Personality Theories
Are the different basic approaches to personality mutually exclusive? Yes or no (and why or why not)
Nope! They address different questions so they are not mutually exclusive
What are the four types of data that can be be collected to understand or assess personality?
Behavior
Life
Informants
Self
Define reliability and validity
1. Reliability: the consistency and dependability (or "repeatability") of a measure
2. Validity: quality and accuracy of the measure
What are the 4 trait perspectives?
1. The single trait approach
2. The many-trait approach
3. The essential-trait approach
4. The typological approach
What is ethnocentrism?
Judging another culture from the point of view of your own
What are the goals of personality psychology?
1. The scientific study of the psychological forces that make people uniquely themselves
2. Explain the whole person in their daily environment
A person's evaluation of his or her own personality is used to describe what type of data?
S data: self-judgements or self-reports
What are the three types of reliability? List and describe them
1. Inter-rater reliability: two or more observers rating the same behavior should agree with each other
2. Internal consistency: within a test, people should respond in a consistent way to ALL of the questions
3. Test-retest reliability: when given a test more than once, people should get about the same score each time
What are the five Big 5 traits?
Openness to experience (not open)
Conscientiousness (Impulsivity)
Extroversion (Introversion)
Agreeableness (Disagreeableness)
Neuroticism (Emotional Stability)
What does each of the letters in the acronym ADDRESSING stand for?
Age
Developmental and acquired Disabilities
Religion or spirituality
Ethnicity and race
Socioeconomic status
Sexuality
Indigenous heritage
National origin (& generational status)
Gender
What four features make a good theory?
1. Comprehensive
2. Parsimonious
3. Falsifiable
4. Productive
Define and describe the two types of behavioral data (B data)
1. Natural B data: naturalistic observations, based on real life
2. Laboratory B data: based on experiments, to see how a person responds
2. Discriminant validity: the extend to which scores on a measure are found to be statistically unrelated to scores on other measures designed to assess different conceptual variables
Give 2 advantages and 2 disadvantages to the trait approach
Possible advantages:
- Simplifies personality to a small number of basic dimensions
- Looks for a deeper consistency underlying behaviors
- good assessment techniques (objective)
- allows for comparisons between individuals
Possible disadvantages:
- may reach too far trying to capture the individual in a few ways-- over simplification
- may label people on the basis of test scores
- sometimes underestimates variability across situations
- not originally supported by theory
- disagreement about a framework
What is the difference between enculturation and acculturation? Do they have any similarities?
Both are the process of picking up the culture one is a currently a part of. However, enculturation is learning the culture into which one is born, while acculturation is learning the culture of one's new home after moving from one country to another.
What are the 6 basic theoretical approaches to personality? Define and describe each of them
1. Trait approach: how people differ psychologically
2. Biological approach: understand the mind in terms of the body
3. Psychoanalytic approach: concerned with the unconscious mind and internal mental conflict
4. Behavioral/Learning approach: how behavior changes as a result of rewards, punishments, and life experiences
5. Cognitive approach: A. social learning: learning through observation and self evaluation; B. cognitive processes: focuses on perception, memory, and thought
6. Phenomenological approach: A. humanistic psychology: how conscious awareness produces uniquely human attributes B. Cross-cultural psychology: how the experience of reality varies across cultures
Define informant report data (I data) and what are the advantages and disadvantages of I data?
Definition: Judgements by knowledgable informations about general attributes of the individual's personality (e.g. acquaintances, coworkers, clinical psychologists)
Advantage: based on observation of behavior in the real world from multiple informants about many behaviors across situations
Disadvantages: A) Errors in reporting because one is more likely to remember behaviors that are extreme, unusual, or emotionally arousing B) Bias due to personal issues or prejudices
What is criterion validity? Describe the two ways (types of validity) used to establish criterion validity.
Definition: The extent to which test scores agree with an objective criterion that is logically related to the measure
Two ways:
1. Concurrent validity: selected “objective” criterion and measure to be validated are assessed at the same time
2. Predictive validity: measure to be validated is compared to criterion that occurs later in time
Describe the study design of trait theory research. Can you infer causality from this design? Why or why not?
Correlational designs
- correlational data can be graphed
- correlation does not equal causation because a separate variable (confound) could be influencing both of the variables being observed
Define etics and emics and give an example of each.
Etics: universal components of a culture
Emics: components that are particular to a specific culture
example:
etic: duty
emic: duties that are expected may vary among cultures such as between individualistic cultures and collective cultures where familial duties across generations may play a more central role in collective cultures