Psychology: Social and Cultural Domain and Adjustment

Social and Cultural Domain

• Personality is affected by and affects the social and cultural context.

Adjustment Domain

• Personality plays a key role in how we cope, adapt, and adjust to the ebb and flow of events in our day-to-day lives.
• Evidence shows that personality is linked with important health outcomes, such as heart disease.
• Personality is also linked with health-related behaviors, such as smoking, drinking, and risk-taking.
• Research has even demonstrated that personality is linked with how long we live.

The Role of Personality Theory

• A good theory should fulfill three purposes in science: provide a guide for researchers, organize known findings, and make predictions.
• Scientific theories should be distinguished from beliefs.
• Five scientific standards for evaluating personality theories should be considered.

Personality Assessment, Measurement, and Research Design

• Self-report data (S-data) is the most common method for measuring personality.
• Self-report data can be obtained through various means, including interviews, periodic reports, and questionnaires.
• The Twenty Statements Test (TST) is a prime example of an open-ended form of self-report.

Individual and Group Differences

• Personality can have dimensions of individual differences, such as extraverts and sensation seekers.
• Personality can also be observed by studying differences among groups, such as men and women.
• Individual uniqueness is a key aspect of personality, with no two individuals having exactly the same personalities.

Research Approaches

• Nomothetic research involves statistical comparisons of individuals or groups, requiring samples of participants.
• Idiographic research focuses on a single person, trying to observe general principles that are manifest in a single life over time.

Grand Theories of Personality

• Grand theories of personality address the universal core of human nature.
• Statements about the universal core of human nature lie at the center of grand theories of personality.

Taxonomies of Personality

• Eysenck's Hierarchical Model of Personality is strongly rooted in biology.
• PEN: extraversion-introversion (E), neuroticism-emotional stability (N), and psychoticism (P).
• The model has a hierarchical structure with three levels: super-traits, narrower traits, and habitual acts.
• Biological underpinnings include heritability and identifiable physiological substrate.

Circumplex Taxonomies of Personality

• The two resources that define social exchange are love and status.
• The dimensions of status and love define the two major axes of the Wiggins circumplex.

Personality Psychology

• Features of personality make people different from one another.
• Personality is defined as the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring.
• Psychological traits are characteristics that describe ways in which people are different from each other.
• Traits describe the average tendencies of a person.
• Psychological mechanisms are like traits, except that they refer to the processes of personality.

Data Sources

• Projective techniques, such as the Rorschach inkblot test, involve giving a person a standard stimulus and asking what they see.
• Life-Outcome Data (L-Data) refers to information that can be gleaned from the events, activities, and outcomes in a person's life.

Issues in Personality Assessment

• A key issue is how closely the findings obtained from one data source correspond to findings from another data source.
• Traits that are easily observable show a higher degree of self-observer agreement than do traits that are difficult to observe.
• The Fallibility of Personality Measurement is a limitation, and triangulation can be a strategy to overcome this.

Evaluation of Personality Measures

• Three standards are used to evaluate personality measures: reliability, validity, and generalizability.
• Once personality measures have been identified, they should be subject to scientific scrutiny to determine how good the measures are.