TOP 2

• There has been a lot of debate about whether personality is innate __ or learned from one’s experiences in childhood and beyond

  nature;nurture
• is a set of related assumptions that allows scientists to use logical deductive reasoning to formulate testable hypotheses

  scientific theory
• can never fill all the requirements of an adequate theory.

  single assumption
• Unless a __ can be tested in some way, it is worthless. The possibility that scientists in the future might develop the necessary means to test it.

  hypothesis
• Means love of wisdom, and philosophers are people who pursue wisdom through thinking and reasoning. Philosophers are not scientists; they do not ordinarily conduct controlled studies in their pursuit of wisdom.

  Philosophy
• the nature of knowledge.

  Epistemology
• Closely tied to empirically gathered data and to science

  Speculation
• __is the branch of study concerned with observation and classification of data and with the verification of general laws through the testing of hypotheses. __are useful tools employed by scientists to give meaning and organization to observations

  Science;Theories
• An educated guess or prediction specific enough for its validity to be tested through the use of the scientific method.

  Hypothesis
• A classification of things according to their natural relationships. are essential to the development of a science because without classification data science could not grow.

  Taxonomy
• ability to stimulate and guide further research

  Generates research
• concerned with the measurement, labeling, and categorization of the units employed in theory building

  Descriptive research
• leads to an indirect verification of the usefulness of the theory that may reshape and enlarge the theory

  Hypothesis testing
• ability to be confirmed or disconfirmed a theory

  Falsifiable
• be able to organize those research data that are not incompatible with each other.

  Organizes data
• ability to guide the practitioner over the rough course of day-to-day problems

  Guides action
• is one whose components are logically compatible.


  Is internally consistent
• ability to generate research, be falsified, give meaning to data, guide the practitioner, and be self-consistent, the simpler one is preferred.

  Parsimonious
• 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? Although the dimension of determinism versus free will is more philosophical than scientific, the position theorists take on this issue shapes their way of looking at people and colors their concept of humanity.

  Determinism versus Free choice.
• Are people doomed to live miserable, conflicted, and troubled lives, or can they change and grow into psychologically healthy, happy, fully functioning human beings? In general, personality theorists who believe in determinism tend to be pessimistic (Skinner was a notable exception), whereas those who believe in free choice are usually optimistic.

  Pessimism versus Optimism.
• Causality holds that behavior is a function of past experiences, whereas teleology is an explanation of behavior in terms of future goals or purposes. 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 versus Teleology.
• 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?

  Conscious versus Unconscious.
• Are people mostly creatures of biology, or are their personalities shaped largely by their social relationships? A more specific element of this issue is heredity versus environment; that is, are personal characteristics more the result of heredity, or are they environmentally determined?

  Biological versus Social influences.
• 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?

  Uniqueness versus Similarities
• a measuring instrument is the extent to which it yields consistent results.

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

  Validity
• the extent to which an instrument measures some hypothetical construct

  Construct validity
• the extent that scores on that instrument correlate highly (converge) with scores on a variety of valid measures of that same construct.

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

  Divergent construct validity
• if it discriminates between two groups of people known to be different.

  Discriminant validity
• the extent that a test predicts some future behavior.

  Predictive validity
• A classification of things according to their natural relationships.

  taxonomy
• are essential to the development of a science because without classification data science could not grow

  Taxonomies