Chapter 1 Learning Objectives 1 What is personality Know the definition of personality as well as how it is different from Social Psychology and other related fields e g Developmental abnormal clinical counseling Personality psychology is the scientific study of the whole person Concerned with the development of human beings from birth to death Social psychologists focus on human sociality while personality psychologists focus on human individuality Developmental psychology concerns itself with meaningful change and transition over time personality psychologists tend to focus on those aspects of the person that show some degree of continuity or stability over time Abnormal and clinical counseling psychology considers problems in human life such as psychopathology mental illness and behavioral dysfunctions Personality psychology proper tends to focus more on relatively normal functioning and the wide varieties of psychological individuality that may be expressed among more or less well adjusted people It is not centrally concerned with psychotherapy and other treatment aspects of clinical practice 2 What is the difference between personality traits and mechanisms Personality traits are those general internal and comparative dispositions that we attribute to people in our initial efforts to sort individuals into meaningful behavior categories and to account for consistencies we perceive or expect in behavior from one situation to the next and over time 3 What are the differences between personality traits characteristic adaptations and life stories What are the major components to each of these three terms Personality traits are those general internal and comparative dispositions that we attribute to people in our initial efforts to sort individuals into meaningful behavior categories and to account for consistencies we perceive or expect in behavior from one situation to the next and over time o Major components the Big Five traits construction and validation of scientifically useful measures of individual differences in personality traits Characteristic adaptations are contextualized facets of psychological individuality that speak to motivational cognitive and developmental concerns in personality o Major components human motivation goals motives life plans cognition and personality developmental tasks psychosocial stages A life story is an internalized and evolving narrative of the self that integrates the reconstructed past perceived present and anticipated future in order to provide a life with a sense of unity and purpose o Major component what kind of identity he she is articulating in life through the construction of stories about the self earliest memory reconstruction of childhood anticipations for future self 4 Know the three levels of personality analysis Human nature individual and group differences individual uniqueness o Human nature personality components possessed by nearly everyone need to belong o Individual differences ways in which each person is similar to or difference from others e g being high low in sensation seeking o Group differences how people differ across groups e g culture age sex gender o Individual uniqueness ways in which someone is different from all other people Everyone has unique qualities combination of qualities not shared by any other person 5 Know what induction is Reasoning from the concrete and the particular to the abstract and general 6 Be able to recognize an example of a case study Case study in depth investigation of a single individual sometimes conducted over a substantial period of time 7 What are the three major steps to the scientific process 1 Unsystematic observation 2 Building theories 3 Evaluating propositions What are the four tools a theory provides and the seven standards by which a scientific theory may be judged 4 tools 1 An abstract model or picture that serves as an easily envisioned representation for the structure of the theory 2 A conceptual terminology or set of names for key ideas and major classes of observations in theory 3 A set of correspondence rules that describe the specific relationships to be expected between the various components 4 Hypotheses or testable predictions that are logically derived from the correspondence rules 7 standards comprehensiveness parsimony coherence testability empirical validity usefulness gernerativity How are scientific theories evaluated and the steps to the scientific method used to evaluate them Scientific theories must be empirically tested Steps to scientific method o Empirical Based on objective systematic observations o Rational Follow rules of logic and consistent with facts determinism o Testable Verified through observation and can be disproved contrast with pseudoscience o Parsimonious Provide simplest explanation o General Apply beyond the original observations o Tentative Never accepted as absolutely correct o Rigorously evaluated Consistency with evidence generality and parsimony 8 Know the differences between correlational and experimental designs Correlational a methodology for research whereby the scientist examines the extent to which variables co vary or relate to each other Experimental a methodology for research whereby the scientist manipulates or alters one variable of interest the independent variable to observe its effect on another variable of interest the dependent variable 9 Be able to recognize examples of positive and negative correlations Positive correlation an increase in the value of one variable tends to be associated with an increase in value of the other variable Negative correlation an increase in one variable is generally associated with a decrease in the other variable 10 Know the difference between nomothetic and idiographic approaches Nomothetic aimed to discover and test general principles or laws of all persons Idiographic ignored general laws to discern the specific and individual patternings of particular lives focus on uniqueness of individual case 11 Know the three periods of personality psychology and their dates from pages 22 23 I know some of the eras overlap so I won t give you a year that is contained in the overlap on the test 1930 to 1950 marked by the establishment of the field and the development of a number of general systems 1950 to 1970 Focused their research on the examination and elaboration of particular personality constructs and a host of other traits needs motives and so on that could be reliably and validly
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