L2 Observing personality Flashcards
(57 cards)
1
Q
What are triats?
A
- Traits are words in natural language to describe individual characteristics
- There are lot of them
2
Q
What is the lexical hypothesis
A
The original hypothesis leading to the Big Five or OCEAN model
- Those personality characteristics that are important to a group of people will eventually become a part of that group’s language
- More important personality characteristics are more likely to be encoded into language in many words
- Principle Component Analysis of the covariance- structure of traits can be used to extract the most important aspects of variation in a population
Simply said: There is a good reason why people decided to describe each other in language, and the kind of words they invent to describe each other reveal something about what are the main important differences between people (individual differences that are somewhat stable)
3
Q
Does this hypothesis work?
A
- Why would the principle component analysis show us the most important components?
- With this technique you can look at the biggest variance part in a language so if you do it, you get 5 big components (neuroticism, extroversion…)
- However, we still have all the words to describe people because there were all these small differences and shades
- So the uncertainty is whether the principle component analysis was able to pick out all the important ones - this seems a bit too overstated
- Nevertheless, it works, when you look at large number of words in many different cultures/languages, you get number of components that consistently overlap
4
Q
What is an example of words that go together (covary)?
A
- assertive, charismatic, charming, cheerful, energetic, enthusiastic
- needy, nervous, irritable, moody
These are examples of words that always go together in a group
5
Q
What is the method for studying covariance patterns?
A
- Take a large list of trait words in a language (from dictionaries)
- Use a method to derive Principal Components (or factors) on these traits
- Arrive at a factor structure of 5 to 7 factor
6
Q
What do you get from this analysis?
A
- Mostly words that are often used together (e.g. to describe psychosis the analysis identified needy, nervous, irritable, energetic, charismatic, assertive…)
- You can then map these onto the big 5 spectrum (picture 1)
- You can do the same with personality disorders and see which traits describe people with these PD most often
- Most of them are related to the general groupings of the big-5 model (picture 2) so we are onto something since these are the big components that people vary quite a bit
- You can also link this to HiTOP
7
Q
What are the central questions in regards to traits and covariance?
A
- Why do we so often find these 5 (or 6 or 7) principal components in lexical studies across the world?
- What is the reason for covariance between specific traits?
- Why do we find persistence – i.e. consistency across time?
- (Why) do we find pervasiveness – i.e. consistency over situations?
The studies still vary on these questions and the evidence is mixed
8
Q
4 types of interpretations of the covariance structure
A
- Trait realism and temperament
- Situationism
- Network stability
- The self as an actor
They are not mutually exclusive - could be that multiple appear at the same time
9
Q
What is trait realism and temperament?
A
- It’s an explanation as an emergence of the trait difference
- One can define a trait as an inferred organismic (psychological, psychobiological) structure underlying an extended family of behavioral dispositions
- These dispositions are not meant to be viewed as generalized action tendencies, but as inclinations to behave in certain ways in a set of trait-relevant situations
10
Q
What is an example that explains trait realism?
A
- E.g. extroversion is thought of as a broad set of traits
- it includes general energy, general tendency to converse, general evaluation of parties etc
- hence, it’s more likely that you feel energetic at a certain moment in time or certain situation (e.g. I felt energetic at this party…)
- but that it just a transient factor which can change (e.g. feeling down at a party because you just failed an exam) but that doesn’t change your extraversion
- picture 4
11
Q
A
- Biopsychological system that is involved in the emergence of a specific trait (e.g. being extroverted) and then from there you get to more specific ones (e.g. energetic, charming…)
- Picture 5
12
Q
What is the Big 3
A
Model of continuity from temperamental traits to personality, including: Positive Emotionality (PEM), Negative Emotionality (NEM) and Constraint (CON)
13
Q
What personality questionnaire was developed form the realistic trait perspective?
A
- Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire - Big three
- There are three large groupings in this questionnaire that each lead to more specific traits
1) Positive emotionality - well being, social closeness, achievement, social potency (being dominant, leader in a group)
2) Negative emotionality - stress reactivity, alienation (from the world around us), aggression
3) Constraint - harm avoidance, control, traditionalism (wanting things to be the same, following authority…)
4) One outside of the groups is absorbtion - how easily you get absorb in a situation, picture (associated with creativity, daydreaming…)
14
Q
How can you study whether traits/the groupings are biological or psychological systems?
A
- Look at the association and continuation of temperament and later adult personality traits
- There are three big three temperament groupings identified with the Infant Behaviour Questionnaire that can predict later adult personality traits
1) Surgency (predictor of positive emotionality) - approach, vocal reactivity, hip intensity pressure, smile and laughter, activity level, perceived sensitivity
2) Negative affectivity (predictor of negative emotionality) - sadness, distress to limitation (put a blockade in front of a baby and how they react), fear, falling reactivity (rate of recovery from stress)
3) Orienting/regulation capacity (predictor of constraint) - cuddliness, low intensity pleasure, duration of orienting, sociability
15
Q
Who proposed situationism and why?
A
- Critique of these hypothesis by Waltr Mischel in the 60s
- He says that personality traits don’t exist so they don’t have influence on people’s reactions to certain situations - ‘‘…with the possible exception of intelligence, highly generalized behavioral consistencies have not been demonstrated, and the concept of personality traits as broad dispositions is thus untenable.“
- This strong position of denying traits is no longer compatible with the evidence because if we look at aggregations of situations, there is predictability of a person behaving a certain way according to traits (however, not when looking at a single situation which is easily explained by the transient factors)
- A weaker version may be maintained
16
Q
What is the evidence for either side?
A
- Mischel was right in one thing - specificity of situations matters a great deal in determining how a person will react; people act very differently on different occassions - so there is evidence for situations playing a role
- However there is also evidence for persons (traits) - people acr very similarly from one week to the next
17
Q
What is the solution?
A
- Both are correct
- Traits are best regarded as person-specific distributions of certain states-of-mind and behaviors
- Thus they indicate the likelihood of such states over a certain time-period
- These person-specific distributions are quite stable (personality)
- The specific outcomes at any particular moment vary a great deal (situationism)
- Traits are a prediction of the distribution that you will have - e.g. extroversion predicts that you will have a distribution where extroverted behaviours are more common than introverted behaviours
18
Q
What is network stability?
A
Persistent and pervasive personality patterns emerge from network-interactions between a large number of small personality-related components
- Interactions of particular acts, feelings, thoughts
- Give rise to covariance between them
- Resulting in generalized patterns
- And broad traits
19
Q
So what is network stability simply explained?
A
- It’s a complex system
- How we react to very specific sitauations that I liked will be generalised to new situations which I also liked and will emerge into some stable pattern
- In your twenties there is more flexibility but over time it will stabilize more because you will be building mental schemas of how the world is and how I react to that
- So small dispositions are accumulating over time and by directional influence of one another turn it into the broader dispositions
- picture 6
20
Q
How do we distinguish empirically between the two models of trait realism and network stability?
A
- We don’t have to necessarily see them completely mutually exclusive
- But there is indeed lot of genetic inheritance from twin studies so genes do play a role in this but the problem is there is a very large number of genes which code for all different kinds of our emotional and cognitive systems
- So we are not necessarily coded for very broad traits but rather for specific traits that over time become covariant over situations
21
Q
Stability in the performance of the actor
Personality model of McAdams
A
- It’s related to the network perspective
- The actor part is about the child being born and starting to act and temperament goes in there but temperament influences as the enviornment reacts to the child
- McAdams (2013): “… the self as social actor, encompassing semantic representations of traits, social roles, and other features of self that result in and from repeated performances on the social stage of life.”
- Persona: mask, character
- Appearance, i.e. the way one appears to others
22
Q
What does the model look like?
A
- Actions (performed by the newborn)
- Perceptions and judgment by others (what does the action mean, e.g. when I cry)
- Reactions by others
- Perceived reactions and self-judgment (Through these interactions I learn about myself - e.g. I’m a happy child, sad child, my aggression is good…)
- It’s a cyclical process (picture 7)
- This doesn’t deny temperament because my environment reacts to me based on that
- So the idea is that there is emergence of stable character of an actor from the interactions in life influenced by genetic makeup
23
Q
He answered a question someone gave him after the last lecture
What is his definition of a personality?
There are three answers
A
- Personality trait - one makes one person persistently, stably different from others?
↪ Personality is about some form of personal consistency, regularity patterns that occur over long period of time and it’s about how I’m distinct from others - Agency (from McAdams) - we differ from other based on our life goals, values, plans… these give coherent distinction between how we will our lives (agency part of personality - our values determine the choices we make)
- Life story about ourselves which has a certain stability over time and that influences how we see ourselves, how we communicate, what choices we make, and how we see one another (studied by life story interviews)
24
Q
What are the goals of the organization Verhalenbank psychiatrie
A
- Creating a scientific database of interviews on experiences of mental health and mental health care
- Developing new methods for analyzing these narratives
- Initiate possibilities for improving mental health care
- Creating educational material for students in mental health care
- Working against taboo and stigma
- Offering comfort, strength and inspiration to fellow patients (lotgenoten)
25
What is Content?
- 138 narratives of (ex)patients, people in their network, and workers in mental health care
- Transcripts of the interviews are kept private in a scientific database
- From these transcripts narratives are written by an editor and then revised on the basis of input from the interviewer and the person being interviewed
- These are published online and can be freely used
- In this course we use two narratives from this database
26
Coding narratives
- If you have narratives and you want to use them in scientific research, some kind of interpretation (i.e. coding) will have to happen
- There are two types: top-down and bottom-up
27
What is top-down coding?
- When you have a pre-existing idea what you will find in a narrative and you look specifically for that and code it a try to see how much inter-rater reliability there is in that
- These coding schemas are a way of quantifying narratives
- You use a codebook which has explanations of what each theme is and you apply it to each narrative
28
What are agency and communion themes in coding?
- Agency and Communion are examples of top-down coding
- It's one way to look at multiple narratives and there is some consistency in clinical narratives but also personal ones on how these themes appear and are coded
- Bakan was the first one to adopt these two terms and he said:
- “I have adopted the terms “**agency**” and “**communion**” to characterize two fundamental modalities in the existence of living forms, agency for the existence of an organism as an individual, and communion for the participation of the individual in some larger organism of which the individual is a part. Agency manifests itself in self-protection, self-assertion, and selfexpansion; communion manifests itself in the sense of being at one with other organisms. Agency manifests itself in the formation of separations; communion in the lack of separations. Agency manifests itself in isolation, alienation, and aloneness; communion in contact, openness, and union. Agency manifests itself in the urge to master; communion in noncontractual cooperation.“
- These are meta-themes - we can find them in each of the three parts of the personality model by McAdams
↪ They are part of the traits, actor and author
29
What are indication of agency when coding?
- Self-mastery (e.g. A musician experiences a sense of power or mastery during a performance)
- Status/victory (A person is granted an important position or awarded a prestigious job)
- Empowerment (A person feels empowered by contact with a guru or spiritual guide)
- Achievement/responsibility (A secretary takes over an office and turns it into a model of efficiency and productivity)
- People high on conscientiousness and with agentic values will be more likely to report these kinds of narratives
30
What are indication of communion when coding?
- Love/friendship (e.g. A young couple enjoy lovemaking on a Saturday afternoon)
- Dialogue (“Sara and I had been writing letters to each other all summer)
- Unity/togetherness (“I was warm, surrounded by friends and positive regard that night. I felt unconditionally loved.”)
- Caring/help (At the centre for asylum seeking individuals I helped teaching Dutch to some of them)
31
Example of stengthened agency in the narrative of Naomi
- You can see agency and communion in therapeutic narratives as well
- Picture 8
32
Example of changing experience of communion in the narrative of Naomi
Picture 9
33
What can we see from the narrative of Naomi?
- Communion and agency are not opposites, it's not either that or that
- Often, via communion you can become more agentic
34
What big-5 traits are imnportant for each of the two themes?
- Agency: Conscientiousness, extraversion
- Communion: agreeableness, somewhat extraversion and conscientiousness
35
Communion themes in the novel of Baldwin
Picture 10
36
Agentic themes in the novel of Baldwin
- Picture 11
- It's not a trait, it's a theme - he was not born with an agentic trait rather he's wondering how can I be a distinct person from what everyone has taught me that I should be; he wants to find his own way
37
What are the themes or structures of other coding schemas?
1. Motivational themes
2. Affective themes
3. Themes of integrative meaning
4. Structural elements of narratives
These have been coded in multiple narratives and they have been consistently linked with certain outcomes over time
38
Motivational theme
1. Agency
2. Communion
3. **Growth goals**
39
Growth goals
The degree to which the protagonist makes intentional efforts to guide his or her self-development in a personally meaningful direction, oriented toward personal growth
40
Affective themes
1. Contamination
2. Redemption
3. Positive resolution
41
Contamination
- Found mostly at the beggining of therapy
- The protagonist describes an event that moves from a good, affectively positive scene to a bad, affectively negative scene, in which good things turn into bad outcomes
- e.g. someone bullied at primary school so was looking forward to moving to high school where they won't be bullied but they were bullied again
- predictor of low well-being if they have lot of these up and down sequences
42
Redemption
The protagonist describes an event that moves from a bad, affectively negative scene to a subsequent good, affectively positive scene. The bad is redeemed, salvaged, mitigated, or made better in light of the ensuing good.
43
Positive resolution
The protagonist is able to come to peace with, or let go of, a challenging event.
44
Themes of integrative meaning
1. Accomodative processing
2. Exploratory processing
3. Meaning making
45
# Structural theme
Accomodative processing
- The degree to which the protagonist has been forced to change, centrally and qualitatively, his or her views of the self and world, by actively experiencing a paradigmatic shift that requires a revision of structures and/or important changes in response to the environment.
46
Exploratory processing
The degree to which the protagonist makes an active and engaged effort to explore, reflect on, or analyze a difficult experience with openness to learning from it and incorporating a sense of change into the life story.
47
Meaning making
The degree to which the protagonist learns something or gleans a message from an event (e.g., no meaning, vague meaning, learning concrete lessons, gaining deep insights).
48
Structural elements of narratives
1. Coherence
2. Complexity
49
Coherence
The degree to which the narrator situates the characters of his story and their actions in a specific context, the story follows a temporal sequence of goal-oriented actions that are culturally recognized, emotions are clearly expressed in support of the point of the narrative, and narrative is integrated into larger life themes and meanings.
50
Complexity
The degree of engagement in the narrative processing, as shown by depth of thought and nuance, such as seeing a variety of perspectives or emotions.
51
What did Adler's research on variation in narrative identity found?
- They found that variation in narrative identity is associated with trajectories of mental health over several years
- They conducted life story interviews
- They showed that agency and redemption is positively associated with well-being and psychological problems at a certain moment whereas contammination is negatively correlated
- All three were also predictive of well-being over a long period of time
52
What was Adler's follow-up research in therapy
- They conducted life story interviews with the participants during therapy
- They saw that most agency and coherence develop over the course of therapy in such a way that agentic stories would increase over time and then well-being increased over time
- If people start telling more agentic and coherent narratives that's predictive of people having an increased well-being
- This suggest some kind of mechanism of change over the course of therapy
53
How does DSM-5 define personality disorders and how does that relate to agency and communion?
- DSM-5: ''Disturbances in **self** and **interpersonal** functioning constitute the core of personality psychopathology''
- The interpersonal part is all about communion, the possibility of humans to empathise, form relationshops and to be intimate
- Traits you're born with but also the schemas you develop in your life play a role in this (how you've been treated by your parents)
- The self part is about agency - the ability to develop coherent identity and self-direction
54
What is bottom-up coding?
- You miss a lot with top-down coding because you have a pre-existing idea of what you will find in the narrative
- So bottom-up is the opposite
- You have no pre-existing idea but you go from one narrative to another and looking what core themes emerge in all of them
- It's a qualitative methods for data analysis
55
What qualitative methods for data analysis are there?
1. Thematic analysis
2. Grounded theory
3. Case-wise narrative analysis
4. Phenomenological analysis...
56
What is an example of qualitative method analysis?
- Research by Sambeek on Making meaning of trauma in psychosis
- She interviewing with such patients and they narrated how the experience over the long-period of time was
- She tried to identify which core elements were in each narrative and they identified four different story types:
1) Psychiatry as the wrong setting to find meaning
2) The ongoing struggle to get trauma-therapy
3) Exposure to trauma as a threat to a stable life
4) Disclosure as the key to resolving alienation
- Each story type comprises a different plot, meaning of trauma withing the self-story, (lack of) integration and barriers and facilitators in the meaning-making process
57
Core concepts
- Lexical hypothesis
- OCEAN / Big 5
- Big 3
- Trait realism
- Situationism
- Person-specifc distributions
- Network stability
- Stability in the performance of the actor
- Agency
- Communion
