Midterm 1

• what is the Roschach ink blot test

  • Widely used ink blot
  • uses projection
  • invalid and unreliable
  • made my Herman Rorschach.
• purposes of personality testing for the workplace

  Personnel selection, integrity testing, concerns over negligent hiring.
• who inspired Myers and Briggs


  Carl Jung
• what percentage of participants received a different result when retested using the Myers-Briggs test

  50%
• steps in coming up with a good measure for personality


  Begin with the idea, rough description, point to particular examples, specific indicators constitute the measure.
• what is the most commonly used method for assessment

  Self-report data
• 3 methods in self-report data


  Empirical approaches, rational/theoretical approaches, factor analysis.
• what is the empirical approach


  Selecting items that distinguish between those who possess the trait and those who have it in small magnitudes or not at all.
• what is the MMPI


  A psychology test that assesses personality traits and psychopathology, intended to test people who are suspected of having mental illness or clinical issues.
• what is the rational/theoretical approach?

  Relies on theory to determine how and what of assessment, can dictate how to measure something
• what is the projective hypothesis


  If an individual is confronted with an ambiguous stimulus, the interpretation that the individual provides is to some extent a projection of the individual's internal characteristics.
• what qualities do projective tests have - strengths/weaknesses


  • Unstructured, disguised, scored subjectively.

  Strengths: disguise, bypassing ego, deeper understanding of individual.

  Weaknesses: low reliability and validity, refutability of underlying theory.
• first and second guiding principles for a projection study?

  1. items should be chosen as to sample all possible contents (more comprehensive than own view).
  2. ensure there is an adequate sample of items within each of the major content areas.
• what is factor analysis

  • All the characteristics found in personality tests can be reduced to a few common factors that describe the fundamental aspects of human personality.
  • Statistical tool for data reduction, highly correlated items are measuring the same thing. Can test whether theory holds up, can't test what it really is.
• what is the implicit association task (IAT)


  Measures the degree of association between concepts.
• what are the three standards to evaluate personality measures


  Reliability, validity, generalizability.
• what is a necessary prerequisite for validity


  Reliability
• what is the most important type of validity

  Construct validity
• what are the steps to establish validity

  • Need to establish convergent correlations.
  • Building a nomological net.
  • Need to establish divergent correlations.
• what is convergent validity 


  Measures that should be related are related.
• what is divergent validity


  Concepts that seem to be tapping different things.
• what is a nomological network

  • A necessity to establish construct validity.
  • A representation of the concepts of interest in the study, the interrelationships and their observable manifestations.
• who did comprehensive review of personality studies and what was concluded


  Mischel (1968), concluded that the personality trait is not indicative of behaviour.
• at any one time, what powers an individual's behaviour

  Situational forces (roles, peer pressure, media).
• what are the solutions proposed to combat the lack of traits influencing behaviour

  1. interactionalism
  2. role of moderator-variables.
  3. aggregation
• what is interactionalism 


  Researchers who take an interactional view believe that traits only predict behaviour in certain circumstances, they then make predictions.
• true or false: given a very strong situation, everyone will react in a different way, however, in ambiguous situations, traits cannot predict behavior

  FALSE
• what is the role of moderator variables

  • Individual differences in people's need for consistency and self monitoring moderate predictive power of personality and the situation.
  • A moderator variable is a third variable that affects the strength of the relationship between dependent and independent variables.
• what is aggregation


  Correlations between conceptually related traits or between traits and their related behaviours increase dramatically when these measures are aggregated across different situations.
• who had a concept of traits and density distribution of states, which suggested that a person will behave above or below their own mean (explained by situation)


  Will Fleeson
• historically, what did scientists claim was the source of personality 


  Focused on how rearing and other experiences shaped personality.
• do genes play a crucial role in personality

  Yes, most affects are correlational between parents and children.
• what is the heritability estimate for personality traits


  0.5, found from monozygotic and dizygotic studies.
• what are the two types of environmental contributions

  Shared environment and non-shared environment.
• what is the shared environment 


  What siblings share, parenting practices, neighbourhood and family life.
• what is the importance of non-shared environment

  • Adopted siblings are not much more similar than two random people from the same culture.
  • Adult sibling personalities are about equally correlated whether or not they grew up together.
• what is the flynn effect


  Suggests people are getting smarter over history.
• define personality

  A stable trait across different situations and time, the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and influence their interactions with and adaptations to the physical, intraphysical and social environment.
• what are traits?


  The average tendencies of a person.
• what are the three levels of analysis

  • Like all others (human nature)
  • like some others (groups and individual differences)
  • like no others (uniqueness).