Personality Study Guide Exam 2 Ch 4 6 pre valentines day Lecture 4 Personality Assessment What is a dispositional trait o Dispositional trait A unique set of consistent emotional cognitive and behavioral dispositions or tendencies Measuring Personality o Ways to measure Ask them self report Ask others other report Situational tests act vampiric Biological tests E g put them in a situation where they could E g Measuring how the eyes react to fear o Self Report Data Drawbacks E g Job interview questions People can lie There are things people don t even know Over estimating under estimating Only correlational you can t know cause about themselves effect Advantages There are things people know about themselves that nobody else does o Observer Report Data Types of observers Professional personality assessors Friends Family Trained experienced in assessment More naturalistic Can assess across social situations May be biased o Test Data Situational Test Do people behave differently in identical Situation designed to elicit behaviors that Elicited behavior can be scored by situations serve as indicators to personality independent raters P s might guess what is being measured and P s may interpret testing situation differently Researcher might influence behavior alter behavior than intended Limitations What makes a measure useful o Validity Measures what it claims to measure Types Face validity Predictive validity Convergent validity Discriminant validity o Reliability Consistency Some types Test retest reliability Internal consistency A scale can be reliable but not valid o Generalizability Valid across various groups Valid across situations Being smart with research o Correlation does NOT mean causation Can the order be reversed Can something else cause both variables E g can the second variable cause the first Third variable problem o Maybe the relationship is Curvilinear Higher in the middle Lower on both extremes E g Lec 4 Book Objectives 1 What is the construct approach to test construction Begins with a clear conceptual definition of the trait of interest After defining trait being writing items which are test questions or statements Items relate to each other Goal is to generate an item pool examine results decide which items should be retained e g item analysis Administer item pool to a large number of people Might do a factor analysis Final step examine extent to which trait measure predicts behavior 2 What does an item analysis tell you An item analysis is a statistical procedure through which we would determine the contribution that each item makes to the scale by correlating the scores on each item with the total score Those with low correlations would be dropped Lecture 5 Traits Trait Taxonomies Four Perspectives on Personality Traits o Two perspectives claim traits can CAUSE behavior E g Extroversion causes you to approach people 1 Neurological substrates Traits are biological differences that can cause behavior to occur 2 Behavioral dispositions Traits are tendencies to behave a certain way o Two other perspectives claim traits DO NOT cause behavior Traits are the behavior 1 Act Frequencies Traits are descriptive categories for behavior Traits exist objectively they just don t cause Consistent individual differences that actually behavior mean something 2 Linguistic Categories Traits are linguistic categories for behavior Traits only exist in our minds We came up with these categories labels Doesn t have any meaning Traits o Four primary aspects Internal stable attribute Conceived in bipolar terms continuum Seen as additive and independent Additive Can predict how a person will behave Independent One trait can t predict another o What s a taxonomy A taxonomy is a classification system Goal identify name groups within a subject E g periodic table types of animals What are the most important traits o Three approaches Lexical Statistical All important traits are apparent in language Narrow down by Synonym frequency Cross cultural consistency Give people questionnaires and analyze using factor analysis Factor analysis Group together words see how someone responds to them If answer similarly then those questions are asking something similar and those items can represent a bigger group Theoretical A theory determines which traits are important Eysenck s Hierarchical Model of Personality o 3 Traits Extraversion Introversion E Neuroticism Emotional Stability N Psychoticism P o Eysenck Psychoticism Solitary Lack empathy cruel inhumane Aggressive Prefer strange unusual things Impulsive Antisocial Cattell s taxonomy o Just know that he has 16 factors The interpersonal circumplex o 2 dimensional mode Dominant Submissive i e agency Friendly Hostile i e communion Argued to directly map onto extroversion Argued to directly map onto agreeableness The Five Factor Model o Five broad factors OCEAN Openness to experience Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism o Empirical evidence Most widely accepted Found by many researchers using different samples Has been replicated over 50 years in many Replicated using different item formulas languages Extraversion o Talkative assertive forward outspoken o Compared to introverts Talk more Engage in more eye contact Gamble more drive faster Are more sexually active Are physically stronger Like studying in social places Perform better under distraction Focus on speed over accuracy Feel better happier Good mood lasts longer Remember being in a good mood even if they Reward sensitivity Get more pleasure from experiences Extroversion may just be positive Sensitivity to positive emotions is predicted by weren t emotionality extroversion Neuroticism instability high neuroticism o Emotional stability low neuroticism Emotional o Moody anxious insecure o Could be called negative emotionality o Sensitivity to negative emotions is predicted by o Across generations people are more neurotic than they o People become less neurotic over time o Compared to low neuroticism neuroticism used to be Lonelier More likely to be anxious depressed Report poorer quality of life More likely to get divorced Worse physical health Often engage in less effective coping mechanisms o Neurotic Cascade Hyper reactivity Pay attention to negative things and view them as more negative than most others would Differential exposure Feel there are more stressful things in their life pay more attention to them Differential appraisal Seeing neutral or ambiguous things as
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