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PSYCH 2750 > EXAM 1 > Flashcards

EXAM 1 Flashcards

1
Q

What is the trait-dispositional paradigm?

A

Trait Theory, also known as Dispositional Theory, is an approach to study human personality and behavior.

It is the measurement of steady patterns of habit in an individual’s behavior, thoughts and emotions.

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2
Q

What is the source of behavior?

A

Can be genetic and environmental factors that influence an individual.
“Activities”: not consistent across time/ situation (verbs)

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3
Q

What is a trait?

A

Characteristic that is consistent across situations and time “chronic”

Is internally caused/motivated

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4
Q

Gordon Allport’s Trait Theory

A

That personality came about like a series of building blocks.

He further believed that personality was biologically determined but could be shaped by someone’s environment.

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5
Q

Contemporary Trait Approaches

A
  1. The Single-Trait Approach
  2. The Many-Trait Approach
  3. The Essential-Trait Approach
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6
Q

The Single-Trait Approach

A

This research approach investigates the behavioral implications of traits of particular interest.
Trait —> Behavior

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7
Q

The Many-Trait Approach

A

This research approach investigates the many traits that might be associated with a behavior or outcome of particular interest.
Behavior or Life Outcome—> Trait

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8
Q

Typological Approach

A

Personality typology is the concept of distinguishing people by their behavioral traits and viewing them as defined types

Stems from a doubt and a hope. The doubt is whether it is really valid to compare people with each other quantitatively on the same trait dimensions. The hope is that researchers can identify groups of people who resemble each other enough, and are different enough from everybody else.

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9
Q

The Essential-Trait Approach

A

Attempts to identify the few traits out of thousands, that are truly central to understanding all of the others.
ex: The Big Five

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10
Q

What is the Lexical Hypothesis

A

The Lexical Hypothesis is that the important aspects of human life will be labeled, and that if something is truly important and universal, many words for it will exist in all languages.

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11
Q

Which trait do researchers argue that should be a sixth basic trait (to Big 5)?

A

Honesty/Humility

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12
Q

Typological Approaches to Personality

A

The concept of distinguishing people by their behavioral traits and viewing them as defined types. Personality traits reflect people’s innate tendencies and are represented as opposed pairs – for example, Introversion and Extraversion.

Attempts to capture the ways people might differ in kind, not just in degree. Research has identified 3 basic types of personality:
1. Adjusted
2. Maladjusted over-controlled
3. Maladjusted under-controlled

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13
Q

What is a particular problem with personality typologies?

A

A particular problem with typologies is that when people are sorted into types based on cutoff scores. People classified together as the same type are often more different from each other than people classified as being different types.

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14
Q

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

A

(MBTI) is an introspective, self-report evaluation that identifies a person’s personality type and psychological preferences.

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15
Q

What does the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) have serious shortcomings of?

A

Myers-Briggs have serious shortcomings of
Reliability and Validity.
Should only be used for entertainment

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16
Q

California Q-Set

A

Devised to identify and measure the status of factors in personality and social adjustment. The purpose of the test was to assess these factors and provide individual feedback to assure a proper balance was kept between social and personal development.

(Q-Sort) is an instrument that includes one hundred cards, each displaying a descriptive personality statement that observers arrange according to how well they describe a person.

Raters express judgments of personality by sorting the items into nine categories ranging from highly uncharacteristic of the person being described (Category 1) to highly characteristic (Category 9). Items that are neither characteristic or uncharacteristic are placed in Category 5.

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17
Q

What are the 7 basic principles of Continuity and Change in personality? & What 3 Psychologist made a significant contribution to these 7 principles?

A
  1. Cumulative Continuity Principle
  2. Maturity Principle
  3. Plasticity Principle
  4. Role Continuity Principle
  5. Identity Development Principle
  6. Social Investment Principle
  7. Corresponsive Principle

Psychologists: Brent Roberts, Dustin Wood, Avshalom Caspi

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18
Q

What is the Cumulative Continuity Principle in Personality Continuity and Change?

A

The proposal that personality becomes more consistent as the individual gets older.

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19
Q

What is the Maturity Principle in Personality Continuity and Change?

A

Proposes that people become better equipped to deal with the demands of life as they acquire experience and skills.

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20
Q

What is the Plasticity Principle in Personality Continuity and Change?

A

Asserts that personality can change at any time during the life course, though such change may not be easy.
Plasticity is defined as something that is easily molded, so easily changed.

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21
Q

What is the Role Continuity Principle in Personality Continuity and Change?

A

Presents the idea that people choose “roles” to play that may stay the same over their lives, such as the person who becomes a “jock” or “brain” in high school continues to enact that role in college and adult life.

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22
Q

What is the Identity Development Principle in Personality Continuity and Change?

A

States that people construct a sense of “who am I” as they grow up, and that this self-view becomes an important foundation of behavioral stability as people try to be consistent with their sense of self.

This principle is closely related to the process of identity formation described by Dan McAdams.

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23
Q

What is the Social Investment Principle in Personality Continuity and Change?

A

Describes how people become connected to social structures and institutions, and how this connection affects their psychological development.

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24
Q

What is the Corresponsive Principle in Personality Continuity and Change?

A

Relates how life experience tends to magnify the personality traits that already exist, and establish them ever more firmly over time.

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25
Q

______ life experiences can lead to ______ in neuroticism, but people ______ in neuroticism also encounter more negative life experiences.

A

Negative; increase; higher

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26
Q

T/F People may resist significantly changing their personalities, but it is possible to do if they strongly desire to change and believe change is possible.

A

True

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27
Q

How can personality change potentially be accomplished?

A

Psychotherapy, general intervention programs, targeted interventions, or behaviors and life experiences.

28
Q

T/F Increasing evidence indicates that personality can be changed, though it is not easy to do.

A

True

29
Q

Do most people want to change their Big 5 personality traits?

A

Yes, most people would like to change at least one of their Big 5 personality traits to at least some degree.

30
Q

Narrative Identity

A

An important development task for everyone is to develop a life story.

31
Q

Do goals tend to change over the life span? What do younger people/ older people focus on?

A

Younger people look to explore new possibilities and develop skills; Older people focus more on maintaining emotional well-being and enjoying relationships.

32
Q

What does the social clock describe?

A

The social clock describes the accomplishments conventionally expected of people at certain ages. For women, following either stereotypical feminine or masculine social clocks can lead to long-term life satisfaction, but following neither can lead to problems.

33
Q

T/F Although individual differences in personality tend to remain consistent over long periods of time, several traits change, on average, as people get older.

A

True, individual differences in personality tend to remain consistent over long periods of time, but several traits change on average as people get older. In particular, conscientiousness tends to increase while neuroticism declines.

34
Q

Are patterns of behavior seen in children visible when they are adults?

A

Yes, patterns of behavior seen in children are also visible when they are adults, and traits identified early in life have important associations with long-term life outcomes, including academic achievement, occupational success, and satisfying interpersonal relationships

35
Q

Why is personality stable over time?

A

Personality is stable over time because the environment that surrounds a person tends to be stable, because early experiences can have long-lasting consequences, because people will seek out environments that are compatible with and magnifying their personality traits, and because people actively change the environment they enter.

36
Q

Personality tends to become more stable over time, is an effect known as what?

A

Personality tends to become more stable over time is an effect known as the Cumulative Continuity Principle.

37
Q

What is Heterotypic Continuity?

A

Fundamental behavioral and emotion tendencies stem from a very early root, and persist throughout life. These effects of the fundamental tendencies change with age, which is called Heterotypic Continuity.

Heterotypic is defined as: different in form, arrangement, or type.

38
Q

What is Person-Environment Transactions?

A

One reason personality remains stable over the years is that people respond to, seek, out, and even create environments that are compatible with, and may magnify, their personality traits.

39
Q

What is an example of an ACTIVE Person-Environment Transactions?

A

An example of active person-environment transaction is if an aggressive person may be attracted to and attractive to similarly aggressive friends, which may put that person into environments where conflict is common.

40
Q

What is an example of a REACTIVE Person-Environment Transactions?

A

Reactive Person-Environment Transactions is the reason people tend to seek out environments compatible with their traits is that they may find other kinds of environments unpleasant.

A true extravert might feel miserable sitting quietly on the porch, while a true introvert suffers just as much at a noisy party. This kind of pattern of differential response to situations is relative person-environment transaction.

41
Q

What is an example of an EVOCATIVE Person-Environment Transactions?

A

Refer to the process in which different individuals evoke different reactions from others. An antagonistic individual is more likely to evoke unfriendly responses from others than is an agreeable person.

People do not just choose and experience their environments; they change them.
Ex: Parents who are emotionally positive and uninhibited tend to be highly responsive to their 3 to 6 year old children.

42
Q

What is Cohort Effect?

A

A potential situation that may make a difference in data.

When you gather personality ratings of people of different ages, all at the same time, you are necessarily gathering data from people who were born in different years and grew up in different social environments. This fact might make a difference.

43
Q

Cross-Sectional Study. Give an example.

A

Surveying different people at different ages.

44
Q

Longitudinal Study. Give an example

A

A better way of studying development when possible is a longitudinal study, in which the same people are repeatedly measured over the years from childhood through adulthood.

45
Q

What is Rank-Order consistency?

A

Indicates whether the rank order of individuals in a certain trait is maintained over time.

When a child who is either more or less neurotic, agreeable, conscientiousness, or open than his peers is likely to maintain this distinction throughout life too. Psychologists call this kind of stability, rank-order consistency.

Does not mean that people do not change over the years, it just means that they tend to maintain the ways in which they are different from other people the same age.

46
Q

What is Constructivism?

A

Constructivism is the theory that says learners construct knowledge rather than just passively take in information.

Philosophic approach that reality, as a concrete entity, does not exist. All that does exist are human ideas, or constructions of reality.

47
Q

What is Critical Realism?

A

Critical Realism (CR) is a branch of philosophy that distinguishes between the ‘real’ world and the ‘observable’ world. The ‘real’ can not be observed and exists independent from human perceptions, theories, and constructions.

Holds that the absence of perfect, infallible criteria for determining the truth does not mean that all interpretations of reality are equally correct (Rorer, 1990).

48
Q

What is Convergent Validation?

A

Assessing the accuracy of a personality judgment becomes exactly equivalent to assessing the validity of a personality test.

It can be illustrated by the duck test. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is very probably (but still not absolutely positively) a duck.

49
Q

What is Interjudge Agreement?

A

The degree to which two or more judges of the same person provide the same descriptions of personality; the more judges who agree, the more likely the judgment is to be correct.

One of the two primary converging criteria in personality judgments.

50
Q

What is Predictive Validity?

A

Proving that ones judgment of another is “more probably” correct (although 100% certainty is never attained).

If my judgment that you are conscientious converges with the subsequent empirical fact that you arrive on time for almost all your class meetings for the next three semesters, it demonstrates predictive validity.

51
Q

What is a Moderator Variable?

A

In psychological parlance, a moderator variable is one that affects the relationship between two variables.

Moderator variables are one that changes the correlation between a judgment and its criterion.

52
Q

What is Judgability?

A

A matter of “what you see is what you get.”

“Judgable” people are those about whom others reach agreement most easily, because they are the ones whose behavior is most predictable from judgments of their personalities.

53
Q

What is the Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM)?

A

The Realistic Accuracy Model of the process of accurate personality judgment describes accuracy as a function of the relevance, availability, detection, and utilization of behavioral cues.

Outlines a four-stage process necessary to achieve accurate personality judgments.
1. Relevance
2. Availability
3. Detection
4. Utilization of behavioral cues

54
Q

What does the Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM) imply?

A

RAM implies that accurate personality judgment is difficult, helps to explain the four moderators of accuracy, and suggests ways in which one might be able to judge others more accurately.

55
Q

What are the 4 moderators of accuracy?

A
  1. The good judge, or the possibility that some judges are more accurate than others.
  2. The good target, or the possibility that some individuals are easier to judge than others.
  3. The good trait, or the possibility that some traits are easier to judge accurately than others.
  4. Good information, or the possibility that more or better information about the target makes accuracy judgment more likely.
56
Q

Why is it important to examine when and how judgments are accurate?

A

Other people’s judgments of an individual can affect that persons opportunities and can create self-fulfilling prophecies or expectancy effects.

57
Q

How has research evaluated the accuracy of personality judgments?

A

Consensus and Predictability

58
Q

What is interactionism

A

It is much more accurate to see persons and situations as constantly interacting to produce behavior together.

  1. The effect of a person variable may depend on the situation.
  2. People with different personalities may choose, or find themselves in different situations.
  3. Situations are affected by the eprsonaltiies of people who inhabit them.
59
Q

T/F A wide-ranging survey of the research literature shows that personality traits affect important life outcomes, including health, longevity, and interpersonal and career success.

A

TRUE

60
Q

What is the Person-Situation Debate?

A

Classifying people according to traits raises a problem. People are inconsistent. Psychologists have suggested that people are so inconsistent in their behavior from one situation to the next that it is not worthwhile to characterize them in terms of personality.

61
Q

What do Situationists (opponents of the trait approach) argue about personality traits and behavior?

A
  1. They argue that according to a review of the personality literature, the ability of traits to predict behavior is extremely limited.
  2. That situations are therefore more important than personality traits for determining what people do.
  3. That not only is personality assessment (the measurement of traits) a waste of time, but also many of people’s intuitions about each other are fundamentally wrong.
62
Q

What is Type 1 Error?

A

The p-level address only the probability of one kind of error. Type I Error involves deciding that one variable has an effect on, or a relationship with, another variable, when it REALLY DOES.

63
Q

What is Type II Error?

A

Involves deciding that one variable DOES NOT have an effect on, or relationship with, another variable, when it DOES NOT.

64
Q

What is Binomial Effect Size Display (BESD)?

A

Rosenthal and Rubin (1982) provided a technique for demonstrating the size of effect-size correlations.

The intent of a binomial effect size display (BESD) is to show “the [real-world] importance of [an] effect indexed by a correlation [r]”
e.g., treatment group success rate-control group success rate

65
Q

What is P-hacking?

A

Hacking around in ones data until one finds the necessary degree of statistical significance, or p-level, that allows their findings to be published.

66
Q

What is Funder’s Second Law?

A

“There are no perfect indicators of personality; there are only clues, and clues are always ambiguous.”

67
Q

What is Funder’s Third Law?

A

“Something beats nothing, two times out of three.”

The only alternative to gathering information that might be misleading is to gather no information. That is not progress.

PSYCH 2750 (9 decks)

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