Psych 3700 Test 1 Notes PDF

Anything in bold is a vocab term from the textbook! (still have to go thru textbook for chapter 3 and chapter 5) CHAPTER 1 ​ Personality ○​ Set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his...

Anything in bold is a vocab term from the textbook! (still have to go thru textbook for chapter 3 and chapter 5) CHAPTER 1 ​ Personality ○​ Set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with and adaptations to the intrapsychic, physical, and social environments ○​ Trait descriptive adjectives: Words that describe traits, attributes of a person that are reasonably characteristic of the individual and perhaps even enduring over time. ○​ Psychological traits: Characteristics that describe ways in which people are unique or different from or similar to each other. Psychological traits include all sorts of aspects of persons that are psychologically meaningful and are stable and consistent aspects of personality. ○​ Within the individual: The important sources of personality reside within the individual—that is, people carry the sources of their personality inside themselves—and hence are stable over time and consistent over situations. ​ Traits ○​ Average tendencies: tendency to display a certain psychological trait with regularity. For example, on average, a high-talkative person will start more conversations than a low-talkative person. This idea explains why the principle of aggregation works when measuring personality ○​ Mechanisms are the processes of personality that impact information processing ○​ Mechanisms involve inputs, decision rules, outputs ○​ Optimism ​ Input: being unsuccessful ​ Decision rules: scan the environment for the positives of the situation ​ Output: continue to try, work ○​ Go with us from situation to situation ○​ Organized, meaning these mechanisms are linked ○​ Enduring: When psychological traits are stable over time. ​ Influential forces: Personality traits and mechanisms are influential forces in people’s lives in that they influence our actions, how we view ourselves, how we think about the world, how we interact with others, how we feel, our selection of environments (particularly our social environment), what goals and desires we pursue in life, and how we react to our circumstances. ​ Person-environment interaction: A person’s interactions with situations include perceptions, selections, evocations, and manipulations. ​ Adaptation: Inherited solutions to the survival and reproductive problems posed by the hostile forces of nature. Adaptations are the primary product of the selective process. ​ Environment: Environments can be physical, social, and intrapsychic (within the mind). Which aspect of the environment is important at any moment in time is frequently determined by the personality of the person in that environment. ​ Challenges to personality theory ​ Stability across time ​ Stability access situations ​ Personality can alter… ○​ Perceptions or how we interpret a situation or event ○​ Selection of situations we want to enter ○​ Evocations or the reactions we elicit from others ○​ Manipulations or how we try to persuade others ​ Situations can alter the expression of personality ​ Three Levels of personality analysis ○​ Human nature ​ How we are like all others ​ Traits and mechanisms of personality that are typical of our species and are possessed by nearly all everyone ○​ Group differences ​ Refer to ways in which people of one group differ from those in another group ○​ Individual uniqueness/differences ​ How we are like no others ​ Refers to the fact that every individual has personal qualities not shared by any other person in the world ​ Can be studied nomothetically (The study of general characters of people as they are distributed in the population, typically involving statistical comparisons between individuals or groups) or idiographically (The study of single individuals, with an effort to observe general principles as they are manifest in a single life over time) ​ Grand theories of personality ○​ Attempt to provide a universal account of the fundamental physiological processes and characteristics of our species ○​ Statements about the universal core of human nature lie at the center of grand theories of personality (such as the sigmund freud psychoanalytic theory) ​ Contemporary research in personality ○​ Addresses ways in which individuals and groups differ ○​ Usually the psychologist specialize in a particular domain ​ Six domain of knowledge ○​ Dispotional ​ Deals in the way in which individuals differ from one another ​ Cuts across all other domains ​ Focuses on number, nature , consequences of fundamental dispositions ​ Those working in domain seek to identify and measure the most important ways in which individuals differ from one another ​ Interested in origin of individual differences and how they develop overtime ○​ Biological ​ Humans are collections of biological systems, and these systems provide building blocks for behavior, thought, emotion ​ Behavioral genetics of personality ​ Psychophysiology of personality ​ Impact of evolution on human psychological functioning ○​ Intrapsychic ​ Deals with mental mechanisms personality many of operate outside conscious awareness ​ Linked to classic and modern version freud's many of which operate outside conscious awareness ​ Linked to class and modern version of friends theory of psychoanalysis including his work on repression denial, projection ○​ Cognitive-experimental ​ Focuses on thought processes and subjective experiences such as conscious ideas feelings beliefs and desires about oneself and other ​ Self and self concept ​ Goals we get and strive to meet ​ Emotional experiences in general overtime ○​ Social and cultural ​ Assume that personality affects and is affected by cultural and social contexts ​ Groups can differ tremendously from one other ​ At the level of individual within cultures personality plays itself in the social sphere ○​ Adjustment  ​ Personality plays a key role in cope adapt and adjust to events in our daily lives ​ Personality is linked with health related behaviors and problems in coping and adjustment ​ Good theory ○​ A theory that serves as a useful guide for researchers, organizes known facts, and makes predictions about future observations. ​ Theories ○​ Theories, on the other hand, are based on systematic observations that can be repeated by others and that yield similar conclusions. ​ Beliefs ○​ Beliefs are often personally useful and crucially important to some people, but they are based on leaps of faith, not on reliable facts and systematic observations. ​ Scientific standards for evaluation personality theories ○​ The five key standards are comprehensiveness, heuristic value, testability, parsimony, and compatibility and integration across domains and levels. ​ Compreshensivesness: One of the five scientific standards used in evaluating personality theories. Theories that explain more empirical data within a domain are generally superior to those that explain fewer findings. ​ Heuristic value: An evaluative scientific standard for assessing personality theories. Theories that steer scientists to important new discoveries about personality are superior to those that fail to provide this guidance. ​ Testability: The capacity to render precise predictions that scientists can test empirically. ​ Parsimony: The fewer premises and assumptions a theory contains, the greater its parsimony. This does not mean that simple theories are always better than complex ones. Due to the complexity of the human personality, a complex theory—that is, one containing many premises—may ultimately be necessary for adequate personality theories. ​ Compatibility and integration across domains and levels: A theory that takes into account the principles and laws of other scientific domains that may affect the study’s main subject. CHAPTER 2 ​ Sources of personality data ○​ Observer- report data (o-data) ​ Provides access to information not attainable thru other sources ​ Multiple observers can be used to assess a person ​ Strategies for selecting observers ​ Using professionals ​ Using people who actually know the target person ○​ Remain a better position to observe targets natural behaviors than personality assessors ○​ Allows for the assessment of social personalities (different aspects of personality), inter-rater reliability ○​ May be biased bc of their relationship with the target ​ Naturalistic vs artificial observation ​ Naturalistics ○​ Observers witness and record event that occur in the normal course of the lives of the participants ○​ Maintains the advantages of being able to secure info in th realistic context ○​ Bust not being able to control the events witnessed, target behavior may not occur ​ Artificial ○​ Artificial settings or citations ○​ Maintains an advantage of controlling conditions and eliciting relevant behavior, but at the cost of sacrificing realism, making generalizations of observations more difficult ​ Multiple social personalities: Our social personalities vary from one setting to another, depending on the nature of relationships we have with other individuals. ​ Disadvantages ​ Subject reactivity ​ Time consuming  ​ Subjects object to being observed ​ Observer bias ○​ Confirmation bias ○​ Self report data (s-data) ​ Info provided by a person thru a survey or interview ​ Unstructured: open ended questions ​ Structureded: response options are provided ○​ Likert scale: 1 to 7 range of how outgoing you are etc ​ Experience sampling: People answer some questions, for example, about their mood or physical symptoms, every day for several weeks or longer. People are usually contacted electronically (“beeped”) one or more times a day at random intervals to complete the measures. Although experience sampling uses self-report as the data source, it differs from more traditional self-report methods in being able to detect patterns of behavior over time. ​ Research ​ Valuable in measuring where observation is difficult large N, quick, individuals have access to wealth of info about themselves that is inaccessible to anyone else ​ Dispel false consensus effect ​ Problems ​ Retrospective ​ Social desirability ○​ Socially desirable responding refers to the tendency to answer items in such a way as to come across as socially attractive or likable. ○​ Crowne and marlowe have a scale for this ​ People lack self knowledge ​ Biased sample ​ Forced choice questionnaire ​ Test takers are confronted with pairs of statements and are asked to indicate which statement in the pair is more true of them. Each statement in the pair is selected to be similar to the other in social desirability, forcing participants to choose between statements that are equivalently socially desirable (or undesirable), and differ in content. ○​ Test data (t-data) ​ Particulation situation: constructed to measure responses and relate responses to a personality type ​ Strengths ○​ Allows for control ​ Disadvantages ○​ Participants may try to guess what trait is being measured then alter their behavior to create certain impressions ○​ Participants may try to guess that trait is being measured and may alter their behavior to create certain impression ○​ Difficile to know if participants define the testing situation as intended by the experimenter ○​ Researched might influence how participants behave ​ Normative tests: norms measuring personality, standard set of questions and subjects responses are compared to normative sample ​ Advantages ○​ Long history of use ○​ Has research and clinical applications ​ Disadvantages ○​ Are they reliable, valid and have adequate generalization ​ Mechanical recording devices: automated device to measure children's activity level ​ Strengths ○​ Unhampered biases of human observation ○​ Obtainable in naturalistic settings ​ Disadvantages ○​ Few personality dispositions lead themselves to mechanical assessment ​ Physiological data: PET, fMRI ​ Included info about potential indicators of personality such as levels of arousal or reactivity ​ Key benefit is that it is hard to fake responses ​ fMRI: A noninvasive imaging technique used to identify specific areas of brain activity. As parts of the brain are stimulated, oxygenated blood rushes to the activated area, resulting in increased iron concentrations in the blood. ​ Disadvantages ○​ Often used in artificial lab setting  ○​ Accuracy of recording hinges on whether the participant perceives citation as the experimenter intended ​ Projective tests: ambiguous stimulus presented and subject responds​ ​ Techniques ○​ Person is presented with ambiguous stimulus is asked to describe what he/she sees ○​ Assumption is the person prejects his personality onto the stimulus ○​ Strength ​ May provide useful means for gathering info about the wishes desires and fantasies that a person is not aware of and couldn't report ○​ Disadvantages ​ Difficult to score and uncertain validity and reliability ○​ Life-outcome data (l-data) ​ Info that can be gleaned from events activities and outcomes in a person's life that are available for public scrutiny ​ Can service as important source of real life info about personality ​ How could we measure the impact of personality impact on life success? ○​ Issues in personality assessment ​ Inking different data sources ​ Fallibility of personality measurement ​ All sources have limitations ​ Results that replicate thru triangulation are the most powerful ​ Evaluation of personality measures ○​ Reliability ​ Degree to which an obtainted measure represents true level of trait being measured is the test accurate and consistent ​ Repeated measurement: A way to estimate the reliability of a measure. There are different forms of repeated measurement, and hence different versions of reliability. ​ Response sets ​ The tendency of some people to respond to the questions on some basis that is unrelated to the question content. ​ Noncontent responding ​ The tendency of some people to respond to the questions on some basis that is unrelated to the question content.  ​ Acquiescence (yea saying) ​ A response set that refers to the tendency to agree with questionnaire items regardless of the content of those items ​ Extreme responding ​ A response set that refers to the tendency to give endpoint responses, such as “strongly agree” or “strongly disagree” and avoid the middle part of response scales, such as “slightly agree,” “slightly disagree,” or “am indifferent.” ​ measures of reliability ​ Test-retest reliability repeat measure overtime ​ Inter-rater reliability: different observers are compared ​ Internal consistency reliability: single point in time, items on a test measure the same constrict ○​ Validity ​ Degree to which a test measures what it claims to measure ​ Type of validity ○​ face validity: on the surface does it appear to measure the construct ○​ Predictive (criterion) validity: tests predict external criteria, life outcomes ○​ Convergent validity: does it correlate well with other measures of the construct ○​ Discriminant validity: does the test not correlate with measures unrelated to the construct ○​ Construct validity: broadest type, bring all the above together ○​ Theoretical constructs: Hypothetical internal entities useful in describing and explaining differences between people. ○​ Generalizability ​ Degree to which a measure retains its validity across different contexts, including different groups of people and different conditions ​ Research designs in personality ○​ Experimental methods ​ Used to determine causality ​ Whether one variable causes another ​ Manipulation of variables ​ Ensuring that participants in each experimental condition are equivalent to each other ○​ Experiment ​ An investigator manipulates one or more factors (independent variables) to observe their effects on some behavior (dependent variable) ​ By random assignment of participants or matching on a factor the each controls other relevant factors ​ Counterbalancing: in some experiments, manipulation is within a single group. For example, participants might get a drug and have their memory tested, then later take a sugar pill and have their memory tested again. In this kind of experiment, equivalence is obtained by counterbalancing the order of the conditions, with half the participants getting the drug first and sugar pill second, and the other half getting the sugar pill first and the drug second. ○​ Correlational studies ​ Correlation is a statistical procedure for determining whether there is a relationship between two variables ​ Determines strength and direction of relationship ​ Designed to identify what goes in what in nature and not designed to identify casual relationship s ​ Major advantage is that it allows us to identify relationships among variable as they occur naturally ​ Coefficient coefficient can vary from -1 (perf negative relationship) thru 0 (no relationship) to + 1 (perfect positive relationship) ​ Correlation does not equal causation!!! Because of… ​ Directionality problem : One reason correlations can never prove causality. If A and B are correlated, we do not know if A is the cause of B, or if B is the cause of A, or if some third, unknown variable is causing both B and A. ​ Third variable problem: One reason correlations can never prove causality. It could be that two variables are correlated because some third, unknown variable is causing both. ​ statistically significant: Refers to the probability of finding the results of a research study by chance alone. The generally accepted level of statistical significance is 5 percent, meaning that, if a study were repeated 100 times, the particular result reported would be found by chance only five times. ○​ Case studies ​ In depth examination of the life of a person ​ Advantages  ​ Can find out about personality in great detail ​ Can give insights into personality that can be used to formulate a more general theory tha is tested on a larger sample ​ Can give in depth knowledge about an outstanding individual such a as political or religious personality ​ Disadvantages ​ Results based on the study of a single person cannot be generalized to others ​ Traditional technique ​ Idiographic (1 at a time) ​ When to use each of the above? ○​ Each design has strengths and weaknesses ○​ Design chosen by a researcher depends on the research question and goal of the research ○​ Taken together , the three designs provide complementary methods for exploring personality ​ Summary ○​ Decisions about data source and research design depends on the purpose of the study ○​ No perfect data source ○​ No perfect research design ○​ Some data sources and methods are better sued for some purposes than for others CHAPTER 3 ​ Trait descriptive adjectives ○​ Words that describe traits and attributes of person that are characteristic of a person perhaps enduring overtime ​ Three fundamental questions guide those who study traits ○​ How should we conceptualize traits? ○​ How can we identify which traits are the most important among the many ways in which individuals differ? ○​ How can we formulae a comprehensive taxonomy of traits - a system that includes within it all the major traits of personality? ​ Definitions of trait ○​ Traits as internal causal properties ​ Presumed to be internal  ​ Indivs carry their desires needs and wants from one situation to next ​ Desires and needs are presumed to be casual ​ Explain behavior of individuals who possess them ​ Traits can lie dormant ​ ​ Capacities are present even when behaviors are not expressed ​ Scientific usefulness of viewing traits as causes of behavior lies in ruling out other causes ○​ Purely descriptive summaries ​ Traits are descriptive summaries of attributes of a person ​ No assumption about internality nor causality assumed ​ Psychologists are that we must first identify and describe important indiv difference and subsequently developm causal theories to explain them ​ Identification of the most important traits : 3 approaches ○​ Lexical ​ Hypothesis: All important indiv differences have become encoded within the natural language ​ Trait terms are helpful in describing people for communicating info about them ​ Two criteria for identifying important traits ​ Synonym frequency: the more words in a language to describe a trait, the greater the importance of that trait ​ Cross-cultural universality: the more import a trait is the greater likelihood there is a language for he trai across cultures ​ Limitation ​ Personality conveyed thru different parts of speech including adjectives , nouns, and adverbs ​ Lexical approach is a good starting point for identifying important indiv differences but should not be the only approach used ○​ Theoretical ​ Hypothesis: Starts with a theory that determine which variable are important ​ Example - maslow , self actualization ​ Strengths coincide with of the theory, and weaknesses coincide with weaknesses of he theory ​ Sociosexual orientation: According to Gangestad and Simpson’s theory of sociosexual orientation, men and women will pursue one of two alternative sexual relationship strategies. The first mating strategy entails  seeking a single committed relationship characterized by monogamy and tremendous investment in children. The second sexual strategy is characterized by a greater degree of promiscuity, more partner switching, and less investment in children. ○​ Statistical ​ Hypothesis: Starts with large diverse pool of personality items ​ Most researchers using lexical approach turn to statistical approach to distill rating of traits adjectives into basic categories of traits ​ Goal of this approach is to identify the major dimensions of personality ​ Factor analysis ​ Identifies groups of items that covary or go together but tend to not covary with other groups of items ​ Provides means for determining which personality variable share some common property or being within the same group ​ Useful in reducing the large array of diverse traits into smaller more useful set of underlying factors ​ Factor loading: index of how much variation in an item is explained by a factor ​ Cautionary note: u only get out of factor analysis what you put in ​ Evaluating the approaches for identifying important traits ○​ In practice many personality researcher use a combo of the 3 approaches ○​ Norman , goldberg, and saucier started with the lexical strategy to identify the first set of variable for inclusion ​ Used factor analysis to to reduce the set to a more manageable number (five) ​ This strategy solves 2 problems central to the science of personality ​ Problem of identifying key domain of indiv differences ​ Problem of describing structure that exists among individual differences identified ​ Taxonomies of personality ○​ Eysenck's hierarchical model of personality ​ Believed the traits were highly heritable and had psychophysiological foundation ​ Three traits meet the criteria ​ Extraversion - introversion (E) ○​ High score is people who enjoy parties have many friends like to have people to take to like playing practical jokes on  others display carefree and easy manner and have high activity level ​ Neuroticism - emotional stability (N) ○​ High scorers are worriers ○​ Usually anxious and depressed ○​ Have trouble sleeping experience array of psychosomatic symptoms and overreact to negative emotions ○​ More arousal to stressful events ​ Psychoticism (P) ○​ High scores are solitary individuals ○​ Tough minded, creative ○​ Less empathy ○​ At extreme dark triad ​ Hierarchical structure of eysenck's system ​ Super traits (PEN) are at the top ​ Narrower traits are placed in the second level ​ Third level habitual acts ​ Lowest level are specific acts on particular days ​ Hierarchy has the advantage of locating each specific personality relevant act within an increasingly precise nested system ​ Biological underpinnings ​ Key criteria for basic dimensions of personality ○​ PEN have moderate heritability but so do many other personality traits ○​ Psychological traits should have identifiable physiological substrate ​ P - testosterone levels ​ E - CNS arousal ​ N - changeability of autonomic nervous system ​ Limitations ○​ Many other personality traits show moderate heritability ○​ Eysenck may have missed important traits ○​ Circumplex taxonomies of personality ​ Interpersonal traits: What people do to and with each other. They include temperament traits, such as nervous, gloomy, sluggish, and excitable; character traits, such as moral, principled, and dishonest; material traits, such as miserly or stingy; attitude traits, such as pious or spiritual; mental  traits, such as clever, logical, and perceptive; and physical traits, such as healthy and tough. ​ Adjacency: In Wiggins circumplex model, adjacency indicates how close the traits are to each other on the circumference of the circumplex. Those variables that are adjacent or next to each other within the model are positively correlated. ​ Bipolarity: In Wiggins circumplex model, traits located at opposite sides of the circle and negatively correlated with each other. Specifying this bipolarity is useful because nearly every interpersonal trait within the personality sphere has another trait that is its opposite. ​ Orthogonality: Discussed in terms of circumplex models, orthogonality specifies that traits that are perpendicular to each other on the model (at 90 degrees of separation, or at right angles to each other) are unrelated to each other. In general, the term “orthogonal” is used to describe a zero correlation between traits. ○​ Five factor model ​ In 1930s Allport and Odbert used lexical approach and with thru dictionary and indeed 17953 trait ​ Cattel did not have computers for factor analysis bit using 4500 stable traits reduced it to 171 cluster traits and then 35 clusters ​ Fiske in 1949 took 22 clusters and using factor analysis arrives at the five factor model ​ Types and christal in 1961 used the 22 clusters to derive the current big five. Subsequent research replicates the 5 ​ Five broad factors ​ Extraversion ○​ High ​ Social attention is primary ​ The goal and payback for surgent or extraverted behavior. By being the center of attention, the extravert seeks to gain the approval of others and, in many cases, through tacit approval controls or directs others ​ Tend to be happier ​ Enjoy their work more ​ Tend to by physically stronger ​ Drive to fast, more accidents, more road fatalieis  ​ Dont save as much money retirement ○​ Low ​ Don't want social attention ​ Agreeableness ○​ High ​ Want to get along ​ Use negotiation strive for harmony in all aspects of life ​ Prosocial and empathic ​ High might not attain in workplace ○​ Low ​ Low agreeableness and more aggressive ​ Conscientiousness ○​ High ​ Industrious ​ Higher gpa ​ Greater job satisfaction ​ Set high standards for themselves ​ More likely to delay gratification make good financial investments ○​ Low ​ Risky sexual behavior ​ Break rules ​ Neuroticism (emotional stability) ○​ Low or stable ​ Cope with stressors ○​ High or less stable ​ Mood swings ​ More fatigue ​ Poor health ​ Openness-intellect ○​ High ​ Experimentation ​ Trying new things ​ More creative ○​ Low ​ Closed to trying new things ○​ Each represents a continuum  ○​ Originally based on a combo of lexical and statistical approaches ○​ Big 5 taxonomy has achieved greater degree than any other trait taxonomy in the history of personality trait psychology ​ Combos ​ Good grades ○​ High conscientiousness, High emotional stability ○​ Milgram obedience to authority: high conscientious high agreeableness ○​ Risky sexual behavior: high extraversion, low emotional stability, low conscientiousness, low agreeableness ○​ Leadership effectiveness: high extraversion, high agreeableness, high conscientiousness, high emotional stability ​  ​ ​ Empirical evidence for the five factor model ​ Replicable in studies using english language trait words as items ​ Found by more than a dozen researchers using diff samples ​ Replicated in diff languages ​ Replicated in every decade for the past half century showing its replicable overtime ​ Replicated using different item formats ​ Replicates with self report using single word adjectives and using sentences ​ Fifth factor openness ​ Some disagreement remains about the content and replicability of the fifth factor ○​ Personality-descriptive nouns: As described by Saucier, personality-descriptive nouns differ in their content emphases from personality taxonomies based on adjectives and may be more precise. In Saucier’s 2003 work on personality nouns, he discovered eight factors, including “Dumbbell,” “Babe/Cutie,” “Philosopher,” “Lawbreaker,” “Joker,” and “Jock.” ​ Is the model comprehensive?  ​ Possible omissions ○​ Religiosity or spirituality ○​ Attractiveness ○​ Sexuality ○​ HEXACO ​ Some argue that most comprehensive cross language taxonomy of personality is best captured by the HEXACO model ​ Humility - honesty (H) ​ Emotionality (E) ​ Extraversion (X) ​ Agreeableness (A) ​ Conscientiousness (C) ​ Openness to experience (O) ​ ⅚ factors are very close to the big 5 although there are subtle differences ​ Honestly humility factor has accrued strong construct validity ​ High scores are more likely to offer sincere and humble apologies, even though less likely to violate social rules ​ More likely to be sincerely religious ​ Low tend tend to be interpersonally exploitative , are more likely to sabotage others in their work environment and are even more likely to engage in criminal activity ​ Evaluation ​ HEXACO is being validated in many diff cultures ​ Evidence continues to accumulate that honestly humility is not well captured by the five factor model ​ Summary ○​ Many different approach to identifying important traits ○​ Personality psychologists use a blend of approaches ○​ Formulating an overarching taxonomy of personality traits is fundamental CHAPTER 5 ​ Personality development: The continuities, consistencies, and stabilities in people over time, and the ways in which people change over time. ​ Rank order stability ○​ Maintenance of individual position within a group ​ Mean level stability ○​ A population that maintains a consistent average level of a trait or characteristic over time ​ Mean level change ○​ Within a single group that has been tested on two separate occasions, any difference in group averages across the two occasions is considered a mean level change ​ Personality stability over time ○​ Stability of temperaments during infancy ​ Temperament: individual differences that emerge very early in life are heritable, and are involved behaviors linked with emotionality ​ Based on the rating given by caregivers temperament factors include activity level smiling and laughing fear distress to limitations soothability and duration or orienting ​ Longitudinal studies: Examines individuals over time ​ Actometer: A mechanical motion-recording device, often in the form of a watch attached to the wrist. ○​ Research points to ​ Stable individual diff emerge early in life when they can be assessed by observers ​ For most temperament variables there are moderate levels of stability over time during the first year of life ​ Stability of temperament is higher over short intervals of time than over long intervals of time ​ Level of stability of temperament increases as infants mature ​ Activity level and smiling tend to be more stable ○​ Stability of aggression ​ 16 longitudinal studies of aggression across childhood ​ Measures included teacher ratings , direct observation, and peer ratings ​ Moderate rank order stability found across ages ​ Aggression emerges early in life and is predictive of aggression at 21 years ​ Stability coefficients decline as the time between measures increases  ​ Validity coefficients: The correlations between a trait measure and measures of different criteria that should relate to the trait. ○​ Rank order stability in adulthood ​ Across diff self report measures of personality conducted by diff investigators over different time intervals and broad personality traits have shown moderate to high levels of stability ​ Average correlation across traits scales and time intervals is +.65 ​ Stability found in spouse and peer reports ​ Personality consistency tends to increase in linear fashion with age ​ More set with age ○​ Mean level stability and change in adulthood ​ Big 5 personality factors show a consistent mean level stability overtime ​ Still very little change in the average level of stability after the age of 50 ​ There are small but consistent changes especially during the 20s ​ Openness, extraversion, neuroticism decline with age until 50 ​ Conscientiousness and agreeableness show gradual increase with time ​ Personality change over time ○​ Flexibility and impulsive ​ Decreases in impulsivity and flexibility with age ​ Less impulse and more fixed in their ways ​ Self esteem: “The extent to which one perceives oneself as relatively close to being the person one wants to be and/or as relatively distant from being the kind of person one does not want to be, with respect to person-qualities one positively and negatively values” ​ Personality coherence over time ○​ Marital stability, marital satisfaction and divorce ​ 300 couples from 1930s to 1980s ​ Friends rated the person's personality ​ Aspects of personality strongly predicted marital dissatisfaction and divorce ​ Husbands neuroticism ​ Husbands lack of impulse control ​ Wifes neurontin ○​ Alcoholism and emotional disturbance ​ In long study of men high neuroticism predicted later development of emotional disturbance  ​ Alcholichic men had lower impulse control scores than men with emotional disturbance ○​ Adult outcomes of children with temper tantrums ​ Men as children with severe temper tantrums achieved lower levels of education lower occupational status at their first hob, changed jobs frequently, and had erratic work patterns ​ In the military men who has temper tantrums as children achieved lower rank than their peers ○​ Prediction of personality change ​ Can we predict who is likely to change and who is going to stay the same? ​ Caspi and Herbener (1990) studied middle aged couples over an 11 yr period in 1970 and again in 1981 ​ Researchers asked if the choice of marriage partner was a cause of personality stability or change ​ People married to a spouse highly similar to themselves showed the most personality stability ​ People married to a spouse least similar to themselves showed the most personality change ○​ Cohort effects: Personality changes over time as a reflection of the social times in which an individual or group of individuals live. Test 1 -​ Concept of mechanisms -​ Know definition of personality -​ Watch videos -​ Prisoner and guards -​ Understand how personality can alter the way we see information/select situations, etc. -​ More questions from chapter 3 than others -​ Understand traits are causal (can be dormant) -​ Know about lexical, theoretical, and statistical approaches! (and have examples) -​ Understand synonym frequency vs cross cultural universality -​ Know about factor analysis -​ How eyesynck is different from the others , assumes heritability and physiological (PEN) know each of those -​ Big five -​ Temperament