Everything PDF - Personality Psychology

Everything September 22, 2024 1:03 PM Chapter 1: - Personality: a stable set of behavioral / experiential characteristics of an individual ○ 3 Principles Explaining Personality: ▪ Consistency: establishes consistency in an individual's qualities / characteristics...

Everything September 22, 2024 1:03 PM Chapter 1: - Personality: a stable set of behavioral / experiential characteristics of an individual ○ 3 Principles Explaining Personality: ▪ Consistency: establishes consistency in an individual's qualities / characteristics ▪ Causation: the practical value of the personality concept □ Indicates behavior, feelings, or thoughts aren't random responses to outside influences ▪ Organization: systematic approach to identify salient qualities of an individual ○ Dichotomies: ▪ Personality can be described as a coexistence / interaction of at least 2 conditions that are opposite to each other ▪ Type: a category of elements / features sharing similar characteristics or qualities ▪ Central features: somewhat wide ranging and present ▪ Peripheral features: more specific and appear in particular individuals in specific circumstances ▪ Pessimism: a persistent, broad spectrum belief in / anticipation of undesirable, negative, or damaging outcomes □ Can be a central feature ▪ Cynicism: persistent distrust of other people's motives ▪ Self enhance: deem ourselves as superior to peers ○ Normal vs Abnormal: - Tolerance threshold: a measure of tolerance or intolerance toward specific personality traits in a society / group - Personality disorders: enduring patterns of behavior and inner experience that deviate from the expectations of the individual's culture - Brain stem and hypothalamus are key for self awareness □ Important for personality ○ Active vs Reactive: - Scarcity mindset: a reaction to a shortage of resources - Determinism: psychological phenomena are determined by preceding events or some identifiable factors □ Encourages psychologists to: Study the factors that influence personality Explain personality by referring to these factors Predict its development in the future - Fatalism: humans aren't in control of their lives because something / someone controls them - Self determination: we are in control of ourselves Knowledge: - 4 types: ○ Scientific: systematic empirical observation, measurement, and evaluation of facts ○ Beliefs: assumptions that represent a form of "everyday psych" created by the people for the people ▪ Kind of like stories ○ Values: stable perceptions about the world and the individual's place in it ○ Legal: official prescriptions - including "this is allowed" or "this is not" - Theory: a type of comprehensive, scientific explanation about what personality is, how it develops, and how it functions ○ Based on scientific knowledge ○ Allows us to transform research data / opinions into a logical construction ○ Provides an explanation for a particular observation ○ Suggests hypotheses that can be tested to support / challenge the theory Personality Theories and Academic Traditions: - Personality psychology: branch of psychology that studies personality - Academic traditions: bring together scholars that share similar views on a particular scientific approach, subject, or method Week 2 Page 1 - Personality: explains why people act, think, and feel they way they do ○ Trait: a characteristic about you ▪ Empirical: - Nomothetically: how people normally act ○ When studying a group of people ○ Looking for an association between variables - Ideographically: when you do an intense case study on an individual ○ Why is this person different from everyone else? ○ Done through case studies - 4 Types of data: L.O.T.S. ○ L data: life outcome ▪ Demographic data □ Anything that can be found in someone's public records ○ O data: observer report ▪ Naturalistic vs Artificial □ Artificial: you want to control the conditions but you know the person in the study knows its not real ○ T data: test ▪ Has a right and wrong answer ▪ Intelligence tests are the exception ▪ Less variance in data with people who are open to experiences ▪ Self monitoring: modify their behavior to give off the best impression ▪ Psychological data: watch people's reactions to stimuli / events taking place ▪ Projective: anything with a scoring key falls under Test Data □ Ambiguous stimuli ○ S data: self report ▪ Info provided by the individual directly ▪ Structured and Unstructured ▪ Social desirability: presenting your responses in a desirable manner ▪ Faking: consciously altering your responses □ Faking good □ Faking bad - Measurement issues: ○ Reliability: ▪ Reliability = Consistency ▪ Types: □ Test retest reliability: Only if you're expecting the same score every time □ Inter rater reliability: Have 2 individuals rating the same thing □ Internal consistency reliability: Are the items responding the same way ○ Validity ○ Generalizability: the measure retains validity across different contexts Week 2 Page 2