Personality Midterm 1-3

Front: What is personality?
Back: Organized, enduring psychological traits + mechanisms that influence how people adapt to environments.

Front: Traits vs mechanisms
Back: Traits describe patterns; mechanisms explain how behavior happens.

Front: Trait
Back: Stable tendency across time and situations.

Front: State
Back: Temporary condition at a specific moment.

Front: Adaptation (personality definition)
Back: Changing behavior to meet environmental demands.

Front: Dispositional domain
Back: Study of traits and individual differences.

Front: Biological domain
Back: Study of genetics, brain systems, physiology.

Front: Intrapsychic domain
Back: Unconscious motives and internal conflicts.

Front: Cognitive-experiential domain
Back: Conscious thoughts, interpretations, emotions.

Front: Social & cultural domain
Back: How culture and social context shape personality.

Front: Mechanism
Back: Process that interprets input → produces behavior.

Front: Reliability
Back: Consistency of measurement.

Front: Validity
Back: Accuracy — measures what it claims to measure.

Front: Reliability vs validity rule
Back: Reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity.

Front: Test-retest reliability
Back: Consistency across time.

Front: Internal consistency
Back: Items measuring the same construct correlate.

Front: Inter-rater reliability
Back: Different observers agree.

Front: Construct validity
Back: Test measures intended construct.

Front: Convergent validity
Back: Correlates with similar measures.

Front: Discriminant validity
Back: Does NOT correlate with unrelated traits.

Front: Generalizability
Back: Test works across groups/settings.

Front: Ecological validity
Back: Reflects real-world behavior.

Front: Response set
Back: Bias in how someone answers questionnaires.

Front: Social desirability
Back: Answering to look good.

Front: Acquiescence
Back: Agreeing with everything.

Front: Extreme responding
Back: Choosing scale extremes only.

Front: Correlational study
Back: Measures relationships; cannot infer causation.

Front: Experimental study
Back: Manipulates variables; can infer causation.

Front: Case study
Back: Deep analysis of one person; not generalizable.

Front: O-data
Back: Observer ratings.

Front: S-data
Back: Self-report.

Front: Lexical hypothesis
Back: Important traits become encoded in language.

Front: Factor analysis
Back: Statistical grouping of traits into clusters.

Front: Big Five traits
Back: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.

Front: Conscientiousness predicts…
Back: Academic success, job performance.

Front: Openness predicts…
Back: Creativity, intellectual curiosity.

Front: Neuroticism
Back: Emotional instability, anxiety.

Front: Eysenck’s model
Back: Biological 3-trait model: Extraversion, Neuroticism, Psychoticism.

Front: HEXACO criticism of Big Five
Back: Adds Honesty-Humility as a sixth trait.

📘 Flashcards — Lectures / Chapters 4–6

Front: Evocation
Back: Personality accidentally brings out reactions in others.

Front: Manipulation
Back: Intentional influence on others.

Front: Aggregation
Back: Averaging behavior reveals stable traits.

Front: Situationalism
Back: Behavior mostly shaped by situations.

Front: Dispositionalism
Back: Behavior mostly shaped by traits.

Front: Structured assessment
Back: Standardized questions and scoring.

Front: Unstructured assessment
Back: Flexible, open-ended evaluation.

Front: Idiographic approach
Back: Focus on unique individual.

Front: Nomothetic approach
Back: Focus on general laws across people.

Front: False positive
Back: Labeling someone as having a trait when they don’t.

Front: False negative
Back: Missing a trait that is present.

Front: Rank-order stability
Back: Relative ordering of people stays the same.

Front: Mean-level stability
Back: Group average stays the same.

Front: Mean-level change
Back: Group average shifts over time.

Front: Personality coherence
Back: Core personality theme persists despite behavioral change.

Front: Temperament
Back: Biologically based early emotional style.

Front: Maturity principle
Back: People become more responsible and emotionally stable with age.

Front: Heritability
Back: Proportion of variance due to genetic differences in a population.

Front: Heritability trap
Back: Applies to groups, not individuals.

Front: Twin study logic
Back: Compare MZ vs DZ similarity to estimate genetic influence.

Front: Adoption study logic
Back: Separate genes from environment.

Front: Selective placement
Back: Adoption agencies match similar families.

Front: Shared environment
Back: Experiences siblings share.

Front: Non-shared environment
Back: Unique individual experiences.

Front: G×E interaction
Back: Different genotypes respond differently to same environment.

Front: Passive rGE
Back: Parents provide genes + environment.

Front: Reactive rGE
Back: Others respond to genetically influenced traits.

Front: Active rGE
Back: Person seeks environments matching traits.

Front: Twin formula
Back: h² = 2(rMZ − rDZ)