2 2 2012 two different systems of cognition system 1 ancient o all parts of our thinking that are quick intuitive and effortless 2 o pattern detection Unconscious feeds results to system o step outside room and see someone walking is it someone I know Special part of brain that recognizes faces people who have damage to this part of the brain can not recognize faces o Tell you do I like this person or not Are they dangerous System 2 o Part of our thinking that is more slow and deliberate Uses logic and rationality o When people have a stroke system 2 is more likely to be damaged o Develops much later takes a long time System 1 influences system 2 The Dunning Kruger effect o In competence leads to too much confidence o They are so bad that they don t realize how bad they really are American idol auditions People that are over competent are actually under competent Assume that people around them are always better hard to remember that things don t come as easily to everyone else o We are all by nature really bad at critical thinking incompetent Use intuition to study personality Disney movies People who are physically ugly are evil mean bitter villain Attractive nice kind thoughtful empathetic physical attractiveness is characterized by confidence narcissism much more likely to behave rudely above average Unattractive people are more likely to be nice halo effect everyone who is attractive is nice funny talented etc can cover over time the bad characteristics an ugly person can be made attractive by their good personality Why are we studying personality scientifically Thales of Miletus 6th cent B C o The natural world is lawful and the laws of nature are discoverable etc People assumed that spirits animated the wind Supernatural agency use magic to notice correlations Thales said that he was not disputing that there is something greater but supernatural explanations don t get you anywhere when trying to explain things o Arguments from authority mean nothing question everything In group and out group Told followers to challenge everything that I am teaching you still be part of the in group Form community that is a training ground for critical thinking o Objective observations Science serves as a corrective to our built in biases Don t rely on arguments from authority i e question authority false Stay humble you have lots of biases your thoughts may be Be wary of group think Innovate new ways of thinking without being kicked out of the group Rely on objective evidence replicable experiments In essence science yields evolution of new ideas mutation and natural selection o Computers phones tablets Trait approach Trait o A stable attribute of personality o EX impulsivity warmth agreeableness hostility dominance Etc Traits are dimensional rather than categorical with each person somewhere in a continuum o Trait is on a spectrum o There is a level middle ground o Measure level of introversion and extroversion all are somewhere on the continuum Trait approach ignores underlying causes just focuses on traits are predictors of future behaviors o The best way to predict what someone will do in the future is to look at what they have done in the past Situationist critique Mischel are traits really stable across situations o Average level of happiness when I was in 8th grade 7 o Average level of happiness when I was 7 10 o How happy am I now 8 o Every person has a certain happiness set point You can increase your base line 2 7 2012 Correlation coefficient measures strength of association between two variables Rules of thumb o 0 r 0 2 weakly correlated o 0 2 r 0 5 moderately correlated o 0 5 r strongly correlated correlation does not imply causation logical fallacy Reliability if you repeat the study you are likely to get the same type of results every time you do it IQ test the WAIS o If you give someone the full IQ test then give it to the same person a month later the correlation is about 5 o Knowledge of one variable tells you the other Assessment of traits personality tests Reliability the similarity of results on a test across different measurements how consistent is the test o Myers Briggs Validity the degree to which a given instrument or experiment actually measures what it purports to measure how valid is the test A projective tests e g Rorschach 100 years ago Draw a person TAT 70 years ago handwriting analysis Advantages management o They don t know what you are giving away impression o Ink blot food responses and maturity invalid o Make use of color well integrated emotional life invalid B Objective tests The scoring and interpretation are both really straight forward No whimsical interpretation Any two psychologists come up with the same results Self report 2 9 2012 Objective tests TAT Draw a Person Handwriting Rational method each item rationally derived from underlying theory o The roommate test o Base only on rational method then we have a theory that something is important Empirical method data driven not relying on theory o Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory MMPI 550 items true false I tend to be somewhat on guard to people who are friendlier than I expected theory would say true but the empirical method would say false o Advantage not transparent so hard to fake replies you don t know exactly what they are looking for so you are more honest with your answers o Disadvantage shrinkage often poor validity Every time you are tested with the empirical test you get a shrinkage response The depression scale is inaccurate Factor analysis sophisticated extension of rational method o Uses sophisticated statistics to help measure target construct Cluster of items that are heavily correlated o Big Five factor analysis of 17 953 trait words 5 underlying factors Allport s theory if there is any meaningful trait we should have a word for it Rating themselves and others by using these 16 underlying dimensions they correlated with Costa and McCray found that there were only 5 words each other dimensions They replicate across cultures age etc find in the newspaper an exampled of a reporter confusing correlation and causation paragraph Big Five Neuroticism negative emotionally o Reactive high negative emotionally more likely to develop a mental illness shorten one s life expectancy Higher hormones Ever alert to possibility that something might go wrong Highly sensitive to the distress pain of others Easily discouraged or overwhelmed o Resilient low negative emotionally Largely