PSYA02H3 Study Guide - Winter 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Anxiety, Memory, Serotonin
PSYA02H3
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Chapter 12: Personality
Lecture 1
• Personality – a idiidual’s style of ehaiou, thought, ad feelig
o Stable across time and situations
• Idiographic approach – individual differences
• Nomothetic approach – common trends in the population
• Study of personality
▪ Describing personality
▪ Characteristics
▪ Inventory
▪ Explaining personality
▪ Why are they the way they are?
• Personality theories, e.g. trait approach
• How to measure personality?
o Observation?
▪ Drawbacks – change the way we behave to seem more favourable
o Usually takes 2 forms
▪ Personality inventories (personality tests/scales)
▪ Projective tests
o Personality inventories (tests, scales)
▪ Rely on self-report
• Work when honest + know yourself really well
• We may not know certain things about ourselves
• Interviews, written questionnaires -> lots online
o Most online tests are weak in validity and reliability
▪ Validity – measuring what it says it measures
▪ Reliability – same results at different times
• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
o Reliable, clinically valid test
o Tue/false/a’t ase
o Lots of questions, meant to cause fatigue
o Get first instinct answers
• Criticisms of personality inventories
o Test administrator can be biased
o Less of an issue with true/false
o Test ay ask uestios that the take a’t ase eause they do’t ko
themselves
o Test taker may be biased and report socially desirable traits
Lecture 2
• Personality – characteristics, etc. about a person that stay stable over time
• Basic structure of MMPI – binary questions of a larger volume
o Forces one to make decisions about themselves vs. scalar where they pick a
number
o Induce fatigue so responses are more automatic and less biased
• Criticisms of personality inventories
o So broad that they apply to everyone, like horoscopes
o Test administrator is biased – interpreting answers
▪ Could be that the test taker changes their answers to be more socially
reliable
▪ Test takers are negatively biased – more critical of themselves
• MMPI Validity Scales
o Sets of questions that mitigate bias
▪ F-scale (frequency scale)
• high rates of true responses
• Over-reporting or severe psychopathology
▪ L-scale (lying scale)
• High rates of false responses
• Indicate lying to appear socially desirable
▪ ? – scale
• High ates of I do’t ko idiates a ialid test
• Personality theories
o Measuring personality
▪ Describe + explain
• Trait approach
o Personality is a series of traits
o Stable + consistent disposition (to behave in a certain way)
o Use factor analysis to reduce into lowest possible sets of traits
▪ Individuals rate themselves on hundreds of traits
▪ Traits that are highly correlated are combined into factors
▪ Traits with no correlation are combined into separate factors
• The Big Five
o Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism
▪ Levels on the big five tend to increase throughout the lifespan
• Exceptions – in old age, openness to experience decreases
▪ Personality states change across situations
• Location, associations, activities, mood
• Where does personality come from?
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PSYA02H3 Full Course Notes
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Document Summary
Lecture 1: personality a(cid:374) i(cid:374)di(cid:448)idual"s style of (cid:271)eha(cid:448)iou(cid:396), thought, a(cid:374)d feeli(cid:374)g, stable across time and situations. Thematic apperception test (tat) ambiguous scenes, make up a story: results are hard to interpret. Security of body, employment, resources, morality, health, property. Physiological: personality differences arise from environmental constraints against climbing our needs hierarchy. Increased visual info when babies walk vs. crawl explore environment more richly: children learn to think about the world, cognitive development ability to think and understand. Child, adolescent, and adult development: what type of stimuli do infants prefer to look at, novel stimulus. Identity and early childhood: describe themselves in physical terms, usually positively; egocentric, positivity bias, self-enhancement, less pronounced for peers than self, ex. Ide(cid:374)ti(cid:272)al t(cid:449)i(cid:374)s" self-esteem correlated to a greater degree than non-twin siblings: physical appearance, athletic ability, erik erikson (1902-1994, german-american developmental scientist, theory of conflicts and resolutions. Identity formation is chief task of adolescence: conflict-identity vs. confusion, resolution-identity achievement.
