Personality

• Personality is how we act, think and feel in relatively enduring and distinctive ways, in response to life situations
• personality traits grow less stable with age
• social dominance increases with age
• agreeableness increases with age
• conscientiousness increases with age
• emotional stability increases until around 35 and then stays relatively stable
• social vitality decreases with age
• peroasnltiy is strongly influenced by genetics, shaped more so, than by the environment. Staying strongly influence when twins are reared apart
• genetics effect account for approximately 40-50% of trait score variation
• unique effects are more important than shared effects - own experiences
• lexical hypothesis - people that vary in an important way to a group of people

  this variation will be captured in langauge

  • important variations tend to be captured in single words
• unique terms

  • personality traits - sociable, aggressive, fearful
  • evaluative judgments - excellent, worthy
  • temporary states - afraid, elated
• are traits independent?

  • theoretically, yes
  • empirically, small correlations among traits - similar experiences, getting a job or not, having children or not)
• Big 5 Personality Traits

  • extroversion - joiner, talkative, active, affectionate
  • agreeableness - trusting, lenient, soft-hearted, good-natured
  • conscientiousness - hardworking, well organised, punctual
  • neuroticism - worried, temperamental, self-conscious, emotional
  • openness to experience - imaginative, creative, original, curious
• trait-based approaches are on a scale - more introverted or more extroverted
• type-based approaches is two distinctive groups even when on a scale

  naming as introverted or extroverted
• trait structures are not very good at predicting behaviour in specific situations

  focuses on average tendencies
• social-cognitive perspective

  • Behaviourism and the cognitive revolution
  • power of the environment
  • learning by observation - person (personality) influence behaviour influence enviroment aorund them which cycles back to influence the person
• reciprocal determinism - dynamic, two-way interactions

  social-cognitive perspective
• CAPS - cognitive affective personality system

  • encoding strategies
  • expectancies and beliefs
  • goals and values
  • affects
  • competencies and self-regulation processes
• Mischel’s Marshmallow Experiment

  design - one marshmallow now; but 2 if willing to wait

  delayed gratification
• ability to delay gratification predicted an increased score in standardised testing
• social-cognitive approach integrates cognitive and behavioural approaches

  persons-in-situations