Study Guide – Test 1 Personality Psych (255) Fall, 2009

Material: Lecture notes Readings:  Funder - Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7  Larson & Buss – Chapter 15, pp. 270-275, 287-292  Factor Analysis reading

Topics

Intro to personality psychology

Personality Assessment  Clues to personality o BLIS strategies of personality assessment) . What are they? . Pros and cons of each o Projective vs objective tests (eg, Rorschach, Implicit Associations Test) . What is the logic of a “projective” test? . Why would projective tests be used? . What is a key psychometric problem with Rorschach test?  Methods of scale construction  Purposes of assessment  Quality of measurement o Reliability (Generalizability) . Test-retest rel . Internal consistency rel . Aggregation (Funder) o Validity . Evidence for validity of a test?

Scientific Methods  Research Design o Case studies o Nonexperimental Designs (AKA “Correlational”) o Experimental Designs o What are they? What are the key differences?  Statistics o correlation coefficient . What is it? . Range, magnitude, direction, scatterplot . Interpretation . What is “big”? BESD . Effect size o Inferential Statistics (significance testing)  Ethics

Trait Perspective on Personality  Theoretical issue - Basics about traits o What are traits? o Causal entities or descriptive labels? o Why do we prefer thinking in terms of “traits” instead of “types”  Theoretical issue - What are the fundamental traits? o Approaches – theoretical and atheoretical o Authoritarianism, Self-monitoring (Funder) o Lexical hypothesis (Allport) o Factor analysis (Cattell) . What is it for? How does it work, conceptually? o The Five Factor Model (FFM, AKA the Big Five) . What are they? . Are they universal? . How should we think about them?  Theoretical issue - How are traits, situations, and behavior interconnected? (Lecture and L & B). For the following studies, which apply basic personality traits to various areas of psychological interest, think about how they reflect the interconnectedness between personality traits, behaviors, and the social environment.  Applied issue: Study on non-clinical depression o California Q-srt (Lecture and Funder) o Self-perceptions of people with NCD, behaviors associated with NCD, behavioral responses to NCD, long-term social effects of NCD  Applied issue: Personality and worklife o Person-environment fit – personality and career choices . Holland’s job types . Personality traits of people who have interests in the job types o Effect of leaders’ personality on corporate ethical behavior . Design of study as discussed in class . Findings – which traits are relevant to employee’s ethical behavior and how so?  Applied issue: Personality and Romantic Relationships (Lecture and L & B) o What kind of people tend to be romantically satisfied? o What kind of people tend to make their partner satisfied? o What traits do we look for in a partner? o To what degree are “Idealness” and “personality similarity” related to romantic satisfaction? o To what degree do personality traits related to future romantic satisfaction? Why?  Personality and physical health o How might personality be related to health? . Health behavior model . Reporting bias o Study: Personality and diabetes o Study: Mother’s personality and communication with pediatrician o Study: Childhood personality and longevity  Aggression and evocation (L & B)  Personality traits and manipulation tactics (L & B)  Criticisms of the trait approach o Mischel’s (1968) arguments o The “Person-situation debate” o The theoretical implications of behavioral predictability and consistency (or the lack thereof) o Responses to the situationist position