Chapters 1-4

Individual's characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, behavior. An individual’s unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving

Feel, behave, think

clinical psych, social psych, industrial psych, goal is to show they come together to explain the whole person

personality disorders, 4 D's (deviance, danger, distress, dysfucntion, duration)

the person/situation debate

personality assessments for understanding vocational interests, occupational success, and leadership

explain whole person in daily environment (not always easy to do)

trait approach, biological approach, psychoanalytic, phenomenological approach, learning approach

how differences may be conceptualized, measured, and followed over time. "personality traits". Big Five.

understanding the mind in terms of body. focusing on anatomy, physiology, genetics, evolution. understanding depression as a function of abnormal levels of neurotransmitters

focus on unconscious mind and internal mental conflict. id, ego, superego. understanding anxiety as a result of a mental conflict

unique conscious experience, humanistic psych (innate good in people). conscious awareness can lead to existential anxiety and creativity. cross cultural psych

how behavior changes due to awards/punishments. includes social learning (how observation/self evaluation determines behavior). cognitive personality (perception, memory, thought)

Psychologists believe their way is the only way. not good to have One Big Theory (OBT), each field can address a different set of questions

Great strengths are usually great weaknesses, and surprisingly often the opposite is true as well

inclusive, interesting, important/over inclusive or unfocused research

great at addressing specific issues, topics/ignores everything else

their strengths are their weaknesses

develop procedure, collect data (pay attention to results), interpret results (how many tests need to be "correct" before the question is answered?)

research is constantly critiqued, improving methods, isolating variables, trying new conditions, asking new questions, seek new knowledge, question what is already known to find out more

personality is a construct, like gravity, observable aspects of personality are clues, piece together clues to form a clear portrait of personality

test scores, GPA, how many friends on facebook, how often they smile during convo, what friends say about you, how they describe themselves (things that could make up a person's personality)

appearances can be deceiving, people behave differently in different settings

there are no perfect indicators of personality; there are only clues, and clues are always ambiguous

something beats nothing, two times out of three

directly asking about what the researchers want to know (ex: "are you friendly?" if researchers want to know about friendliness)

SILB (all sources of data are useful, none are perfect, may not fit all neatly into separate categories)

self judgements, ask person directly, self report, T/F questions, usually matches the way others describe the person, have face validity (intend to measure what they seem to measure)

large amount of info, access to thoughts/feelings/intentions, definitional truth (self view), causal force (self efficacy), simple and easy

bias (think we are better or worse than we are), error (fish and water effect, when completely immersed you can't notice your envt), too simple and easy, over 70% of articles are S data

ask people what they know about the target, people form accurate impression w/o training, can be more accurate than self judgements, based on observation

large amount of info, real world bias, common sense based on context, definitional truth (outside perspective), causal force (if people are reporting the subject in a certain way, you will align with that more)

limited behavioral info (an informant cannot be with the target all the time), lack of access to private experiences, error (certain events can stick out and assume personality traits), bias (how do you feel about the person you're describing?)

verifiable, concrete, real life facts that may hold psychological significance. "residue" of personality. how a person has affected the world. been arrested? married? divorced? graduate? how does your bedroom look rn?

objective/verifiable, concrete data (often numerical form), intrinsic importance, goal is to predict outcomes/consequences

multi determinism (might have many causes, difficulty establishing causality), may lose a job that has nothing to do with their personality, other examples

direct observation and recording behavior (how many times did they smile today?), can be in a lab/natural situation

incorporate self report through diary/experience sampling. spying would be best but we can't do that. mix of S data, but no self judgment, beeper method, electronically activated recorder, small wearable cameras, social media

can use experiments and physiological measures, create scenarios to elicit reactions, blood pressure, sweat, heart rate, brain function

can make contexts happen in a lab and in real life, only limited by resources/imagination/ethics, can be very precise, still subjective in terms of what to observe/define behavior

difficult to recruit, instruct, and motivate to complete. expensive equipment. long time to sift through data. but does smiling mean openness or agreeableness? appearances can be deceiving. B data often overlaps with S, I, and L data

if the data are bad, so are the results and interpretation. are the data reliable? + are the data valid? --> are the data generalizable

are the data dependable? can you get the same result more than once w/ the same group of people? if yes = then reliable. if no = measurement or error variance. (only if you are measuring a trait rather than a trait)

1. low precision 2. state of participant 3. state of experimenter 4. environment of the study

1. be careful with data 2. standardize research protocol 3. measure something important 4. aggregation (average data to reduce data)

does it actually measure what it is supposed to? for a measure to be valid, it has to be reliable. IQ test is valid if it measure intelligence (but what is intelligence?) need to test from multiple angles to try and get the same results to be valid

do your results also apply to other kinds of people across time?

up until 60/70s only men were used in studies, now women are used more, women are more likely to sign up and show up, the men that do aren't always able to be applied to the general population

shows different from no shows, used I data to correlate to these people, shows = over expressive, compulsive, needy. no shows = self adoring, low in assertiveness

WEIRD, very different from people in poor, uneducated, pre industrialized people, new policies ensure diverse populations have money to be studies

western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic

personality is revealed by a person's characteristics patterns of behavior, thoughts, experiences. relatively consistent over time. motives, intentions, goals, strategies, perceptions

most tests online are fake, tricking you into giving them money, possibly cults, people cannot tell the difference between valid money and scams, people are desperate to learn who they are

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), California Psychological Inventory, Strong Vocational Interest Blank, Hogan Personality Inventory

used in clinical assessment of psychiatric difficulties, employment screening

Karracker vs Rent a Center, had to take management tests to be promoted, MMPI was used, "failed" the test, not given promotion, won because they were discriminated against because of mental disorder

designed for people without psychiatric difficulties, assesses social engagement , poise, morals, interpersonal style, cognitive function, used in law enforcement recruitment

used to help people choose suitable careers

used by employers for personnel selection, using scales to determine if you will align with the needs of the company

ambiguous stimuli draw out "hidden aspects of the mind", stimuli don't mean anything, interpretation must be a projection of your own needs, feelings, fears

show a person an ambiguous picture, the patient describes what they see, the clinician takes responses and interprets what they could mean about the patient. takes 45 minutes to administer, 1.5 to 2 hours to interpret. not a sure thing. 82% of psychologists use this. 4th most commonly used

breaks the ice, provides convo between psychologist and patient, may detect something important about pathology (disease?), can show usual/unusual perceptions, can predict suicide

over pathologizes, time consuming, expensive, validity questionable. looking for what's wrong with you so they could say everything is bad. other measures work just as well and are cheaper

someone (child) is asked to draw a person. clinician interprets drawing, looking for size, color, distortions, shading, exaggerated body, and multiple erasures. excessive shading = aggression, large eyes = fear, erasing = anxiety

show a picture and ask the client to create a story around the picture. could be given prompts. who is in the picture? what were they doing before? measure motivational states, can use LIWC program to analyze

nothing is really objective with personalities yes/no, true/false, numeric scales, scored by computers, objective tests and ways to score them

rational method, factor analysis, empirical method

develop items that see, direct and rationally related to what the test developer wishes to measure. happiness scale = are you happy? how often do you go to theme parks? do you like your job?

interpretation must mean the same thing to participants that it does to researchers, must be able to make an accurate self assessment, must be willing to report accurately, items must be valid indicators of what is being measured

passion, focus, perseverance, and resilience even when faced with setbacks

begin with a large list of items, administer to a large group of participants, see which items have a pattern emerge, after identifying patterns figure out what they have in common, name the categories (factors), this was how the Big 5 was made

allow reality to speak for data, gather samples who are already naturally divided into groups (happy ministers v not happy ministers), gather items, administer test, compare answers between groups, compare similar answers to apply to real life (MMPI is an example)

helpful in figuring out occupations, however these tests rely on the assumption that people in that occupation should only be one type of person, what if a new perspective is needed?

correlational designs (observing relationships between variables), focus on individual differences (not universal experiences), can still group people by individual experience, traits are building blocks for personality, people are inconsistent, traits may not be enough because situations can change behavior

showing strength of relationship between two variables between -1 and +1, 0 is no relationship

situations matter more! three factors

Upper limit to predicting future behavior, upper limit is low, not able to predict future, people are inconsistent situation to situation, Walter Mischel, S/B data, I/B data, B/B data nothing matches! correlations are .3-.4

situations matter more than personality traits in predicting behavior, if correlation between personality and future behavior is .4, personality only explains "16% of variance"

assessing personality is a waste of time, fundamental attribution error is believing personality matters/exists at all

they are good at predicting who is most likely to be ___, especially with aggregated data, real life predictive data, and .4 is actually not small, many psych studies are the same or less

there is a difference between absolute consistency and relative consistency. when talking to someone you don't know first time scores were awkward, second time was every average was lower. when the data was phrased in correlation to the individual, people were very consistent to themselves in both situations

Mischel himself found that self control in childhood can be predictive of competency, higher SAT scores, health in early adulthood. he argued that this was not personality but rather the building of strengths

predictions that can be made are still important! businesses and schools need to know who could be successful in these environments

more likely to be hired, better heart health, less criminal behavior

where you stand on debate reflects your own values, the two sides do not need to be mutually exclusive, persons and situations do interact!