PPE 3003 Exam 1 Chapter 1 How are people similar vs different Human Nature How we are like all others Personality features possessed by nearly everyone Group Differences Ex Cultural differences age differences How people are like some others in their group different from other groups Individual Differences Ways in which we are like some others different from some others Individual Uniqueness How we are like no others Everyone has unique qualities not shared by any other person Ex Being high low in sensation seeking What is Personality Human Nature and Culture The Context The Outline Dispositional Traits Unique set of consistent emotional cognitive and behavioral dispositions or tendencies Traits How people typically feel think and act Describe people Explain behavior Predict future behavior The Details Characteristic Adaptations Aspects of psychological individuality that are contextualized in time place and or role Motivational factors Cognitive factors values beliefs etc Developmental factors evolution of the self identity over time The Meaning Integrative Life Stories An internalized and evolving narrative of the self that integrates the past present and future to provide life with a sense of unity and purpose Personality A patterning of dispositional traits characteristic adaptations and integrative life stories set in culture and shaped by human evolution Distinguishing Personality Psychology Different from developmental psychology How people change over time vs in what ways they stay the same Focus on adulthood Different from Clinical psychology Study of normal functioning vs study of disorders Different from social psychology Focus on the situation vs the person Science and the Person Induction When a scientist begins to organize observations into categories they move from concrete and particular events that are discerned to the more abstract and general representations of those events Case Study An in depth investigation of a single individual sometimes conducted over a substantial period of time Used as a way to organize complex observations about a single person to build a theory about some or all persons in general What are the criteria of a good theory Parsimony Science is a simplifying and economizing game Theories attempt to explain the maximum number of observations with the minimum number of explanatory concepts Thus a simpler and more straightforward explanation is generally preferred to a more complex one Testability From the theory a scientist should be able to derive hypotheses that can be readily evaluated tested through empirical research Generativity A good theory should generate new research and new theorizing It should give birth to a wide variety of creative activity on the part of scientists and laypersons alike Correlational Design Assess the extent to which two different variables relate to each other When one variable changes in value what happens to the other variable Positive correlation When one variable increases the other variable increases as well 1 Negative correlation When an increase in one variable is associated with the decrease in the other variable 1 Correlation Coefficient Expresses the degree of correlation between two variables the closer to 1 or 1 the stronger the correlation with 0 meaning no correlation Experimental Design A scientist manipulates or alters one variable of interest in order to observe its impact on another variable of interest Dependent variable the one being measured the response to the manipulation Independent variable the one that is manipulated Ex Testing how sunlight affects the growth of a plant Independent variable would be the amount of sunlight Dependent variable would be the height of the plant Personality Psychology Early American Psychology Nomothetic approach Aims to discover and test general principles or laws of behavior Personality Psychology Emphasizes how people are different from one another as well as alike Idiographic approach Ignores general laws to discern the specific and individual patternings of normal lives Modern Personality Psychology 1930 1950 Developing general systems and grand theories of personality 1950 1970 Period of refining measurement techniques and elaborating personality constructs 1970 today Began w a crisis concerning legitimacy of personality studies and developed into the present sense of renewal and invigoration in the field of personality psychology Gordon Allport Author of first authorative text for the field of personality psychology Personality A Psychological Interpretation 1937 Humanistic approach towards personality rather than Freud s behavioristic view Proprium includes all aspects of personality that make for inward unity Traits are central to personality defined trait as neuropsychic structure having the capacity to render many stimuli functionally equivalent and to initiate and guide equivalent forms of adaptive and expressive behavior Letters from Jenny collection of letters written by a girl that Allport used to analyze her personality Chapter 2 reproduce Survival of the fittest those best equipped to survive to reproductive age and Three products of the evolutionary process Adaptations traits that help survival reproduction become more common in the gene pool traits that hinder reproduction slowly disappear Features selected for by evolution For something to be an adaptation it has to deal with an adaptive problem something that impedes survival or reproduction and have some genetic basis Byproducts of Adaptations side effects of adaptations not considered to be Ex Our brain adaptations themselves Ex Belly button Ex Shape of the earlobe Noise or Random Variation feature that doesn t affect reproduction Natural Selection Process whereby nature gradually selects those characteristics of organisms that promote survival and reproductive success Sexual Selection Even if a trait threatens survival it will be selected for as long as it helps reproduction Intersexual selection members of one sex choose a mate based on their preferences Intrasexual competition members of the same sex compete with rivals for access to mates Ex Birds of paradise Ex Elephant seals Inclusive Fitness Inclusive Fitness Theory William Hamilton an organism s inclusive fitness is its overall ability to maximize the replication of the genes that designed it We share genes with others Selfish Gene Perspective Our genes want to make as many copies of themselves as possible Our behavior will
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