Types of Data

Chapter 1 Recap 

  • Goal of personality psychology: Understand the whole person by putting together the pieces of the personality puzzle. 

  • Personality psychologists couldn't really understand the whole person due to the fact that people are very complex. 

  • Personality psychology: The study of characteristic patterns of thinking feelings and behaviours. 

  • Personality science is an empirical science: need to gather data. 

Four Types of Data

  • “S” Data (Self reported) (Most common data type)

    • What's it about:

      • Usually Surveys, Questions catered to you. (Example: Online dating)

      • The questions cannot be trick questions: If the interviewer asks you how friendly you think you are they need to really care about how friendly you are.

      • The questions need to be straightforward. 

    • Advantages of S Da: 

      • You can learn so much about a person. (Lots of information)

      • Privileged Access (You can get information that you can’t get anywhere else. Can get access to their personal thoughts and feelings that they experience alone.)

      • Definitional Truth (Some aspects of a persons personality are understood and defined by their own beliefs about themselves .

        • Self esteem: Is often shaped by how one perceives their worth and abilities.

        • These self defined beliefs are not always beneficial; their impact depends on the accuracy of those beliefs and the context in which they exist.

      • Causal Force (Set forth a set of chain reactions that lead that belief to come true. Examples: Self fulfilling prophecies Someone thinks they're bad at maths that might actually lead to them being bad at maths.)

      • Simple and Easy

    • Cons:

      • Bias (Hard to tell if people are telling the truth all the time)

      • Error: (People make mistakes, imperfect memories only as good as peoples self knowledge)

      • Too simple and Easy

        • May not capture the complexity of an individuals personality, due to the straightforward nature.

  • “I” Data (Informant) (Next most common data type)

    • Asking people who know you about you (friends, parents, classmates etc.) 

    • Examples: Gossip and letters of recommendation are examples of I data. (Previous employer will write about you) Online reviews (yelp, shein, amazon, google maps.) Obituary. 

    • Pros:

      • Causal Force: The things that other people think about our personalities can become true. Becuase we can internalize these thoughts.

      • Lots of information.

      • Real-world basis:Their answers come from real world experience with their friends 

      • Common Sense: Filtering real world experience through common sense.

        • Sarcasm: Your friend types: Oh my gosh i love this restaurant for a review, yk that's bogus u can tell the tone.

      • Definitional Truth: Some aspects of personality are defined by the perceptions of others rather than solely by the individuals self-assesment.

        • (By definition popularity is based on other people think about you. So you ask other people to find out if your popular.)

    • Cons:

      • Limited contexts: Informants impressions or opinions might not fully capture the individuals personality across different settings.

      • Limited Access: Can't read minds don't know everything about the individuals thoughts and feelings.

      • Error and bias: Misunderstandings and misinterpretations in observations.

  • “L” Data (Life)

    • Traces of Behaviour: Data of the clues that traces things people have done in their lives.

      • Digital traces: Internet providers can see everything. They can assume you're a shopaholic because of how often you visit online shopping sites.

      • Records: Marriage certificates, birth certificate, criminal records

      • Living Spaces: Whether clean or messy can reflect your behaviours (organization). 

    • Pros: 

      • Objective and Verifiable (Mostly): Criminal record can be verified. Grades can be verifiable by transcript. 

      • Intrinsic Importance: If it's not important then it's not documented.  L data exists because someone thought it was important enough. 

    • Cons:

      • Multiply Determined: Researchers have to infer the reason for records there's alot of ambiguity. Everyone does things for different reasons. 

        • Marriage certificate: Lots of reasons behind marriage, arranged marriage, real love, immigration status. 

  • “B” Data (Behavioural) (Visit lecture recording and fill in blanks) (Not that common in personality psychology)

    • Direct observation of behaviour:

      • We can perceive/watch the naturally occuring behaviour happening,

        • We can also listen to the behavior.

          • There are plenty of behaviors that are verbal that don’t require use to see whats happening, so we can directly observe behavior this way.

      • We can video behavior happening.

      • Experience Sampling Metholodogy ( A blend of the data types in a way MORE SO B data) (Common way to collect data in personality psychololgy)

        • Researchers will randomly text you throughout the day, and they could ask what your doing at the moment in time, youll say what your doing and then put your phone away.

      • Setting: Real world and laboratories

        • Simulate real world:

          • Example: Researcher is interested in studying couples arguing and how people resolve conflict in a relationship.

            • Waiting is tedious so instead lets make them argue by making them write a list of pet peeves about eachother and have them argue about that. (Ethics: Informed consent)

        • Experiments: You could do an experiment but you don’t have to, you could just observe behavior without any manipulation.

        • Physiological data: Observations of your physiology is observing behavior. (Does not have to be a conscious behavior that you are thinking about and doing deliberately.)

          • Heart rate, Galvanic skin response (sweat glands are opening and closing.), Electricl actvity in the brain ( Using an EEG we see your synapses are firing)

    • Pros: 

      • Appear objective: “Appears” objective because someone has to make a judgment call about the behavior about whether it occurs or not. Sometimes it can be hard to tell.

      • Range of contexts:

        • When observing behavior in a lab we can change things about the enviornment or context artificially.

        • We can lisen to people in their lives across many different contexts.

        • We can capture information about a behavior more than any one informant.

    • Cons: 

      • Difficult and Expensive

        • Need to get peoples permission to record and listen to them, not everyone is going to be so ready to be recorded.

        • You need certain types of equipment (expenses)

    • Distinction between B data and L data example:

      • B data: Researcher records behavior of individual at gas station using CCTV footage.

      • L data: Researcher asks the gas station clerk for the CCTV footage.

        • Difference: Researcher is recording the data themselves