Measuring Personality Flashcards
(25 cards)
Good measures of personality are important for what reasons?
- Practical and Ethical Reasons
- Scientific Reasons
Scales measure?
1 dimension of personality
An inventory consists of _____ and measures what?
- Several scales
- Measures multiple dimensions of personality
Random Error
“Noise”, non-systematic variations in score. For example a person 1 day may rate 3 and the next 4.
How can we control for random error?
increase the number of items.
Systematic Error (bias)
Scores are always slight higher or lower, consistently.
Response Set Bias
people respond the same for every question
2 ways to control response set bias?
- Removing the mid-point
- Including reverse scored items.
What are some potential issues with the way we can control response set bias?
- A genuine neutral response is sometimes valuable.
- Reverse scored questions can be confusing to participants if not done correctly.
Socially desirable response bias
Participants pick the response which illuminates them in the most positive way.
Faking
Similar to socially desirable response bas, but involves intent. Often when stakes of the responses are high, e.g. in a occupational or forensic setting.
2 ways we can control social desirability bias
- Including ‘lie detection’ items
- Making all options socially undesirable
How does the Mach V scale control for social desirability bias by making all options socially undesirable?
Presenting 3 questions, with an obvious socially desirable option and two equally undesirable options.
Participants have to rate most and least like them.
The ‘lest like them’ out of the two undesirable options reveals their true trait level.
How did Steffans & Shulze-König (2006) criticise self-report measures of personality?
Self-report measures indicate controlled and deliberate behaviour, which is not representative of true personality.
In ‘Part 1’ of Steffans & Shulze-König (2006) study what was measured?
Spontaneous Behaviours
An example of a spontaneous behaviour measured by ‘Part 1’ of Steffans & Shulze-König (2006)
Participants were asked about their experiences in a fake study, by a researcher. There time spent answering questions was taken as a measure of extraversion.
Correlations of scored on behavioural measures compared to self-report measures Steffans & Shulze-König (2006).
Only extraversion and openness to experience correlated (not strongly)
Suggesting low concurrent validity between behavioural measures and self-report.
In ‘Part 2’ of Steffans & Shulze-König (2006) study what was measured?
Implicit association
In ‘Part 2’ of Steffans & Shulze-König (2006) they hypothesises that?
People with high trait Conscientiousness would respond faster in the congruent condition (self+conscientious)
Other report is limited by what?
- External manifestations (the extent to which a persons reveals about themselves)
- The number of situations to observe.
Self-other Knowledge Asymmetry (SOKA) Model (Vazire, 2010)
There are asymmetries in the validity of self and other knowledge
According to SOKA, how does observability play a role?
Traits which are associated with internal emotions (e.g. Neuroticism) are better evaluated by the self as they are hard to externally observe.
According to SOKA how does evaluativeness play a role?
Traits associated with ego (e.g. creativeness) are better evaluated by others as our ego protects us.
The Apperceptive Personality Test (Holmstrom et al., 1990)
People are given a line drawing of a person in an everyday environment:
- Tell a story of the person in the image
- Complete a querstionairre on how the character appears
