Introduction to Personality: Toward an Integrative Science of the Person
Chapter 1. Orientation to Personality
Personality
- Shows continuity, stability and coherence in differences that can be described op
predicted
- Is expressed in many ways (behavior, thoughts, feelings
- Is organized
- Is a determinant that influences how the individual relates to the social world
- Is a psychological concept but also linked with physical, biological characteristics of
the person
What is personality psychology
- To find and describe those individual differences between people that are
psychologically meaningful and stable
- Personality as the person’s unique patterns of coping with and transforming the
psychological environment
- Mapping out differences between people in term of their characteristic ways of
behaving (thinking, feeling and acting)
- What is it that underlies these differences
- Study how personality dispositions and psychological and biological-genetic
processes influence people’s distinctive patterns of behavior
Theories
I. Big picture
Distinctive conceptions of the nature of personality, a comprehensive view of all of
personality in all of its diverse aspects (generalizations on the nature of personality)
+ their ideas helped to shape clinical psychology and psychiatry
- their work was based on disturbed patients
From big picture levels of analysis
,Trait-dispositional level: identify consistencies in the basic expression of personality,
conceptualized as stable personality characteristics
Stability and consistency of traits and types over the course of time throughout the life span
- What am I like as a person?
- How am I different from other people?
- How does my personality influence the situations I choose to be in?
Biological level: explores the biological bases of personality, including the role of heredity,
the brain, and evolution
Specifying the role of genetic determinants and of the social environment in shaping who
and what we become
- What in my personality come from the genes I inherited?
- How is my personality a reflection of my life experiences?
- Why is my personality so different from my siblings?
Psychodynamic-Motivational level: probes the motivations, conflicts, and defenses – often
unconscious – that may underlie diverse aspects of personality
Probes the motivations, conflicts and defenses that can help explain complex consistencies
and inconsistencies in personality
- Does what I do sometimes puzzle me?
- What are the real motives that drive or underlie my behavior?
- How do I protect myself against getting hurt psychologically?
Behavioral-conditioning level: analyzes specific patterns of behavior that characterize
individuals and identifies the conditions that regulate their occurence
Tries to provide accounts of irrational behaviors that perplex the people who are tortured by
them
- How are important behavior patterns learned?
- How does what I do and feel depend on my earlier experiences?
Phenomenological-humanistic level: focuses on the inner experiences of the person and
his or her way of seeing and interpreting the world
How do people perceive their world, understanding individual’s experience as he or she
perceives it (subjective)
- Who am I really?
- What do I want to become?
- How do I see myself?
Social Cognitive level: places a emphasis on scientifically rigorous analysis of the patterns
of thoughts and feelings an the role of situational contexts on them
Person’s social knowledge of the world, and how people make sense of other people and
themselves and cope as they negotiate their interpersonal lives
- How does what I know, think, and feel about myself and the social world influence
what I do and can become?
- What can I do to change how I think and feel?
,Chapter 2. Data, methods and tools
Methods:
- Interviews: psychodynamic-motivational level & phenomenological level
- Test and self-reports
- Projective measures: assessors present the person with ambiguous stimuli and ask
them ambiguous questions that have no right or wrong answers (what could this
remind you of)
- Naturalistic observation and behavior sampling
- Remote behavior sampling - daily life experiences: device carries by respondents
pages them at randomly determined times of the day, respondents record their
current thoughts, feelings, or behaviors
- Physiological functioning and brain imaging
o Polygraph: records activities of the autonomic nervous system
Electrocardiogram (EKG): muscular contractions that produce patterns
of electrical activity when heart beats
Plethysmograph: changes in blood volume
Galvanic skin response: changes in electrical activity of the skin
o Electroencephalograph (EEG): degree of activation from brain waves
o Positron emission tomography (PET) scans: amount of glucose being used in
various parts of the brain
o Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): measures magnetic fields
created by functioning nerve cells in the brain
o Sequential priming-pronunciation task: measuring time between words on
screen and vocalization of these words
people with higher rejection fear read out loud hostile words faster when
primed with a rejection word (because they have hostile thoughts)
Operalization: translates constructs into something observable and measurable
Correlation: joint relationship between variables
Correlation coefficient: quantative expression of correlation
Reliability = are the measurements consistent: when the results of a measure can be
repeated both within the confines of the study and with different investigators
- Temporal reliability = retest
- Internal consistency = the correlation between different parts of a single form
- Interscorer agreement = degree to which scorers arrive at the same statements
about the same test data
Validity = what is being measured: how well an assessment device measures what it claims
to measure
- Content validity = the items on a test represent a defined broader class of behavior
- Criterion validity = relationship between behavior and the score on other measures
that serve as referents
, - Concurrent validity = correlation among concurrently available data
- Predictive validity = correlation between a measure and data collected at a later time
- Construct validity = behavior that reflect a construct are showed
Double blind designs: when both the participant and experimenter are blind to the
independent variable manipulation
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