Study of the Person
Personality psychologists who adhere to the _______________ approach try to understand people by way of identifying, conceptualizing, and measuring the ways in which people differ psychologically from one another.
A. psychoanalytic
B. trait
C. cognitive
D. phenomenological
B. trait
Many psychologists tend to use college students as participants in their research and then assume that what they learn applies to people in general. However, this common practice may limit the
A. ecological reliability of their research.
B. internal validity of their studies.
C. generalizability of their findings.
D. construct validity of their studies.
C. generalizability of their findings.
If you were to fully develop a personality test without even looking at the item content, you would be using the _______________ method of test construction.
A. factor analytic
B. rational
C. projective
D. empirical
D. empirical
A fundamental problem for the trait approach is that
A. individual differences cannot be measured reliably.
B. situations do not affect behavior.
C. people are inconsistent.
D. correlational methods do not clearly indicate effect size.
C. people are inconsistent.
What is another name for ego resiliency?
A. psychological adjustment
B. self-monitoring
C. extraversion
D. self-control
A. psychological adjustment
Why haven’t personality psychologists combined all paradigms into One Big Theory?
A. A theory that tries to explain everything would probably not provide the best explanation for any one thing.
B. The manageability of research programs would be lost.
C. The different basic approaches to psychology address the same sets of questions.
D. Applying principles of behaviorism helps reduce negative behaviors, making the cognitive approach the best one.
A. A theory that tries to explain everything would probably not provide the best explanation for any one thing.
The strongest advantage of the experimental method is that
A. it allows the assessment of causality.
B. it allows the study of naturally occurring individual differences that already exist in the participants.
C. participants are always randomly sampled from the general population.
D. it can take advantage of extreme levels of the independent variable.
A. it allows the assessment of causality.
According to the text, what is the best approach to test construction?
A. the rational method
B. the factor analytic method
C. the empirical method
D. a combination of all three approaches
D. a combination of all three approaches
In his book, Personality and Assessment, Mischel argues that
A. traits are the only factors that influence human behavior.
B. situations do not reliably predict consistent behavioral trends.
C. behavior is too inconsistent to predict using broad personality traits.
D. personality traits transcend the immediate situation and moment, and they provide the most consistent guide to a person’s actions.
C. behavior is too inconsistent to predict using broad personality traits.
What are the essential traits according to Hans Eysenck?
A. neuroticism/extraversion/openness to experience
B. neuroticism/extraversion/psychoticism
C. ego control/ego resiliency/ego adjustment
D. positive emotionality/negative emotionality/constraint
B. neuroticism/extraversion/psychoticism
One critique of personality psychology is that it “pigeonholes” people. What does pigeonholing someone mean?
A. psychoanalyzing people
B. prescribing medication
C. statistically analyzing results
D. categorizing and labeling people
D. categorizing and labeling people
Because Jesse’s teacher believes that he is intelligent, she challenges him with extra assignments and generally encourages his curiosity. At the end of the school year, Jesse performs better on the school’s achievement test than any other student. Jesse’s enhanced performance is likely due to the
A. recency effect.
B. expectancy effect.
C. self-serving bias.
D. judgment bias.
B. expectancy effect.
Imagine that a researcher conducts a study and finds a statistically significant correlation between eating pizza and aggression. However, there is no real association between eating pizza and aggression in the population. What kind of error has this researcher made?
A. Type I
B. Type II
C. Type III
D. Correlational
A. Type I
The traditional practice in evaluating the degree to which behavior is affected by the situation has been to
A. square the correlation coefficient for the relationship between behavior and some aspect of the situation.
B. determine the percentage of variance accounted for by personality, subtract that from 100 percent, and then assign that value to the situation.
C. multiply the variance in the behavioral measure by 2.
D. add the variance in the behavioral measure to the variance for the situational variable.
B. determine the percentage of variance accounted for by personality, subtract that from 100 percent, and then assign that value to the situation.
Which Big Five domain captures a tendency to experience negative emotions?
A. neuroticism
B. extraversion
C. conscientiousness
D. openness
A. neuroticism
What is the largest and most dominant approach in personality psychology today?
A. learning and cognitive
B. trait
C. psychoanalytic
D. biological
B. trait
The MOST important and generally useful way to enhance reliability is to
A. use the smallest possible number of items.
B. measure something that is important.
C. aggregate your measurements.
D. maximize error variance.
C. aggregate your measurements.
Which of the following is the best explanation for why publication bias is a major concern in science?
A. Only researchers with interesting findings are awarded grants and jobs.
B. It is far too easy for researchers to commit fraud.
C. Researchers can make choices throughout the research process and manipulate real datasets to get the results they want.
D. Strong effects are published more, leading to a literature that does not represent the actual strength of an effect.
D. Strong effects are published more, leading to a literature that does not represent the actual strength of an effect.
A social psychologist focused on statistical significance is concerned with _______________, whereas a personality researcher focused on effect sizes is concerned with _______________.
A. documenting the existence of an effect; quantifying the size of an effect
B. quantifying the size of an effect; documenting the existence of an effect
C. squaring correlations; Binomial Effect Size Displays
D. process; outcome
A. documenting the existence of an effect; quantifying the size of an effect
The Big Five are believed to be orthogonal factors of personality. What does orthogonal mean?
A. People’s scores on one of the factors are useful for predicting their scores on only one of the other factors.
B. People’s scores on one of the factors are useful for predicting their scores on two of the other factors.
C. People’s scores on one of the factors are useful for predicting their scores on three or four of the other factors.
D. People’s scores on one of the factors do not predict their scores on any of the other factors.
D. People’s scores on one of the factors do not predict their scores on any of the other factors.
Funder writes that there are good reasons why personality psychologists have distinct theories versus One Big Theory. Which is NOT one of those reasons?
A. One Big Theory would undermine the smaller theories.
B. There is a trade-off between breadth and depth in theories.
C. There is, for now, no accepted One Big Theory.
D. Each theory offers a different perspective on personality.
A. One Big Theory would undermine the smaller theories.
In simple language, questions about reliability concern _______________, whereas questions about validity concern _______________.
A. accuracy; consistency
B. consistency; dependability
C. stability; dependability
D. consistency; accuracy
D. consistency; accuracy
Using the Binomial Effect Size Display, if there is a correlation of .30 between drinking alcohol and the likelihood of having a car accident, then out of 100 people who have been drinking, you would expect _______________ of them to have an accident.
A. 100
B. 45
C. 90
D. 65
D. 65
Sally found that neither caffeine nor extraversion individually predicted problem solving; however, she found that they both worked together to predict problem solving. This is an example of what kind of an effect?
A. a true interaction
B. a suppressor
C. an evocation
D. a true mediation
A. a true interaction
The _______________ approach to personality usually assumes that all people can be characterized by points on a continuous score of measurement; the _______________ approach to personality suggests that people might differ in kind more than in degree.
A. typological; trait
B. trait; typological
C. essential-trait; single-trait
D. constructivist; critical realist
B. trait; typological