PSYC2130 - Final Exam #2

• Types of data

  • S data - self reported data
  • I data - informant data
  • L data - life data
  • B data - behaviour data
• S data


  Ask people about themselves, takes the form of surveys, no trick questions, advantages: lots of info, privileged access, definitional truth, casual force (e.g. self-fulfilling prophecy), simple and easy, disadvantages: bias, error, too simple and easy
• I data


  Informant data, "gossip", takes the form of letter of recommendation, advantages: lots of info, real world basis, common sense, definitional truth (e.g. truth about how popular you are is defined by other people/informants), casual force, disadvantages: limited contexts, limited access, error, bias
• L data


  Traces of behaviour, our behaviour has consequences and it leaves traces, takes the form of digital traces, records, living spaces, advantages: objective and verifiable, intrinsic importance, disadvantages: multiple determined (there could be many reasons why this L data exists)
• B data


  Watch natural behaviour, observing the behaviour directly, in lab, simulate real world, experiment, physiological, advantages: appear objective, range of context, disadvantage: difficult and expensive, uncertain interpretation
• Goal of personality psychology

  Trying to understand people in their entirety, understanding people's thoughts, feelings, behaviours
• Ethical principles

  • Respect for participants
  • Beneficence
  • Justice
• Principle of respect


  Respect participants enough to make an informed decision whether or not do they do or do not want to participate in a study, informed consent, vulnerable populations
• Principle of beneficence


  Weigh benefits and risks - maximise benefits and minimise risks, anonymous/confidential, return participants the same way they came in
• Principle of justice


  Fairness of who pays cost and who gain benefits
• Deception


  If people knew something about the study it might undermine their results, might lose the benefits without deception, know enough to understand the risks but not explicit enough to undermine the results - misleading a little bit
• Case study


  • Intensely measuring one thing, usually a person in psychology, advantages: mirrors goals, generative - to generate new ideas, falsify possible/impossible claims, disadvantages: generalizability - can't generalize to a population because it's just one thing
• Correlational


  • Look at repeated co-occurance, natural fluctuations - people are different, causal problem: a related to b - a ←→ b, a causes b - a → b, b causes a - a← b, a third variable might cause both - third variable problem, advantages: naturalistic, practical - measure two variables out in the world, disadvantages: unclear causality
• Experimental


  • Researcher is engaging in manipulations of variables of interest, random assignment, advantages: causality, controllable, appear rigorous, disadvantages: difficult, artificial
• Binomial effect size display (BESD)


  Effect size r, Pearson's r correlation coefficient
• Lewin's formula: B= f(P,E)
• Lewin's formula

  B= Behaviour, f = function, P= person, E = situation/environment, The way people behave is a function of who they are and their situation
• Trait approach


  • For example, talkative would be a behavioural tendency, people are inconsistent, situations are important predictors of behaviour
• Person situation debate


  The question that started the debate: If the situation is so important, what about personality? 20 year long debate, debate nearly killed personality psychology
• Situationist perspective


  • Walter mischel argued that personality is not something that people should assess, Personality is poor at predicting behaviour, Situations are more important predictors, personality assessment is a waste of time
• Single trait approach


  • Look at a single trait and see how its associated with many behaviour/outcomes
• Many trait approach


  • Look at many traits and focus on a singular behaviour/outcome
• Essential trait approach


  • How can we identify an efficient subset of of the possible traits, what is the essential traits we might need to understand a person?, lexical hypothesis, the big five
• The big five

  • Extraversion
  • Agreeableness
  • Conscientiousness
  • Negative emotionally or neuroticism
  • Open mindedness
• Typological approach


  • People don't vary across dimensions, there's just different types of people, categorises people, examples: Myers briggs, True colours, Type A, can't predict behaviours or outcomes, unreliable
• Lens model


  Trying to look at, listen to, smell, perceive the cues that a person provides to us, people do things to give us clues about their personality, cue validity, cue utility
• Realistic accuracy model (RAM)


  What's the process through which expressions form, relevancy, availability, detection, utilization
• Mean discrepancy


  We compare one's own personality vs a judge's judgment of that person, judges underestimate: r > 0, accuracy: r = 0, judge overestimate: r < 0, we are pretty good at judging others people's personality
• Rank order accuracy


  accuracy: r> 0, no accuracy: r=0 (or less than 0), the more positive the better the accuracy is between the judges and the target
• Accuracy criteria

  Self-other agreement, inter judge consensus, behavioral prediction
• Modifiers of accuracy

  • Good trait, good target, good judge, good information
• Nature vs nurture

  Nature - genetics, Nurture - environment, Both play a role in shaping personality but personality must be grounded by a biological system
• Brain damage

  • Phineas Gage experienced brain damage naturally as a railroad worker, trauma damages parts of the brain by damage the outside then going in, brain tumors damage the brain through the inside, man made brain damage - lobotomy, split brain surgery, observing consequences of brain damage can help determine which areas of the brain are affected
• Brain stimulation


  • Can be done by electrodes, part of the way the brain signals to itself and other parts of the body is through electrical activity, electromagnetic activity, can be placed inside brain to stimulate a particular region of the brain, stimulation to various regions of the brain have consequences and these consequences help figure out what each part of the brain does, trans magnetic stimulation (TMS) - in the presence of a very strong magnetic field, you can disrupt/you can prevent any electrical activity
• Brain imaging


  • EEG and MEG - look at electromagnetic energy, image where and when electrical activity is happening, poor localization, PET (positron emission topography) scan - ingest tracer chemical and look where chemical flows which can be packed up by the scan, MRI and fMRI - MRI is pictures, fMRI is video, slowest way, excellent localization
• DNA sequencing


  • Very modern approach, expensive, multiple comparisons (6.4 billion), genes are rarely 1 to 1 with phenotypes
• Frontal lobes


  Most uniquely human, left front - approach pleasant, pleasurable experience would be associated with lower levels of negative emotionality, right front - avoid unpleasant, people who have a tendency to focus on avoiding the unpleasantness is associate higher levels of negative emotionality, damage to the frontal lobe changes the way people experience negative emotions
• Dopamine


  Turns motivation into action, the behavioural go system, heavily involved in muscle movements, people with an abundance of domain are assertive, dominant, outgoing, extraversion, open mindedness
• Serotonin


  Inhibiting behavioural impulses, especially things that are attractive but dangerous, implicated with getting along with others, implicated with organize behaviour and get stuff done - conscientiousness, implicated with avoiding mood swings - negative emotionality
• Epinephrine and norepinephrine


  Adrenaline and noradrenaline, stress floods the body with adrenaline, adrenaline rush aka fight or flight, external validity problems, negative emotionality