Science of Psychology
Setting up a study to reduce bias
What is systematic observation?
Important personality characteristics should be reflected in the language that we use to describe other people (Allport & Odbert).
What is the lexical hypothesis?
Administering a standard set of items each of which is answered using a limited set of response options
What is an objective test?
Consistency/stability of a measure. Is there random error associated with it? Can it be replicated or are there null results?
What is reliability?
Ask someone who knows the participant to describe the person. Lacks full access of the participant's thought, feelings, and motives.
What are informant ratings?
The simplest theory wins
What is parsimony?
Pitted the power of personality against the power of situational factors as determinants of the behavior that people exhibit.
What is the person-situation debate?
Exaggerating true magnitude of differences between individuals
What is the sibling-contrast effect?
Accuracy or correctness of many aspects in a study.
Can be confident about causality
Results can be generalized
Constructs operationalized well
Hypotheses map onto theory
What is validity?
What is internal validity?
What is external validity?
What is construct validity?
What is conceptual validity?
This graph illustrates the validity of extroversion through the mapping of arousal and its affect on performance.
What is the Yerkes-Dodson Curve?
Psychologically meaningful dimensions (that are not directly observable) or processes.
"People that are similar to one another are more likely to be attracted to one another than are those who are dissimilar
What is a construct?
Asks people to describe themselves. Self-raters have access to own thoughts, feelings, and motives. This approach is simple and cost-effective.
What is a self-report measures?
Infer important personality characteristics from direct samples of behavior. This approach is not subject to response biases (self-enhancement/reference group effect). Allows people to be studied in a natural environment.
What are behavioral and performance measures?
X= T+E
Observed score= True score + error
What is the classic test theory?
Personality is operationalized by self-reports from the TIPI scale and Facebook usage is operationalized by self-reporting.
What are the constructs in the first study of Gosling et. al?
Statistical technique for grouping similar things together according to how they are associated
What is factor analysis?
Motivated to ignore less desirable characteristics
Self-perceptions based upon sociocultural reference group
What is self-enhancement bias?
What is reference group effect?
Extent to which an instrument seeks to assess personality in a reasonably comprehensive manner. Either measure one core attribute (Self-Esteem Scale) or measure a multitude of attributes (HEXACO).
What is comprehensiveness?
Arbitrary and unranked categories
Rank order along a dimension. Doesn't give indication of distance between ranks
What is nominal data?
What is ordinal data?
Measuring a group of individuals at one time and then having them come back a second time to take the test again.
When an individual participating in a research or testing scenario is given two different versions of the same test at different times
What is test-retest?
What is alternate forms?
Freudian theory over personality development.
What is falsifiability?
Personality characteristics can be classified at different levels of breadth or generality. For example, many models emphasize broad "big" traits.
Based off of projective hypothesis (when people are confronted with ambiguous stimuli, their responses will be influenced by their unconscious thoughts).
Tests based on the assumption that people form automatic or implicit associations between certain concepts based on their previous experience and behavior. Detects automatic association with mental representations.
What is a project test?
What is an implicit test?
Variable on a dimension with a true zero point. Distances between points are of equal magnitude
Variable on a dimension with no true zero point. Distances between points are of equal magnitude
What is ratio data?
What is interval data?
Measures the extent to which all parts of the test contribute equally to what is being measured. This is done by comparing the results of one half of a test with the results from the other half
The degree to which test items measure the same construct
What is split-half?
What is internal consistency?