Personality lecture 1

Question 1

What is personality? (4)

Answer 1

• An adaptive, organised internal system
• Interaction of body and mind
• Relatively stable part of a person
• Personality influences a range of human experiences

Question 2

How do Western cultures differ from others in the general idea of what personality is?

Answer 2

Western think it is stable and fundamentals always stay the same
Others think it is more malleable

Question 3

Which methods involve measurements of personality from data provided by the individual?

Answer 3

• Projective tests
• Implicit measures
• Self-report questionnaires

Question 4

When are methods of measuring personality used that involve others reporting rather than the person themself?

Answer 4

When the person can’t report themselves e.g. very young children

Question 5

What are some methods using another person to determine the personality?

Answer 5

• Known others
• Behavioural observations
• Perception of faces by unknown others

Question 6

What is a projective test of personality?

Answer 6

Ambiguous stimuli presented to person who then provides a response to the stimuli

Question 7

What are 2 examples of projective tests of personality?

Answer 7

• Rorschach Inkblot - what do you see in this inkblot?
• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) - ambiguous image - what is happening?

Question 8

What happens in Thematic apperception tests?

Answer 8

Show the participant an ambiguous dramatic image
Asked what is happening in this picture:
- Relationships between people
- Feelings of people in picture

Question 9

What are the main criticisms of projective tests?

Answer 9

• Lack of reliability - no consensus in interpretation
• Lack of validity - don’t predict behaviour, illnesses or scores on other tests well

Question 10

What is the implicit association test?

Answer 10

Measures whether the subject responds faster to when certain categories are combined versus other combinations of categories - show 2 words together and see if they associate them

Question 11

What is the emotional stroop test?

Answer 11

Say the colour of the word that is written
Should take longer to say the colour of more anxiety-causing words

Question 12

What did Mogg et al (1993) find when giving patients with an anxiety disorder an emotional stroop test?

Answer 12

Patients with anxiety took longer to say colour of negative word than controls

Question 13

How are self report questionnaires developed? (3)

Answer 13

• Create a questionnaire with many items
• Use factor analysis to cluster items together
• Each cluster represents a personality trait that the researcher names

Question 14

What are some benefits of self report questionnaires? (2)

Answer 14

• Time and cost effective
• Can use online tools easily

Question 15

What are some issues with self report questionnaires? (2)

Answer 15

Rely on the information people are…
- willing to give (beware of impression management)
- able to give (beware of self-deception)

Question 16

What words did Oosterhoff and Todorov (2008) find that people most often describe other people’s personality with based on their faces? (top 10)

Answer 16

Top 10: Attractive, Unhappy, Sociable, Emotionally Stable, Mean, Boring, Aggressive, Weird, Intelligent, Confident

Question 17

What 2 factors do people tend to focus on when judging personality based on faces?

Answer 17

• trustworthiness (motivation)
• dominance (ability)

Question 18

What is the 3rd factor that Sutherland et al (2013) discovered for what people judge faces on?

Answer 18

Youthful-attractiveness

Question 19

How do collectivist and individualistic cultures view personality?

Answer 19

Collectivist = it is malleable
Individualist = it is fixed

Question 20

What are etic and emic approaches?

Answer 20

• Etic = compare ‘universal’ personality constructs across cultures
• Emic = examines personality constructs specific to culture

Question 21

What are some issues with using personality questionnaires cross culturally? (4)

Answer 21

• Simple translation can have issues - doesn’t portray the correct meaning
• Response bias is stronger in some cultures
• Social desirability affects interpretation of items
• Assume a level of literacy + technology competency

Question 22

What is linguistic equivalence?

Answer 22

Ensuring the literal meaning of the item in the measure is conveyed similarly across cultures

Question 23

What is construct equivalence?

Answer 23

Ensuring that the generalisability of the personality traits being examined are the same across cultures - so the same items will cluster together

Question 24

What did Cheung et al (2008) find when looking into construct equivalence in Chinese culture?

Answer 24

There is no openness factor, but potency/expansiveness instead

Question 25

What is psychometric equivalence?

Answer 25

Ensuring similar psychometric properties of a scale across cultures (e.g. reliability, item-scale correlation) - ensure that scores represent the same intensity of the trait across cultures (develop a norm)

Question 26

What did Cheung et al (2003) find when looking into psychometric equivalence for clinical and non clinical Chinese and American samples?

Answer 26

• Chinese non-clinical sample scored significantly higher than American non-clinical sample, Chinese clinical sample scored even higher.
• Adjusting ‘norm’ to culture, addressed this issue

Question 27

What is psychological or cultural equivalence?

Answer 27

Ensures individual items on a scale have similar meaning across cultures to represent real experiences