Personality Theory PDF

Chapter Fourteen Personality: Who We Are Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Personality  Psychoanalytic theory  Behavioral and social learning theories  Humanistic models  Trait models  Personality assessment...

Chapter Fourteen Personality: Who We Are Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Personality  Psychoanalytic theory  Behavioral and social learning theories  Humanistic models  Trait models  Personality assessment Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Relatively enduring predispositions that influence our behavior across many situations  People’s typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving  These traits account in part for consistencies in our behavior across time and situations  Introversion, extraversion, aggressiveness Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Nomothetic Approach Idiographic Approach Focuses on identifying general Focuses on identifying the unique laws that govern the behaviour of configuration of characteristics all individuals and life experiences within a person Studying similarities among Studying difference among people people Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  How do personality traits originate?  Behavior-genetic methods attempt to disentangle the effects of  Genetic factors  Shared environmental factors  Experiences that make individuals within the same family more alike.  Nonshared environmental factors  Factors—experiences that make individuals within the same family less alike.  Use twin and adoption studies to do this Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Numerous personality traits are influenced by genetics – but all much below a 1.0 correlation  Demonstrates non-shared environmental influence  Turns out that shared environment plays little to no role in adult personality  Supported by twin and adoption studies Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  First Born Second Born Last Born Only Child Achievement Competitive High Mature Achiever  Traits develop as a result of early social interactions/environmental experiences  Most research has failed to find link between personality and order of birth Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Yes, genes influence a variety of behaviours often associated with personality traits  Remember, genes code for proteins, not specific behaviors  Genes have indirect influence on traits, while the environment influences how these are displayed in our lives  Twin studies vs. molecular genetic studies  Twin studies tell little about what genes influence personality  Molecular genetic studies allow researchers to pinpoint the influence of genes and neurotransmitters on personality  Link found between novelty seeking and dopamine system Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Viennese neurologist who developed first comprehensive theory of personality Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Developed by Sigmund Freud, rests on three primary assumptions 1. Psychic determinism  The assumption that all psychological events have a cause.  We are not free to choose our actions because we’re at the mercy of powerful inner forces that lie outside of our awareness 2. Symbolic meaning  All behaviour attributable to preceding mental causes, even if we can’t always figure out what they are. 3. Unconscious motivation  Our behaviour is driven by forces of which we are unaware Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Conscious  sensations and experiences of which we are aware at any given moment (limited)  Preconscious  Material of which we are not consciously aware, but that we can easily summon into consciousness e.g. memories, perceptions  Unconscious  Material that is outside of conscious awareness (large)  The focus of psychoanalytic theory Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  ID: Basic Instincts EGO: Principal Decision SUPEREGO: Sense of Maker Morality Reservoir of primitive The rational aspect of the Moral aspect of instincts that drive personality personality behaviour e.g. desires, fantasies, wishes, needs Contains the sexual drive; Strives to delay Contains sense of right & libido gratification until it can wrong internalized by find an appropriate outlet our interactions with parents Operates on pleasure Operates on reality principle principle Conflict between these cause distress (anxiety) Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Freud thought that our dreams reflected this unconscious struggle  Royal road to the unconscious  Believed dreams to be wish fulfillments: expressions of our Id impulses, some of which were disguised  Mentioned that dreams have 2 types of content :  Manifest content: Actual dream events  Latent content: Hidden and symbolic meaning Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Anxiety is a warning sign that something is amiss with the personality; the ego is threatened by conflicts of everyday life  The ego will try to minimize anxiety via defense mechanisms  Characteristics  Involves denial or distortion of reality  Operate unconsciously  Although essential for psychological health, Freud thought over reliance on one or two could cause problems Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Freud believed that we pass through stages, each of which is focused on an erogenous zone  Erogenous zone: site of sexual pleasure  Insisted that sexuality begins in infancy  Individuals who get fixated on a stage and have difficulty moving on Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Birth to around the 1st or 2nd year of life.  Infant’s principal source of pleasure – mouth (sucking, biting, swallowing)  Dependent on caregiver for oral gratification – primary object of satisfaction  Id is dominant  Mother’s response to infant’s demands lead to their perceptions of the world as good/bad Oral Incorporative Behaviour Oral Aggressive Behaviour (taking in) (biting/spitting out) Excessively concerned with oral Pessimistic, hostile, aggressive activities e.g. eating, smoking, kissing Optimistic, dependent, gullible, Likely to be argumentative, trusting manipulative and cruel to others Oral receptive/oral passive personality Oral aggressive personality type type Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  18 months to 3 years  Toddler’s principal source of pleasure: the anus  Society (parents) demands that the child control their inherent desire for tension reduction – learning appropriate times for holding on and letting go  Toilet training and how it is dealt with by caregivers plays a role in personality development (Excessively demanding/Harsh/Overindulgent Anal Retentive Personality Anal Expulsive Personality Personality characterized by holding Personality characterized by letting go on tendencies (holding on or retaining tendencies (defecate wherever & faeces) whenever) Stubborn, stingy, emotionally Disorderly, wasteful, dirty/messy, tardy restrictive, rigid, compulsively neat Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Ages 4-5  Child’s principal source of pleasure: the genitals  Conflict: objects of their sexual desire  In boys  Oedipus complex: Unconscious desire for the mother (major source of gratification for his needs)  Desire to replace or destroy the father  Problem: father already has rights to mother  Castration anxiety: Fear that his penis will be cut off by the father  Resolve the complex by repressing desire for mother and hostile rivalry toward father and instead identifying with Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Ages 4-5  Child’s principal source of pleasure: the genitals  Conflict: objects of their sexual desire  In girls  Electra complex: Unconscious desire for the father  Hostility toward mother because she did not give her a penis  Desire to replace or destroy the mother  Turn their desires to father in hopes of sharing his phallus  Penis envy: Envy of the male because of penis possession and a sense of loss Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Age 5-11  Not a psychosexual stage of development  No new unfolding of sexuality  No new personality development  FIXATION CANNOT OCCUR HERE  Time for ego development and learning the social rules of being a citizen  The sex instinct is dormant, temporarily sublimated in school activities, hobbies, and sports and in developing friendships with members of the same sex. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Adolescence-Adulthood  Final stage of psychosexual development  The libido reemerges – this time in the genitals  The adolescent must now find appropriate objects for sex (love) and aggression (work) – sublimation Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Stage Approximate Age Primary Source of Sexual Fixation & Associated Traits; Pleasure Other Characteristics Oral Birth -12/18 mths. Mouth; sucking & drinking Dependent, drinking, smoking, overeating Anal 18 mths. – 3 yrs. Alleviating tension by Excessive neatness, stinginess, expelling faeces and stubbornness|| wasteful, messy Phallic 3 – 6 yrs Genitals (penis or clitoris; Challenges forming healthy object of their sexual desire relationships, narcissism, insecurity Latency 6-12 years Dormant Sexual Stage Time for ego development, school activities, hobbies, sports and forming interpersonal relationships Genital 12 years and Renewed sexual impulses in Sublimation of instincts; beyond genitals emergence of mature romantic relationships; work Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Unfalsifiable Some concetps are difficult or impossible to disprove Failed Predictions Some aspects of his theory have not held up well in research e.g. association btwn. harsh toilet training and perfectionism Questionable conception Does not provide evidence for existence of the of unconscious unconscious Unrepresentative Freud based his theories on atypical samples Samples and generalized them to the rest of humanity; lack generalizability Emphasis on shared E.g. shared environments can cause similar environment personality types Behavior-genetic studies have shown that shared environment plays little role in adult personality Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Were thinkers who agreed with many of the fundamental tenets of Freud's psychoanalytic theory but changed and adapted the approach to incorporate their own beliefs, ideas, and opinions  Differ from Freud’s theories in two key ways  Less emphasis on sexuality, more on social drives  More optimistic about personal growth Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Motivator of human personality is the striving for superiority  Drive to perfect ourselves and towards wholeness/completion.  To achieve this goal we construct a distinctive style of life  Character structure or pattern of behaviours by which each of us strive for perfection  E.g. The sickly child may strive to increase physical prowess by running or lifting weights. These behaviours become part of the style of life used to compensate for feelings of inferiority. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Dominant Dominant/ruling attitude | Attacking, Sociopaths, Drug Addicts Avoiding Ignores problems; avoids difficulties to avoid failure Getting Dependent Socially useful Cooperative; acts in accordance with others’ needs Copyright ©2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.   All people experience inferiority feelings  Necessary motivating force of behaviour  Motivated to compensate/overcome feelings of inferiority feelings by striving for higher levels of development  Excessive pampering/neglect/physical defects (organic inferiority) can cause inferiority complexes Inferiority Complex Superiority Complex Develops when a person is unable to Develops when a person compensate for normal inferiority overcompensates for normal feelings inferiority feelings Low self-esteem; tend to Tries to dominate others; Boastful, self- overcompensate for these feelings centered Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Placed greater emphasis on the role of the unconscious than Freud  Personal unconscious: Reservoir for material that was once conscious but now forgotten/suppressed due to being trivial or disturbing  Collective unconscious: shared storehouse of memories that ancestors have passed down to us across generations  Archetypes: Images of universal experiences  E.g. mother, the goddess, the hero  Believed we have an innate/inevitable desire to achieve wholeness and unity of the personality Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Was against aspects of Freud’s theory that she viewed as gender biased  Safety need: High level need for security and freedom from fear  Normal personality development is dependent on this  Basic anxiety: Pervasive feeling of loneliness and helplessness  Foundation of neurosis Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Disagreed with Freud’s concept of penis envy  Countered concept of penis envy with womb envy: The envy a male feels toward a female because she can bear children and he cannot.  Women’s sense of inferiority stems not from their anatomy, but their excessive dependency on men, which society has ingrained in them from an early age.  Viewed the Oediplus complex as more of a symptom  It is not inevitable, but rather arises only when the opposite-sex parent is overly protective and the same-sex parent overly critical. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Believe that differences in our personalities stem largely from our learning histories  Personalities are bundles of habits acquired by classical and operant conditioning  Reject the notion that the first few years of life are crucial in personality development  Do not believe that personality plays a role in causing behaviour  Learning molds personality over the lifespan  Instead, they believe that personality consists of behaviours (overt and covert) Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  View personality as under the control of genetic factors and contingencies (reinforcers and punishers)  Determinism & Free Will  Determinists: believe that all of our actions are products of preexisting causal influences.  Free will is an illusion: we may think we are free to select our behaviours, but this is because we tend to be unaware of the situational factors that trigger them. Unconscious Processing  We are unconscious of the reasons for our behaviour because we are often unaware of the external cause of this behaviour  E.g. We may have had the experience of suddenly humming a song to ourselves and wondering why we were doing so, until we realized that this song had been playing softly on a distant radio Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Learning through association  Form of learning in which animals come to respond to a previously neutral stimulus, that was paired with another stimulus that elicits an automatic response.  Discovered by Pavlov, a Russian scientist through his research on digestion in dogs. ________________________________________________________________  Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): a stimulus that elicits an automatic response  Unconditioned response (UCR): the automatic, reflexive response elicited  Neutral stimulus (NS): stimulus that procedures no specific response  Conditioned response (CR): an automatic response established by training to an ordinarily neutral stimulus.  Conditioned stimulus (CS): previously neutral stimulus that comes to elicit a conditioned response Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Learning controlled by the consequences of the organism’s behaviour  The organism’s behaviour is shaped by what comes after it – reward/punishment  E.L. Thorndike  Law of Effect: if a stimulus followed by a behaviour results in a reward, the stimulus is more likely to give rise to the behaviour in the future. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  B.F. Skinner  Reinforcement: any outcome that strengthens the probability of a response  Positive reinforcement: when we administer a stimulus  E.g. Giving a child a Hershey’s Kiss when he picks up his toys  Negative reinforcement: when we take away a stimulus  E.g. Ending a child’s time-out for bad behaviour once she’s stopped whining Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  B.F. Skinner  Punishment: any outcome that weakens the probability of a response  Positive punishment: administering a stimulus that the organism would rather avoid e.g. a spanking  Negative punishment: removal of a stimulus that the organism wishes to experience e.g. favourite toy or article of clothing. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Saw learning as important, but believe thoughts play a crucial role in behaviour as well  Believed that how we interpret our environments affect how we react to them  E.g. if we perceive others as threatening, we’ll typically be hostile and suspicious in return.  Believed classical and operant conditioning to be cognitively mediated  As we acquire information in classical and operant conditioning, we’re actively thinking about and interpreting what it means. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Determinism  Emphasize reciprocal determinism  Tendency for people to mutually influence each other's behaviour  E.g. Our high levels of extraversion may motivate us to introduce ourselves to our introductory psychology classmates and thereby make new friends. In turn, our newfound friends may reinforce our extraversion, encouraging us to attend parties we’d otherwise skip. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Focus on observational learning  Much learning occurs by watching others  Our parents and teachers can play significant roles in shaping our personalities, because we acquire both good and bad habits by watching and, later, emulating them  Modeling: learning through imitation Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Focus on individuals’ locus of control  Speaks to our sense of control over life events  Juliet Rotter introduced the concept to describe the extent to which we believe that reinforcers and punishers lie inside or outside of our control  People with an internal locus of control  Believe that life events are due largely to their own efforts and personal characteristics.  E.g. what would a person with an internal locus of control think if they did poorly on an exam? Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  People with an external locus of control  Believe that life events are largely a product of chance and fate  Tend to praise or blame external factors  E.g. what would a person with an external locus of control think if they did poorly on an exam? Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Based on research, almost all forms of psychological distress, including depression and anxiety are associated with an external locus of control  For ‘internals’ it is possible that they are less prone because they feel as though they can remedy problems on their own  For ‘externals’, it is possible that once these people experience any form of emotional upset that they may feel as though their lives are spiraling out of control  When people in difficult circumstances obtain a measure of control over their lives, their adjustment improves Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Placed psychology on firmer scientific footing  However…  Radical behaviorists’ ignoring of cognition is not supported by research  Social learning’s emphasis on shared environment is non supported  If we learn by modeling our parents’ behaviour, then we should be just like them  Behaviour-genetic studies have shown that the effects of shared environment on adult personality are weak or non-existent. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Rejected notion of determinism and embraced free will  We’re perfectly free to choose either socially constructive or destructive paths in life.  Proposed self-actualization as core motive in personality  The drive to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Best known humanistic theorist  Used his personality theory to develop an influential form of psychotherapy  Believed that we could all achieve our full potential for emotional fulfilment if only society allowed it. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Three major components of personality: 1. The organism (innate, genetic blueprint)  Similar to Freudian id but inherently positive and helpful toward others. 2. The self (our self concept; set of beliefs about who we are) 3. Conditions of worth (expectations we place on ourselves for appropriate/inappropriate behaviour  Emanate from our parents & society and we internalize them  Arise in children, where others make their acceptance of us conditional only on certain behaviours Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Conditions of worth can result in incongruence  Discrepancy between one’s self-concept and aspects of experience  We’re no longer our genuine selves, because we’re acting in ways that are inconsistent with our underlying potentialities. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  These people tend to be creative, spontaneous, and accepting of themselves and others  Self-confident but not self-centered  Focus on real-world and intellectual problems and have a few deep Maslow believed friendships rather than many superficial Mahatma Ghandi ones. to be one of the historical figures who was self- actualized Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Can come off as difficult to work with or aloof because they have outgrown the need to be popular  Prone to peak experiences: transcendent moments of intense excitement and tranquility marked by a profound sense of connection to the world. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Theory of motivation in psychology  An arrangement of innate needs, from strongest to weakest that activates and directs behaviour.  Needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend to needs higher up Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Comparative psychology (compares behaviour across the species) challenges Rogers’ claim that our nature is entirely positive  As humans we have the capacity for aggression  His and Maslow’s research was not methodologically sound  Many non-falsifiable assumptions  Self-actualization may not be testable Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Interested primarily in describing and understanding the structure of personality  Trait theorists aim to pinpoint the major traits of personality  It is important that we ignore the circular reasoning fallacy  We might conclude that a child who kicks others on the playground is aggressive. But in asking how we know that this child is aggressive, we might respond “because he kicks other children on the playground.”  This is merely restating the same evidence we used to infer that the child was aggressive  To avoid this logical trap, we need to demonstrate that personality traits predict behaviours in novel situations or correlate with biological or laboratory measures. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Gordon Allport mentioned that there are over 17,000 terms in the English Language that refer to personality traits  A statistical technique, factor analysis, is used reduce the enormous diversity of traits to a much smaller number of underlying traits  This method analyzes the correlations among responses on personality measures to identify the underlying “factors” that give rise to these correlations. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Variables 1 – 3 correlate well with each other, as do variables 4-6 Variables 1 -3: we may call this factor extraversion Variables 4-6: we may call this factor fearlessness Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Consists of five traits that have surfaced repeatedly in factor analyses of personality measures.  Uncovered using a lexical approach  Crucial features of human personality are embedded in our language  If a personality trait is important in our daily lives, it’s likely that we talk a lot about it.  The Big Five emerged from factor analyses of trait terms in dictionaries and works of literature. Trait Description Openness to Intellectually curious and unconventional Experience Conscientiousness Careful and responsible Extraversion Social and lively Agreeableness Sociable and easy to get along with Neuroticism Tense and moody. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  According to Big Five advocates each of us occupies some location on all five of these dimensions.  Predict many important real-world behaviors  E.g. High Conscientiousness, low Neuroticism, and perhaps high Agreeableness are associated with successful job performance and grades in school  Conscientiousness is positively associated with physical health and even life span Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Other psychologist such as Hans Eysenck maintain that three dimensions rather than five offer the most accurate model of personality structure.  The Big Five dimensions of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and (low) Openness to Experience combine to form one larger dimension of impulse control or fearfulness along with the dimensions of Extraversion and Neuroticism.  The “Big Three” model of personality structure is a worthy alternative to the Big Five Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Traits do not tell the whole story of why we differ from each other  Basic tendencies are underlying personality traits; characteristic adaptations are their behavioral manifestations  Same trait can manifest in very different ways  For example, people can express tendencies toward risk taking and danger seeking in either socially constructive (firefighting) or destructive (crime) outlets Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Some variability prior to age 30, but little thereafter  Some evidence for changing of personality psychopharmacologically, but should we?  E.g. mood-altering medications, like Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft produce calmness and decreased shyness, even among people without mental illness (Concar, 1994).  Ethical or….?  Many emotions serve important adpative functions e.g. anxiety which warns us of danger Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Mischel’s argument concerning behavioral inconsistency  Found low correlations among different behaviours presumed to reflect the same trait (e.g. dishonesty)  Students who steal are not more likely to also cheat  Response was that traits are predictors of aggregate (e.g. on average how persons will behave across may situations), not isolated behaviors (e.g. lying & stealing)  Primarily describe individual differences rather than what causes them Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Attempts to explain personality development in terms of understanding our thought processes.  Thoughts are the primary determinants of emotions and behaviour  A person can engage in abnormal behaviour because of particular thoughts and behaviours that are often based upon their false assumptions. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  ABC’s of personality  A – e.g. rejection by a partner  B – belief used to process the activating event  These beliefs can be rational (e.g. the rejection was unfortunate)  These beliefs can be irrational (e.g. it is awful that I was rejected; I must be unlovable)  C- emotional and behavioural consequences of these thoughts  Rational: normal feelings of sorrow or regret  Irrational: depression, anxiety, hostility Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Individuals make themselves emotionally healthy or emotionally sick by the way they think  Irrational beliefs and dysfunctional attitudes  Tend to be rigid, dogmatic, powerful demands usually expressed in the words must, should, ought to, have to and got to (musturbatory thinking)  “I must get an A or else I am a failure/dumb/don’t deserve to be at university”  This way of thinking leads to highly unrealistic and overgeneralized attributions (catastrophizing)  “If I do not get an A then it is awful”, “I never get what I want”, “I can’t bear it”  Ellis believes that processing events using these dysfunctional beliefs will inevitably lead to emotional upset. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Speaks about automatic thoughts: the thoughts that pop up' or 'flash' in your mind without conscious thought.  When a person’s stream of thoughts are negative, they can cause depressed feelings  E.g. I’m never going to get this essay finished, my girlfriend fancies my best friend, I’m getting fat, I have no money, my parents hate me  Cognitive Distortions: Thoughts that cause individuals to perceive reality inaccurately Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Plagued by number of dubious methods 1. Phrenology (Franz Joseph Gall; head shape)  Purported to detect people’s personality traits by measuring the patterns of bumps on their skulls Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Plagued by number of dubious methods 2. Physiognomy (facial characteristics)  Detecting personality characteristics based on facial features  The term “lowbrow,” which today refers to someone who’s uncultured, derives from the old belief that most non-intellectual people have protruding foreheads and a low brow line.  Falsified.  However , research has found some truth. Example, in one study observers accurately gauged men’s tendencies toward physical aggressiveness by glancing briefly at their faces Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  All previously mentioned methods lacked two key criteria – reliability and validity  Reliability: consistency of measurement  Validity: the extent to which a test measures what it purports to measure.  These are the two key criteria for evaluating all tests, including personality tests. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  3. Sheldon’s body types (William Sheldon)  Drawing inferences about people’s personalities from their body types  Highly muscular (mesomorphs): assertive and bold  Lean and skinny (ectomorphs): introverted and intellectual  Rounded and soft (endomorph): relaxed, comfortable, extraverted  All lacked two key criteria – reliability and©validity Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Paper-and-pencil tests consisting of questions you respond to in one of a few fixed ways  Set response options e.g. true/false, Likert-type scale  Advantages: relatively easy to administer and score; researcher can collect data from many participants simultaneously  The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is most researched test  567 true-false questions  10 basic scales ; 8 of which measure mental disorders (e.g. depression & schizophrena  Used to detect symptoms of mental disorders  Revised version: MMPI-2 Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Developed using empirical method of test construction  Researchers begin with two or more criterion groups such as a group of people with a specific psychological disorder (depression) and a group of people without any psychological disorder  Researchers examine which items on the test distinguish both groups  E.g. items on the MMPI depression scale will distinguish among these two groups  As a result of using the empirical method, the MPPI and MMPI-2 have low face validity  Extent to which respondents can tell what the items are measuring  “I think new-born babies look very much like little monkeys” Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Items with low face validity are thought to be difficult to fake  Contains three validity scales designed to detect various types of distorted responses  L (Lie) detects impression management  Making ourselves look better than we really are  F (Frequency) detects malingering  Making ourselves appear psychologically disturbed  K (Correction) measures defensive/guarded responding  Distorted responses can diminish the validity of psychological tests Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Most scales of the MMPI are both reliable as well as valid for differentiating among mental disorders  E.g. the MMPI-2 schizophrenia scale distinguishes individuals with schizophrenia from those with other severe disorders, like clinical depression  Problematic in several ways  Redundant scales  Not used for formal diagnosis: not because the scale is elevated means there is a disorder  Scales can be misused for the purpose of diagnosis  An offspring of the MMPI is the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Requires test developers to begin with a clear-cut conceptualization of a trait and then write items to assess that conceptualization  Items are created based on some theory related to the trait  Some have strong reliability and validity (NEO PI-R) but others do not (Myers-Briggs)  NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R), a widely used measure of the Big Five.  The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), based largely on Jung’s theory of personality Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Ask examinees to interpret or make sense of ambiguous stimuli (e.g. inkblots, drawings or incomplete sentences).  Influenced by psychoanalytic theory of personality, specifically Freud’s notion of projection  Based on projective hypothesis  When interpreting ambiguous stimuli, people project aspects of their personality onto them  Test interpreters work in reverse to examine people’s answers for clues containing their personality traits Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Freedom in responding, as there are no set response options  Valuable because they have the ability to bypass conscious awareness and defense mechanism to offer insight info an individual’s unconscious conflicts  Controversial, because reliability and validity are in dispute Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Consists of ten symmetrical inkblots, five in black-and-white and five containing color  Examiners ask respondents to look at each inkblot and say what it resembles  This supposedly tells you about personality traits of the respondent  The Rorschach is one of the most commonly used of all personality measures Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Unknown test-retest and problematic interrater reliability scores  Little evidence that it detects features of mental disorders  Lack of incremental validity  Extent to which a test contributes information beyond other, more easily collected, measures  Takes a long time to administer and interpret  There’s no evidence that the Rorschach exhibits incremental validity beyond more easily collected data, such as life history information or the MMPI Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Requires subject to construct a story based on pictures  Consists of 31 cards depicting ambiguous situations, most of them interpersonal in nature  Interpretation  “Impressionistic”: inspect the content of the examinee’s stories and analyze them using clinical intuition alone  Little evidence that impressionistic TAT interpretations generate scores with adequate reliability or validity Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Often failed to distinguish psychiatric patients, such as people with clinical depression, from non-patients, or to predict personality traits  Lack of evidence for incremental validity  The TAT is moderately valid for assessing what psychologists call object relations— perceptions of others, such as whether people see others as helpful or harmful  A system has also been developed to score TAT measures on the need for achievement – possess some amount of validity Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Human figure drawings require you to draw a person(s) in any way you wish  E.g. Draw-A-Person Test and House-Tree-Person Test  Interpreted based on drawing ‘signs’ (e.g. big eyes in drawings may mean suspiciousness)  Low to non-existent correlations between personality traits and drawing signs  Poor test-retest reliabilities. Why?  Confounded with artistic ability: persons may be considered psychologically disturbed just because they draw poorly Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Graphology – analysis of handwriting – is another projective test  Many firms in the United States and abroad use graphology to detect potential employees who are prone to dishonest behaviour  Many of the handwriting signs used by graphologists rely heavily on the representativeness heuristic (because certain handwriting features bear a superficial resemblance to certain traits, graphologists assume they go together).  For example, some graphologists maintain that individuals who cross their t’s with lines resembling little whips are sadistic  No scientific support for its use and claims Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  Let’s say you completed a personality measure and this is the interpretation you received:  Some of your hopes and dreams are pretty unrealistic. You have a great deal of unused potential that you have not yet turned to your advantage. Although you sometimes enjoy being around others, you value your privacy.You prize your independence and dislike being hemmed in by rules and restrictions. You are an independent thinker and do not accept others’ opinions without strong evidence.You sometimes have serious doubts about whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. Despite these doubts, you are a strong person whom others can count on in times of trouble. _____________________________________________________________________  After reading your response is “This is so me!”, only to be told by the test administer that this description is not based on your results, but instead it is identical to one that all 100 previous participants have received. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.  The PT Barnum effect and the tendency to accept high base rate descriptors as accurate  We may be convinced that the results of a personality test fit us to a T, but that doesn’t mean the test is valid.  Demonstrates that personal validation - the use of subjective judgments of accuracy - is a flawed method of evaluating a test’s validity.  May help to explain astrological horoscopes  Overall, personality assessment can be useful, but only if using valid, reliable instruments Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.