Key Terms 1-5 in Personality Psychology - PDF

key terms 1-5 Status Not started Chapter 1: Introduction to Personality Psychology 1.Trait-descriptive adjectives: Words that describe traits, attributes of a person that are reasonably characteristic of the individual and perhaps even enduring...

key terms 1-5 Status Not started Chapter 1: Introduction to Personality Psychology 1.Trait-descriptive adjectives: Words that describe traits, attributes of a person that are reasonably characteristic of the individual and perhaps even enduring over time. 2.Personality: The set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the intrapsychic, physical, and social environments. 3.Psychological traits: Characteristics that describe ways in which people are unique or different from or similar to each other. Psychological traits include all sorts of aspects of persons that are psychologically meaningful and are stable and consistent aspects of personality. 4.Average tendencies: Tendency to display a certain psychological trait with regularity. For example, on average, a high-talkative person will start more conversations than a low-talkative person. This idea explains why the principle of aggregation works when measuring personality. 5.Psychological mechanisms: Similar to traits, except that mechanisms refer more to the processes of personality. For example, most personality mechanisms involve some information-processing activity. A psychological mechanism may make people more sensitive to certain kinds of information from the environment (input), may make them more likely to think about specific options (decision rules), or may guide their behavior toward certain categories of action (outputs). 6.Within the Individual: The important sources of personality reside within the individual—that is, people carry the sources of their personality inside themselves —and hence are stable over time and consistent over situations. 7.Organized and Enduring: "Organized" means that the psychological traits and mechanisms for a given person are not simply a random collection of elements. Rather, personality is coherent because the mechanisms and traits are linked to key terms 1-5 1  one another in an organized fashion. "Enduring" means that the psychological traits are generally consistent over time, particularly in adulthood, and over situations. 8.Influential Forces: Personality traits and mechanisms are influential forces in people's lives in that they influence our actions, how we view ourselves, how we think about the world, how we interact with others, how we feel, our selection of environments (particularly our social environment), what goals and desires we pursue in life, and how we react to our circumstances. Other influential forces include sociological and economic influences, as well as physical and biological forces. 9.Person-Environment Interaction: A person's interactions with situations include perceptions, selections, evocations, and manipulations. Perceptions refer to how we "see" or interpret an environment. Selection describes the manner in which we choose situations—such as our friends, our hobbies, our college classes, and our careers. Evocations refer to the reactions we produce in others, often quite unintentionally. Manipulations refer to the ways in which we attempt to influence others. 10.Adaptation: A central feature of personality concerns adaptive functioning-- accomplishing goals, coping, adjusting, and dealing with the challenges and problems we face as we go through life. 11.Environment: Environments can be physical, social, and intrapsychic (within the mind). Which aspect of the environment is important at any moment in time is frequently determined by the personality of the person in that environment. 12.Human Nature: The traits and mechanisms of personality that are typical of our species and are possessed by everyone or nearly everyone. 13.Individual Differences: Every individual has personal and unique qualities that make him or her different from others. The study of all the ways in which individuals can differ from others, the number, origin, and meaning of such differences, is the study of individual differences. 14.Differences among groups: People in one group may have certain personality features in common, and these common features make them different from other groups. Examples of groups studied by personality psychologists include different cultures, different age groups, different political parties, and people from different key terms 1-5 2  socioeconomic backgrounds. The most common group difference studied by personality psychologists concerns differences between men and women. 15.Nomothetic: The study of general characters of people as they are distributed in the population, typically involving statistical comparisons between individuals or groups. 16.Idiographic: The study of single individuals, with an effort to observe general principles as they are manifest in a single life over time. Often results in case studies or psychological biographies. 17.Domain of Knowledge: A specialty area of science and scholarship, where psychologists have focused on learning about some specific and limited aspect of human nature, often with preferred tools of investigation. 18.Dispositional Domain: Deals centrally with the ways in which individuals differ from one another. As such, the dispositional domain connects with all the other domains. In the dispositional domain, psychologists are primarily interested in the number and nature of fundamental dispositions, taxonomies of traits, measurement issues, and questions of stability over time and consistency over situations. 19.Biological Domain: The core assumption of biological approaches to personality is that humans are, first and foremost, collections of biological systems, and these systems provide the building blocks (e. g. , brain, nervous system) for behavior, thought, and emotion. Biological approaches typically refers to three areas of research within this general domain: the genetics of personality, the psychophysiology of personality, and the evolution of personality. 20.Intrapsychic Domain: This domain deals with mental mechanisms of personality, many of which operate outside the realm of conscious awareness. The predominant theory in this domain is Freud's theory of psychoanalysis. This theory begins with fundamental assumptions about the instinctual system—the sexual and aggressive forces that are presumed to drive and energize much of human activity. The intrapsychic domain also includes defense mechanisms such as repression, denial, and projection. 21.Cognitive-Experiential Domain: This domain focuses on cognition and subjective experience, such as conscious thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and desires key terms 1-5 3  about oneself and others. This domain includes our feelings of self, identity, self- esteem, our goals and plans, and our emotions. 22.Social and Cultural Domain: Personality affects, and is affected by, the social and cultural context in which it is found. Different cultures may bring out different facets of our personalities in manifest behavior. The capacities we display may depend to a large extent on what is acceptable in and encouraged by our culture. At the level of individual differences within cultures, personality plays itself out in the social sphere. One important social sphere concerns relations between men and women. 23.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. In addition to health consequences of adjusting to stress, certain personality features are related to poor social or emotional adjustment and have been designated as personality disorders. 24.Good Theory: A theory that serves as a useful guide for researchers, organizes known facts, and makes predictions about future observations. 25.Theories and Beliefs: Beliefs are often personally useful and crucially important to some people, but they are based on leaps of faith, not on reliable facts and systematic observations. Theories, on the other hand, are based on systematic observations that can be repeated by others and that yield similar conclusions. 26.Scientific Standards for Evaluating Personality Theories: Comprehensiveness, Heuristic Value, Testability, Parsimony, and Compatibility and Integration Across Domains and Levels. 27.Comprehensiveness: One of the five scientific standards used in evaluating personality theories. Theories that explain more empirical data within a domain are generally superior to those that explain fewer findings. 28.Heuristic Value: An evaluative scientific standard for assessing personality theories. Theories that steer scientists to important new discoveries about personality are superior to those that fail to provide this guidance. 29.Testability: The capacity to render precise predictions that scientists can test empirically. Generally, the testability of a theory is dependent upon the precision key terms 1-5 4  of its predictions. If it is impossible to test a theory empirically, the theory is generally discarded. Chapter 2: Personality Assessment, Measurement and Research Design 1.Self-Report Data (S-Data): Information a person verbally reveals about themselves, often based on questionnaire or interview. Self-report data can be obtained through a variety of means, including interviews that pose questions to a person, periodic reports by a person to record the events as they happen, and questionnaires of various sorts. 2.Structured and Unstructured: Self-report can take a variety of forms, ranging from open-ended questions to forced-choice true or false questions. Sometimes these are referred to as unstructured (open-ended, such as "Tell me about the parties you like the most") and structured ("I like loud and crowded parties"; answer true or false) personality tests. 3.Likert Rating Scale: A common rating scale that provides numbers that are attached to descriptive phrases, such as 0 = disagree strongly, 1 = disagree slightly, 2 = neither agree nor disagree, 3 = agree slightly, 4 = strongly agree. 4.Experience Sampling: People answer some questions, for example, about their mood or physical symptoms, every day for several weeks or longer. People are usually contacted electronically ("beeped") one or more times a day at random intervals to complete the measures. Although experience sampling uses self- report as the data source, it differs from more traditional self-report methods in being able to detect patterns of behavior over time. 5.Observer-Report Data (O-Data): The impressions and evaluations others make of a person whom they come into contact with. For every individual, there are dozens of observers who form such impressions. Observer-report methods capitalize on these sources and provide tools for gathering information about a person's personality. Observers may have access to information not attainable through other sources, and multiple observers can be used to assess each individual. Typically, a more valid and reliable assessment of personality can be achieved when multiple observers are used. 6.Inter-Rater Reliability: Multiple observers gather information about a person's personality, then investigators evaluate the degree of consensus among the key terms 1-5 5  observers. When different observers agree with one another, the degree of inter- rater reliability increases. When different raters fail to agree, the measure is said to have low inter-rater reliability. 7.Multiple Social Personalities: Each of us displays different sides of ourselves to different people—we may be kind to our friends, ruthless to our enemies, loving toward a spouse, and conflicted toward our parents. Our social personalities vary from one setting to another, depending on the nature of relationships we have with other individuals. 8.Naturalistic Observation: Observers witness and record events that occur in the normal course of the lives of their participants. For example, a child might be followed throughout an entire day, or an observer may record behavior in the home of the participant. Naturalistic observation offers researchers the advantage of being able to secure information in the realistic context of a person's everyday life, but at the cost of not being able to control the events and behavioral samples witnessed. 9.Test-Data (T-Data): A common source of personality-relevant information comes from standardized tests (T-data). In these measures, participants are placed in a standardized testing situation to see if different people react or behave differently to an identical situation. Taking an exam, like the Scholastic Aptitude Test, would be one example of T-data as a measure used to predict success in school. 10.Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): A noninvasive imaging technique used to identify specific areas of brain activity. As parts of the brain are stimulated, oxygenated blood rushes to the activated area, resulting in increased iron concentrations in the blood. The fMRI detects these elevated concentrations of iron and prints out colorful images indicating which part of the brain is used to perform certain tasks. 11.Projective Techniques: A person is presented with an ambiguous stimulus and is then asked to impose some order on the stimulus, such as asking what the person sees in an inkblot. What the person sees is interpreted to reveal something about his or her personality. The person presumably "projects" his or her concerns, conflicts, traits, and ways of seeing or dealing with the world onto the ambiguous stimulus. The most famous projective technique for assessing personality is the Rorschach inkblot test. key terms 1-5 6  12.Life-Outcome Data (L-Data): Information that can be gleaned from the events, activities, and outcomes in a person's life that are available to public scrutiny. For example, marriages and divorces are a matter of public record. Personality psychologists can sometimes secure information about the clubs, if any, a person joins; how many speeding tickets a person has received in the last few years; whether the person owns a handgun. These can all serve as sources of information about personality. 13.Reliability: The degree to which an obtained measure represents the "true" level of the trait being measured. For example, if a person has a "true" IQ of 115, then a perfectly reliable measure of IQ will yield a score of 115 for that person. Moreover, a truly reliable measure of IQ would yield the same score of 115 each time it was administered to the person. Personality psychologists prefer reliable measures so that the scores accurately reflect each person's true level of the personality characteristic being measured. 14.Repeated Measurement: A way to estimate the reliability of a measure. There are different forms of repeated measurement, and hence different versions of reliability. A common procedure is to repeat the same measurement over time, say at an interval of a month apart, for the same sample of persons. If the two tests are highly correlated between the first and second testing, yielding similar scores for most people, then the resulting measure is said to have high test-retest reliability. 15.Response Sets: The tendency of some people to respond to the questions on some basis that is unrelated to the question content. Sometimes this is referred to as noncontent responding. One example is the response set of acquiescence or yea saying. This is the tendency to simply agree with the questionnaire items, regardless of the content of those items. 16.Noncontent Responding: The tendency of some people to respond to the questions on some basis that is unrelated to the question content. One example is the response set of acquiescence or yea saying. This is the tendency to simply agree with the questionnaire items, regardless of the content of those items. 17.Acquiescence: A response set that refers to the tendency to agree with questionnaire items, regardless of the content of those items. (Also known as yea- saying). key terms 1-5 7  18.Extreme Responding: A response set that refers to the tendency to give endpoint responses, such as "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree" and avoid the middle part of response scales, such as "slightly agree," "slightly disagree," or "am indifferent." 19.Social Desirability: Socially desirable responding refers to the tendency to answer items in such a way as to come across as socially attractive or likable. People responding in this manner want to make a good impression, to appear to be well adjusted, to be a "good citizen." 20.Forced-Choice Questionnaire: Test takers are confronted with pairs of statements and are asked to indicate which statement in the pair is more true of them. Each statement in the pair is selected to be similar to the other in social desirability, forcing participants to choose between statements that are equivalently socially desirable (or undesirable), and differ in content. 21.Validity: Refers to the extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure. 22.Face Validity: Refers to whether the test, on the surface, appears to measure what it is supposed to measure. 23.Predictive Validity: Refers to whether the test predicts criteria external to the test. Therefore, it also sometimes called Criterion Validity. 24.Convergent Validity: Refers to whether a test correlates with other measures that it should correlate with. 25.Discriminant Validity: Often evaluated simultaneously with convergent validity. It refers to what a measure should not correlate with. 26.Construct Validity: Whether a test that measures what it claims to measure, correlates with what it is supposed to correlate with, and does not correlate with what it is not supposed to correlate with. 27.Theoretical Constructs: The idea that almost all of the personality variables useful to psychologists in describing and explaining differences between people, like intelligence and extraversion, are abstractions. 28.Generalizability: The degree to which a measure retains its validity across various contexts. key terms 1-5 8  29.Experimental Methods: Typically used to determine causality—to find out whether one variable influences another variable. Experiments involve the manipulation of one variable (the independent variable) and random assignment of subjects to conditions defined by the independent variable. 30.Manipulation: Researchers conducting experiments use manipulation in order to evaluate the influence of one variable (the manipulated or independent variable) on another (the dependent variable). 31.Random Assignment: Assignment in an experiment that is conducted randomly. If an experiment has manipulation between groups, random assignment of participants to experimental groups helps ensure that each group is equivalent. 32.Counterbalancing: In some experiments, manipulation is within a single group. For example, participants might get a drug and have their memory tested, then later take a sugar pill and have their memory tested again. In this kind of experiment, equivalence is obtained by counterbalancing the order of the conditions, with half the participants getting the drug first and sugar pill second, and the other half getting the sugar pill first and the drug second. 33.Statistically Significant: Refers to the probability of finding the results of a research study by chance alone. The generally accepted level of statistical significance is 5 percent, meaning that, if a study were repeated 100 times, the particular result reported would be found by chance only 5 times. 34.Correlational Method: A statistical procedure for determining whether there is a relationship between two variables. In correlational research designs, the researcher is attempting to directly identify the relationships between two or more variables, without imposing the sorts of manipulations seen in experimental designs. 35.Correlation Coefficient: Researchers are interested in the direction (positive or negative) and the magnitude (size) of the correlation coefficient. Correlations around. 10 are considered small; those around. 30 are considered medium; and those around. 50 or greater are considered large (Cohen & Cohen, 1975). 36.Directionality Problem: One reason correlations can never prove causality. If A and B are correlated, we do not know if A is the cause of B, or if B is the cause of A, or if some third, unknown variable is causing both B and A. key terms 1-5 9  37.Third Variable Problem: One reason correlations can never prove casuality. It could be that two variables are correlated because some third, unknown variable is causing both. 38.Case Study Method: Examining the life of one person in particular depth, which can give researchers insights into personality that can then be used to formulate a more general theory that is tested in a larger population. They can also provide in-depth knowledge of a particularly outstanding individual. Case studies are useful when studying rare phenomena, such as a person with a photographic memory or a person with multiple personalities—cases for which large samples would be difficult or impossible to obtain. 39.criterion validity: Whether a test predicts criteria external to the test. Chapter 3: Traits and Trait Taxonomies 1.Lexical Approach: The approach to determining the fundamental personality traits by analyzing language. For example, a trait adjective that has many synonyms probably represents a more fundamental trait than a trait adjective with few synonyms. 2.Statistical Approach: Having a large number of people rate themselves on certain items, and then employing a statistical procedure to identify groups or clusters of items that go together. The goal of the statistical approach is to identify the major dimensions or "coordinates" of the personality map. 3.Theoretical Approach: The theoretical approach to identifying important dimensions of individual differences starts with a theory, which then determines which variables are important. The theoretical strategy dictates in a specific manner which variables are important to measure. 4.Lexical Hypothesis: States all important individual differences have become encoded within the natural language 5.Synonym Frequency: In the lexical approach, synonym frequency means that if an attribute has not merely one or two trait adjectives to describe it, but rather six, eight, or ten words, then it is a more important dimension of individual difference. 6.Cross-Cultural Universality: In the lexical approach, cross-cultural universality states that if a trait is sufficiently important in all cultures so that its members have codified terms within their own languages to describe the trait, then the trait must key terms 1-5 10  be universally important in human affairs. In contrast, if a trait term exists in only one or a few languages but is entirely missing from most, then it may be of only local relevance. 7.Factor Analysis: A commonly used statistical procedure for identifying underlying structure in personality ratings or items. Factor analysis essentially identifies groups of items that covary (i. e. , go together or correlate) with each other, but tend not to covary with other groups of items. This provides a means for determining which personality variables share some common underlying property or belong together within the same group. 8.Factor Loadings: Indexes of how much of the variation in an item is "explained" by the factor. Factor loadings indicate the degree to which the item correlates with or "loads on" the underlying factor. 9.Sociosexual Orientation: According to Gangestad and Simpson's theory of sociosexual orientation, men and women will pursue one of two alternative sexual relationship strategies. The first mating strategy entails seeking a single committed relationship characterized by monogamy and tremendous investment in children. The second sexual strategy is characterized by a greater degree of promiscuity, more partner switching, and less investment in children. 10.Interpersonal Traits: What people do to and with each other. They include temperament traits, such as nervous, gloomy, sluggish, and excitable; character traits, such as moral, principled, and dishonest; material traits, such as miserly or stingy; attitude traits, such as pious or spiritual; mental traits, such as clever, logical, and perceptive; and physical traits, such as healthy and tough. 11.Adjacency: In Wiggins circumplex model, adjacency indicates how close the traits are to each other on the circumference of the circumplex. Those variables that are adjacent or next to each other within the model are positively correlated. 12.Bipolarity: In Wiggins circumplex model, traits located at opposite sides of the circle are negatively correlated with each other. Specifying this bipolarity is useful because nearly every interpersonal trait within the personality sphere has another trait that is its opposite. 13.Orthogonality: Discussed in terms of circumplex models, orthogonality specifies that traits that are perpendicular to each other on the model (at 90 degrees of separation, or at right angles to each other) are unrelated to each key terms 1-5 11  other. In general, the term "orthogonal" is used to describe a zero correlation between traits. 14.Five-Factor Model: A trait taxonomy that has its roots in the lexical hypothesis. The first psychologist to use the terms "five-factor model" and "Big Five" was Warren Norman, based on his replications of the factor structure suggesting the following five traits: Surgency (or extraversion), Neuroticism (or emotional instability), Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience (or intellect). The model has been criticized by some for not being comprehensive and for failing to provide a theoretical understanding of the underlying psychological processes that generate the five traits. Nonetheless, it remains heavily endorsed by many personality psychologists and continues to be used in a variety of research studies and applied settings. 15.Extraversion: The first fundamental personality trait in the five-factor model, a taxonomy which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers for Extraversion are "talkative," "extraverted" or "extroverted," "gregarious," "assertive," "adventurous," "open," "sociable," "forward," and "outspoken." 16.Social Attention: The goal and payback for surgent or extraverted behavior. By being the center of attention, the extravert seeks to gain the approval of others and, in many cases, through tacit approval controls or directs others. 17.Agreeableness: Agreeableness is the second of the personality traits in the five-factor model, a model which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers for Agreeableness are "good-natured," "cooperative," "mild/gentle," "not jealous." 18.Conscientiousness: The third of the personality traits in the five-factor model, which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers for Conscientiousness are "responsible," "scrupulous," "persevering," "fussy/tidy." 19.Emotional Stability: The fourth of the personality traits in the five-factor model, which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers for Emotional Stability are "calm," "composed," "not hypochondriacal," "poised." key terms 1-5 12  20.Intellect-Openness: The fifth personality trait in the five-factor model, which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers for Openness are "creative," "imaginative," "intellectual." Those who rate high on Openness tend to remember their dreams more and have vivid, prophetic, or problem-solving dreams. 21.Combinations of Big Five Variables: "Traits" are often examined in combinations. For example, two people high in extraversion would be very different if one was an extraverted neurotic and the other was extraverted but emotionally stable. 22.Personality-Descriptive Nouns: As described by Saucier, personality- descriptive nouns differ in their content emphases from personality taxonomies based on adjectives and may be more precise. In Saucier's 2003 work on personality nouns, he discovered eight factors, including "Dumbbell," "Babe/Cutie," "Philosopher," "Lawbreaker," "Joker," and "Jock. " 23.The HEXACO Model: The HEXACO model is an alternative to the Five-Factor Model. The HEXACO model includes six traits, five of which are variants of the traits included in the Big Five (Emotionality [E], Extraversion [X], Agreeableness [A], Conscientiousness [C], and Openness [O]). The sixth factor, Honesty-Humility [H], is unique to this model. 24.Honesty-Humility: trait people think is missing from Big Five Chapter 4:Theoretical and Measurement Issues in Trait Psychology 1.Differential Psychology: Due to its emphasis on the study of differences between people, trait psychology has sometimes been called differential psychology in the interest of distinguishing this subfield from other branches of personality psychology (Anastasi, 1976). Differential psychology includes the study of other forms of individual differences in addition to personality traits, such as abilities, aptitudes, and intelligence. 2.Consistency: Trait theories assume there is some degree of consistency in personality over time. If someone is highly extraverted during one period of observation, trait psychologists tend to assume that she will be extraverted tomorrow, next week, a year from now, or even decades from now. key terms 1-5 13  3.Rank Order Stability: Maintaining one's relative position within a group over time. Between ages 14 and 20, for example, most people become taller. But the rank order of heights tends to remain fairly stable because this form of development affects all people pretty much the same. The tall people at 14 fall generally toward the tall end of the distribution at age 20. The same can apply to personality traits. If people tend to maintain their position on dominance or extraversion relative to the other members of the group over time, then we say that there is high rank order stability to the personality characteristic. Conversely, if people fail to maintain their rank order, we say that the group has displayed rank order instability or rank order change. 4.Situationism: A theoretical position in personality psychology that states that situational differences, rather than underlying personality traits, determine behavior. For example, how friendly a person will behave or how much need for achievement a person displays will depend on the situation, not the traits a person possesses. 5.Person-Situation Interaction: The person-situation interaction trait theory states that one has to take into account both particular situations (e. g. , frustration) and personality traits (e. g. , hot temper) when understanding a behavior. 6.Aggregation: Adding up or averaging several single observations, resulting in a better (i. e. , more reliable) measure of a personality trait than a single observation of behavior. This approach implies that personality traits refer to average tendencies in behavior, how people behave on average. 7.Situational Specificity: The view that behavior is determined by aspects of the situation, such as reward contingencies. 8.Strong Situation: Certain situations that prompt similar behavior from everyone. 9.Situational Selection: A form of interactionism that refers to the tendency to choose or select the situations in which one finds oneself. In other words, people typically do not find themselves in random situations in their natural lives. Instead, they select or choose the situations in which they will spend their time. 10.Evocation: A form of person-situation interaction discussed by Buss. It is based on the idea that certain personality traits may evoke consistent responses from the environment, particularly the social environment. key terms 1-5 14  11.Manipulation: Researchers conducting experiments use manipulation in order to evaluate the influence of one variable (the manipulated or independent variable) on another (the dependent variable). 12.Average Tendencies: Tendency to display a certain psychological trait with regularity. For example, on average, a high-talkative person will start more conversations than a low-talkative person. This idea explains why the principle of aggregation works when measuring personality. 13.Infrequency Scale: A common method for detecting measurement technique problems within a set of questionnaire items. The infrequency scale contains items that most or all people would answer in a particular way. If a participant answered more than one or two of these unlike the rest of the majority of the participants, a researcher could begin to suspect that the participant's answers do not represent valid information. Such a participant may be answering randomly, may have difficulty reading, or may be marking his or her answer sheet incorrectly. 14.Faking: The motivated distortion of answers on a questionnaire. Some people may be motivated to "fake good" in order to appear to be better off or better adjusted than they really are. Others may be motivated to "fake bad" in order to appear to be worse off or more maladjusted than they really are. 15.False Negative & False Positive: There are two ways for psychologists to make a mistake when making decisions about persons based on personality tests (e. g. , when deciding whether or not to hire a person, to parole a person, or that the person was lying). When trying to decide whether a person's answers are genuine or faked, the psychologist might decide that a person who was faking was actually telling the truth (called a false positive). Or they might conclude that a truthful person was faking. This is called a false negative. 16.Barnum Statements: Generalities or statements that could apply to anyone. A good example is the astrology column published in daily newspapers. 17.Integrity Tests: Because the private sector cannot legally use polygraphs to screen employees, some companies have developed and promoted questionnaire measures to use in place of the polygraph. These questionnaires, called integrity tests, are designed to assess whether a person is generally honest or dishonest. key terms 1-5 15  18.Personnel Selection: Employers sometimes use personality tests to select people especially suitable for a specific job. Alternatively, the employer may want to use personality assessments to de-select, or screen out, people with specific traits. In both cases an employer is concerned with selecting the right person for a specific position from among a pool of applicants. 19.Negligent Hiring: A charge sometimes brought against an employer for hiring someone who is unstable or prone to violence. Employers are defending themselves against such suits, which often seek compensation for crimes committed by their employees. Such cases hinge on whether the employer should have discovered dangerous traits ahead of time, before hiring such a person into a position where he or she posed a threat to others. Personality testing may provide evidence that the employer did in fact try to reasonably investigate an applicant's fitness for the workplace. 20.Female Underprediction Effect: On average, college entrance exam scores underpredict grade point average for women relative to men. Women tend to do better in college than one would predict from their entrance exam scores. 21.Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: A specific section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that requires employers to provide equal employment opportunities to all persons, regardless of sex, race, color, religion, or national origin. 22.Griggs v. Duke Power: Prior to 1964, Duke Power Company had used discriminatory practices in hiring and work assignment, including barring blacks from certain jobs. After passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Duke Power instituted various requirements for such jobs, including passing certain aptitude tests. The effect was to perpetuate discrimination. In 1971 the Supreme Court ruled that the seemingly neutral testing practices used by Duke Power were unacceptable because they operated to maintain discrimination. This was the first legal case where the Supreme Court ruled that any selection procedure could not produce disparate impact for a group protected by the Act (e. g. , racial groups, women). 23.Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures: The purpose of the guidelines is to provide a set of principles for employee selection that meet the requirements of all federal laws, especially those that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. They provide details on the key terms 1-5 16  proper use of personality tests and other selection procedures in employment settings. 24.Ward's Cove Packing Company v. Atonio: Ward's Cove Packing Co. was a salmon cannery operating in Alaska. In 1974 the non-White cannery workers started legal action against the company, alleging that a variety of the company's hiring and promotion practices were responsible for racial stratification in the workplace. The claim was advanced under the disparate impact portion of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In 1989 the Supreme Court decided on the case in favor of Ward's Cove. The court decided that, even if employees can prove discrimination, the hiring practices may still be considered legal if they serve "legitimate employment goals of the employer." This decision allowed disparate impact if it was in the service of the company. This case prompted Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which contained several important modifications to Title VII of the original act. Most important, however, the new act shifted the burden of proof onto the employer by requiring that it must prove a close connection between disparate impact and the ability to actually perform the job in question. 25.Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins: A Supreme Court case in which Ann Hopkins sued her employer, Price Waterhouse, claiming that they had discriminated against her on the basis of sex in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, on the theory that her promotion denial had been based on sexual stereotyping. The Supreme Court accepted the argument that gender stereotyping does exist and that it can create a bias against women in the workplace that is not permissible under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. By court order Ann Hopkins was made a full partner in her accounting firm. 26.Disparate Impact: Any employment practice that disadvantages people from a protected group. The Supreme Court has not defined the size of the disparity necessary to prove disparate impact. Most courts define disparity as a difference that is sufficiently large that it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. Some courts, however, prefer the 80 percent rule contained in the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. Under this rule, adverse impact is established if the selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group is less than four-fifths (or 80 percent) of the rate for the group with the highest selection rate. 27.Race or Gender Norming: The Civil Rights Act of 1991 forbids employers from using different norms or cut-off scores for different groups of people. For key terms 1-5 17  example, it would be illegal for a company to set a higher threshold for women than men on their selection test. 28.Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA): The ADA states that an employer cannot conduct a medical examination, or even make inquiries as to whether an applicant has a disability, during the selection process. Moreover, even if a disability is obvious, the employer cannot ask about the nature or severity of that disability. 29.Right to Privacy: Perhaps the largest issue of legal concern for employers using personality testing is privacy. The right to privacy in employment settings grows out of the broader concept of the right to privacy. Cases that charge an invasion-of-privacy claim against an employer can be based on the federal constitution, state constitutions and statutes, and common law. 30.Job Analysis: When assisting a business in hiring for a particular job, a psychologist typically starts by analyzing the requirements of the job. The psychologist might interview employees who work in the job or supervisors who are involved in managing the particular job. The psychologist might observe workers in the job, noting any particular oral, written, performance, or social skills needed. He or she may also take into account both the physical and social aspects of the work environment in an effort to identify any special pressures or responsibilities associated with the job. Based on this job analysis, the psychologist develops some hypotheses about the kinds of abilities and personality traits that might best equip a person to perform well in that job. 31.Myers-Brigg Type Indicator (MBTI): One of the most widely used personality tests in the business world. It was developed by a mother-daughter team, Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers, based on Jungian concepts. The test provides information about personality types by testing for eight fundamental preferences using questions in a "forced-choice" or either/or format. Individuals must respond in one way or another, even if their preferences might be somewhere in the middle. Although the test is not without criticism, it has great intuitive appeal. 32.Psychological Types: A term growing out of Carl Jung's theory implying that people come in types or distinct categories of personality, such as "extraverted types." This view is not widely endorsed by academic or research-oriented psychologists because most personality traits are normally distributed in the population and are best conceived as dimensions of difference, not categories. key terms 1-5 18  33.Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI): A questionnaire measure of personality based on the Big Five model but modified to emphasize the assessment of traits important in the business world, including the motive to get along with others and the motive to get ahead of others. 34.Density Distributions of States: refers to the idea that traits are distributions of states in a person's life over time, and the mean of that distribution is the person's level of the trait 35.Overt and Covert Integrity Measures: Both are self-report measures of integrity used in business and industry. Overt measures include questions directly related to past violations of workplace integrity, such as absenteeism or theft. Covert measures include questions that are indirectly related to integrity, such as questions about personality traits that are correlated with workplace integrity, such as conscientiousness. Chapter 5: Personality Dispositions over Time: Stability, Coherence and Change 1.3 Levels of Analysis: Population Level, Group Differences Level, Individual Differences Level 2.Age Effects: Caused by the increasing of age of individuals 3.Alcoholism & Emotional Disturbance: - Men earlier rated high on neuroticism developed a serious emotional problem (alcoholism) later in life Alcoholic men had lower impulse control scores than those who had developed an emotional problem 4.Autonomy, Dominance, Leadership, Ambition: - Men in management have a decreased amount of ambition as they become more realistic in their view of the company, but dominance, leadership, achievement and autonomy all increased over time Sensation Seeking 5.Changes in Self-Esteem from Teen to Adult: - Self Esteem in boys increases from high school onward but in girls there is a decrease Variable self-esteem suggests a fragile self-value key terms 1-5 19  More sensitive & dependent on the feedback of others 6.Cohort Effects: Everyone experiencing the same effects across time (Ex: Baby Boomers) 7.Competence: - Study of women show a sharp increase of competence (self- assessed) Their husbands remained high on this trait as well 8.Conceptual Issues: Personality Development which consists of Rank Order Stability, Mean Level Stability, Personality Coherence, Personality Change 9.Education, Academic Achievement & Dropping Out: - Among students with high SAT scores, the impulsive individuals had lower GPA's Impulsive individuals were more likely to flunk out of college Those with high impulsivity have less progress in their work and lower financial security Path Analysis & Life Course Health & Longevity 10.Example of Stability: - Type A behaviour Big Five traits aggressive behaviour shyness dependency hyperactivity 11.Feminity: - Study of women show a consistent drop in femininity from age 40 to age 50 12.Flexibility & Impulsivity: - Study of Architects 13.Group Differences Level: Developmental processes that apply to a particular group 14.Health & Longevity: Traits that predict long life: High Conscientiousness key terms 1-5 20  Extraversion (positive emotionality) Low Hostility 15.Independence and Traditional Roles: 4 groups were compared from ages 21 - 43: Group 1: Married homemakers with children Group 2: Working mothers with children Group 3: Divorced mothers Group 4: Non-mothers Independence was found to increase in groups 2, 3 and 4 and showed no increase in group 1. 16.Individual Differences Level: Developmental processes that apply to a particular individual 17.Individuals with variable self-esteem are more...: - vulnerable to stressful life events become depressed 18.Longitudinal Studies of Effects: - Age Effects, Period Effects, Cohort Effects 19.Marital Stability, Satisfaction & Divorce: - Personality coherence is the effect of personality on behaviour Neuroticism, lack of impulse control of the husband and neuroticism of the wife were strong predictors of divorce 20.Mean Level Stability: Mean consistency or change of the population on a trait 21.Mean Level Stability in Adulthood: - The Five Factor model of personality shows fairly consistent mean level stability over time Openness, Extraversion & Neuroticism gradually decrease with time (after age 30) Conscientiousness & Agreeableness gradually increase with time (after age 30) 22.Path Analysis & Life Course: - Shows relationships among variables and is based on multiple regression analysis key terms 1-5 21  Can show how steps in life can predict things later in life 23.Period Effects: The effects of a time or era in history 24.Personality Change: - Personality in adulthood is different from childhood because of new self-awareness Can be caused by major events, or new environments Basic underlying personality dimensions are likely to remain stable 25.Personality Coherence: The trait stays the same but its manifestation may change 26.Personality Coherence Over Time: - Marital Stability, Satisfaction & Divorce Alcoholism & Emotional Disturbance Education, Academic Achievement & Dropping Out Predicting Personality Change Itself 27.Personality Development: The continuities, consistencies and stabilities in people over time, and the ways in which people change over time 28.Personality Development: Continuity and Change in people over time 29.Personality Stability Over Time: Consists of Temperament in infancy, Stability during childhood, Rank order stability in adulthood and Mean level stability in adulthood 30.Population Level: Developmental processes that apply to everyone 31.Predicting Personality Change Itself: - If you marry someone who is similar to you, do you tend to remain stable over time? Similar married couples show the most personality stability (1970 - 1981) Those married to spouses least similar to themselves show the most personality change 32.Rank Order Stability: Maintenance of an individual's position in a group on a trait 33.Rank Order Stability in Adulthood: - Results on normed tests indicate rank order stability of traits key terms 1-5 22  Personality stability seems to increase with each decade of life and peak in the fifties 34.Sensation Seeking: - Increases from childhood to adolescence, peaks at late adolescence and then decreases Ex: Parachute jumping 35.Stability Coefficents: Correlations between the same measures taken at two different points in time 36.Stability during Childhood: More traits emerge and tend to be moderately stable Stability Coefficients Longitudinal studies indicates that measures taken earlier on can predict personality later in life 37.Stability of Temperament in Infancy: - Stable individual differences emerge early in life Moderate levels of stability over time during the first year of life Levels tend to increase with maturity (9-12) Temperaments: differences that emerge in infancy, linked to emotional stability and arousability 38.Study of Architects: - Shows a decrease in impulsivity & flexibility over a 25 year span People tend to reign in their impulses and become more fixed in their ways as they age 39.Temperaments include: (1) Activity level (2) Smiling & Laughing (3) Fear (4) Distress to Limitations (5) Soothability (6) Duration of Orientation key terms 1-5 23