PSY100 – Personality Approaches to the Scientific Study of Personality Describing and Measuring...
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PSY100 – Personality
• Approaches to the Scientific Study of Personality
• Describing and Measuring Individual Differences
• Validating Individual Difference Measures
• Important Consequences of Individual Differences
• Causes of Individual Differences
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How does Personality Psychology differ from Other Disciplines in Psychology?
• Cognitive psychology: The science of basic cognitive processes • Neuropsychology: The science of the connection between the brain and the mind • Social psychology: The science of social influences on psychological processes• Developmental psychology: The science of changes in psychological processes over the life span.
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• All these disciplines implicitly assume that all people are the same.
• Personality psychology makes a different assumption: People are different from one another in important ways.
• Cognitive “Why do some people have better memories than others?” • Social “Why do people respond differently to rejection by others?”• Developmental “Why are some children more afraid of strangers than others?”
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Two Approaches to Personality:Idiographic versus Nomothetic Approach
The idiographic (person-centered) approach: A focus on one individual at a time, and it tries to understand this individuals’ actions from the individuals’ characteristics.
The nomothetic (variable-centered) approach A focus on the relation between a certain outcome such as academic achievement (getting an A in this class) to a variable like organized-disorganized.
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Idiographic Nomothetic
Traditional ModernGrand Theories Small TheoriesOne individual at a time Large samplesQualitative QuantitativeFreud Eysenck
Idiographic question: Why did Mariah Carey have a nervous breakdown?
Nomothetic question: Are young stars in the music industry more likely to suffer a nervous breakdown than normal people?
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• Freud & Rogers – It is impossible to test scientific theories with case studies.
• Skinner – Behaviorism assumed that all people are born equal and that individual differences are a mere consequence of different learning experiences. Nobody believes this anymore.
• Eysenck – An influential early proponent of the nomothetic approach. Although unnecessarily confrontational, his work continues to influence modern personality research.
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Important Notice
• As noted in the textbook, “in recent decades the study of personality has shifted toward narrower research programs that examine specific aspects of personality”
• In other words, most contemporary personality research takes the nomothetic approach.
• Consistent with this modern trend, my second year course “PSY230 – Introduction to Personality” focuses exclusively on the modern, nomothetic approach to personality psychology.
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Warning
If you want to learn more about psychodynamic theories (Freud, Adler, Jung), DO NOT take PSY230
However, I hope to convince you in the rest of today’s lecture that the nomothetic approach examines interesting questions and provides answers that are relevant to the understanding of yourself and others.
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The Scientific (Nomothetic) Study of Personality and Individual Differences
Three Goals of Personality Psychology
1. Classification: How do people differ?2. Causes: Why do individuals differ from
each other? 3. Consequences: What are the effects of
individual differences?
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Examples
• How consistent are people in their behaviors? When somebody is friendly to us, how likely is it that this person is also friendly to others.
• Why are some people friendlier than others? Nature vs. nurture – How much is personality due to genetic differences? How much influence do parents have on their children’s personality?
• What are the consequences of personality?Does personality predict important life-outcomes such as longevity, happiness, and income?
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The Scientific Study of Individual Differences
• The nomothetic approach to personality research relies heavily on correlations (textbook pp. 54-56).
• Correlations provide information about the relation between variability in two variables.
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Examples
-Stability: Will individual differences in today’s friendliness be the same in the future?
- Consistency: Are individual differences in friendliness in one situation the same in a different situation?
- Cause: Do genetic differences predict individual differences in friendliness?
- Consequences: Do individual differences in friendliness predict individual differences in happiness?
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SWLS Time 1 (Beginning of Semester)
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r = .73; r2 = 50%
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Describing Individual Differences
• Everyday language provides thousands of words to describe individuals (honest, caring, ambitious, orderly, shy, modest, self-confident,…)
• Correlations (and more advanced statistics) show that individual differences in some of these traits (characteristics) are related (e..g, shy is negatively related to confident).
• As a result, it is possible to describe personality with fewer dimensions.
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The Big Five
• Initially, personality psychologists used different traits to describe personality and there exist hundreds of measures to measure individual differences in these traits.
• In the past two decades, it was discovered that these measures are related to each other and can be reduced to five major traits that differentiate one individual from another.
• The Big Five provide a comprehensive first impression of an individual. They do not capture all aspects of individual differences.
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The Atlas Analogy
• I like to compare the Big Five to continents.
• Continents capture important differences between regions of the word (Europe is different from Asia).
• However, there still exists important differences between countries in each continent (Germany is different from Italy).
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The Big Five
• Neuroticism – A disposition to experience more negative feelings and low self-esteem.
• Extraversion – A disposition to be outgoing, risk-taking, and cheerful.
• Openness – A disposition to be curious and interested in novel and unconventional things.
• Agreeableness – A disposition to be caring and modest
• Conscientiousness – A disposition to be organized, ambitious, and dependable.
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Measuring Personality Traits
• Self-report: The easiest and most widely used method (e.g., “I am self-confident”). Assumes that people are honest and know themselves.
• Informant reports: asking acquaintances (e.g., Joe is self-confident); more difficult to obtain; assumes that others’ know the person well.
• Observing behavior: e.g., research assistants rate personality based on videotapes of behavior; time-consuming
•
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•Experience sampling: ask participants to keep a diary or momentary records of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Time-consuming, requires high motivation and honesty of participants.
• Each methods has its advantages and drawbacks.
• The best way of measuring personality would be to use multiple methods. For example, we are currently conducting a study of married couples in which we assess personality with self-reports, informant reports, and experience sampling.
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I tend to be relaxed and handle stress well. I tend to worry a lot.I tend to be quiet. I tend to be outgoing and sociable.I tend to be original and come up with ideas. I tend to like to reflect and to play with ideas. I tend to be considerate and kind to almost everyone. I tend to be rude to others. I tend to do a thorough job. I tend to do things efficiently.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7Strongly disagree strongly agree
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Scoring of Your Personality Test
N 1+2 8.60 3.00
E 3+4 9.01 3.00
O 5+6 9.73 2.35
A 7+8 11.39 2.00
C 9+10 10.53 2.09
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Stability of Personality
• Relative differences in personality are quite stable over time.
• Stability increases over the life-span. It is not fixed at 20.
• Personality changes with age: - Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness decrease.- Agreeableness, Conscientiousness increase.
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Consequences of Personality
• Personality and Health
• Personality and Longevity
• Personality and Happiness
• Personality and Marital Satisfaction (Divorce)
• Personality and Job Performance (Income)
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Personality and Health
• Stress is related to illness – Suppression of the immune system.
• Neuroticism is related to stress-reactivity.
• We would expect neuroticism to be related to health.
• However, neuroticism is more related to subjective perception of symptoms (hypochondria) than to objective health.
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Personality and Longevity
• It is difficult to study the relation between personality and longevity.
• The Terman-study assessed personality of gifted children in the 1920s and 1930s. Now researchers can examine which children are still alive.
• Conscientiousness is the best predictor of longevity.
• The processes underlying this relationship are still unclear.
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Personality and Happiness
• Extraversion is a disposition to experience more positive affect (pleasant feelings).
• Neuroticism is a disposition to experience more negative affect (unpleasant feelings).
• Extraversion and Neuroticism are the most important personality predictors of life-satisfaction.
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Personality and Marital Satisfaction
• Research on personality and marital satisfaction has a long history (since 1930s).
• Most studies show a negative effect of neuroticism on marital satisfaction and a positive effect on divorce.
• Another interesting finding is that people do not marry on the basis of personality: Spouses’ personality scores are uncorrelated.
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Personality and Job Performance
• It is plausible that some personality traits help people in certain jobs:
- extraversion & service jobs- optimism & sales jobs
• In addition, conscientiousness is a good predictor of job performance in many different jobs (work ethic)
• Conscientiousness becomes a stronger predictor of job performance with higher autonomy.
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Causes of Personality
• The relative contribution of genetic/biological factors versus environmental/cultural factors has been a major controversy.
• After the first child parents believe in environmental factors.
• After the second child parents believe in genetic factors.
• What is the evidence?
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Twin Studies
• Before DNA testing (before the 1990s), researchers had to rely on indirect evidence to examine the influence of nature (genes) and nurture (environment).
• Twin studies capitalized on the difference between monozygotic twins (MZ) and dizygotic twins (DZ).
• MZ twins are genetically identical.
• DZ twins share on average 50% of their genes, just as much as other siblings.
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Genetic Contribution to Personality
• To examine a genetic contribution, we can compare the similarity of MZ twins to the similarity of DZ twins.
• (Given certain assumptions), if MZ twins are more similar to each other than DZ twins, then genes must influence the trait.
• For example, the height of MZ twins correlates very highly (r = .90), whereas the height of DZ twins is correlated less highly (r = .45).
• Height is genetically determined.
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• Numerous studies have demonstrated greater similarity (higher correlations) for MZ twins than for DZ twins for personality traits including the Big Five.
• Today nobody doubts that genetic factors contribute to personality.
• Twin studies also lead to the conclusion that growing up in the same household has no influence on personality.
• This finding is the topic of a heated debate as it is hard to believe that parents have no influence on the personality of their children.
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Do Genes Determine Personality?
• Genes cannot directly influence experiences and behavior.
• Genes influence biological processes, which in turn influence experiences and behavior.
• Understanding these processes can help people to change their personality.
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• Neuroticism has been linked to a gene that influences the reuptake of serotonin in the brain.
• Drugs like Prozac (SSRIs) change the biological reuptake mechanism.
• Studies show that drugs like Prozac change personality scores on a Neuroticism scale.
• SSRIs also have several side-effects. They are used only when people suffer from abnormal levels of depression and anxiety.
• What should we do when it becomes possible to change personality at will?
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Cultural influences on personality
• Cross-cultural studies show variation in personality traits across cultures. For example, HK Chinese score lower on Extraversion and Openness.
• Acculturation studies show that personality changes. HK Chinese who migrated to Canada have higher extraversion and openness scores.
• In North America, Extraversion and Neuroticism scores have increased over the past decades.
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Conclusion
• Personality psychology examines individual differences.
• It relies more on correlations than on experimental studies.
• It examines the major traits that differentiate people.
• It examines the consequences of individual differences for real-world outcomes.
• It examines the causes of individual differences.