PSYC116: Personality and Individual Differences - Personality Data

Personality Data

Introduction to Personality Data

  • The study of personality is approached as an empirical science.
  • Exploration of the types of data used to study personality.
  • Appreciation of the strengths and limitations of each data type.

Personality Psychology as a Science

  • Personality psychology relies on data to test hypotheses.
  • Data provides clues to understanding personality.
  • There are no perfect indicators of personality, only ambiguous clues (Funder's perspective).
  • Key question: What data can be used to understand a person’s personality?

The Millionaire’s Dilemma

  • Hypothetical situation: Winning a large sum of money in the lottery and needing to choose a financial manager.
  • Considerations:
    • Competence and trustworthiness of the potential manager.
    • What information is needed to make an informed decision?

Types of Personality Data: BLIS

  • Four types of 'clues' to personality:
    • Behaviors
    • Life Outcomes
    • Informant Reports
    • Self Reports
  • Acronym: BLIS

Self-Report Data

  • Definition: A person’s evaluation of their own personality.
  • Method: Simply asking people to describe themselves.
  • Most frequently used method in personality psychology.
  • Example: I see myself as: ___ extroverted, enthusiastic, etc. using a rating scale (e.g., Disagree strongly to Agree strongly).

Self-Report - Strengths

  • Access to unique information that others do not have.
  • Understanding of oneself across various contexts.
  • Awareness of own intentions, hopes, and dreams.
  • Reports of self-perception are definitionally true.
  • Simple and easy to collect large amounts of data.

Self-Report - Limitations

  • Bias in self-perception.
  • Inability to accurately assess certain aspects of one's own personality.
  • Participants may opt-out of responding.
  • Potential for faking or intentionally responding inaccurately.

Self-Report - Bias

  • Individuals may rate themselves higher than average, even in areas where that's unlikely (e.g., writing ability).

Self-Report – Inability

  • Some aspects of personality are genuinely inaccessible.
    • Memory limitations: Difficulty recalling past events (e.g., what were you doing on the 14th of Feb?).
    • Causal explanations: Difficulty understanding reasons for preferences (e.g., why is strawberry your favorite ice-cream?).

Self-Report – Opting out

  • Participants can choose not to respond to certain questions.
  • Ethical considerations require researchers to provide this option.
  • Especially relevant for distressing, embarrassing, or incriminating topics.
  • Opting out can skew base-rates and conceal relationships.

Self-Report - Faking

  • Definition: Intentionally providing disingenuous or inaccurate responses.
  • More likely in high-stakes situations, such as job interviews.
  • May not be a significant issue for common personality tests like the Big Five.
  • Research indicates that very few applicants change their scores when re-applying, and even those who do don't significantly alter their reported conscientiousness.

Informant-Report Data

  • Definition: Judgments made by knowledgeable informants (family, friends, colleagues, etc.).
  • Premise: Other people know a lot about an individual and can provide accurate reports.
  • Format: Similar to self-report (questionnaires, open-ended questions).

Informant-Report - Strengths

  • Accuracy can be improved by using multiple judges.
  • Some personality aspects are defined by others’ perceptions (e.g., likeability, status, charm).

Informant-Report - Weaknesses

  • Reports may be based on limited information (e.g., observing someone in only one context).
  • Extreme events can disproportionately influence perceptions.
  • Potential for biases (e.g., liking/disliking someone).

Life Outcomes Data

  • Definition: Objective information about one’s life, measured via archival records.
  • Examples: Educational attainment, medical records, legal documents, place of residence, qualifications, salary, etc.

Life Outcomes - Strengths

  • More objective than human reports.
  • Verifiable.
  • Often the ultimate focus of interventions (e.g., criminal convictions, employment status, success in school, health).

Life Outcomes - Weaknesses

  • Can be mutually reinforced by personality (e.g., anti-social tendencies and criminal records).
  • Life outcomes have multiple causes, and psychology is often a minor factor.

Behavior Data

  • Records of what people actually do.

Natural Observation

  • Examples: Laughter, interpersonal proximity, spontaneous altruism.

Lab Research

  • Examples: Performance tests, physiological indices (e.g., blood pressure), group tasks.

Behaviour - Strengths

  • Most “direct” way of observing personality.
  • Range of contexts and methods for capturing behavior.
  • Focus on what psychologists want to intervene on (e.g., discrimination, altruism).

Behaviour - Weaknesses

  • Interpretation of the behavior can be ambiguous (e.g., What does passing the marshmallow test actually indicate? Self-control? Agreeableness? Lack of sweet-tooth?).
  • Data collection can be difficult and expensive.
  • Perhaps the least used source of data.

Data Classification

  • Not all data can be easily classified (and that's OK).
  • Examples of survey questions include:
    • What were you doing right before the phone went off?
    • How often, in the past 3 months, did you eat the following?

Summary

  • BLIS typology (Behaviors, Life Outcomes, Informant Reports, Self Reports) is a helpful tool for thinking about the strengths and weaknesses of personality data.
  • Not all data types can be easily classified.

Up Next

  • Personality data II
  • Digital spaces as sources of personality data