer items to a large # of people

3. Analyze with a factor analysis

4. Consider what the items that group together have in common and name the factor

Advantages of factor analysis objective test construction

• Tend to get good measure of one thing

• Internally consistent

• Get measures that have good discriminate validity

Disadvantages of factor analysis objective test construction

• Can be misused

• Dependent on items included from the begging

• Time-consuming

• Expensive

Factor

The property that ties a group of things that seem to have something in common

Factor Loading

Express the relationship of each variable to the underlying factor

Why are literature reviews important?

Provides an overview of previous research on a topic that critically evaluates, classifies, and compares what has already been published on a particular topic

Effect Size

A number that will reflect the magnitude as opposed toi the likelihood of their result

Correlation coefficient in relation to effect size

Tells the strength of the relationship between the two variables

Binomial Effect Display

A method for displaying and understanding more clearly the magnitude of an effect reported a s correlation, by translating the value of r into a 2×2 table comparing predicted with obtained results

Replication

Doing a study again to see if the results hold up

Trait

Relatively stable and long-lasting attribute of personality

Individual Differences Theme

What are the important qualities that make us different from one another