MBB2 - Personality Psychology

PERSONALITY

how we are psychologically diverse. refers to enduring relatively broad psychological differences between people, excluding cognitive abilities

PERSON PERCEPTION

judging other peoples personalities - usually happens in 250ms or less

STEREOTYPES

personality traits believed to be associated with social groups

PERSONALITY TRAITS

the way you think feel and behave is consistent over time and in different situations

CARTELL’S 16 PERSONALITY FACTORS

THE BIG FIVE

5 dimensions of which all personality traits are influenced

O - Openness to Experience

C - Conscientiousness

E - Extraversion

A - Agreeableness

N - Neuroticism

EXTRAVERSION (the big 5)

HIGH

sociable, energetic, enthusiastic, assertive

LOW

shy, reserved, quiet, retiring

• low cortisol arousal leading to desire for stimulation

AGREEABLENESS (big 5)

HIGH

warm, modest, kind, trusting, helpful

LOW

cold, unfriendly, quarrelsome

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS (big 5)

HIGH

efficient, organised, thorough, self-controlled

LOW

careless, irresponsible, frivolous

NEUROTICISM (big 6)

HIGH

tense, irritable, moody, nervous, high-strung, low self esteem,

LOW

stable, calm, contented, unemotional

• vulnerability to depression

• limbic system reactivity

• leads to great autonomic NS arousal to threat and stress

OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE (big 5)

HIGH

imaginative, original, sophisticated

LOW

simple, shallow, conventional, narrow

VALUES

concepts or beliefs about desirable states or behaviours that transcend specific situations

they are cognitive, linked to motives and desired, they are learned

VOCATIONAL INTERESTS

HERITABILITY

proportion of variance in the trait accounted for by genes

most personality attributes show heritabilities from .3 to .5

SHARED ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES

• make sibling more similar

• LESS influential on personality

• parental education, neighbourhood, class, ethnicity, diet

NON-SHARED ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES

• make siblings more different

• MORE influential on personality

• illness, friend groups, differential treatment by parents

BEHAVIOURAL ACTIVATION SYSTEM (BAS)

• linked to reward sensitivity and pleasure

• hope and elation

• extraversion

BEHAVIOURAL INHIBITION SYSTEM (BIS)

• linked to sensitivity to punishment and pain

• fear, anxiety, avoidance

• neuroticism

COGNITIVE THEORY - PERCEIVING (PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS)

• humans are driven to understand, predict and control their environment

• we develop theories to do so, called PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS

• thus we inhabit the world as we construct it

• idiographic approach - each person writes their own perception

• constructs can be analysed to map individuals construct systems (ranging from very simple to very complex)

COGNITIVE THEORY - EXPLAINING (ATTRIBUTIONAL STYLE)

• ATTRIBUTIONS how we explain events and experiences

  • internal vs external

  • stable vs unstable

  • global vs specific

• attributional style predicts many phenomena

  • vulnerability to depression

  • poorer academic performance

  • worse physical health

  • shorter life span

ATTRIBUTIONS - PESSIMISM

the tendency to explain events with INTERNAL, STABLE, and GLOBAL causes

pessimists may also explain positive events as due to chance

COGNITIVE THEORY - THINKING (EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE)

COMPONENTS OF EI

• perceiving emotion

  • accurate recognition of emotions in self and others

• using emotion

  • use of emotions to guide and plan behaviour

• understanding emotion

  • predicting others emotional states and reasoning about them

• managing emotion

  • ability to control and regulate emotion

correlates with OPENNESS and AGREEABLENESS

• academic performance

• social sensitivity

COGNITIVE THEORY - REPRESENTING (THE SELF)

1. self-complexity

• degree to which the self’s structure is complex

• defined as a number and distinctness of ‘self aspects’

• associated with greater depression

• can lead to less self concept clarity

2. self-esteem

• degree to which the self is positively valued

• little evidence that it promotes overall life performance

• the stability and consistency of self esteem matters more than its level

• ‘fragile’ self esteem may be high by unstable

3. self concept clarity

• clear understanding of self identity / self beliefs

PERSONALITY INTERVIEWS

rarely used in personality assessment

• time consuming and labour intensive

• subjective

• prone to bias

sometimes they are used for assessing attributes where interpersonal/nonverbal behaviour may be revealing (ie personality disorders)

FORMS

• structured

• semi structures

• unstructured

• ‘provocative’

  • designed to lead the participant to behave in a specific way

  • type a personality

PERSONALITY INVENTORIES

• questionaire, self report personality tests

• items form scales

  • omnibus test measures multiple scales

  • generally 10 items per scale

• variety of response scales

  • true/false

  • likert scales (strongly agree - disagree)

• vulnerable to response biases

• longer tests check for this

  • lie scales

  • infrequency scales

  • defensiveness scales

  • inconsistently scales

PERSONALITY INVENTORY DEVELOPMENT

• item generation

• pilot testing

• item analysis

  • check consistency

• select optimal items for final scales

• re-test on new sample

• correlate with other tests and prediction cirteria

• develop norms to allow score comparison

the MMPI personality test

• developed in the 1940s for comprehensive clinical personality assessment

• 10 clinical scales, 3 validity scales, 566 items

• scale scores converted into t-scores

PROJECTIVE TESTS

developed to bypass probels of self-report

• aim to penetrate to deeper levels of personality

• allied with the psychoanalytic approach

• involve deliberate ambiguity and open endedness

THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TESTS

• developed by Henry Murray

• idiographic approach

• series of monochromatic images

• person tells a story about whats in the picture

• responses coded for repeated themes in the stories

• rigorous scoring systems for defense mechanisms

RORSCHACH TEST

inkblot tests

IMPLICIT TESTS

• testing based on rapid ‘autonatic responses’

• hypothetically difficult to fake because it is a subconscious response

• 2 pairings, you make more errors when attempting the pairing that doesnt match your personality

• does not demonstrate retest reliability