Personality Assessment Methods

Personality

• Personality refers to an individual's distinct patterns of behavior, thought, and feelings, explaining the psychological variations among people.
• Personality explanations are approached through prior events shaping it and anticipated events motivating individuals, highlighting unique “style” and differences.
• Physiological measures, such as EEG, analyze bodily functions to understand psychological processes related to personality.

Interviews

• Interviews are essential for measuring personality, allowing observation of behavior, communication styles, and situational reactions.
• They offer insights beyond self-reports.

Self Report

• Self-reports involve questionnaires where individuals rate statements or adjectives describing their behavior or mental state.

Projective Techniques

• Projective techniques use ambiguous stimuli to reveal inner aspects of personality.
• Examples include the Rorschach Inkblot test and Thematic Apperception Test.
• By responding to vague stimuli, individuals project their thoughts, feelings, and inner world.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

• The MMPI is a psychometric test for assessing personality traits and psychopathology.
• It uses self-report questions in a true/false format and is utilized by mental health professionals for diagnosis and treatment planning.
• The Validity Scale, part of the MMPI, assesses test-taking attitude and attempts to distort results.

Trait

• Trait defines a stable tendency to behave in a consistent manner, categorizing differences among individuals based on trait terms.
• Traits can be examined as causes or pre-existing dispositions for behavior and as motivations guiding behavior.
• Challenges include narrowing down adjectives and understanding biological or hereditary foundations.

Trait Theory

• Trait theory describes personality as a combination of traits, like high extraversion and low neuroticism.

Big Five Dimensions

• The Big Five include Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
• Openness involves imagination and broad interests. High scorers are imaginative, while low scorers prefer the conventional.
• Conscientiousness involves thoughtfulness and impulse control. High scorers strive to be organized, while low scorers tend to be careless.
• Extraversion involves sociability and assertiveness. High scorers are outgoing, while low scorers prefer solitude.
• Agreeableness includes trust and kindness. High scorers are cooperative, while low scorers are competitive.
• Neuroticism involves sadness and emotional instability. High scorers are prone to mood swings, while low scorers tend to be stable.

Traits Origins

• Origin of Traits is a debate between nature (genes and biology) versus nurture (environment and experiences).
• Brain damage, pathologies, and pharmaceutical treatments can cause personality changes.
• Nurture involves shaping personality through upbringing, culture, and life experiences.

Gender Differences

• Men exhibit higher assertiveness, self-esteem, and sensation-seeking tendencies.
• Women score higher on neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
• Hormones and social expectations may play a role.

Social Role Theory

• Cultural expectations shape behavior and influence personality traits.

Explaining Extraversion

• Extraversion may stem from how the brain handles stimulation.
• Extraverts seek stimulation due to a less easily stimulated cortex.
• Introverts prefer quieter environments because their brains are easily stimulated.

Under/Over Arousal

• Under-arousal involves lower levels indicating tiredness and boredom.
• Over-arousal involves higher levels indicating excitement and aggression.
• Reticular formation is responsible for regulating arousal or alertness.

Explaining Extraversion & Neuroticism

• Differences in brain systems likely play a key role in these two personality traits.
• The Behavioral Activation System (BAS) promotes reward-seeking behaviours. Extraverts tend to have a highly active BAS.
• The Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS) prevents behaviours resulting in punishment. Neuroticism is linked to a highly active BIS.

Psychodynamic Perspective and Sigmund Freud

• Sigmund Freud posited that personality is formed by needs, striving, and desires largely outside of awareness.
• Personality reflects a constant struggle between primal desires (Id), higher standards (Superego), and reality (Ego).
• The mind consists of the ID, Superego, and Ego.
• The ID contains drives present at birth and operates on the pleasure principle.
• The Superego reflects internalized cultural rules and regulates behavior through guilt and pride.
• The Ego develops through interaction with the external world, mediating between the Id and Superego while operating on the reality principle.

Anxiety

• Anxiety arises from conflicts between the id, ego, and superego.

Defense Mechanisms

• Defense mechanisms are unconscious reactions protecting from unpleasant emotions.
• Repression blocks distressing thoughts or feelings.
• Displacement redirects emotions to a less threatening target.
• Intellectualization avoids uncomfortable emotions through logic and reasoning.
• Projection attributes one's feelings to others.
• Rationalization justifies behaviors with logical reasons.
• Reaction Formation expresses the opposite of true feelings.
• Sublimation channels unacceptable impulses into socially acceptable activities.

Stages of Development

• The oral stage focuses on mouth-related pleasures and frustrations.
• The anal stage involves pleasures and frustrations associated with the anus and toilet training.
• The phallic stage includes conflicts and frustrations associated with genital regions and incestuous feelings.
• The latency stage focuses on developing intellectual and social skills.
• The genital stage leads to mature adult personality with the capacity to love and work.

Humanistic Approach

• Emphasizes a positive and optimistic outlook on human nature.
• Emphasizes freedom and potential for personal growth.

Existentialist Approach

• Focuses on individuals as responsible agents creating their lives.
• Emphasizes meaning and the reality of death.

Self Actualizing Tendency

• A human motive towards realizing inner potential.
• The environment impacts one's ability to realize this potential.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Arranges human needs in order such that basic physiological and safety needs must be met before higher level psychological needs.

Social Cognitive Approach

• Views personality in terms of how individuals think about and react to daily situations.

Person-Situation Controversy

• Explores whether behaviour is driven more by personality or situational factors.

Personal Constructs

• Dimensions individuals use to understand their experiences.

Outcome Expectancies

• Assumptions about the likely consequences of future behaviour.

Locus of Control

• The degree to which people perceive rewards as controlled internally or externally.

Self Concept

• An individual’s explicit knowledge of their behaviours, traits and personal characteristics

Self Verification

• The tendency to seek evidence to affirm the self-concept.

Self Esteem

• The extent to which an individual likes, values and accepts the self.

Self Serving Bias

• Taking credit for success but blaming others or circumstances for failures.

Narcissism

• A grandiose sense of self and a need for admiration.

Name Letter Effect

• Favourable evaluation of letters in one's name, especially initials.

Implicit Egotism

• A biased preference for things similar to us (our names).

Social Psychology

• Studies the causes and consequences of sociality.

Survival and Reproduction

• Involves how evolutionary principles impact behaviour and social structures.

Limited Resource Problems

• Self control is a finite resource

Aggression

• Is behaviour whose purpose is to harm another can be either physical or emotional.
• Men engage in more direct aggression, and women engage in indirect aggression.
• Culture influences perceptions and expressions of aggression.

Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

• Suggests that animals aggress when their goals are frustrated.

Proactive Aggression

• Is aggression that is planned and purposeful.

Reactive Aggression

• Aggression that occurs spontaneously in response to a negative affective state.

Cooperation

• Is behaviour by two or more individuals leading to mutual benefit

Prisoners Dilemma

• Illustrates the risk of cooperation.

Ultimatum Game

• Studies decisions on whether to accept or reject monetary offers

Group

• A collection of people with something in common.

In Group Favouritism

• The tendency to treat members of one's own group better.

Costs of Cooperation in Decision Making

• Include required effort and potential for exploitation.

Common Knowledge Effect

• Group discussions focus on information all members share.

Group Polarization

• Groups make decisions more extreme than any member would alone.

Groupthink

• Groups reach consensus to facilitate interpersonal harmony.

Deindividuation

• Immersion in a group causes people to become less attentive to personal values.

Diffusion of Responsibility

• The tendency to feel less responsible for actions when others are acting the same way.

Social Loafing

• The tendency to contribute less when in a group than alone.

Bystander Effect

• Less likelihood of helping a stranger in an emergency when other bystanders are present.

Common Beauty Standards

• Have correlations with many psychological disorders, including lowered self-esteem and eating disorders.

Gender Role

• Both genders are influenced by a complex interplay of factors, including physical attractiveness, social status, and personality traits, with cultural and individual differences also playing a significant role.

Altruism

• Intentional behaviour benefitting another at a potential cost.

Kin Selection

• The evolutionary tendency to help relatives because it increases the chances of shared genes being passed on.

Reciprocal Altruism

• Behaviour benefitting another that expects returned benefits in the future.

Mere Exposure Effect

• The tendency to like something more the more often we are exposed to it.

Homophily

• The tendency to like similar people.

Passionate Love

• Involves euphoria, intimacy, and intense sexual attraction.

Companionate Love

• Involves affection, trust, and concern.

Comparison Level for Alternatives

• The cost/benefit ratio that a person believes they could attain in another relationship.

Equity

• Cost/benefit ratios of two partners are roughly equally favourable.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

• Decisions are based on what was previously invested.

Social Cognition

• How we process, store, and apply information about others.

Category Based Inferences

• Inferences based on categories a person belongs to.

Target Based Inferences

• Inferences based on an individuals behaviour.

Stereotyping

• Drawing inferences based on category membership

Prejudice

• A negative evaluation based on category membership.

Discrimination

• Negative behaviour based on category membership.

Transmission

• Passage of stereotypes through generations.

Self Perpetuating

• Ability to maintain or continue its own existence indefinitely.

Self Fulfilling Prophecy

• Expectation influences actions so the original belief becomes true.

Behavioural Confirmation

• Targets behave as observers expect them to behave

Stereotype Threat

• Anxiety about confirming negative stereotypes.

Perceptual Confirmation

• Observers see what they expect to see.

Subtyping

• Observers think of targets who disconfirm stereotypes as exceptions to the rule.

Attributions

• Inferences about why someone behaves a certain way.

Fundamental Attribution Error

• Overestimating personality traits in explaining behaviour.

Actor Observer Effect

• Explaining behaviours based on the situation, but others based on personality.

Main Peoples Motivations

• A complex interplay of factors, including intrinsic needs like autonomy, competence, and relatedness, along with extrinsic factors like recognition, achievement, and security, and the desire for purpose and personal growth.

Hedonic Motive

• In psychology, hedonic motivation refers to the drive to seek pleasure and avoid pain, influencing behaviors aimed at enhancing positive experiences and minimizing negative ones.

Social Influence

• The ability to change or direct another people’s behaviour

Overjustification Effect

• Rewards decrease intrinsic motivation to perform a behaviour

Reactance

• An unpleasant feeling arising when people feel coerced.

Approval Motive

• The inherent human drive to gain positive evaluations and acceptance from others, often leading to behaviours aimed at securing social approval and avoiding disapproval.

Norms

• Customary standards for behaviour.

Norm of Reciprocity

• People should benefit those who have benefited them.

Normative Influence

• Behaviour provides information about what is appropriate.

Door In The Face Technique

• Asking for a big favour first then asking for a smaller favour.

Conformity

• Tendency to do what others do.

Obedience

• Tendency to do what authorities tell us to do.

Milgrims Study

• Investigates individuals obeying authority figures, even to inflict harm.

Accuracy Motive

• The desire to believe what is right.

Attitude

• And enduring positive or negative evaluation of a stimulus.

Belief

• And enduring piece of knowledge about a stimulus.

Informational Influence

• Looking to others for guidance on what is correct

Persuasion

• Influencing attitudes or beliefs through communication.

Central Route Persuasion

• Persuasion based on logic, facts, and reasoning.

Peripheral Route Persuasion

• Persuasion based on emotions, habits, or superficial cues.

Consistency

• Tendency to hold onto past thoughts, words, or deeds.

Foot In The Door Technique

• Making a small request then a larger one.

Cognitive Dissonance

• An unpleasant state when actions don't align with attitudes.

Stressors

• Specific events or chronic pressures threatening well-being.

Stress

• Physical and psychological response to stressors.

Health Psychology

• Study of psychological factors on physical health.

Chronic Stressors

• Repeated stressors with impactful effects on marginalized communities.

Perceived Control

• It reduces stress and promotes effectiveness.

Fight or Flight Response

• An immediate reaction prepares the body for action.

HPA Axis

• Plays vital role in body’s stress response.

Sympathetic Nervous System

• Increases (flight or fight) activation

Parasympathetic Nervous System

• Decreases activation

Three Stages of Physiological Stress Responses

• Alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.

Type A Behaviour

• Easily aroused, hostile, impatient, competitive.

Type B Behaviour

• Less Driven Behaviour

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

• Alarm, Resistance, and Exhaustion

Long Term Effects of Stress

• aging, effects on the immune system, cause cardiovascular reactions.

Psychological Reactions

• Appraisal, Burnout

Stress Management Techniques

• Managing the mind and body

Relaxation Techniques

• Meditation

Aerobic Exercise

• Manages situations, providing support.

Psychological Effects of Illness

• Sickness, depression