PSYCH 333 Notes PDF

Introduction and Research Methods September 5, 2024. 1. Definition of Personality - 3 general criteria: 1. Conveys sense of consistency or continuity, stability across time and/or situations. Within the person. Consistent through time and in situations, even different situation...

Introduction and Research Methods September 5, 2024. 1. Definition of Personality - 3 general criteria: 1. Conveys sense of consistency or continuity, stability across time and/or situations. Within the person. Consistent through time and in situations, even different situations. --> behave the same way consistently 2. Causal force from within the person (internal causality). Anything the person does (feeling, thinking, behaving) comes from within. --> thoughts, feelings, and behavior = psychological triad OR ABC (affect, behavior, cognitive) 3. Distinctiveness – qualities that summarize what an individual is like. Because the qualities are distinct in the behavior of the person - Personality: a dynamic organization, inside the person, of psychophysical systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns of behavior, thoughts, and feelings. 1. Personality has organization. Not a random assortment a. Patterns and hierarchies' direct activity/behavior 2. Personality has processes and causal forces a. It is deterministic – personality is something and does something. Dynamic not dormant. Relate to other people 3. Personality is psychological and physical. Psychophysical. The brain and body’s relationship with the mind (mental processes) a. It is neither exclusively mental nor neural – it is both 4. Personality is individualized patterns a. Recurrences and consistencies 2. Personality Psychology: Themes - Individual Differences o No two people are exactly alike. Individuals are different o A perspective on personality should address where these individual differences come from, and why they are important - Intrapersonal Functioning o The idea that there are deterministic tendencies or propensities that exist within the individual, which are elicited from situational factors. Ready to be activated when the individual needs them o Ex. different motives or needs exist within us, which can be elicited from different situations. To be activated, the situation is considered 3. Psychological Triad - Thoughts, feelings, and behavior o Important independently of each other. Can be meaningful in their own right ▪ (more interesting when they are combined and/or have conflict) o Inconsistencies between them is where personality psychology comes in. Personality psychologists deem that people-puzzles are worth solving/worthy of attention ▪ Personality psychologists deem these inconsistencies (puzzles) worthy of attention 4. What is Personality? - Personality refers to an individual’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms behind those patterns (Funder, 2013) - Personality has a unique (and difficult) mission to explain whole persons September 10, 2024. 5. Basic Approaches to Personality - These approaches complement rather than compete with each other because each addresses a different set of questions about human nature and personality. Portrayed in competition. The original researcher made claims that their approach accounted for anything they wanted to know about personality and other claims are wrong. o Ex. Sigmund Freud --> was adamant and vocal about his psychoanalytic approach being the best and correct, he rejected and ostracized his followers for disagreeing with him. o Ex. B. F. Skinner --> he announced loudly, vocally, and adamantly that behaviorism explained everything relevant to psychology. Apparently took a great deal of pleasure?/pressure? and delight in making bold claims saying that people don't have traits, thoughts, freedom, and dignity. o These bold claims are not that rare. They are not limited to just one or two basic approaches, like psychoanalysis and behaviorism, that are often very closely associated with one individual famous founder. - Each approach can be useful for handling its own key concerns. - Each one typically tends to ignore the concerns of the others. Can even deny that other questions don’t exist - The important thing to know about this table is that each approach/perspective focuses/emphasizes on different focal topics. - A perspective refers to a particular orientation/angle from which we can view things from the various theorists tended to proceed. - Each perspective will reflect fundamental assumptions about human nature that were deemed to be important from that particular perspective. - Each provides an orientation to human nature. o It provides a window into the human experience and what we can see through that window, which is going to be limited. - Each perspective/theory tends to differ widely in terms of their starting point which can get confusing. o Each starting point, in some way, is always in reference to a view on human nature that can help. - Each seems to be pretty good at addressing certain topics and very poor at addressing others. 6. One Big Theory? - A theory that accounts for certain things extremely well will probably not explain everything else so well. This principle is true. Faced by personality theorists - A theory that tries to explain almost everything would probably not provide the best explanation for any one thing. 7. Funder’s First Law (Funder, 2013)  - GREAT STRENGTH ARE USUALLY GREAT WEAKNESSES, AND SURPRISINGLY OFTEN, THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE AS WELL o Ex. Personality psychology’s broad mandate to account for the psychology of the whole person and real-life concerns o In other words, advantages and disadvantages have a way of being so closely connected, so closely intertwined as to virtually be inseparable. o Applies to the fields of research, theories, and individual people o Personality psychology provides a good example of this law ▪ Personality psychology’s biggest advantage over other areas of psychology is that it has this mission, a broad mandate, to try to account for the psychology of whole people, whole individuals in their environment/real-life concerns. However, it can lead to research that tends to be overly broad, inclusive, and unfocused. o According to one analysis, the personality and so-called ethical flaws of several leaders were the exact same attributes that allowed them to effectively attain and use their power. Their strengths were often their weaknesses o Ted talk: Josh Shipp “your child’s most annoying trait may just reveal...” ▪ Redirect the annoyance, cultivate the talent ▪ An adult to be patient o Each approach made a deliberate decision to ignore some aspect of psychology and focus on other ones 8. Pigeonholing - Personality psychology tends to emphasize how individuals are different from one another. Emphasizes how individuals are unique and different to one each other. Pigeonholing: assigning a definite place in an orderly category/system --> categorize or label - Often entails categorizing and labelling people, but it also leads the field to be extraordinarily sensitive to the fact that people really are different 9. Funder’s Second Law (Funder, 2013) - THERE ARE NO PERFECT INDICATORS OF PERSONALITY; THERE ARE ONLY CLUES, AND CLUES ARE ALWAYS AMBIGUOUS o Henry Murray commented that to understand personality, first you have to look at it; but what do you look at exactly? ▪ 4 things to do: Ask the person what they think they are like (ask the person for their own perspective/opinions on what they think they are like) Talk to other people who know that person well and try to get their perspective/opinions on what that person is like Check on how the person is doing/faring in their daily life Observe what the person does and try to measure their behavior directly and objectively as possible o The observable aspects of personality, the things that you can observe/see are often best characterized as being clues = clues are always uncertain, ambiguous, or incomplete because personality is hidden. It resides hidden within each individual o You can't see personality directly so you must make inferences, assumptions about what a particular behavior might mean. ▪ Ex. How a person answers a question, how they interact with others, how they perform activities in daily life, etc. 10. Data are Clues  - Personality resides hidden inside each individual, therefore inferences about personality must be based on indications that can be observed - A psychologist trying to understand an individual’s personality is a bit like a detective solving a mystery o Inferences about personality must be based on indications that we can observe ▪ Ex. How a person answers a question, how they interact with other people, how they perform activities in daily life, how they respond to various assessment procedures, etc. 11. Funder’s Third Law (Funder, 2013) - SOMETHING BEATS NOTHING, TWO TIMES OUT OF THREE o Something is usually better than nothing o The psychologist should maintain a healthy skepticism about the possibility that some clues might be misleading. o But this skepticism should not go too far. 12. S Data (Ask the person directly = self-reports) - The way people describe themselves by and at large matches the way they are described by others (Funder, 1999; McCrae, 1984; Watson, 1989) - S Data have face validity: they ask questions that are directly and obviously related to the construct they are designed to measure. Intended to measure what they seem to be measuring on their face or on their surface - The most common basis for personality assessment o The basic principle behind the use of S data is that the world’s best expert about your personality is most likely going to be you o S data is simple and straightforward because the psychologist is not interpreting what the participant is saying/asking one thing to try to figure out something else September 12, 2024. - Advantages: o Access to a large amount of information quickly and easily: ▪ Can reflect complex aspects of character that no other data source could access ▪ Although a few people who may be very close to you might be with you in many situations in your life, you are the only one who is present in all of them. = a unique perspective on the general nature of your personality that no other aspect/data could possibly access ▪ “Wherever you go, there you are” o Access to thoughts, feelings, and intentions: ▪ Inner mental life is private yet important, S data provides a unique and indispensable source of data (Spain, Eaton, & Funder, 2000) ▪ A great deal of your inner mental life that would be invisible to everyone else from the outside is visible and accessible to you. ▪ You know your own fantasies, hopes, dreams, fears, and intentions. You directly experience your own emotions. People can only know these things if you let them know ▪ Provides a unique and indispensable source of data that may not be accessible via any other means o Definitional truth: ▪ Some aspects of personality are self-views; thus, the S data have to be correct. = Some types of data/information are true by definition ▪ They must be true/correct because they are your self-views of yourself. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks e.g., self-esteem o Causal force:  ▪ What you think of yourself may be among the causes of what you do. S data reflect what you think you are and therefore, they have this way of becoming true/creating their own reality ▪ What you may attempt to do/accomplish often depends on what you think you can do/accomplish. Your view/perspective of the type of person that you are, can have important effects on the goals that you set for yourself. = self-efficacy (or efficacy expectations) ▪ Sometimes people will work very hard to get others to see them the way that they see themselves. People may go out of their way for other people to see them the same way that they do. = self- reliance e.g., efficacy expectations, self-verification o Simple and easy to obtain: ▪ Can obtain a great deal of interesting, important information about a lot of people quickly and at relatively little cost. Cost effectiveness: S data has no comparison, they cannot be beat ▪ Psychological research operates on a low budget compared with research in other sciences ▪ It may be the only data that is readily available (financially or if it's the only one available) for psychologists - Disadvantages: o Maybe they won't tell you: ▪ Knowledge (of intentions and/or self-views) only translates into S data only if the individual is willing to reveal it. There is no way to force someone to provide an accurate account of who they think they are. ▪ If the person withholds information, the S data they provide will be compromised. No way to prevent this Accuracy and validity will be compromised o Maybe they can’t tell you ▪ Exceptional events stand out in memory ▪ Fish-and-water effect (Kolar et al., 1996). Failure of self-judgment --> people can become used to how they behave, think, etc. Which can stop seeming unique/remarkable, so they fail to notice it. Ex. Consistently kind --> can fail to notice its distinct to them or its unique. Actions stop feeling remarkable. A person's personality may become invincible to them ▪ Lack of insight. Some people may lack the ability to see all aspects of their personality accurately o Too simple and too easy ▪ S data are so cheap and easy that they are probably overused (Funder, 2001; Vazire, 2006). Used so much that other types of data are forgotten PQ1: the goal of personality psychology is to: a. Explain the whole person in their daily environment b. Explain how people think in ways that differ from each other c. Understand extreme patterns of personality d. Develop one big theory to explain everything about personality 13. I Data (Ask somebody who knows) - I data are judgments by knowledgeable informants about general attributes of the individual’s personality, such as traits. Gather the views/opinions of people who know the person well in their daily life. “I” stand for informant data - Key is that informant is well-acquainted with the individual they are describing - Frequently used in daily life o Informants' knowledge is based on the fact that they know the person well/well acquainted with who they've been recruited to describe  o I data are judgments. They come from someone observing someone else in whatever context they encountered them in and providing a general opinion on what they think the person is like on the basis of their observations. Judgmental, subjective, and very human ▪ Ex. ordinary conversation/gossip is I data - Advantages: o Large amount of information ▪ Descriptions based on hundreds of behaviors in dozens of situations ▪ Could have multiple informants ▪ Ex. a typical informant for university students is roommates o Based on observations in the real world: ▪ Extra chance of being relevant to aspects of personality that affects important life outcomes o Take advantage of people’s common sense (smarts): ▪ Judgments take context into account ▪ Context includes the immediate situation, and other behaviors that the informant might know about. The meaning of behavior depends on the context or situation. If they have seen this person. ▪ Basis of judgment. Behavioral judgment/observations filtered through individuals' perceptions/common sense o Definitional truth: ▪ Some aspects of personality reside in the reactions of other people. e.g., how “charming” you are --> charm seems to exist in the eyes of other people. An individual might find it hard to answer it for themselves o Causal force: ▪ Reflect your reputation; which can greatly affect both your opportunities and expectancies ▪ To some degree, people become what others expect them to be (expectancy effects/behavioral confirmation – to care about what people think of you) - Disadvantages: o Limited behavioral information: ▪ There is a sense in which each person lives inside a series of separate compartments, and each compartments contains different people ▪ The I data provided by any one person will have limited validity as a description of what you are like in general o Lack of access to private experience: ▪ Much of inner mental life is shared sparingly, can only be reflected in I data to the extent that it has been revealed to someone else o Error: ▪ No informant can remember everything. Mistakes that occur randomly. Not perceived, they are misunderstood ▪ May be likely to remember behaviors that are extreme, unusual, or emotionally arousing o Bias: ▪ Can be affected profoundly by whatever biases the informants may have about the person whose traits they are judging. Systematic, seeing someone in a positive/negative way than they deserved e.g., “letter of recommendation effect” (Leising, Erbs, & Fritz, 2010) --> letting participants nominate their own informants ▪ Biases of a more general type are also common (e.g., the informant is sexist) PQ2: which of the following is a strength of personality psychology? a. It uses pigeonholing b. It treats all people as if they were the same  c. The basic approaches ignore areas they cannot explain d. It is inclusive September 17, 2024. 14. L Data (Life outcomes) - Verifiable, concrete, real-life facts that may hold psychological significance. - Can be thought of as the results, or “residue” of personality rather than a direct reflection of personality itself. Manifestations of what the person has done has affected their world. o Ex. just like how a snail leaves behind a trail = our behavior has left a track. - Includes important life outcomes, health, and the physical environment - Netflix video: Gilmore girls. Rory broke up with Dean --> talking about L data. Episode 17 “the breakup, part II” - Ex. The state of a bedroom may be determined what you have done which in turn may be determined by what type of person you are = if true, personality can be determined by looking at a bedroom - Youtube video: Sam Gosling --> “dr. Phil tests your personality” o Pragmatic, conventional, conscientious - Advantages: o Objective and verifiable: ▪ Outcomes are specific and may even be expressed in exact, numeric form ▪ Specific and objective behavior ▪ Rare type of precision o Intrinsic importance: ▪ Often constitute exactly what the psychologist needs to know (applied research) ▪ Ex. To an applied psychologist working as a parole officer/social workers/school counsellor, L data is exactly what they’re interested in or want to have an effect on. Predict and have a positive impact. Criminal behavior, employment status, success in school... o Psychological relevance: ▪ In many cases are strongly affected by/and may even be uniquely informative about psychological variables ▪ Ex. Some people might have certain traits that may promote career success or psychological makeup that could make them prone to certain kinds of behavior (ex. Criminal behavior) ▪ An individual's personality can have important effects on health relationship factors, etc. ▪ May be influenced by factors that are not psychological (ex. Criminal behavior can be affected/influenced by a degree by neighborhood) - Disadvantages: o Multideterminism: ▪ Have many causes, so finding specific connections might be difficult. Not just one cause. = trying to establish a connection can be difficult ▪ May not be associated with only one trait, or may not be associated at all ▪ L data may not be caused/determined by personality at all ▪ If it is your job, your chance of success is limited. Even if you fully understand the person, the possibility of predicting things about them will be limited. Constrained to the degree of any of the outcomes are impacted/influenced by personality in the first place o Possible lack of psychological relevance ▪ Chances of successfully predicting L data from personality are limited ▪ Can only predict an outcome to the degree that it is psychologically caused PQ3: What does it mean to say that S data have causal force?  a. S data cause personality b. What people think about themselves influences how they behave c. How people behave is caused by what others think of them d. People's environments cause their self-perceptions 15. B Data (Watch what the person does) (Behavior) - The most visible indication of an individual’s personality is going to be what they do = behavior. Watch their actions, behavior. Observe their behavior as directly as possible - Participants are placed in a testing situation and then their behavior is observed o A context in the person’s real life or an artificial setting. Information is recorded from direct observations and that is what constitutes B data. o Can also be derived from certain kinds of personality tests. Natural and contrived o Idea behind B data is participants are found in real life situations or artificial situations (a testing situation) and then behavior is directly observed 1. Natural B Data - Diary methods: Not self-judgments, but direct and detailed indications of specific behaviors. A compromised form. o Ex. Daily diaries that detail everything they did that day, who they talked to, etc. - Experience-sampling methods: Moment by moment reports of what people are doing or feeling - Ambulatory assessments (e.g., EAR). o Electronic activated recorded: digital audio recorder that a participant is asked to carry around with them on a daily basis. Programmed to sample sounds intermittently throughout the day. ▪ Participants give it back after a few days and researchers will listen to the recordings and note what they think the participant was doing. Designed to get what the participant is doing. ▪ However, the limit of EAR is its only audio. The recorder can only record intermittently throughout the day. Ambulatory assessments: Use of computer assisted methods to assess behaviors, thoughts, and feelings during normal daily activities - Disadvantages: difficult, too costly, time-consuming, etc. - Reports of specific behaviors offered by the participant or an acquaintance - Direct observations can come from real life situations, participants behavior in daily life, and normally/ordinary interactions with the people that we know do allow us to have access to some amount of B data about them, and we often draw conclusions based on what we have observed. o Observations are unsystematic and limited to the situations that we happen to share with people - Best/ideal/unrealistic way to collect B data is to hire a detective to follow the participant all day and night and get a detailed report of what the participant did, what they said, who they were with --> unethical and cannot do this - Beeper method: pager that beep to let participant know to stop moving and write down what they were doing in that exact moment - Reports of specific behaviors offered by the participant/informant they know well o Ex. Participant may be asked to record show many calls they took, texts they got, etc. 2. Laboratory B Data - Psychological experiments: Find out how people react to very subtle aspects of situations. Something that happens can be very dramatic/be more ordinary and mundane - Experiments provide opportunities to find out how people may react to very subtle aspects of situations and behaviors that are measured can also be surprisingly informative about personality - (Certain) Personality tests o E.g., Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): “I am a special messenger of the Lord.” ▪ This type of question usually signals that a test is looking for B data because the psychologist is not actually looking for special messengers of the lord. People who answer it true tend to be a little bit different, a bit more unusual, differ from general population  People who tend to answer it as true are more likely to have schizophrenia than people who answer it as false ▪ This is not S data because we are not asking this question and then taking what people say at face value - Physiological measures: The biological “behavior” of the participant. Can also constitute B data o Measures things like blood pressure, sweating, heart rate, etc. ▪ These are classified as B data because they are things that the participant does, usually via their nervous system, that can be precisely observed/measured. Also informative about personality o Physiological measurements of the biological behavior of participants = informative about personality - Advantages: o Range of contexts: ▪ Can provide important information about aspects of their personalities that are ordinarily hidden ▪ Ex. How would you know how you would respond to being in a room when smoke starts to pour under the door unless you actually face the situation? Some aspects can be hidden because these scenarios just never present themselves o Appearance of objectivity: ▪ The psychologist gathers information directly, and can increase their precision People can distort/exaggerate their self-reports so the direct gathering of data appeals to psychologists Also makes it more likely that psychologists can devise techniques to improve/increase their precision and reliability ▪ May be expressed in numeric form, and be gathered with high reliability Many measurements can be gathered with high precision, high reliability, and may even be expressed in exact numeric form Can be gathered with a high degree of reliability if appropriate care is done ▪ B data are not quite subjective as they might seem because many subjective judgments have been made by researchers made along the way such as choosing what which behaviors you want to observe, for how long and how you rate them. - Disadvantages: o Uncertain interpretation: ▪ Numbers do not interpret themselves ▪ Appearances are often ambiguous or even misleading, and so it is impossible to be entirely certain what they mean Behaviors can be measured with great precision but what those measures actually mean psychologically is less clear ▪ Can’t know what the data means and measures, psychologically, just by looking at it o Youtube video: the marshmallow test | igniter media | church video ▪ Delay of gratification ▪ The test is how long the kids can wait for an instant reward or wait for the reward valued more than the first ▪ The measure is if we are satisfied to regard it purely operationally and therefore non-psychological ? ▪ When we are saying that what is happening is the psychological tension between not wanting to wait and wanting the better treat = we call it delay of gratification and therefore we are making a deeper psychological claim ▪ Analyzed the longest delaying children = characterized to be helpful, cooperative, obedient, etc. The time spent waiting was the children's tendency to cooperate with adults/authority figures because they were offered a better reward if they waited.  o They might have thought that waiting for the better reward was what the researchers wanted them to do ▪ At the operational level, the time spent waiting measures the time spent waiting but at the psychological level, when that time is interpreted as a measure of the way of gravitation, things become less clear and more ambiguous. PQ4: identify each type of data 1. How much money a person spends on groceries in a month based on receipts. L data 2. What type of food a student purchases from dining areas and vending machines on campus. B data 3. Reports from parents about what kind of food people ate as children. I data 4. Answers to a “healthy foods, healthy people” survey about one’s self. S data What is the LCPR? Assess? Measurement? Info we might want to have. Case studies and measurement Trait Perspectives, Needs, and Motives September 24, 2024. - It is obvious that no 2 people look exactly alike as well as think, feel, and behave the same way. - Gordon Allport had a research assistant count the number of personality traits words in the English dictionary, and he found 18,000 words. o Allport argued that perhaps one reason why the English dictionary have so many words to describe traits is because traits are important, it’s an important way to intuitively think and talk to each other and about other people. - The trait approach to personality builds on this assumption, the trait of truth builds on these assumptions that traits matter. It does this by trying to translate/transform the natural, every day, informal language of personality into a formal assessment/psychology that allows us to measure traits, to talk about them, explain them, and use them to predict behavior. o A formal psychology that measures traits and uses them to try and predict/explain human behavior. 1. The Trait Approach - Largely based on empirical research that mostly uses correlational designs (trait predicts behavior). o The ultimate criterion for any measurement of personality to be useful is to see whether or not traits can be used to predict behavior ▪ Ex. If a person scores high on a measure of dominance, can we accurately predict that they will act/behave in a dominant way relative to other people in one or more life situations? How well can traits accurately predict behavior? The answer is the correlation between a dominance score/personality trait and some separate indications of a person's behavior - Focuses exclusively on individual differences (i.e., how people compare; how people have more or less of a trait than other people) o Does not attempt to measure how dominant, sociable, nervous, extroverted, etc. a person is in absolute sense. We want to examine these in a relative sense/relative comparisons. In this way, there is no such thing as zero dominance, zero extroversion, zero point on any trait/measure of any psychological attribute. - This approach tries to measure the extent/measure the degree to which a person might be dominant, sociable, extroverted, nervous, friendly, etc. This means that trait measurements are made on an ordinal scale rather than a ratio scale because there is no such thing as zero dominance or zero extroversion !! o Ordinal scale --> the value reflects a rank ordering of each entity that is measured. ▪ Ex. 3 people running a race, and each earns a value of 1-3 if they place the corresponding places. There is no zero point on the scale, you cannot place zero. For third place, it does not necessarily mean that they were 3 times as slow as the first place. o Ratio scale --> the scale has a true zero point, and the measurement can be compared in terms of ratios ▪ Ex. It is possible for one runner to go 3 miles an hour, a runner to go 2 miles, etc. These numbers are rational because we can compare them. It is possible to make those comparisons, to use the ratios, to say that somebody who is going 3 miles an hour is actually going 3 times faster than someone going 1 mile an hour. There is a true zero point o Ex. If person A has a dominant score of 25 and person B has 50, this does not imply that person B is two times more dominant than person A. it just implies that they are more dominant. 2. People are Inconsistent - Maybe people’s behavior is so inconsistent and likely to change according to a given situation that there really is no use in categorizing/classifying/labelling people in terms of broad personality traits. o Implies that not only are the personality measurements/assessments that many professional psychologists do a complete waste of time, but also that much of the everyday way that we seem to think/talk about each other is fundamentally false/flawed. o With this, you can consider the possibility that traits do not exist, and that people are continually changing who they are based on the situations, everybody is in fact the same and there are no individual differences. - There will be numerous exceptions to people’s general or usual way of behaving o People are inconsistent and this type of inconsistency is seen all the time ▪ Ex. A person is shy with strangers but warm/open to family members and friends. People might be conscientious at work but disorganized at home. - Maybe people’s behavior is so inconsistent and likely to change according to a given situation that there really is no use in categorizing/classifying/labelling people in terms of broad personality traits. o Implies that not only are the personality measurements/assessments that many professional psychologists do a complete waste of time, but also that much of the everyday way that we seem to think/talk about each other is fundamentally false/flawed. o With this, you can consider the possibility that traits do not exist, and that people are continually changing who they are based on the situations, everybody is in fact the same and there are no individual differences. - Situations are also important determinants of behavior o Make a person more or less shy, friendly, etc. o Casual everyday observation/experience seems to be enough to tell us that personality traits are not the only factors that are going to affect what a person does, how a person will behave, etc. = situations clearly matter. ▪ Different situations will elicit different types of behaviors. Situations vary according to the people who are present in them and likely the implicit rules that apply, the implicit rules that govern our behavior. ▪ There are often different implicit rules/norms that apply within a given situation. Rules and norms may differ. - Older people appear to be more consistent in their personalities than younger people o Research shows that the stability of the differences between people tends to increase with age. ▪ 30-year-olds = more consistent and stable over time than adolescence/kids ▪ 50–70-year-olds = most stable of all o Older adults typically have started a stable career path, started families, often undertake various adult roles and responsibilities but younger people may not have done these things yet so they may find the idea that people are different and how you act does depend on the situation that you’re in to be more plausible/reasonable. ▪ Might be partly because the personality so still in the design stage (younger people have not had the same experiences) o They may have established a consistent individual identity, and they may therefore simply forget/just not believe that people really can be inconsistent. ▪ Tend to forget/misremember a fluctuating/dynamic/erratic personality that they may have had when they were younger 3. Person-situation Debate - Regardless of your age/stage in life, it's this idea that we see here is so inconsistent across situations that for all intents and purposes, personality traits are not real. = they do not exist. - Focuses on the question of what is important when determining people's behavior: the person or the situation - Triggered by Walter Mischel: by a publication of his book in 1968, “the marshmallow guy”  o He argued that behavior is too inconsistent from one situation to the next to allow individual differences to be characterized accurately in terms of broad personality traits. = he believes that behavior is simply too inconsistent which means there’s no use in characterizing people in broad personality traits o Has implications of understanding... differences and outcomes - Some have argued that this consistency controversy goes to the heart of how we think/talk about people. The way that we intuitively seem to understand and talk about other people. It has important implications for understanding individual differences and important life outcomes. - Has been argued that this debate was prominent because it seems to be aimed at the foundations of the trade approach o To the essentials: the situationist perspective, the situationism argument has 3 main points/components: o Traits are poor predictors of behaviors ▪ A thorough review of the personality literature reveals that there is an upper limit to how well we can predict behavior based on any measurement of a person’s personality. (what they do, how well we can predict a person's behavior based on any measurement of it/trait. This limit is believed to be low. o Situations are better when accounting for differences in behavior ▪ Situations are better/important than personality traits in determining/accounting for differences in people’s behaviors. = situationism o Personality assessments and everyday intuitions about personality are fundamentally flawed ▪ Professional judgments, professional assessments by personality psychologists are a waste of time and our everyday institutions are mistaken/flawed. ▪ The trait words we use to describe people are not legitimately descriptive because people generally tend to see others as being more consistent across situations than we really are. = we believed that people have traits, and we tend to read more consistently into people ▪ Some on the situationist side argue that people who believe that personality is real/exists are committing fundamental attribution error that we simply have this optical illusion that traits are real/exist. Fundamental attribution error: fundamental law of the way we think about people. Cognitive error.. That ???? ▪ The definitive test/ultimate criterion for the usefulness of a personality trait is going to be whether it can be used to predict behavior. If you know somebody’s level/core on a particular trait --> you should be able to predict what that person will do in one/more life situations in the future. Situationists/situationist perspective argue that this predictive capacity is severely limited. There is no trait to predict someone’s behavior with enough accuracy to be useful. - Predictability and consistency can be indicated/indexed by using a correlation coefficient. = indicated/indexes the relationship between 2 variables o (in the case of a personality trait and a behavior) Calculate a correlation coefficient, indicate the level of argument/level to which one variable is related to or predicts another using a correlation coefficient such as a person’s personality score and some indication of their behavior. ▪ Positive correlation: the two values move/change in the same directions (one increase = other increase, one decrease = other decrease) ▪ Negative correlation/inverse correlation: the two values move/change in opposite directions (one increase = other decrease, one decrease = other increase) ▪ The strength of the relationship is more relevant than the direction. = indexed by a correlation coefficient The closer to a correlation coefficient of positive or negative 1, the stronger the relationship/association If a correlation coefficient is near 0, the two variables are unrelated/not associated.  - Mischel’s original argument was that those correlations between personality traits and behaviors or between across two situations rarely exceeds a correlation of 0.3. However, Richard Nisbet (situationist) revised this to 0.4 o The implication is essentially the same = there are small correlations and personality traits are unimportant 4. Are Person Perceptions Erroneous? - Those on the pro-personality side came up with responses/rebuttals to the situationist perspective: o Mischel’s review of the personality literature is essentially what kicked off this entire controversy in the first place, they argue that his review was selective and unfair. ▪ The review goes back for decades and contains thousands of studies. His review was short, only 16 pages long. ▪ Mischel also seemed to concentrate/focus on a small number of studies that obtained disappointing results, rather than concentrating on the other studies which are perhaps more numerous that obtained more impressive findings. o They grant that 0.4 may be true from which we can predict personality, but they claim that this limit is the result of less-than-optimal research methodology. ▪ Might be the true upper limit to predict behavior from personality. ▪ They argue that the weak findings that are summarized by Mischel does not mean that personality is unimportant but just that psychologists can and must do better. They can improve by moving it out of labs. Almost all of the behavioral measurements that form the basis of Michel’s review were made in lab situations. o Looking at behavior in real life = personality may be more likely to become relevant in situations that are real/vivid/important. o 0.4 correlation. ▪ A correlation of a 0.4 is not small to begin with then the limit ceases to be problematic. To be impressed/devastated by the situationists perspective, you have to believe: A correlation of 0.4 represents that true upper limit from which we can predict behavior from personality This upper limit is small. A low upper limit. - Despite the situationist critique, the effects of personality on behavior do seem sufficient to be perceived accurately. o Our intuition of/about each other is not flawed - People really do act differently from each other o Individual differences exist o When it comes to personality, one size does not fit all o Some are more extroverted, talkative, etc. than others o People behave different based on the situation and if you change the situation, the differences are still there. - If we don’t, then why do we have so many words describing personality differences? o Almost 18,000 trait terms in the English language = maybe came about because ideas about personality traits are important. ▪ Important for western and maybe all cultures. o People are psychologically different, and it may be important/interesting to talk about how they are different. o Words seem to have come about to describe these differences. 5. Resolution? - Situational variables are relevant to how people will act under specific circumstances o How people will act in specific situations/circumstances o Situational variables are going to be better/relevant for trying to understand how people will act under specific circumstances/situations - Personality traits are better for understanding how people act in general o Describing how people will act in general. o Personality traits are better for describing how people will act.  - In the long run, personality affects many important outcomes o Personality variables matter because they consist of the psychological aspects of the person they carry along with them throughout life. o People can maintain their personalities even as they adapt their behavior to particular situations ▪ A view of people being flexible and adaptive to situations, as well as generally consistent in their personal style are not necessarily in conflict. - Sad remainder today: psychologists are so used to thinking about the person and the situation as being in competition/opposing forces/one becomes more dominant and other is less so - Interactionism: sees people and situations as constantly interacting and influencing each other o They work together to produce/influence a person’s behavior. PQ5: examine someone's past criminal record through police reports would be an example of: a. S data b. B data c. I data d. L data 6. Reliability - Edward Sorenseid (?) quoted that “If something exists, it exists in some quantity, and if it does then it can be measured” - It has a technical meaning that is different than the way that it is often used. o The common meaning of reliability usually refers to someone/something that you can count on, depend, and rely on. - In measurement, the tendency of an instrument to provide the same comparative information on repeated occasions o Repeatability. ? o These measurements should reflect what you are trying to measure/assess/ and they should not be affected by anything else ▪ Ex. If you find that a personality test taken several times by the same person gives a different score on different days = the test is not reliable. ▪ You are not repeating information. You're not getting the same result more than once. The test is probably being influenced by a thing that it should not be. - Measurement error: the variation of a number around its true mean due to uncontrolled, essentially random influences (a.k.a. error variance) variation of a number around its true mean/average o The overall combined effect of extraneous factors o The variation of a number is due to these uncontrolled extraneous influences that are believed to be random o The less there is of this error = the less there is of this measurement error/error variance = usually the more reliable the measurement will be o The influences considered extraneous depend on what you are measuring - When trying to measure a stable attribute of personality, a trait rather than a state, the question of reliability becomes can you get the same results more than once? o A method/instrument that repeatedly provides the same information is reliable. One that doesn't is not reliable. - 2 aspects of quality: o Reliability and validity ? 7. Validity  - The degree to which a measurement actually reflects what it is intended to measure - The degree/extent to which a measurement actually reflects what you think what the object does o Reliability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for validity - Validity is more complicated than reliability: o For a measure to be valid, it must be reliable. But a reliable measure, may not always be valid ▪ Distinguish between necessary and sufficient conditions. Reliability is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for validity o The concept of validity seems to invoke the notion that we have the ultimate truth, a direct pipeline to what is happening. That we are measuring what we think we’re measuring - A construct: something that cannot be directly seen/touched but we assume exists because it affects and helps other things o Ex. Gravity, intelligence, extroversion 8. Generalizability - The degree to which a measurement can be found under diverse circumstances, such as time, context, participant population, and so on o The extent to which your results can apply/generalize to other people or at other times under different circumstances o Your results can apply/generalize to other people o Includes both reliability and validity. A combination of both into a generalized concept PQ6: one of the biggest disadvantages of b data is: a. Uncertain interpretation b. Lack of psychological relevance c. Lack of real life relevance d. None of these choices are correct 9. Personality Assessment start here for anki - Professional activity of numerous research, clinical, and industrial psychologists, as well as a business that seems to fulfill a persistent need o Ex. Clinicians may measure the degree of a client’s depression in order to plan & track treatment whereas employers may be more interested in measuring a potential employees conscientiousness to decode whether or not to offer that person a job - Not restricted to psychologists - Two criteria for evaluation (validity or accuracy): agreement and prediction o Agreement: asks does this judgment agree with other judgments obtained through other techniques/from other judges o Prediction: can this judgment be used to predict behavior or other life outcomes - The extent to which its right or wrong o Evaluations of professional personality judgments/tests are said to appraise their validity whereas evaluations of amateur judgments generally used the term accuracy 10. Personality Tests - Used by numerous clinical psychologists, military, employers, etc. - Examples: o Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) → “I prefer a shower to a bath” ▪ Initially designed for use in the clinical assessment of individuals with psychological difficulties o California Psychological Inventory (CPI) ▪ Designed for use with non-clinical individuals  o NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI) ▪ Measures 5 broad traits or the big five - Many are omnibus tests; others measure just one trait o Omnibus inventories: designed to measure a wide range of personality traits - Most personality tests provide S data - B data personality test: implicit association test (IAT): measures how quickly participants respond to instructions to differentiate between terms that apply to me or to others and between terms that are relevant or not to the trait being measured - Some psychologists proposed that personality tests based on B data should be called performance-based instruments and these would include instruments such as the IAT, MMPI, and even IQ tests. It also includes instruments that traditionally have been called projective tests. - S data = objective tests 11. Projective Tests - A test that presents a participant with an ambiguous stimulus, such as a picture or inkblot, and asks the person to describe what they see. o Based on an idea called the projective hypothesis: essentially how to see into someone’s mind - Answers reveal inner psychological states or motivations of which the participant may be unaware o Answer cannot come from the stimulus itself because the stimulus doesn't look like/mean anything. Instead, the answer must come from/be a projection of their needs, motives, feelings, experiences, thought processes, and other hidden aspects of the mind. - Examples: Rorschach, TAT (thematic a perception test), Draw-a-Person test - The data of validity of this test is scarce. - Provides B data. Specific, directly observed, responses to a particular stimulus 12. Objective Tests - A personality test that consists of a list of questions to be answered by the participant as True or False, Yes or No, or along a numeric scale (e.g., 1 to 7) o Questions making up the test seems more objective and less open to interpretation than the pictures and ink blots used in projective tests - Still not absolutely objective - Ambiguity may be necessary for responses to imply anything about personality o Commonality scale of CPI ▪ Consists of items that are answered in the same way by most people. Included it to detect individuals who could not read, those pretending they did know how, individuals who are deliberately trying to sabotage the test. ▪ Average score on the test is ~95% but a person answering at random will score about 50% which can be identified and removed from the sample - Use a large number of items o Most have far more than dozen. 100s. o The principle of aggregation: essentially averaging the answer that an individual gives to any one question might not be particularly informative. 13. Accuracy of Personality Judgment - Convergent validation: The process of assembling diverse pieces of information that converge on a common conclusion o “Duck Test” o The idea is if it looks/walks/swims/quacks like a duck = probably is a duck - Two primary converging criteria: for personality judgments  o Inter-judge agreement: The degree to which two or more people making judgments about the same person provide the same description of that person’s personality o Behavioral prediction: The degree to which a judgment or measure can predict the behavior of the person in question 14. Moderator of Accuracy - A variable that changes the correlation between a judgment and its criterion 1. The Good Judge - Highly intelligent and conscientious. Tended to render better judgments - Women vs. Men. Who are better judges of personality? Results are mixed - People high in “communion”. Appears to be someone who invested in developing and maintaining interpersonal relationships - Psychologically well-adjusted 2. The Good Target - Judgeability: the extent to which an individual’s personality can be judge accurately by others - Coherence and consistency in behavior - Extraversion and agreeableness 3. The Good Trait - More easily observed traits are judged with higher levels of inter-judge agreement than are less visible traits o e.g., sociosexuality: willingness to engage in sexual relationships with minimal acquaintanceship with, or commitment to and from, one’s partner o Female judgments of males are accurate, but male judgments of males are even more accurate 4. Good Information - More information is usually better, especially for certain traits - But advantage of longer acquaintanceship does not hold under all circumstances o There is a boundary on the acquaintanceship 15. The Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM) - In order to get from an attribute of an individual’s personality to an accurate judgment of that attribute/trait, 4 things have to happen. o The person judged must do something relevant = do something informative about the trait to be judged o This information must be available to a judge o The judge must detect this information o The judge must utilize this information correctly - You must accurately remember and correctly interpret all the relevant available information that you have detected - According to the RAM, personality judgment can be improved in 4 ways: o Efforts to improve accuracy have focused on attempts to get judges to think better to use good logic and to avoid inferential errors. These efforts are worthwhile 16. Connecting Traits to Behavior - Single-trait approach: what do people like that do? o Examines the link between personality and behavior by asking what do people like that do - Many-trait approach: who does that? - Essential-trait approach: which traits are most important?  - Typological approach: which type are you? o Focusses on the patterns of traits that characterize whole individuals and tries to sort these patterns into types 17. The Big Five - Based on the lexical hypothesis: the idea that if people find something important, they will develop a word for it, and therefore the major personality traits will have synonymous terms in many different languages - Neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness. - Universality of the big five: o Personality questionnaires translated into various languages have yielded at least four of five factors (not openness) o Central attributes are similar to an important degree, yet are also different from one culture to another Biological Perspective 1. Evolutionary Theory - Behaviors seen in people are present because in the evolutionary history of the human species, these behaviors were helpful or necessary for survival - A wide range of human behaviors have been examined from an evolutionary perspective o Foundation of modern biology and modern extensions of the theorizing that began with Charles Darwin’s Origin of the species have been used in the recent years to apply the same type of theory and reasoning to human behavior - Assumes that human behavioral patterns were developed because they were helpful/necessary for survival - Identify a common behavioral pattern/trait then ask how it might’ve been adaptive/beneficial for survival and reproduction for the human species across time/generations 2. Sex Differences in Mate Selection - Men place a higher value on physical attractiveness (Buss, 1989), whereas women are more likely to value economic security o There is evidence that men and women consider attractiveness and resources respectively to be necessary attributes of potential mates not just nice benefits o Both women and men consider intelligence and kindness to be important attributes of their mates - Heterosexual men desire mates several years younger than themselves, whereas women prefer mates who are older than themselves o Ex. The other effect can be seen in play in ads where men look for younger women, describing themselves as financially secure than physically attractive and women would describe their physical charms than their financial ones - Men and women seek the greatest likelihood of having healthy offspring who will survive to reproduce: o Women: Youth and physical health are essential o Men: Essential is his capacity to provide resources conducive to children thriving 3. Mating Strategies - Men: Tend to want more sexual partners o Succeed in having the greatest number of children by having as many children by as many women as possible - Women: Selective about their mating partners, and have a greater desire for monogamy and a stable relationship o More likely to have viable offspring if she can convince the man to stay and support her and the family they create 4. Sexual Jealousy - More distress: o 60% of men chose sexual infidelity o 82% of women chose emotional infidelity - Slightly altered version: o 45% of men chose sexual infidelity o 88% of women chose falling in love 5. Evolutionary Explanations for Individual Differences 1. Diversity is essential - A trait that is adaptive in one situation may be fatal in another 2. Behavioral patterns evolve as reactions to particular environmental experiences - Only under certain conditions does the evolved tendency become activated/come online 3. People may have evolved several possible behavioral strategies and use the one that makes sense given other characteristics - Ex. We may have innate abilities to be both aggressive and agreeable, but the aggressive style only works if you are big and strong otherwise the agreeable style might be a safer course of action 4. Some biologically influenced behavior may be frequency dependent - They adjust according to how common they are in the population at large