Personality Theory Flashcards
What is personality?
Psychological systems that contribute to an individual’s enduring and distinctive patterns of experience and behaviour
What are enduring qualities?
consistent across time and across different situations
What are distinctive qualities?
features that differentiate people from one another
What are contribute to qualities?
factors that causally influence, and thus at least partly explain, an individual’s tendencies
What are goals of personality theorist?
Study diverse groups of people (caveat?)
Ensure that observations of people are objective
Use specialized tools to study thinking, emotions, and neurobiological systems
What is a process in personality theory?
Psychological reactions that change dynamically; change over relatively brief periods. may be due to motivation factors
Ex: if you are in a new environment you may act differently than how you would act in a comfortable environment.
What is the goal of studying personality development?
To characterize patterns of development that are experienced by most, if not all, persons
Ex Puberty
To understand developmental factors that contribute to individual differences
Ex: parenting styles, birth order
What are some environmental determinants?
Social class, culture, peers, family
Discuss the nature vs nurture debate and why it is not just one
Nature and nurture work together to change the person, certain genes will turn on to adapt to different environments. The environment changes what genes turn on and off
We can easily measure personality traits but it is more difficult to measure environmental factors like parenting styles.
What are the three key functions that theories of personality can serve?
Organize existing information
Generate new knowledge about important issues
Identify entirely new issues
What is a psychodynamic theory?
Pioneered by Freud
Views mind as an energy system
Mental energies directed to the service of basic bodily needs
The drive to gratify bodily needs (id) often conflicts with the dictates of society (ego)
Much mental activity occurs outside of conscious awareness
What are phenomenological theories>
Concerned with people’s conscious experience of the world around them—that is, their phenomenological experience
People have biologically based motives, yet possess “higher” motives involving personal growth and self-fulfillment.
The development of a stable and coherent understanding of oneself is seen as key to psychological health.
What is behaviourism?
Behaviour is seen as an adaptation to rewards and punishments experienced in the environment.
Since different people experience different patterns of reward in different settings, they naturally develop different styles of behaviour.
What is personal construct theory?
Addresses people’s capacity to interpret the world
Studies the subjective ideas, or constructs, that people use to interpret the environment
Explores the possibility that most individual differences in personality functioning stem from the different constructs that people use to interpret their world
What is social cognitive theory?
Social-cognitive theorists study personality by analyzing the thinking processes that come into play as people interpret their world. (confirmation bias)
What is LOTS data
L - info that can be obtained from someone’s life
O - info provided by knowledgeable observers such as parents, friends, or teachers
T - info obtained from experimental procedures or standardized tests
S - info provided by the subject himself or herself, typically in the form of responses to questionnaires
What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-report?
Advantage: People know a lot about themselves
Disadvantages: People’s self-descriptions on questionnaires can be influenced by the phrasing and order of items.
People may lie or unconsciously distort their responses
What are fixed measures?
The same measures are administered to everyone in a study; scores are computed similarly.
They are objective and simple
Limitations:
Some items may be irrelevant to some of the individuals taking the test
There may be features of your personality that are not on the test
What are flexible measures?
Unstructured personality test
Items allow people to describe themselves in their own words
What are the 4 targets of assessment in personality psychology?
Average behaviour (once again, the universals)
Variability in behaviour (once again, individual differences)
Conscious Thought (self-report)
Unconscious Mental Events (implicit measures)
What is reliability?
The extent to which observations can be replicated; whether measures are dependable or stable.
Internal consistency
Aspects of the test, the care in scoring the test and rules for interpreting scores can all affect reliability
What is validity?
The extent to which observations reflect the phenomenon of interest in a given study.
Reliability is necessary for validity
What are case studies?
in-depth analyses of individual cases
Psychologist tries to develop an understanding of the structures and processes that are most important to that individual’s personality
You get a lot of intense data but you cannot generalize results
What is a correlational coefficient?
Statistic used to gauge the degree to which two variables and measures are linearly related
Positive when people who have higher scores on one variable also have higher scores on another variable – as risk taking goes up extroversion goes up
Negative when people who have higher scores on one variable also have lower scores on another variable – as spending goes up saving goes down
What is correlational research?
Refers to a research strategy in which researchers examine relation among variables in a large population of people
