Psych 290 1st EditionExam # 2 Study Guide Intro To Personality PsychWhat is personality?A person’s characteristic manner of thinking, behaving, and feelingWhat is the difference between personality psychologist and others?Concerned not only with how people are similar but WHY they are that way and why not everyone is thesameWhat is Personality Psychology?What is Funder’s definition of personality? An individual’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior together with the psychological mechanisms behind those patternsWhat are 3 things that personality psychologists study? Who also studies them?Thoughts, feelings and behaviorsWhat is similar or different between clinical and personality psychology?Both try to understand whole person, clinical = more extreme personalityWhat is the main goal of personality psych?To explain the whole person in her or his daily environmentWhat is the trait approach?Examining a person’s particular characteristics, especially as they are like and unlike those of othersWhat is the biological approach?How genetics, environment, evolutionary forces, heredity, etc. all influence our thoughts, feelings, behaviorsWhat is the psychoanalytic approach?How the unconscious mind influences our thoughts, feelings, behaviorsWhat is the phenomenological approach?How one perceives and interprets what is happening in one’s environment Humanistic psychology Cultural psychologyWhat is the behavioral approach?Examines how learning through reward, punishment, and experience influences behaviorWhat is the cognitive approach?- Interested in processes of memory, perception, thought- Social learning through observation, self-evaluationWhat is Funder’s First Law?“Great strengths are usually great weaknesses, and surprisingly often the opposite is true as well.”Clues to PersonalityWhat is Funder’s Second Law?There are no perfect indicators of personality, there are only clues and clues are ambiguousHow do you collect “Self” data?Directly as the person about themselves (questionnaire or interview)What are some advantages? Disadvantages?A: easy, person may be best expert on themselves, other people don’t know thoughts and motivation, can compare peoples resultsD: overused, memory is imperfect, lack of self-insight, lying, ulterior motives, What is social desirability?The tendency to respond to questions in a socially acceptable mannerWhat is Funder’s 3rd law?Something is better than nothingHow do you collect “Informant” data?Ask other people that know the person being investigatedWhat are some advantages? Disadvantages?A: comes from observing behavior in real world, data comes from common senseD: Compartmentalization ( people act differently in different parts of their lives), judgement is wrong, time consuming, bias, informants can disagreeHow do you collect “Life” data?Collect public information ( court records, social media)What are some advantages? Disadvantages?A: real world outcomes, objective and verifiable, psychologically relevantD: not all due to personality, takes time, context not considered, is it actually psychologically relevant? How do you collect “Behavioral” data?Collect from diaries, in “laboratory setting”, look how people behaveWhat are some advantages? Disadvantages?A: observe in range of contexts, control context, can deliberately elicit specific behavior, more objectivyD: difficult to interpret, many behaviors have ambiguous meaning, open to researcher bias, time consuming What is Funders 4th Law?There are 2 kinds of data, Terrible data or no dataHow we Gather Clues to PersonalityWhy is “evidence” not “proof”?We can’t prove things in social sciencesWhat is a case study?Study one person in depthWhat are some advantages? Disadvantages?A: detailed and more complicated, source of ideas for further investigation, D: uncontrolled, specific to personWhat is a correlational study?Can be called “cross-sectional”, all data collected at once, What are some advantages? Disadvantages?A: real-life data, uses measurements, east to accomplishD: correlation is NOT causation, cannot determine causalityWhat is an experimental study?Attempts to establish causation, manipulate variables, random assignment,What are some advantages? Disadvantages?A: establishes causal link, can control setting, can be replicatedD: many variables cant be manipulated, cant account for all variables, not real life settingWhat is a quasi-experimental design?Related to correlational and experimental, looking for causal factors by comparing group outcomesWhat is it used for?With “naturally occurring” groupsFor variables that cannot be manipulatedWhat is the problem with generalizability?If we want to draw general conclusions about all people, is it representative?What is a construct in psychology?A concept that we want to measureWhat is reliability?Does it accurately and consistently measure the construct every time it is used? What is validity?Does it measure what it is supposed to measure?* valid measure must be reliable What is Face validity?The items look like what they are asking about What is Predictive Validity?We can predict someone’s behavior based on their scoreWhat is Convergent Validity?Does the score on the measure you are using correspond with other similar measuresWhat is divergent validity?Do scores on the measure differ from dissimilar tests What is significance represented with?p-value, Max=.05 pWhat Is effect size?Magnitude of effect only if the study is significantGathering Clues to PersonalityWhat type of data are projective tests based on?Behavioral dataWhat are 3 examples of projective tests?Rorschach inkblot test, thematic apperception test(TAT), “draw-a-person” testWhat are some advantages? Disadvantages?A: clues to unconscious content that person may not be aware of D: takes a long time, several interpretations, is it reliable? Valid?What type of data are objective tests based on?Self-report DataWhat are the 3 ways to create objective tests?Rational method, factor analytic, empirical What type of validity do items of a rational test have?Face validityWhat are the 4 conditions to a rational method?1) Items must mean the same thing to the person taking the test and the researcher2) Person answering must be able to make accurate self-assessment3) Person answering must be willing to report honestly4) The measure must be an accurate gauge of the personality characteristics in questionWhat