Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
59 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
|
What are personality traits? |
Enduring dispositions in behavior that show differences across individuals, and which tend to characterize the person across varying types of situations. |
|
|
What three criteria characterize personality traits? |
1) consistency: to have a personality trait, individuals must be somewhat consistent across situations in their behaviors related to the trait. 2) stability: individuals with a trait are also somewhat stable over time in behaviors related to the trait. 3) individual differences: people differ from one another on behaviors related to the trait. |
|
|
What is the lexical hypothesis? |
The lexical hypothesis is the idea that the most important differences between people will be encoded in the language that we use to describe people |
|
|
What are the five major personality traits of the five factor model? |
Openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism. |
|
|
Are scores on the big five traits mostly dependent or independent? |
Independent. A person’s standing on one trait tells very little about their standing on the other traits of the Big Five. |
|
|
Why are personality traits important and interesting? |
They describe stable patterns of behavior that persist for long periods of time |
|
|
True or false: Each of the big five personality traits has a set and agreed upon list of facets which make up the trait. |
False: Although personality researchers generally agree about the value of the Big Five traits as a way to summarize one’s personality, there is no widely accepted list of facets that should be studied. |
|
|
What two traits did Hans Eysenck suggest are most important? |
Neuroticism and extroversion. Eysenck believed that by combining people’s standing on these two major traits, we could account for many of the differences in personality that we see in people |
|
|
The HEXACO model is an alternative to the Five-Factor Model. The HEXACO model includes six traits, five of which are variants of the traits included in the Big Five. What sixth factor is unique to this model? |
Honesty-Humility |
|
|
What is the person-situation debate? |
The person-situation debate is a historical debate about the relative power of personality traits as compared to situational influences on behavior. The situationist critique, which started the person-situation debate, suggested that people overestimate the extent to which personality traits are consistent across situations. |
|
|
research conducted after the person-situation debate shows that on average, the effect of the “situation” is about ............... that of personality traits. |
As large as |
|
|
______ is a statistical technique that allows one to group things together according to how highly they are associated (or how similar they truly are). |
Factor analysis |
|
|
What does heterotypic stability refer to? |
The psychological coherence of an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors across development. Questions about heterotypic stability concern the degree of consistency in underlying personality attributes. |
|
|
What is the challenge of studying heterotypic stability? |
The underlying psychological attribute can have different behavioral expressions at different ages. |
|
|
What does homotypic stability refer to? |
The amount of similarity in the same observable personality characteristics across time. |
|
|
What is absolute stability? |
A sub type of homotypic stability, the consistency of the level of the same personality attribute across time. |
|
|
Define group level of absolute stability |
A focus on summary statistics that apply to aggregates of individuals when studying personality development. An example is considering whether the average score of a group of 50 year olds is higher than the average score of a group of 21 year olds when considering a trait like conscientiousness. |
|
|
Define individual level of absolute stability |
A focus on individual level statistics that reflect whether individuals show stability or change when studying personality development. An example is evaluating how many individuals increased in conscientiousness versus how many decreased in conscientiousness when considering the transition from adolescence to adulthood. |
|
|
What does differential stability refer to? |
The consistency of a personality attribute in terms of an individual’s rank-ordering. Evaluates consistency over time on relative standing on an attribute. attribute. |
|
|
What are two common ways to investigate average levels of personality attributes at different ages? |
A cross-sectional study comparing different age groups on a given attribute assessed at the same time. (More simple) A longitudinal study following the same group of individuals and assessing their personalities at multiple time points (often two). Better quality. |
|
|
Identify one chief drawback of a cross-sectional study. |
Individuals who are of different ages are also members of different birth cohorts. Thus, researchers have no way of knowing whether any personality differences observed in a cross-sectional study are attributable to the influence of age per se or birth cohort. |
|
|
What benefit is associated with longitudinal studies? |
Better able to isolate age effects (i.e., differences in personality related to maturation and development) from cohort effects (i.e., differences in personality related to being born at a particular point in history) than a cross-sectional study. |
|
|
What trends do an overview of absolute changes in personality across the lifespan reveal? |
In general, average levels of extraversion (especially the attributes linked to self-confidence and independence), agreeableness, and conscientiousness appear to increase with age whereas neuroticism appears to decrease with age. Openness also declines with age, especially after mid-life. |
|
|
Roberts et al. found that ........... ............ was the most active time in the lifespan for observing average changes. |
Young adulthood |
|
|
The evaluation of differential stability requires a ............ study. |
Longitudinal |
|
|
What relationship has been found between differential stability and age? What is it called? |
Differential stability increases with age. The cumulative continuity principle of personality development |
|
|
A consideration of the broad literature on personality stability yields what two major conclusions? |
Average levels of personality attributes seem to change in predictable ways across the lifespan in line with maturity principle of personality development.
Personality attributes are relatively enduring attributes that become increasingly consistent during adulthood in line with the cumulative continuity principle |
|
|
What does the term person-environment transactions refer to? |
The interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that ends up shaping both personality and the environment. |
|
|
What are active person-environment transactions? |
The interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever individuals play a key role in seeking out, selecting, or otherwise manipulating aspects of their environment. |
|
|
What are reactive person-environment transactions? |
The interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever attributes of the individual shape how a person perceives and responds to their environment. |
|
|
What are evocative person-environment transactions? |
The interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever attributes of the individual draw out particular responses from others in their environment. |
|
|
Brent Roberts coined the helpful acronym ASTMA to aid in remembering the mechanisms likely to produce personality stability and the mechanisms likely to produce changes. What does it stand for? |
Stability: attraction, selection, manipulation, attrition (dropping out) Changes: transformation |
|
|
Which stability producing mechanisms reflect evocative person–environment transactions? |
Selection and attrition |
|
|
What is the corresponsive principle of personality development? |
The idea that personality traits often become matched with environmental conditions such that an individual’s social context acts to accentuate and reinforce their personality attributes. |
|
|
The tendency of some individuals to interpret ambiguous social cues and interactions as examples of aggressiveness, disrespect, or antagonism is known as ........ ........ .......... |
Hostile attribution bias |
|
|
Objective tests represent the most familiar and widely used approach to assessing personality. What are they? |
Objective tests involve administering a standard set of items, each of which is answered using a limited set of response options (e.g., true or false; strongly disagree, slightly disagree, slightly agree, strongly agree). Responses to these items then are scored in a standardized, predetermined way. |
|
|
What are the two basic types of objective tests? |
Self-report measures Informant ratings |
|
|
What are two advantages of self report measures? |
self-raters have direct access to their own thoughts, feelings, and motives, which may not be readily available to others asking people to describe themselves is the simplest, easiest, and most cost-effective approach to assessing personality. |
|
|
True or false: self report personality tests lack validity |
False. Self-report personality tests show impressive validity in relation to a wide range of important outcomes. |
|
|
What are two advantages of self report measures? |
self-raters have direct access to their own thoughts, feelings, and motives, which may not be readily available to others asking people to describe themselves is the simplest, easiest, and most cost-effective approach to assessing personality. |
|
|
What are the limits of self report tests? |
Raters may be motivated to present themselves in an overly favorable, socially desirable way . Personality ratings reflect a self-enhancement bias, ignoring less desirable characteristics. Self-ratings are subject to the reference group effect that is, we base our self-perceptions, in part, on how we compare to others in our sociocultural reference group. |
|
|
When are informant ratings particularly useful? |
When self ratings are impossible to get, or when their validity is suspect. |
|
|
Why might informant ratings be combined with self-ratings of the same characteristics? |
To produce more reliable and valid measures of these attributes. |
|
|
What are some advantages of informant ratings? |
A well-acquainted informant presumably has had the opportunity to observe large samples of behavior in the person he or she is rating. Judgements presumably are not subject to the types of defensiveness that potentially can distort self-ratings.
informants typically have strong incentives for being accurate in their judgments. |
|
|
True or false: self reports and informant ratings in relation to important life outcomes are about equal in terms of validity. |
True: Informant personality ratings have demonstrated a level of validity in relation to important life outcomes that is comparable to that for self-ratings. Indeed, they outperform self-ratings in certain circumstances, particularly when the assessed traits are highly evaluative in nature |
|
|
What are some limitations of informant ratings? |
The reduced level of relevant information that is available to the rater. The reference group effect, and in the case of parental ratings, a sibling contrast effect: when parents exaggerate the magnitude of differences between siblings. Since informants are often selected by the subject, informants may produce overly favorable personality ratings. |
|
|
The tendency for informants to produce unrealistically positive ratings has been termed: |
The letter of recommendation effect. The honeymoon effect when applied to newlyweds. |
|
|
Other than source, on what two dimensions can personality tests differ? |
Comprehensiveness: The extent to which an instrument seeks to assess personality in a reasonably comprehensive manner. Breadth: Personality characteristics can be classified at different levels of breadth or generality. |
|
|
Projective tests are based on the projective hypothesis, which is: |
The theory that when people are confronted with ambiguous stimuli (that is, stimuli that can be interpreted in more than one way), their responses will be influenced by their unconscious thoughts, needs, wishes, and impulses. This, in turn, is based on the Freudian notion of projection, which is the idea that people attribute their own undesirable/unacceptable characteristics to other people or objects. |
|
|
Projective tests are based on the projective hypothesis, which is: |
The theory that when people are confronted with ambiguous stimuli (that is, stimuli that can be interpreted in more than one way), their responses will be influenced by their unconscious thoughts, needs, wishes, and impulses. This, in turn, is based on the Freudian notion of projection, which is the idea that people attribute their own undesirable/unacceptable characteristics to other people or objects. |
|
|
Give two prominent examples of projective tests: |
The Rorschach Inkblot Test: asks respondents to interpret symmetrical blots of ink. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): asks respondents to generate stories about a series of pictures. |
|
|
What are some challenges of projective tests? |
Cumbersome and labour intensive to administer. The complexity of developing a reliable and valid scheme to score the extensive set of responses generated by each respondent. |
|
|
Which projective test has more impressive evidence for validity? The Rorschach or the TAT? |
Validity evidence is more impressive for the TAT. |
|
|
Which projective test has more impressive evidence for validity? The Rorschach or the TAT? |
Validity evidence is more impressive for the TAT. |
|
|
What assumption are implicit tests based on? |
That people form automatic or implicit associations between certain concepts based on their previous experience and behavior. |
|
|
Behavioural measures involve inferring important personality characteristics from direct samples of behavior. What are some advantages of this approach? |
Because behavior is sampled directly, this approach is not subject to the types of response biases that can distort scores on objective tests. This approach allows people to be studied in their daily lives and in their natural environments, thereby avoiding the artificiality of other methods. It assesses what people do, as opposed to what they think or feel. |
|
|
Behavioural measures involve inferring important personality characteristics from direct samples of behavior. What are some advantages of this approach? |
Because behavior is sampled directly, this approach is not subject to the types of response biases that can distort scores on objective tests. This approach allows people to be studied in their daily lives and in their natural environments, thereby avoiding the artificiality of other methods. It assesses what people do, as opposed to what they think or feel. |
|
|
What are some disadvantages of behavioural measures? |
More labour intensive and cumbersome than self report. Creates a rich set of data that then needs to be scored in a reliable and valid way. Relatively small samples that reflect behaviour in a specific situation only. |
|
|
______validity refers to the ability of a given test to predict real world outcomes. For example, a measure of openness to new experiences should be related to one’s desire to engage in unconventional activities. |
Criterion |
