- convergent (associated with what we expect it to be associated with)

- discriminant (unrelated to what it shouldn't be related to)

- face (transparency of intent)

reliability increased because of:

optimization, reducing cognitive burden

- choosing middle response option

- choosing socially desirable options

- non-differentiation response bias

- acquiescence to response bias (yes to everything)

* easy multiple choice qs are easy to satisfice but also easy to code... effectiveness vs. coding ease

1) Identify most important traits necessary to explain important human behaviors

2) Measure traits accurately

3) Eventually examine causes of trait development (i.e. genetics)

Consistent patterns in the way individuals behave, feel and think

should be stable over situations and time

 ---

based mostly on self-report

factor-analysis method

correlate w/ B and L data

naturally judged by others quickly and automatically

contributes to interpersonal satisfaction

stable, esp. regarding ranking w/i a group

person-situation interactions

---

unconcerned w./ causes, development

only explicit (no implicit) data

behavior as dependent not indep. variable

lack of attention to individual

role of experience not considered

1) Traits are relatively stable and enduring

2) Dispositions influence behaviors in most situations

(predict trends, not specific behaviors; strong and weak situations)

 3) traits are dimensionsal, and are present in the population in normal distribution

17,953 person-related items in Webster's Dictionary

4 types of traits, expression of which depends on situation:

- individual traits

- common traits (culture)

-cardinal traits

- central traits (5-10 per person)

Periodic Table of Personality

 16 personality factors as basic personality factors/units/dimensions that are true and show up in every study

factor analysis

biologically based

three dimensions: introversion, neuroticism, psychotisism

supertraits -> traits -> habitual response -> specific response

imaginative, original, daring, w/ wide interests, artistic

more likely to play musical instruments, creative performance, better school grades

attention to one's own feelings vs. those of others

predicts social status (in US), leadership, dating variety, exercise, partying, alcohol intake, success in sales & management

predicts job performance (the best out of any trait), grades, low use of alcohol, juvenile delinquency

low agreeableness=indifference

predicts positive emotions, low stress, perceived support, low juvenile delinquency, donating to charity

predicts/is associated with anxiety, depression, physical illness... high in reassurance seeking, which may eventually cause loss of social supports

1) observer (some are better judges than others)

2) target (high or low impression management)

3) trait (agreeableness and neuroticism hard to read)

4) situation (scripted?)

---

1) willing to be the center of attention--tendency to behave in an outgoing, extraverte way

2) sensitivity to the reactions of others

3) ability and willingness to adjust behavior to induce positive reactions in others

---

more likely to:

- adapt their leadership style

- act differently with diff. people/diff. situations

- feel concern about their impact on others

- actions less likely to reflect inner feelings/attitude

-  be effective at jobst hat require communicating and interacting w/ diff. groups of people

- common in bilinguals

- be compassionate, helpful

- fairly stable

1) persons respond diff. to same situation

2) situations choose person

3) person chooses situations

4) situations can evoke diff. aspects of person

5) situations can change people

 6) people can change situations

combination of different methods of analysis/measurement

increases incremental validity

- poor context (settings, demands)

-measures poorly worded or long, double-barreled

- true changes in participant (life events)

- participants bored, unmotivated, satisficing

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

true-false qs

about 7 hrs long

empirical method based on 2600 adults

clinical scales: hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria (stress reactivity), posychopathic deviance, schizophrenia, social introversion, masculine-feminie, psychasthenia, paranoia, hypomania

validity scales: L scale, F scale, K scale, ? scale, TRIN & VRIN scales

Ten-Item Personality Inventory

factor-analytic

5 scales of personality

answers rated from 1-7

high face-validity

subjective well-being

the measure used in Ozer-Benet-Martinez to judge life satisfaction and experience of positive or negative emotions. S data.

shown to be accurate even with participants as young as 5 y.o.

advantages:

- you're your best expert

- efficacy expectations/self-verification (people work hard to get others to treat them in a manner that confirms their self-conception)

- simple easy and cost-effective

disadvantages

- might not tell you

-maybe can't tell you (don't remember; aren't introspective or insightful enough; inaccurate in how they view themselves; fish-and-water effect: their own behavior stops seeming remarkable)

- too cheap and easy (overused?)

informant data

impressive accuracy

advantage:

- large amount of information

- real-world basis

- common sense (data automatically filtered to take into account immediate situation and past behaviors)

- causal force: reputation is powerful force, and may lead to expectancy effect/behavioral confirmation (to some degree people become what we expect them to be)

disadvantage:

- limited amount of information (diff. person in diff. setting or environment)

- error: no informant can remember everything, the ones that are remembered tend to be extreme, unusual, emotionally arousing

- bias: emotionos damage ability to judge somoeone accurately

Life Data

verifiable, concrete, real-life outcomes

advantages:

- intrinsic importance

- psychological relevance

disadvantages:

- multidetermination

Behavior

natural and contrived observations

diary method, experience-sampling method, beeper method, experiments, personality tests, physiological measures

advantages:

- range of contexts

- objective and quantifiable

- high reliability

disadvantage:

- uncertain interpretation

pyschometrics - random influences sum 0 and cancel each other out       

an idea about a psychological attribute that goes beyond what might be assessed through any particular method of measurement

ideas about how behaviors hang together and are affected by particular aspect of personality

reliability and validity together

tendency of people living at one time to be different than those living earlier or later

(limits generalizability of results)

measure of effect size used to describe strength of effect in either correlational or experimental design

most common is Pearson coefficient (r)

improves with age

associated with general mental health (psychological adjustment)

measure of neuroticism, control, sociability

B data

expensive

hard to standardize results/grading

provides information about implicit motives (as opposed to explicit behaviors/thoughts/feelings measured in questionnaires)

correlation coefficient of Rorschach using specific grading systems is .33 - doesn't go beyond what an easier, cheaper measure like MMPI tells us

come up with items that seem directly, obviously, and rationally related to what it wishes to measure

to be valid, these 4 things must hold:

1) each item must mean same thing to participant as to test-writer

2) participant must be able to accurately self-asses

3) participant must be willing to accurately report

4) all items must be valid indicators of what test is trying to measure

[all 4 must hold, but almost all rationally constructed tests fail on one or more]

seeks to identify groups of things that seem to be alike, to measure the property that seems to unite them all (factor)

groupings of properties constitute factors

administer thousands of questions, use correlation coefficients to see which are correlated together, then name the factor they have in common

must have a good representation of items going in (garbage in, garbage out)

conceptual naming of factor is subjective

some factors make no sense

used also to refine personality tests and in conjunction with other test construction techniques

administer large and somewhat random set of questions to control group and to people who have been identified as having that which you want to identify in your test (for example, schizophrenics in case of MMPI)

difficult to fake

B data, not S data

non-control group must be accurately identified

must be revalidated often for different geographical locations and participants

self-fulfilling prophecies

(student's identified as bloomers example)

[influenced by climate, feedback, input, output]

stronger when held for a long time (drinking behavior of children example)

accuracy of personality judgment-

judged by 3 methods

1) convergent validation

2) interjudge agreement

3) behavioral prediction/predictive validity

personality style describing someone who is invested in developing and maintaining interpersonal relationships

these people tend to be accurate judges of personality

1) good judge (communion, conscientious, openness)

2) good target (consistent, stable, transparent, psychologically adjusted, low self-monitoring?)

3) good trait (related to overt behaviors, such as extraversion)

4) good information/situation (situation is similar to one that acquaintances are used to seeing) (more information improves validity but not inter-rater reliability) (weak vs. strong situations; elicits trait you want to judge)

judging personality nees 4 stages to be accurate:

1) relevance (person does something relevant to trait)

2) availability (done in presence of rater)

3) detection (rater notices)

4) utilization (rater interprets correctly)

"what do people like that do?"

(authoritarianism and conscientiousness examples)

"who does that?"

 (Q-sort example, delay of gratification, drug abusers examples)

"which traits are most important?"

-Murray's 20 essential traits/needs-

-Tellegen's Multidimensional Personoality Questionnaire-

-Cattell: correlation matrix and 16 fundamental traits-

-Allport's lexical hypothesis-

-Big Five-

focuses on patterns of traits that characterize a person, and sorts these patterns into types

-self-monitoring-

-Block's five personality types-

knowing a person's personality type does not help predict his or her behavior beyond what can be predicted from the traits that define the typology

stability of individual difference in personalities

increases with age (ranking stays the same but actual score might change)

most change occurs not in childhood or adolescnce but from 20-30 years old

[means that personality is a result of changing social roles over lifespan?]