PS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Big Five Personality Traits, Psychoticism, Trait Theory
Document Summary
Theophrastus wrote about different characters to try and describe individual differences. Attempting to characterize people their personalities. Personality: distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that characterise a person"s response to situations. If similar response every time, it is a personality trait. Comes from word persona actors mask. Interviews: structured set of standardized questions, note other behaviours appearance, speech patterns, etc. There are patterns when someone is lying for example. Drawbacks: characteristics of interview can affect answers, dependence on co-operation, honesty of interviewee. Behavioural assessment: need explicit coding system, aim is not solely to describe the behaviour. Specific behaviour, frequency, specific situations, under what conditions. Use at least two observers and tally the observation codes. Use standard questions and agreed upon scoring key: another form of questionnaire, advantage collects a large amount of data (online, disadvantage validity of answers (truthfully answered?) and validity scales. Some scales are more valid some are not accurate.
