PSYC1004 Study Guide - Final Guide: Revised Neo Personality Inventory, Thematic Apperception Test, Personality Psychology
Personality Psychology: Introduction and Research Methods
What is personality?
• Personality is a dynamic organisation, inside the person, of psychophysical systems that create the
person's characteristic patterns of behaviour, thoughts and feelings.
Personality Psychology
• Academic personality psychology - the 20th century.
• Intelligence testing and applied needs: personality traits - predictors of occupational and educational
success?
• "Character" and "personality"
• Psychodynamic theory preceded academic personality psychology.
Aims of Personality Psychology
• To create and test theories that try to explain:
o Why people differ from one another?
o What is the underlying organisation of personality?
• To measure personality:
o How individuals differ from each other?
Theories of Personality
• Theory - a system of propositions that attempt to explain a specific phenomenon or phenomena.
• The four main broad theories of personality - trait, social-cognitive, psychodynamic, phenomenological.
• A good theory needs to be falsifiable:
o We should be able to disprove it.
• Social-cognitive and trait theories tend to offer testable hypotheses.
• Psychodynamic and phenomenological theories often do not.
Forer (Barnum) Effect
• Study by Forer (1949)
• Participants completed a personality test (Diagnostic Interest Blank).
• Item example: You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
• A week later given a personality sketch.
• DIB: Score effectiveness at revealing personality on a scale of 1 to 5.
• Sketch: Score accuracy of the assessment.
Measurement of Personality
Objective Tests
• Observer ratings, self-ratings
• Eg: The Revised NEO Personality Inventory
• Psychometrics
Projective Tests
• Participants' (often unconscious) needs, drives, goals, motives, wishes, conflicts,
etc.
• Eg: Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) by Murray
• "The test is based on the fact that when a person interprets an ambiguous
situation, they are apt to expose their own personality as much as the
phenomenon to which they are attending.
• The participants sees a picture and invents a story about the picture.
• Interpretation: hero?, hero's character?, situational factors?, outcome?,
recurrent themes?, attitudes?
Reliability and
Validity
• Reliability - to what extent a personality test consistently measures a particular
construct.
• Validity - to what extent a personality test measures what it is supposed to
measure.
• A measure can be reliable but not valid; however, a measure cannot be valid if it
is not reliable.
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Other ways to
measure
personality
• Interviews - central in psychodynamic approach.
• Behaviour sampling - observe and code behaviour.
• Physiological measures - eg: blood pressure, heart beats - how the body reacts
under different situations.
• Measures of brain activity - eg: FMRI - what brain regions are related to different
types of personalities
Methods of Personality Research
1. Correlational
Research
• Investigates the relationship between two (or more) variables.
• Correlation coefficient: r
• The direction of correlation - positive, negative, no correlation.
• The magnitude of correlation - zero (0), weak (0.12), moderate (0.3), strong
(0.5), powerful (0.79), perfect (1.0).
• The significance of correlation, eg: p < .05.
• Eg: Reidy et al. 2007 - what is the relationship
between narcissism and aggression towards
others.
• Used narcissism scale, interpersonal
competition and then punishment.
• All correlation positive, correlation for self-sufficiency and vanity is not
significant., exploitativeness and entitlement have strongest correlation.
• The main criticism - correlation does not equal causation.
2. Experimental
Research
• What is measured is usually expected to vary depending on a set of
circumstances.
• The researcher introduces a manipulation of a theoretically relevant variable
(independent variable) and then monitors this manipulation on the dependent,
outcome variable.
• Causality can be established directly.
• Eg: Bushman and Baumeister (1998) - are narcissistic people more aggressive
towards those who criticise them than towards those who praise them.
• Procedure - narcissism scale, writing an essay, getting a feedback from
(supposedly) another participant.
• Experimental manipulation (IV) - type of feedback: negative (ego threat) or
positive (praise).
• Competitive reaction time task:
- Opportunity to harm the person who gave them the feedback.
- A blast of noise to the opponent - control of noise intensity and duration.
- DV: composite measure of intensity and duration (=
aggression).
• Results found positive correlation between narcissism, ego-
threat and aggression, and negative (but not significant)
correlation between narcissism, praise, and aggression.
• The main criticism - lack of ecological validity (artificial
situations), demand characteristics.
3. Case Study
Method
• In-depth study of a single person - personality tests, interviews, histories, ratings
of other people, etc.
• More detailed and richer insight into someone's personality.
• Eg: Freud's 1905 study of "Dora"
• Dora was an 18yo clinical patient who suffered hysterical symptoms, such as
fainting, nervous coughing, loss of voice, difficulty breathing, depression,
avoidance of others, suicidal ideas.
• Method - clinical interviews, free associations, dream analysis.
• Results:
- Repressed sexuality generated unconscious conflicts.
- Dora's father had an affair with a family friend, whose husband had been
trying to seduce Dora since she was 14.
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