Outline of Last LectureOutline of Current LectureCurrent LecturePsy 2301 1st Edition Lecture 8Outline of Last LectureHistorical Uses and Abuses of Intelligence Testing: KallikaksOutline of Current LectureI. What is Personality?II. Mischel vs. EpsteinIII. Principle of aggregationIV. HeritabilityV. Assessing PersonalityCurrent LectureVI. What is Personality?A. Characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting B. Emerges in informal, familiar situations in which we feel unconstrainedVII. Mischel vs. EpsteinA. Mischel1. Situations override concept of personality2. Therefore, we cannot measure consistent patterns of behaviora. Doesn’t believe in personalityb. Situations drive our behavior and not personality traitsc. Personality or behavior is not predictableB. Epstein (person side)1. Consistency in behavior is found if we look at it across time2. The construct is there, but we need to improve measurementsa. Consistency in our behavior over timeb. Correlation between behavior and personalityVIII.Principle of aggregationA. Personality is the sum of the best descriptors and predictors of our actions over time in a number of situations1. Like what Epstein would say2. Person debateIX. HeritabilityA. Personality is thought to have 20-50% heritability X. Assessing PersonalityA. Projective tests1. Projective hypothesisa. A person’s interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus provides us with information about his/her personality2. Rorschach Ink Blot Testa. Developed in 1920s by Swiss psychologistb. 10 inkblotsc. Widely used mid-1920s through mid-1969sd. Exner’s scoring system3. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)a. Developed by Henry Murrayb. Card depicting ambiguous scenesc. Poor reliability and validity4. Sentence Completiona. Series of sentence stemsi. i.e., “Life is…” or “I feel scared when…”5. Draw a _______a. Person, house, family6. Conclusions – Projective Testsa. Based upon psychoanalytic tradition; difficult to studyb. Generally lacking normative datac. Best for generating hypothesesB. Objective Tests1. Definitiona. Structured and unambiguous2. Standardizationa. Administered to many to obtain norms3. Assumptionsa. Stable traitsb. Individual differencesc. Traits are measurable4. Historya. WWIi. Screening recruits for emotional instability5. Formata. T/Fb. Likert Scalei. Strongly disagree disagree neither agree strongly agreec. Scales6. MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory)a. Empirically derivedi. Give it to test group and control group, and compareb. T/F self-report questionnairec. 575 itemsd. Minimum age = 14; 6th grade reading levele. Three main types of scalesi. Validityii. Clinicaliii. ContentAssessing PersonalityA. Objective Tests1. MMPI: Validity Scalesa. ? (Cannot say)b. L (Lie)c. F (Infrequency)d. K (Defensiveness)2. MMPI Clinical