Chapter 13
What does personality do?
This leads to individual differences in behavior
explains consistency in behavior over times
Explains consistency in behavior across situations
Strong situation
This means that the personality present in the situations is uniform
Weak situation
this means that personality stands out
Trait Psychology
Description over explanation
Personality as structure
Lexical Research
When something is important to us, it is reflected in our language
Websters dictionary
Which traits are most important
Synonym frequency
Cross-cultural universality
Factor Analysis
Factor Analysis
Factor=cluster of closely related variables
Five-factor model (OCEAN)
O: openness to experience
C: conscientiousness
E: Extraversion
A: Agreeable
N: Neuroticism
Big 5 Validity
Extraversion scores predict
Openness scores predict
Neuroticism Score Predicts
Conscientiousness scores predict
Agreeableness scores predict
Are personality traits stable?
after age 30, traits have very high-rank order stability
rank order stability shifts on average, and is stableish
Manifestation of traits changes over time
Changes in personality
Neuroticism decreases
Extraversion decreases
Openness to experience decreases
Agreeableness increases
Conscientiousness increases
Biological Theories of Personality
Early theory (Eysenck): baseline arousal
Newer theory: rRST (revised reinforcement sensitivity model)
Behavioral Approach System (BAS)
Regulates appetite
Goal to move toward something desired
Go system
Behavioral Inhibition system (BIS)
Regulates aversive motives
sensitive to signs of punishment
slow down system
BIS/BAS
High sensitivity in BAS is associated with elements of extraversion and optimism
High sensitivity in BIS associated with elements of Neuroticism
Fight-Flight-Freeze System (FFFS)
Promotes behavior that keeps you from getting injured
stress response
Linked with fear-proneness
Development of personality
Behavioral genetics evidence
Heritability
Temperaments
Biologically based tendencies to act a certain way
3 level:
Gene-environment correlation
Nature/Nurture debate
Genes and environment affect not only behavior but also each other
Emotional Stability
Consistency in a person's mood and emotions
Humanistic approach
Approaches to studying personality that emphasize how people seek to fulfill their potential through greater self-understanding
Person-centered Approach
To understanding personality and human relationship
Emphasizes peoples subjective understanding of their lives
Unconditional Positive Regard
That is, parents should accept and prize their children no matter how the children behave
Redemption
Where things start out badly but transform for the better
Contamination
Where things start out well, but then some person or event causes them to turn bad
Meaning-making
Where an event or episode yields a deep insight into life
Locus of control
People's personal beliefs about how much control they have over their lives
Internal/locus of control
They bring their own reward
External Locus of Control
Results from forces beyond their controls
Personal Constructs
Personal theories of how the world works
Person factors
Persons characterized
Recipiocal Determinism
The theory that the expression of personality can be explained by the interaction of environment, personal factors, and behavior itself
Need for cognition
The tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking about difficult questions or problems
Situationism
The theory that behavior is determined more by situations than by personality traits
Mischel Theory
Person/Situation debate:
Interactionism
The theory that behavior is determined jointly by situation and underlying dispositions
Rank-Ordering
Refers to stability
Stable over the personality, at different ages
mean-level changes
focusing only on rank-ordering stability can hide changes in personality that many people experience at some stages of life
Increases self-control and emotional stability with age
Less neurotic, less extracted
Idiographic approaches
Person-centered approaches to assessing personality that focus in individual lives and have various characteristic are integrated into the unique person
Nomothetic approaches
Approaches to assessing personality to focus on the variation in common characteristics from person to person
Projective measures
The personality test that examines tendencies and responses to certain stimuli
Evaluative
The tendency is particularity for traits that are highly valued in society
Blind spot
Self-schema
A knowledge structure that contains memories, beliefs, and generalizations about the self and that helps people efficiently perceive, organize, interpret, and uses information related to themselves
self-concept
Larger idea
Encompassing all the information and beliefs we hold about who we are
Working self-concept
Self-concepts that is available during immediate experience
Reflected appraisal internalize
values and beliefs expressed, beliefs on self
Sociometer Theory
Self-esteem is a mechanism for mattering the likelihood of social exclusion
An internal mandatory of social acceptance or rejection
Better-than average effect
people with higher self-esteem are especially likely to exhibit these effect
Most people describe themselves as above average
Positive illusions
Overly favorable and unrealistic beliefs
social companison
The tendency for people to evaluate their own actions, abilities, and beliefs by contrasting them with other people
Comparison to others
Downward
Feels good provide little information
Upward
Feels bad but it can provide information to improve
Self-serving bais
The tendency for people to take personal credit for success but blame failure an external factors
Western
Value independent success
Independent
Eastern
Values harm any coherence with the group
Interdepends