PS101 Lecture Notes - Behaviorism, Collective Unconscious, Orgasm
Document Summary
Throughout time people have been intuitively aware of individual difference. That they like some people and not others. Theophrastus wrote about different characters to try to describe individual differences. Personality: distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that characterize a person"s response to situations. Comes from the word persona- actors mask. How do we measure personality: ask them, ask others, results of a test, observe them, physiological measures, behavioral assessment. Interviews: structured set of standardized questions, note other behaviours appearance, speech patterns etc. Drawbacks: characteristics of interviewer can affect answers, dependence on co-operation, honesty of interviewee. Behavioural assessment: need explicit coding system, aim is not solely to describe behaviour. Specific behaviour, frequency, specific situations, under what conditions: interjudge reliability. Use standard questions and agreed upon scoring key. Advantage: collect large amount of data. Disadvantage: validity of answers (truthfully answered?, validity scales.