week-1-personality-intro-lecture.pdf

lOMoARcPSD|28762649 Week 1 - Personality Intro lecture Personality Psychology (University of South Australia) Scan to open on Studocu Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university Download...

lOMoARcPSD|28762649 Week 1 - Personality Intro lecture Personality Psychology (University of South Australia) Scan to open on Studocu Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university Downloaded by Alexia Jones ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|28762649 PERSONALITY PSYCH- WEEK 1: INTRO INDIVIDUAL UNIQUENESS: how we are like no feelings, beliefs and desires about oneself PERSONALITY others, can be studied nomothetically (statistical comparisons between groups) or ideographically and others - Self and self-concept INTRO (focuses on a single person) DOMAINS OF KNOWLEDGE - Goals we set and strive to meet - Emotional experiences, in general and over DISPOSITIONAL time PERSONALITY DEFINED - Deals in ways in which individuals differ SOCIAL AND CULTURAL LAY DEFINITION: personality: the distinctive from one another (cuts across all other - Assumption that personality affects, and is character or qualities of a person, often as distinct domains) affected by, cultural and social contexts from others (character, nature, temperament, - Focus on number and nature of - Individual differences within cultures- how disposition, make-up, persona, identity) fundamental dispositions personality plays out in the social sphere, Personality is the set of - Goal is to identify and measure the most including work on sex differences and psychological traits (characteristics that important ways in which individuals differ gender differences in personality processes, describe ways in which people are different - Also interested in the origin of individual traits and mechanisms from each other) and differences and how these develop over - At human nature level of analysis, all mechanisms (the process of personality; for time. humans have common set of concerns they example, information processing- input BIOLOGICAL struggle with in the social sphere. - Core assumption of biological approaches is ADJUSTMENT decision rules output)) that humans are collections of biological - Personality plays key role in how we cope, within the individual (something that you carry systems, and these systems provide adapt, and adjust to events in daily life with you over time) that is building blocks for behaviour, thought, and - Personality linked with important health organised and relatively enduring (organised emotion. outcomes and problems in coping and on priorities of needs and stable over time) - Behavioural genetics of personality adjustment and that influences (the traits that influence - Psychophysiology of personality the way you interact with others) - Evolutionary personality psychology PERSONALITY THEORIES a persons’ interactions (perceptions, selection, INTRAPSYCHIC - Research is often informed by theory- evocation, manipulation) with, and - Deals with mental mechanisms of serves as a guide for researchers adaptations (adaptive functions) to the personality, many of which operate outside - Theories are not beliefs (or opinions) environment (including the intrapsychic, conscious awareness organises own findings - Classic and modern versions of Freud’s - Theory has several key purposes – makes physical, and social environment) theory of psychoanalysis, including work on predictions about behaviour and repression, denial, projection, and motives psychological phenomena that no one has LEVELS OF PERSONALITY ANALYSIS for power, achievement, and affiliation. yet documented or observed HUMAN NATURE: how we are ‘like all others’, traits COGNITIVE-EXPERIENTIAL - Comprehensive and mechanisms that are typical to our species - Focuses on cognition and subjective - Testable INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP DIFFERENCES: how we experience, such as conscious thoughts, - Heuristic value are ‘like some others’ - Parsimonious Downloaded by Alexia Jones ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|28762649 PERSONALITY PSYCH- WEEK 1: INTRO - Consistent - Situation designed to elicit behaviours that - Degree to which measure represents ‘true’ serve as indicators of personality level of trait being measured in that - Elicited behaviour ‘scored’ without reliance population on inference - Necessary but not sufficient for validity Limitations - Researcher might influence how participants behave SOURCES OF PERSONALITY DATA - Participants might guess what trait is being SELF_REPORT DATA (S-DATA) measured - Internal: the correlation of items within the - Individuals have access to a wealth of - Difficult to know if participants define measure information about themselves that is testing situation as intended by researcher - Temporal (test-retest): correlation of scores inaccessible to anyone else Mechanical recording devices from T1 and T2 in same group of individuals Personality tests - Good: not hampered by human observer - Alternate forms: two parallel forms of a - Unstructured items: open ended - Bad: not so good for personality test are created, if high equivalent - Structured items: response options Physiological data coefficients >.80 provided - Good: difficult to fake responses - Inter-rater Limitations - Bad: used in labs- participants perceptions= Factors affecting reliability - People may not respond honestly experimenter intention - Test length: more items, more reliability - People may lack accurate self-knowledge Projective techniques - Homogeneity of items: more similar, more OBSERVER REPORT DATA (O-DATA) - Good: info about wishes, desires, fantasies reliability – not too similar!! - Provide access to information not attainable - Bad: difficult to score, uncertain validity and - Test-retest interval: less time, more R through other sources reliability - Variability of scores: larger variance, more R - Multiple observers can be used to assess a LIFE-OUTCOME DATA (L-DATA) - Guessing: less guessing, more R person - Can serve as important source of ‘real-life’ - Variation in the test situation: less v, more R Selecting observers information about personality. - Sample size: larger sample size, more R - Professional personality assessors - People who actually know the target person ISSUES IN PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT VALIDITY Naturalistic vs artificial observation - Links among different data sources - Does the test measure what it purports to - NATURALISTIC: observers witness events in - Fallibility of personality measurement: all measure? normal course of lives of participants, sources of data have limitations - Takes bias into account (Flynn effect) realistic but at cost of no control of events - Results that replicate through triangulation Content validity: - ARTIFICIAL: occurs in artificial settings, can are most powerful - Do the items on the test represent the control conditions but at the cost of domain being assessed? Does the test sacrificing realism. MEASUREMENT ISSUES measure the domain of interest? Are the TEST DATA (T-DATA) RELIABILITY test questions appropriate? Does the test - Idea is to see if different people behave contain enough information to cover differently in identical situations appropriately what it is supposed to Downloaded by Alexia Jones ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|28762649 PERSONALITY PSYCH- WEEK 1: INTRO measure? What is the level of mastery at - Correlational studies: what goes with what which the content is being assessed? - Case studies: focus on a single subject Face validity: - Do the items look like they’re measuring the construct? SUMMARY Construct validity: - Decisions about data source and research - The degree to which a test measures a design depend on the purpose of study specified psychological construct or trait. - There is no perfect data source Does the measure correlate with - There is no perfect research design related/unrelated measures? - But some fata sources and some methods are better suited for some purposes than Criterion related validity: for others. - The extent to which test scores correlate with a criterion or outcome. Concurrent validity: - degree to which scores on 2 related measures correlate Predictive validity: - does it predict real world outcomes? Predictive power: - the extent to which a test agrees with an outcome criterion measure used to classify individuals in a particular category or determine if they have a particular trait. GENERALISABILITY - Degree to which a measure retains validity across different contexts, including groups of people and conditions - Subsumes reliability and validity - Greater generalisability not always better, what is important is to identify empirical contexts in which a measure is and is not applicable RESEARCH DESIGNS IN PERSONALITY - Experimental methods: causality Downloaded by Alexia Jones ([email protected])