CHAPTER 1: Intro to TOP

• Persona

  • which means theoretical mask worn by roman actors in greek dramas.
• Personality

  • Referring to something more than the role people play.
• Personality

  • A pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a person's behavior.
• Traits

  • contribute to individual differences in behavior, consistency of behavior over time, and stability of behavior across situations.
• Characteristics

  • are unique qualities of an individual that include attributes such as temperament, physique, and intelligence.
• Theory

  • a set of related assumptions that allows scientists to use logical deductive reasoning to formulate testable hypotheses. ; A set of related assumptions ; assumptions ; logical deductive reasoning ; Testable.
• Philosophy

  • love of wisdom, and philosophers are people who pursue wisdom through thinking and reasoning.
• Epistemology

  • Nature of knowledge ; a tool used by scientists in their pursuit of knowledge.
• Science

  • a branch of study concerned with the observation and classification of data and with the verification of general laws through the testing of hypotheses.
• Hypothesis

  • is an educated guess or prediction specific enough for its validity to be tested through the use of the scientific method.
• Deductive Reasoning

  • going from the general to the specific.
• Inductive Reasoning

  • going from the specific to the general.
• Taxonomy

  • a classification of things according to their natural relationships.
• Robert McCrae and Paul Costa

  • Founder of big five taxonomy
• Five Major Theoretical Perspectives in Personality Psychology

  • Psychodynamic, Humanistic Existential, Dispositional, Biological Evolutionary, Social Cognitive.
• Psychodynamic Theories

  • Freud focused on the importance of early childhood experiences and on relationships with parents as guiding forces that shape personality development.
• Humanistic Existential Theories

  • people strive toward meaning, growth, well-being, happiness, and psychological health. ; assume that not only we are driven by a search for meaning but also negative experiences, such as failure, awareness of death, death of a loved one, and anxiety, are part of the human condition and can foster psychological growth.
• Dispositional Theories

  • argue that the unique and long-term tendencies to behave in particular ways are the essence of our personality.
• Biological Evolutionary Theories

  • Behavior, thoughts, feelings, and personality are influenced by differences in basic genetic, epigenetic, and neurological systems among individuals.
• Social Cognitive Theories

  • how we think about ourselves and other people, as well as the assumptions we make and the strategies we use for solving problems, are the keys to understanding differences among people.
• Psychology of Science

  • studies both science and behavior of scientists; that is, it investigates the impact of an individual scientist’s psychological processes and personal characteristics on the development of his or her scientific theories and research.
• Useful Theory

  • Generates research, Falsifiable, Organizes Data, Guides Action, Internally Consistent, Parsimonious.
• Falsifiable

  • a theory must be precise enough to suggest research that may either support or fail to support its major tenets.
• Operational Definition

  • one that defines units in terms of observable events or behaviors that can be measured.
• Parsimony

  • When two theories are equal in their ability to generate research, be falsified, give meaning to data, guide the practitioner, and be self-consistent, the simpler one is preferred.
• Determinism vs Free choice

  • Are people’s behaviors determined by forces over which they have no control, or can people choose to be what they wish to be? Can behavior be partially free and partially determined at the same time? 
• Pessimism vs Optimism

  • Are people doomed to live miserable, conflicted, and troubled lives, or can they change and grow into psychologically healthy, happy, fully functioning human beings?
• Causality vs Teleology

  • Do people act as they do because of what has happened to them in the past, or do they act as they do because they have certain expectations of what will happen in the future?
• Causality

  • behavior is a function of past experiences.
• Teleology

  • an explanation of behavior in terms of future goals or purposes.
• Conscious vs unconscious determinants of behavior

  • Are people ordinarily aware of what they are doing and why they are doing it, or do unconscious forces impinge on them and drive them to act without awareness of these underlying forces?
• Biological vs Social Influences on Personality

  • Are people mostly creatures of biology, or are their personalities shaped largely by their social relationships?
• Hereditary vs Environment

  • are personal characteristics more the result of heredity, or are they environmentally determined?
• Uniqueness vs Similarities

  • Is the salient feature of people their individuality, or is it their common characteristics? Should the study of personality concentrate on those traits that make people alike, or should it look at those traits that make people different?
• Reliability

  • the extent to which it yields consistent results.
• Validity

  • the degree to which an instrument measures what it is supposed to measure.
• Construct validity

  • the extent to which an instrument measures some hypothetical construct.
• Convergent validity

  • A measuring instrument has convergent construct validity to the extent that scores on that instrument correlate highly with scores on a variety of valid measures of that same construct.
• Divergent validity

  • it has low or insignificant correlations with other inventories that do not measure that construct.
• Discriminant validity

  • it discriminates between two groups of people known to be different.