Chapter 4 Flashcards
(30 cards)
Differential psychology 
The name, sometimes, given trait psychology due to its emphasis on the study of differences between people includes the study of other forms of individual differences, in addition to personality traits, such as abilities, attitudes, and intelligence
Consistency
Trait, theories, assume there is some degree of consistency in personality over time. If someone is highly extroverted during one period of already observation, trait psychologist tend to assume that they will be extroverted tomorrow next week a year from now, or even decades from now. 
Rank order
One’s relative position within a group overtime. For example, if someone tend to maintain their position on extroversion related to the other members of the group overtime, then we say that there is a higher rank order stability to the personality characteristic. Conversely, if people fail to maintain their rank order, we say that the group has displayed rank order, instability, or rank order change. 
Situationism
A theoretical position and personality psychology that states that situational differences, rather than underlying personality traits, determine behavior. For example, how friendly a person will be, or how much need for achievement, a person displays will depend on the situation, not traits a person possesses.
Person situation interaction
Theory which states that one must take into account both particular situation’s example, (ex frustration) and personality traits, (ex hot temper) when understanding of behaviour 
B f(PxS)
Aggregation
Adding up or averaging several single observations, resulting in better more reliable measures of a personality trait that is single observation of behavior. This approach implies that personality traits refer to average tendencies and behavior, how people behave on average.
Situational specificity
The view that behaviour is determined by aspects of the situation, such as contingencies 
Strong situation
Certain situations that prompt similar behaviour from everyone
Situational selection
A form of person situation interaction that refers to the tendency to choose, or select the situation in which one finds one self. In other words, people typically do not find themselves in random situations in their natural lives. Instead they select or choose those situations.
Person environment fit
A theory that suggests there are particular environments or situation’s that are more complementary to a persons, traits and characteristics, and that this may motivate individuals to select certain situations over others 
Evocation
A form of person situation interaction discussed by Buss. It is based on the idea that certain personality traits may elicit consistent responses from the environment, particularly the social environment.
Manipulation
A third form of person situation interaction identified by Buss. It can be understood as social influence, and involves the various means by which people intentionally influence the behaviours of others. No malicious intent need be employed by the term manipulation, although such intent is not excluded either.
Density distribution of states
Refers to the idea that traits are distributions of states in a persons, life, overtime, and the mean of the distribution is the persons level of the trait 
Infrequency scale
A common method for detecting measurement technique, problems with a set of questionnaire items. The infrequency scale contains items that most or all people would answer in a particular way. If a participant answered more than one or two of these, unlike the rest of the majority of the participants, a researcher could begin to suspect that the participant answers do not represent valid information 
Faking
The motivated distortion of answers on a questionnaire. Some people may be motivated to fake good in order to appear to be better off or better adjusted than they really are. Others may be motivated to fake bad in order to appear to be worse off or more maladjusted than they really are 
False negative
There are two ways for a psychologist to make mistakes when making decisions about persons based on personality tests. When, trying to decide whether a persons answers are genuine or faked, the psychologist might decide that a truthful person was faking, a false negative.
false positive
There are two ways for a psychologist to make mistakes when making decisions about persons based on personality tests. When, trying to decide whether a persons answers are genuine or faked, the psychologist might decide that a person who is faking was actually telling the truth, a false, positive 
Barnum statements
Generalities or comments that could apply to anyone. Exotic a good example is the astrology column in daily newspaper.
Personnel selection
Employers, sometimes use personality test to select people, especially suitable for a specific job. Alternatively, the employer may want to use personality assessments to deselect rescreen out people with specific traits. In both cases, an employer is concerned with selecting the right person for specific position from among a pool of applicants pool of applicants. 
Integrity tests
Because the private sector cannot legally use polygraphs to screen employees. Some companies have developed and promoted questionnaire measures to use in place of the polygraph. These questions are designed to assess whether a person is generally honest or dishonest.
Negligent hiring
A charge sometimes brought against an employer for hiring someone who is unstable or prone to violence. Employers are defending themselves against such suits, which often see compensation for crimes committed by their employees. Such cases hinge on whether the employer should have discovered dangerous traits ahead of time, before hiring such a person into the position, where they posted a threat to others. Personality testing, may provide evidence that the employer did in fact try to reasonably investigate an applicants fitness for the workplace
Right to privacy
This is perhaps the largest issue of legal concern for employers using personality testing. The right to privacy employment settings grows out of the broader concept of the right to privacy. Cases that charge an invasion of privacy claim against an employer can be based on the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms.
Employment, equality act
This act in effect 1986 requires that federally regulated industries in Canada, adopt proactive employment practices, in order to improve the employment rates of for designated social groups: women, individuals with disabilities, aboriginal peoples, and visible minorities.
Canadian human rights act
This act was passed in 1977 with a goal of ensuring equal opportunity to individuals who might be victims of discriminatory practises based on race national or ethnic origin, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability, and conviction, for which a pardon has been granted ; end in 2016, Bill C-16 was passed to include gender identity and gender expression as protect grounds of discrimination 
