Personality

Question 1

Traits and Behavior

What is personality?

Answer 1

A person’s general manner of interacting with the world especialy with other people:

imaginative or unimaginative
reliable or undependable
sociable or reserved
cooperative or uncooperative

Question 2

Traits and Behavior

What are personality traits?

Branch: Surface trait, Central trait

Answer 2

The enduring individual differences in the tendency to behave, think, and feel in certain consistent (that is, cross-situational) ways.

For example, a professor may be late to class one day– there’s nothing to say about her personality from that specific behavior.

Question 3

Traits and Behavior

Surface Trait

Answer 3

A professor may be late to class one day– there’s nothing to say about her personality from that specific behavior.

BUT:
when she’s late nearly every day,
for all courses she teaches,
and late for most events,
late paying bills,
late returnign phone calls
- Then we might describe her as tardy (a surface trait)

Question 3

Traits and Behavior

Central trait

Answer 3

If we learn further that:
She is sploppy in most of her work,
Careless in many other activities,
makes promises she never keeps,
unreliable in other ways,
gives up easily on all sorts of tasks,
can never decide what she wants to do next on all sorts of activities, then
- We describe her as undirected (a central trait

Question 3

Traits and Behavior

Question 3

Traits and Behavior

What did Kenrick & Funder (1988) find about traits?
-(Are traits real?)

Answer 3

• observers agree to a substantial degree in the traits they assign to other people
• observers don’t just agree about which alledged traits go with which, but also about to whom these traits apply
• observers relaibly differentiate people even on relatively common traits
• Observers increasingly agree with each other the longer they have known the person and these ratings increasingly correlate with the person’s actual behavior
• observer’s ratings are just as reliabel whether the observers know one another or are strangers

Question 4

Traits and Behavior

Are personality traits important (1) ?
-cross cut categorizing people

Answer 4

Personality trats cross cut other ways of categorizing people.

• For example men differ more among themselves in curiosity than they differ from women, and women differ among themselves (significantly different) in curiosity than they differ from men
• All social groups–racial, socio-economic, or gender based are made up of individuals who differ from oe another in curiosity, extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticims, etc.

Question 4

Traits and Behavior

What did Costa & McCrae (1994) find?
(Are personality traits reliable?)

Answer 4

Even when personality tests are administered 30 to 40 years apart,, they still correlate between +0.50 and +0.70

Question 5

Traits and Behavior

Are personality traits important (2) ?
-cross cut situations

Answer 5

Personality traits cross-cut situations.
* That is, people behave similarly across many different situations
* Even when situation differences in behavior are large (how you act in a bar vs thanksgiving), personality differences are just as large.

Question 6

Traits and Behavior

Are personality traits important (3) ?
-surviving in real world
-Barrick & Mount 1991: productiveness

Answer 6

Personality traits are important for surviving in the real world
* Productiveness: Barrick & Mount (1991) found that personality differences account for job performance differences even beyond IQ differences.

Question 7

Traits and Behavior

Are personality traits important (4) ?
-surviving in real world
-Buss 1996: Romance

Answer 7

Personality traits are important for surviving in the real world
* Romance: Buss 1996 found that conscientious spouses were less likely to have affairs than undirected spourses, and antagonistic spouses were more likely to become aggressive toward sexual rivals than agreeable spouses.

Question 8

Traits and Behavior

Are personality traits important (5) ?
-surviving in real world
Health & Finding Crimminals

Answer 8

Personality traits are important for surviving in the real world
* Health: Fiedman et al (1995) found that personality differences are related to risk and health promoting behaviors
* Finding crimminals: Caspi et al (1994) found that the same personality differences are related to delinquency in different coutnries, genderations, and races.

Question 9

Traits and Behavior

Early Trait Theories

So what are these central traits?

Question 10

Traits and Behavior

What is the Big Five?

So what are these central traits?

Answer 10

O.C.E.A.N
* Openness to experience-nonopenness
* Conscientiousness-undirectedness
* Extraversion-introversion
* Agreeableness-antagonism
* Neuroticism-stability

Question 11

Traits and Behavior

Openness to Experience

Central traits

Answer 11

Openness: I Have…
* rich vocab
* vivid imagination
* excellent ideas
* quick to udnerstand things
* use difficult words
* full of ideas

Nonopenness:
* I am not interested in abstractions
* I don’t have a good imagination
* I have difficulty udnerstadnign abstract ideas

Pro:
enroll in liberal arts, change careers, less racial prejudice, musical instrument

Cons: drug use

Question 12

Traits and behaviors

Conscientiousness

Central traits

Answer 12

Conscientiousness:
* prepared
* pay attention to details
* get chores done right away
* like order/follow schedule

Undirected:
* Messy
* forget to put things back
* shirk duties

Pro:
Sexually faithful, good grades, drive safely, eat well, live longer

Con:
Conformity, obedience, lack of innovation

Question 13

Traits and Behaviors

Extraversion

Central traits

Answer 13

Extraversion:
* life of the party
* energized socially
* center of attention
* comfortable around people
* start convos

Introversion:
* drained socially
* don’t talk alot
* don’t draw attention
* queit around strangers
* no intention of tlaking in large crowds

Pro:
Popular, attend more parties, seend as leaders, undisturbed by loud noises, live& work with more people

Cons:
High risk of diseases and intimate violence

Question 14

Traits and behavior

Agreeableness

central traits

Answer 14

Agreeableness:
* interested in people
* soft hard
* sympathy
* make people at ease

Antagonism:
* not interested in others’ problems
* insult people
* little concern for others

Pro:
Lend money, easy childhood, less alcoholism, less crime, less divorce

Con:
Poor negotiation, gullible

Question 15

Traits and Behaviors

Neuroticism

Central trait

Answer 15

Neuroticism:
* easily irritated
* stressed out
* upset
* frequent mood swings
* more anxious than most

Stability:
* relaxed most of the time
* seldom feel blue

Pro: less risk taking

Con: more anxious, depressed, divorce, hate surprises, remember threats

Question 16

Origins and Development

Where do our personalities come from?

Hypothesis 1: genes (Jang et al. 1996) ( √ )

Answer 16

(Look at notes for charts)
* Genes play a portion in personality
* (shared ) environment also do

Question 17

Origins and Development

Where do our personalities come from?
(Extraversion Example)

Question 18

Origins and Development

Where do our personalities come from?

Hypothesis 2: Age (√)

Answer 18

• In adults (and babies), persoanlity differences show up most clearly in situations that are
  1. novel (new/original)
  2. ambiguous (uncertain)
  3. stressful
• Babies’ reactions to 1,2,3 events correlate with many of the same outcomes predicted by personailit factors
• negative reactions to novelty predicts internalization of negative envets (this bad thing happened because im just bad.)
• Researchers are now attempting to link temperament differences in infancy with personality traits:

-Activity (energy level): seems to be positively related to extraversion and negatively related to agreeableness and conscientiousness

-Inhibition (fearfulness,shyness, withdrawal): positively related to Neuroticism and negatively related to extraversion

-Persistence (attention span, distractibility, interest): seems to be positively related to Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness

Question 19

Origins and Development

Hypothesis 2: Age
- Personality is not set in childhood

Where do our personalities come from?

Answer 19

Childhood to Adolescence:
* adolescents: more emotional autonomy from parents; feel more independent and idealize the less.
* adolescents: less emotional autonomy form peers: resistance to peer pressure plummets from fifth to eighth grade
* adolescent male enage in group risk taking: teen males join peers in such dangerous behaviors (fight, rrepsonsible driving, tree climbing,etc.)

Question 20

Hypothesis 2: Age
- Adolescence to adulthood

Answer 20

(look at notes/ graphs)
B/t the alte teens and 30 years old, people typically become:

• not open
• alot more conscientious
• little less extraverted
• bit more agreeable
• much less neurotic

Question 21

Where do our personalities come from? Hypothesis 3: Sex (√)

Answer 21

Infants are already being treated in gender specific ways according to their sex * fathers describe girls as soft, small, and beautiful, boy newborns as firm, strong, and well coordinated * mothers who were asked to hold an infant talked moree to Beth than Adam and gave Adam more direct gazes unaccompanied by talk Later adults give aid and comfort to girls while expecting boys to be self reliant * colleges students were quicker to call for help if a infant girl was crying rather than a boy * when two ear olds were given problem solvign task, mothers were mroe likely to aid their daughters than sons Children themselves actively promote sex-segregated play, especially for boys

Question 22

Where do our personalities come from? Hypothesis 4: Birth order (X)

Answer 22

* Sulloway theory: birth order has large impact on personality * It is actually negligible

Question 23

Where do our personalities come from? A possible synthesis (of the hypotheses)

Answer 23

genes--> temperament-- proto-personality traits Age + experience helps to mold these proto-p traits into enduring ones -even at birth, there are individual differences in how we react to the world around us -With age and experience, our temperament develope ina stable and mature personality

Question 24

# Self-Determination Beyond traits (1)

Answer 24

Social cognitive and humanistic approaches to personality emphasize the role of **our beliefs, our pursuit of goals, and our self control** in shaping our personality

Question 25

# Self-Determination Social cognitive perspective

Answer 25

* Based on research on learning, cognition, and social influence * focuses on **beliefs and habits** that increase or decrease our ability to take control of their lieves and accomplish goals.

Question 26

# Self-Determination Locus of control | social cognitive perspective

Answer 26

* Proposed by Julian Rotter * Belief that rewards are controllable by one's own efforts (internal locus-- captains of their fate) or not (external locus---influence by environment) * Internal locus --more optimism/less depression --more achievement --more health-promoting activities Success at setting and achieving difficult goals has the effect of increasing our internal locus Internal locus- maintained over many years (doesn't occur every day) much like a cycle.

Question 27

# Self-Determination Self-Efficacy | social cognitive perspective

Answer 27

Proposed by Albert Bandura * belief about one's ability to perform specific taks * high self-efficacy - low in anxiety - specific,difficult, realistic goals--> best quality to set good goals and its achievable - achieve more This is a cycle with internal locus of control

Question 28

# Self-Determination Beyond Traits (2)

Answer 28

* differences in cognitive processing also play a large role in personality * ex. delay of gratification

Question 29

# Self-Determination Delay of Gratification

Answer 29

(slides) * Self control in 4-5 year old children is highly correlated with adult competence Positive correlation: * ability to concentrate * verbal fluency * general competence * foresight * high credit scores (!) Negative correlation: (no relation positive) * gets rattled/immaturity under stress * low self esteem * slow to make social contacts

Question 30

# Self-Determination Personal Projects/ Personality | Delay of gratification

Answer 30

Brian Little--(video + notes) * Setting difficult long term goals (like projects) for ourselves and organizing our activities in consciously chosen projects is very strongly associated w/ happiness * But sometimes our projects require use to adopt 'free traits' * overtime, however, 'free traits' can become 'second nature' * thus, our personalities are partly determined by the projects that we choose ex. project: joining military--> increasing conscientiousness--> 2nd nature to be on time/order

Question 31

# Self-Determination The bottom line

Answer 31

While personality traits may have orgins in genetic predispositions and experiences outside our volition, **our beliefs about ourselves, goals that we set, and our ability to self control** can also make us the people we are.