Research method Flashcards
lay theories
these are theories of understanding people. this helps understand and make conslusions of why a person is like a certain way. So, the personality emerges from lay theory that explains why a person is the way they are.
this can help with predecting what they can do in future.
fundamental attribution
this is the scenario when more emphasis is given to the person’s personality and snap judgement is made about it instead of the external situation.
what are the three criteria used to define personality
- consistency –> if a certain behaviour is always seen in a person then that is attribtured to the person’s personality. that is also expected to be revealed in all situation and time.
- internal causality –> so everything they do is expected to come from within. this is where they differ from social psychology. so all the thoughts, feeling, and behaviour are coming from the within.
- distinctivenss –> certain qualities that are summarized what an individual is like. ex. they are always loud. these are certain characteristics that stand out in the person.
the first definition of personality
personality is a dynamic organization, inside the person, of psychophysical systems that create the person’s characteristics patterns of behaviour, thoughts, and feling.
what are the component of the textbook personality definition.
- personality is very organized –> meaning that it has hieraches and patterns that are highly organized and dictate our target behavuour and activity. Hence, healthy personality is very organized.
- personality has process and causal forces. its deterministic –> in a sense that it does something. so the way we think, feel, and behave does something. however, there are times when their is conflict in thinking, feeling, and behaving.
- personality is both psychological and physical – > its both neural and mental.
- personality is individualized patterns –> so there are recurrences and consistencies.
what are the two themes in personality psychology?
- individual difference
2. intrapersonal functioning
individual difference
no two people are the same even when they behave a little similar.
hence, perspective on personality address where these individual difference comes from, and why they are important.
no two people will think, feel, or behave the same way.
we need to capture individual differnces to expalin personality because otherwise we wont be able to explain what perosnlaity really is since, everyone is going to be the same. Hence, we wont be able to pick out the differneces.
it has two concern?
- where do these individual difference come from?
- why do we care about the individual difference.
hence, all the perspecitve on personality from differnet theorist focuses on these two question.
intrapersonal functioning
the idea that there are deterministic tendencies or propensities that exist within the individual, which are elicited from situational factors.
so, this states that perosnality comes from the within, its already there, just needs certain situational factors to bring it out.
psychological triad
- discovered by funder
it looked at thoughts, feeling, and behaviour.
these three things are important seperately. they are improtnat in there own way. but, when they are combined or are in conflict they are very interesting.
inconsistency is where personality psychology comes in.
personality psychlogy think that these inconsistencies or puzzles are worthy of attention.
what is one area of psychology that personality psychology overalps a lot with?
clinical psychology.Usually people with perosnality psychology do have clincial trainign but, perosnality psychology comes in when there is a behaviour that is very consistent.
they understand the whole individual in there daily environment.
second definition of personality?
funder said that personality refers to an indviduals paterns of thoguht, emotion and behavoour, together with psychological mechanisms behind those patterns.
personality has a unique mission to explain whole persons.
there are mechanism behind the traid which may be hiden and be a psychological mechanism.
so, perosnality psycholgoy do not alwayd succed at this but they try to put the whole person together in their daily environmet.
the mission to explain the person as a whole, is its biggest flaw of personality psychology.
hence, the only way out is to limit the focus of perosnaltuy psychology.
this self impose limitation is refered to as basic approach or theory of perosnality. each theory only looks at a specific aspect or focus of perosnality.
Basic approach to perosnality
these are when the theory are only focusing on specific aspect of perosnality.
They complement each other rather than compete with one another. this is ebcause each addresses a different set of questions about human nature.
each approach is helpful for handling its own key concerns.
each one typically tends to ignore the concerns of the others.
so each theory, focuses on its own and ignores the other ones out there.
in earlier times, theroiest actually stated that there theory was correct and others were incorrect, this might have been important in getting attention.
However, that is not always needed or correct because not all theories address every question or work in every situation.
systematic self imposed limitation
only study what they like or limit themselves to and ignore others theory or perspective.
is there a one big theory of personality?
A theory that accounts for certain things extremely well will probably not explain everything esle so well.
However, a theory that tries to explain almost everything would probably not provide the best explanation for any one thing.
Hence, its best kept off, if all the personality psychology theory are kept seperately.
Funder’s first law
Great strengths are usually great weakness, and suprisingly oftne, the opposite is true as well.
so, basically advantages and disadvantages go hand in hand in personal psychology.
