Psychology Chapter 1: Introduction to Personality

Chapter 1: Introduction to Personality

• Personality, derived from the Latin word "persona" (meaning mask), refers to relatively enduring traits and unique characteristics that give consistency and individuality to a person's behavior.
• Defining personality is difficult due to its complexity.
• Personality is the organized and relatively enduring set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that influences interactions with and adaptations to the environment (intrapsychic, physical, and social).
• Psychological traits: Ways people are different from or similar to one another (e.g., shy, talkative, outgoing) that describe average tendencies.
• Personality traits: Average tendencies, meaning someone can have quiet days, even though they are very talkative on average.
• Research on personality traits explores:
  • The number of fundamental traits.
  • How traits are organized and relate to one another.
  • The origins of traits (heredity vs. environment).
  • The correlations and consequences of traits (e.g., do talkative people have more friends?).
• Mechanisms: Processes of personality, with three essential components:
  • Input (e.g., sensitivity to environmental information).
  • Decision rules (e.g., tendency to consider specific options).
  • Outputs (e.g., guiding behavior toward certain actions).
• Personality is within the individual, and is relatively consistent over time and situations.
• Personality traits influence how we act, think, and interact with others, significantly shaping our lives.
• Interactions include:
  • Perception (how we see situations).
  • Selection (choosing situations).
  • Evocation (unintentionally producing reactions in others).
  • Manipulation (intentionally influencing others).
• Adaptations involve accomplishing goals, coping, adjusting, and dealing with life's challenges.
• Environment: Includes physical, social, and intrapsychic (internal mental factors) environments.

Three Levels of Personality Analysis

• Human Nature: Traits and mechanisms common to nearly all individuals (e.g., spoken language).
• Individual and Group Differences: How individuals are like some others (e.g., extraverts) and group differences (e.g., cultural, age, sex).
• Individual Uniqueness: Personal qualities not shared by others.
  • Nomothetic approach: Studying large groups to find general laws of behavior.
  • Idiographic approach: Studying individuals in depth to understand unique aspects.

Fissure in the Field

• A gap exists between general theories of personality and contemporary research.

Grand and Contemporary Theories

• Grand theories: Attempt universal accounts of fundamental psychological processes.
• Contemporary research: Focuses on individual and group differences, not human universals.

Domains of Knowledge

• Personality psychology is structured around several specialty areas that should be integrated to gain a holistic view.
• Six key domains are:
  • Dispositional: Trait differences.
  • Biological: Biological systems' influence on behavior, thought, and emotion.
  • Intrapsychic: Mental mechanisms (often unconscious).
  • Cognitive-Experiential: Thoughts, feelings, beliefs and desires.
  • Social and Cultural: Influence of culture and social context.
  • Adjustment: Coping, adaptation, and health outcomes.

Chapter 2: Personality Assessment, Measurement, and Research Methods

Sources of Personality Data

• Self-Report Data (S-data): Information from questionnaires or interviews, most common method.

  • Can be simple or complex, measuring the degree to which traits describe individuals.
  • Potential weaknesses: dishonesty, lack of self-knowledge.

• Observer-report data (O-data): Information from others (e.g., teachers, family, friends, colleagues).

  • Provides access to behaviors not available through self-report.
  • Multiple observers are desirable for better validity and reliability.

• Naturalistic observation: Observing behavior in real-life settings to understand behavior as it would occur naturally.

• Artificial observation: Observing behavior in artificial settings to allow for specific behaviors to be observed and manipulated.

• Test-data (T-data): Participants placed in standardized testing situations to reveal behaviors.

  • Potential weaknesses: participants might try to guess the purpose and alter behavior.

• Mechanical recording devices: Devices to record behaviors (e.g., actometers for activity level).

• Physiological data: Measures of arousal, reactivity, information processing speed (e.g., heart rate, brain waves, fMRI).

• Projective techniques: Participants presented with ambiguous stimuli (e.g., Rorschach test, TAT) to reveal unconscious desires.

• Life-Outcome Data (L-data): Information gleaned from life events (e.g., marriage, owning a home) available for public scrutiny.

Issues in Personality Assessment

• Using multiple data sources to achieve stronger results.
• Fallibility of personality assessment.
• The use of triangulation (multiple methods) to support findings.

Evaluation of Personality Measures

• Reliability: Consistency of a measure.
  • Test-retest: Consistency over time.
  • Inter-rater: Consistency between observers.
  • Internal consistency: Consistency across items.
  • Parallel-forms: Consistency between equivalent versions of a test.
• Validity: Accuracy of a measure.
  • Face validity: Test seems to measure what it is supposed to.
  • Predictive/criterion validity: Test predicts future behavior.
  • Convergent validity: Relationship with other tests of the same constructs.
  • Discriminant validity: Distinguishes between different constructs.
  • Construct validity: Relationship between test scores and theoretical construct.
• Generalizability: Degree to which findings apply to other contexts.

Research Methods

• Experimental methods: Determining causality by manipulating variables and controlling factors.
• Correlational studies: Identifying relationships between variables.
• Case studies: In-depth examination of one or more individuals, used to generate hypotheses.