Summary of Personality Psychology: Domains of Knowledge About Human Nature by Larsen and Buss - 2nd international edition

What is personality? - Chapter 1

How can we define the concept of personality?

People often use trait-descriptive adjectives in describing their own characteristics and the characteristics of others. They reflect qualities of a person’s mind, attitude towards other people, their effect on other people, their desires and the strategies they use to attain goals. The accepted definition of personality is the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the intra-psychic, physical, and social environments.

What are psychological traits?

Psychological traits are the characteristics that define how one individual is different or similar to another. For example, shyness and talkativeness are both traits. Traits describe an individual’s average tendencies, rather than their momentary behaviour. The more often someone avoids social situations, the more able we are to call them “shy”. Personality trait research looks into how many traits there are, how they are organized, their origins, and the consequences or correlations of traits. Traits help describe people and understand their differences, and can help explain behaviour. They can also help predict future behaviour and preferences.

What are psychological mechanisms?

Psychological mechanisms refer to processes of personality. These differ from traits in that they involve information-processing activity. They are made up of three essential ingredients: inputs, decision rules, and outputs. The mechanism might make people sensitive to certain environmental stimuli (input), cause them to consider certain courses of action over others (decision rules), and behave in a certain way (output). Extraversion is a good example of a mechanism.

Personality tends to remain from one situation to the next, somewhat stable and consistent. Traits and mechanisms are not simply random, but are organized and linked to one another. Different aspects of personality might be activated according to the specific situation. Traits tend to be enduring, especially in adulthood. In this way, traits differ from states, which are fleeting and momentary. While relatively enduring, traits can change slowly over time.

What do we mean by influence?

Personality traits and mechanisms have an influence on our lives, how we act, how we see ourselves, interact with others, select our environments, set our goals, and react to new stimuli.

What do we mean by person-environment interaction?

Individual interactions with situations include perceptions, selections, evocations and manipulation. Perceptions refer to how we interpret our environment. Selection involves choosing which situations and interactions we choose to enter. Evocations are the reactions we produce in others. Manipulations are the ways we attempt to influence the behaviour of others.

What do we mean by adaptation?

Adaptation, or adaptive functioning, includes the accomplishment of goals, coping, adjustment, and the way we deal with challenges and problems. Some seemingly negative personality traits may actually hold an adaptive function.

What do we mean by environment?

An individual’s environment can pose unique challenges that can directly threat survival. These challenges also exist in the social environment. Environmental challenges motivate behaviours, inspire us to focus our attentions, and force us to cope. Intra-psychic challenges are those that occur within the mind, like self-esteem.

What are the three levels of personality and culture?

1. Human nature (likeness to others)
2. Individual and group differences (likeness to only some others)
3. Individual uniqueness (likeness to no others)

These can also be considered universals, particulars, and uniqueness.

What do we mean by human nature / likeness to others?

Human nature describes the traits and mechanisms of personality that are typical of humans, and possessed by nearly everyone. Included are the need to belong, and the capacity for love.

What do we mean by individual and group differences / likeness to some others?

Individual differences are those ways in which people are only similar to some people (ex. level of extraversion.) When a whole group of people are different from another group, this is called differences between groups (ex. age groups, different cultures, gender).

What do we mean by individual uniqueness/ likeness to no others?

No two individuals are exactly alike, and it is this uniqueness that psychologists are often interested in. Studying individuals nomethetically involves looking at individual differences that are distributed in the population. This is used to identify universal vs. individual traits. Studying individuals ideographically involves looking at single, unique case studies.

What do we mean by 'grand theories'?

Sigmund Freud theorized on human nature, emphasizing the instincts of sex and aggression, and a universal structure of id, ego, and superego. He also proposed universal stages of psychosexual development. Grand theories of Freud and many other founding psychologists have been drawn on to formulate contemporary theories and research.

What do we mean by 'contemporary research'?

Much of contemporary research on personality focuses on the differences between individuals and groups. A criticism of current personality research is that rather than recognizing personality as a whole, research focuses mostly on individual aspects of personality. As such, the field of personality might be considered incoherent. Adding the research of many psychologists together, however, can bring up a clearer image.

What are the six domains of knowledge on human nature?

A domain of knowledge is a specialty area of scholarship and science in which there is a specific focus on particular aspects of human nature. Specialization is important as each domain is better able to focus and create its own base of knowledge. Within the each domain, researchers develop common methods for asking questions, known facts, and have developed theoretical explanations to account for these facts. There are six main domains of personality research:

1. Dispositional Domain.

The dispositional domain deals with the way in which individuals differ from each other and how these differences develop and are maintained.

2. Biological Domain

The biological domain is based on the core assumption that much of human thought and behaviour is based on biology. This domain deals with genetics, psychophysiology and evolution. Genetic personality research focuses on the heritability of traits. Psychophysiology research addresses the interaction of the nervous system, hormones, and other physical processes on personality. Evolutionary research addresses the adaptive role of personality and how evolution has determined certain traits to be more crucial for survival than others.

3. Intrapsychic Domain

The intrapsychic domain deals with internal mental processes of personality, often those that operate below conscious awareness. Defense mechanisms and Freudian notions of the subconscious form a basis for intrapsychic research.

4. Cognitive-experiential Domain

The cognitive-experiential domain deals with cognition and the subjective experience, including the mechanisms involved in information processing. It also addresses descriptive aspects of the self, self-esteem, motivation, and emotion.

5. Social/Cultural Domain

The social/cultural domain of personality research asserts that personality is affected by and affects social and cultural context. This includes the study of how men and women interact, how people manipulate others, and how personality affects our social habits.

6. Adjustment Domain

The adjustment domain deals with how we cope with the challenges of everyday life, including health-related behaviours and abnormal or maladjusted personality disorders.

Which three functions have personality theories?

Personality theories serve three functions: they provide a guide for researchers, organize known findings and make predictions about behaviour and psychological phenomena that has not yet been observed. Theories are different than beliefs in that they are based on observed and tested systematic observations.

Which five standards for evaluating theories do we know?

There are five scientific standards used to evaluate personality theories. The first, comprehensiveness, ensures that a good theory explains all the facts and observations within its domain. The second standard is heuristic value, which determines whether the theory can act as a guide to future discoveries. The third is testability, as there should be precise enough predictions that the theory can be legitimately tested. Fourth is parsimony- it is better if a theory contains few premises and assumptions (parsimony). However, some complex theories are still necessary. The fifth scientific standard is a theory’s compatibility with other scientific laws and theories, and its ability to be integrated across domains of knowledge.

What do we mean when we're talking about the grand ultimate theory?

While biology contains a grand unifying theory (evolution), personality research does not currently have one. Freud and other psychologists have proposed some, but they do not meet all the criteria. Work in each of the six domains of personality psychology may ultimately result in such a theory.

How can personality be measured? - Chapter 2

What are different sources of data?

What do we mean by S-Data (Self-Report Data)?

The most obvious and most commonly used method of gathering data on personality is self-report. This is obtained through interviews, questionnaires, and systematic personal records. The benefit of self-report is that it can be used to gather information only the individual knows, their own personal feelings, beliefs and private experiences. Open-ended questions are considered unstructured means of information gathering, whereas true/false questions are considered structured. Open-ended instruments require coding schemes to classify responses, in order to obtain measurable data. Common structured tests include the ACL (Adjective Check List) and tests that use the Likert rating scale to measure the degree of agreement. The NEO Personality Inventory and the California Psychological Inventory measure include statements that use the Likert rating scale in this way. Problems with self-report measures include the inability to apply these measurements to unwilling participants, and the inability to account for dishonesty.

What do we mean by O-Data (Observer-Report Data)?

Observer-report data is obtained through sources that are able to provide information about a person’s personality (including friends, family, etc.) Observer reports are able to provide information that other sources cannot, such as the unique social reputation a person has, and the ease of their interactions. When multiple observers are used, inter-rater reliability can be established.

How do we select observers?

There are two strategies used to select observers: one can either choose professional personality observers or people who actually know the target participants. In the first case, professional observers watch participants in a variety of situations and independently assess their personalities. Personal observers, on the other hand, provide different advantages. They may be in a better position to observe the target’s behaviour in a private context. Multiple social personalities can be assessed – for instance, many people act differently around their spouse than around their coworkers. The main disadvantage to this choice is the existence of bias due to intimate relationships.

What is the different between naturalistic and artificial observation?

In naturalistic observation, observers witness normal events that occur in the regular routine of a person’s life. This allows for more accurate information, though much less control of conditions. In experimenter-controlled, artificial situations, the advantage of control comes at the cost of realism.

What do we mean by T-Data (Test Data)?

Personality-relevant information that comes from standardized tests is called test data. This is used to determine how people differ in reactions to an identical situation. This is often accomplished by misleading participants into believing that something else is being tested for, so that the real subject is more accurate and not skewed by acting. If the participants try to guess what trait is being measured, their responses might alter as they try to give a specific impression. Participants must also see the testing situation in the same ways as the experimenter. These situations are also inherently interpersonal, so the experimenter might unintentionally influence the results. T-data is useful as it allows real behaviour to be elicited and observed, context controlled, and specific hypotheses to be tested.

What did the Magargee experiment mean?

Megargee did an interesting experiment to dominance. He wanted to know how dominance influenced the taking of leadership in certain situations. Magargee studied a large group of men and women for dominance and divided them into four types of pairs:
• Dominant man with non-dominant woman.
• Dominant man with non-dominant man.
• Dominant woman with non-dominant man.
• Dominant woman with non-dominant woman.

He gave the couples an assignment in which they had to decide who took the lead. This study showed that in the second group 75%, in group four 70% and in group one 90% of the dominants took the lead. It was surprising that in group three only 20% of the dominant women took the lead. The conclusion that was drawn was based on traditional role patterns, but this turned out to be completely incorrect when the tape recordings of the research were examined. The recordings showed that the women had forced the men to take the lead. This shows that men and women express their dominance in a different way.

From this research a number of important points about laboratory research can be obtained. Personality can be observed in a laboratory, but if the conditions are right. The research also makes it clear that an incorrect conclusion can easily be drawn if a detail is overlooked. Finally, it shows that there are often links between S-data and T-data, which reinforce the outcomes of both.

What should we be aware of by recording devices?

In some cases, mechanical devices may be used to measure aspects of personality. For example, an actigraph (a device worn on the wrist to measure activity levels) produces accurate results that correspond with those made through observation. Mechanical devices cannot measure most aspects of personality (such as introversion or conscientiousness).

What role does physiological information play?

Personality data can be captured using physiological measurements. These can assess arousal level, reactivity to stimuli, speed of information processing, and all things that may indicate personality. Sensors can be used to measure activity of the sympathetic nervous system. Brain waves can be assessed, and brain activity can be pinpointed using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans. Sexual arousal can be measured by gauging the amount of blood flow in the genitals. The startle reflex can be used to test for psychopathy. The downside of testing for physiological data is that most recording must be done in an artificial setting.

What are projective techniques?

Projective techniques involve giving an individual a standard, ambiguous stimulus and asking what they see. The Rorschach inkblot test is an example of this. The content of the person’s responses is thought to reveal aspects of their personality.

What do we mean by L-Data (Life-Outcome Data)?

Information that can be collected from the events, activities, and outcomes of a person’s life is called L-Data. Usually this information is a matter of public record (like marriages and divorces). S-data and O-data can be used to predict L-data. Children who more often exhibit severe temper tantrums have been found (by comparing O-data with later collected L-data) to indicate negative outcomes in adult life. L-data is used to determine car insurance, credit rating, and even targeted advertising on the internet.

Which issues are involved in assessing personality?

How can we link various data sources?

How closely the findings of one data source correspond to those of another source is an important issue to consider. How well does S-data correspond with O-data, for example? This consistency across data sources depends largely on the personality variable that is being assessed. Some traits are less observable than others. Extraversion shows moderate agreement across data sources, but “calculating” shows less self-observer agreement. By using multiple measures, variables can be ironed out, arriving at information about the real subject of study. One problem is that lack of agreement between measures does not necessarily signify measurement error, as different data sources may have different access to relevant information.

What do we mean by the fallible nature of personality measurement?

As scientific measurement is not 100% reliable, strategies must be used to capture the most accurate possible results. The strategy of triangulation involves assessing different measurement results and data sources to transcend single data-sources and come to more credible conclusions.

What does the term "aggregation" mean in psychology?

Checking whether the combination of different individual observations together results in a better measurement of a personality trait. The principle of aggregation is the observation of how a person behaves over the longer term and not at one specific measurement moment. Note: a more extensive study does not lead to a better or more reliable result per definition. This is because participants can lose their concentration as the research takes longer. For example, they can scrap the questionnaires, read the questions less well, or perhaps do not want to participate in an investigation at all.

How can we evaluate personality measures?

What do we mean by reliability of a measure?

Reliability is the degree to which the obtained measure accurately represents the level of the trait being measured. One can estimate reliability in more than one way. The first is repeated measurement, in which the experimenter conducts the same test more than once. If the results correlate, the measure is said to have test-retest reliability. Assessing whether items within a test correlate well with one another is a way to determine internal consistency reliability. In observer-based measures, obtaining measurements from multiple observers can be used to estimate inter-rater reliability.

What kind of responses do we know?

The idea of response sets relates to the tendency people have to respond to questions in way that is unrelated to the actual question content. This can also be called non-content responding. Acquiescence is one type of response set in which the participants answers “yes” to questions regardless of content. This is corrected by reverse-scoring some items. Extreme responding is a response set that avoids the middle of a Likert scale, relying on the extremes at either end.

What do we mean by social desirability?

Social desirability is the most researched response set. It involves answering items in a way that makes one seem the most socially attractive or well-adjusted. Social desirability can be viewed as a distortion of data, or as a valid aspect of certain personality traits. Following the assumption that social desirability is a confounding variable that should be eliminated, psychologists use tests to measure this response set and statistically account for the tendency in subsequent test results. Alternately, questionnaires can be developed in ways that minimize the effects of social desirability by asking questions that do not correlate with it. One can also use a forced-choice questionnaire format which forces participants to select between a pair of statements that are equally socially desirable.

Other psychologists view social desirability as a trait in itself that correlates with other positive traits like happiness and adjustment. Some studies show that unrealistically positive and hopeful views about the self and the world are related to better health. In this case, self-deceptive optimism must be separated from impression management.

Which types of validity do we know?

Validity is the extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure. There are five types of validity:

1. Face validity: Whether the test, on the surface, appears to measure what it is supposed to measure.
2. Predictive validity: Whether the test predicts external criteria and behaviour that it should predict.
3. Convergent validity: Whether the test correlates with other measures that it should correlate with.
4. Discriminant validity: Whether the test does NOT correlate what it should not correlate with.
5. Construct validity: Whether the test measures what it claims to measure and correlates with what it is supposed to correlate with. Construct validity is based on the notion that personality variables are theoretical constructs, and is the broadest type of validity.

What do we mean by generalizability of a measure?

Whether a measure retains its validity across various contexts is called generalizability. A test may be examined for generalizability across different groups of persons – for example, across people of different ages, socioeconomic status, or ethnic background. It can also be examined for generalizability across different conditions – for example, a test that measures dominance may not be generalizable between work and home conditions.

What can we say about the development of measurement instruments?

There are thousands of different measurement instruments. But before a measurement instrument can be used it has to undergo a long period of development and testing.

What is scale development?

There are a number of steps to developing a new scale. The first step is determining what you want to measure, called the conceptual definition. You need to know concretely what should be in the scale and what should be left out, and this is usually based on a thorough examination of the literature. The second step is generating items that measure the construct. Different items measure the same construct, but in a slightly different angle. This increases reliability and validity. An item is created by writing and re-writing it until it has adequate face-validity. Usually you create more items than you need so you can later select the best ones. If you have sufficient items you start administering the test to so-called focus groups; groups of people who represent the target population. These focus groups can give feedback on the test.

What do we mean by scale diagnostics?

The third step is determining reliability and validity. This is done in a pilot-study, preferably with a large sample of participants. Data is then analyzed using statistical means. Test-Retest reliability establishes if a score on a test stays stable over time. Other methods focus on determining whether items can distinguish between low- and high-score individuals. Creating a scale takes very long and is never really done.

How do we design personality research?

What are experimental methods?

Experimental methods are often used to determine causality – whether one variable influences another variable. In order to establish causality, one or more of the variables must be manipulated in some way, and the participants in each condition must be equivalent to one another at the outset of the study. This can be accomplished through random assignment (random placement of participants in experimental groups) or through counterbalancing (switching the order of the conditions). It is important to establish significant differences between groups exposed to altered conditions. To determine this, five things must be known:

1. Sample size

2. Mean: The average.

3. Standard deviation: The measure of variability within each condition.

4. T-test: The difference between two means.

5. P-value: Whether the difference is large enough to be statistically significant.

What do we mean by the correlational method?

The correlational method is used to determine whether there is a relationship between two variables. The correlation coefficient is a statistical procedure for gauging relationships. Results are charted on a scatterplotand a trend can be calculated. Correlational relationships can be positive or negative in direction. The magnitude of the relationship is also of interest to psychologists. Important to note is that one cannot infer causation from correlations. There may be a directionality problem – it is impossible to know which variable may be the cause. There is also the third variable problem – there may be a third unknown variable that causes both.

What do we mean by a case study?

The case study method examines the life of one person in-depth. These can be used to form more general and testable theories, as well as in-depth knowledge about rare phenomena and rare personalities. Among the tools of case study design are personal interviews, coding systems applied to written texts, observation, etc. Case studies are most often used as a source of hypotheses and a means to illustrate a principle.

What are different sources of data?

What do we mean by S-Data (Self-Report Data)?

The most obvious and most commonly used method of gathering data on personality is self-report. This is obtained through interviews, questionnaires, and systematic personal records. The benefit of self-report is that it can be used to gather information only the individual knows, their own personal feelings, beliefs and private experiences. Open-ended questions are considered unstructured means of information gathering, whereas true/false questions are considered structured. Open-ended instruments require coding schemes to classify responses, in order to obtain measurable data. Common structured tests include the ACL (Adjective Check List) and tests that use the Likert rating scale to measure the degree of agreement. The NEO Personality Inventory and the California Psychological Inventory measure include statements that use the Likert rating scale in this way. Problems with self-report measures include the inability to apply these measurements to unwilling participants, and the inability to account for dishonesty.

How can personality traits be described and classified? - Chapter 3

What is a trate of disposition?

A trait or disposition is an attribute of a person that is characteristic and enduring over time. The study of personality traits looks at what the most important traits are, how traits are conceptualized, and how we can form a comprehensive taxonomy of traits.

What do we mean by internal causal properties?

When viewing traits as internal causal properties, they are seen to be motivating influences on behaviour. They are considered internal, as they produce desires that are carried over from one situation to the next and that illicit similar behaviour. Other psychologists view traits as internal dispositions that exist with or without being expressed in behaviour.

What do we mean by purely descriptive summaries?

The opposing view of traits sees them as descriptive summaries of attributes, making no assumptions about causality or internal processes. In this case, trait descriptors summarize expressed behaviour and nothing else. This ensures that the cause of a person's behaviour is not prejudged.

How personality expresses itself, changed over time but the underlying character trait remains stable. For example, a child who is soon frightened and starts to cry, as an adult, may be someone who is quickly worried or pondering a lot. This is called personality coherence in psychology.

What is the Act Frequency Formulation?

Those psychologists who endorse the descriptive summary formulation have created a program of research called the act frequency approach. Traits are considered to be categories of acts. The more frequently a person performs acts that fit into a trait category, the higher they are in that trait.

Of which steps does the research program consist?

The research program of the act frequency approach consists of a couple steps:

1. Act nomination: this procedure identifies which acts belong to which trait category.

2. Prototypical judgment: once acts have been nominated, those that are most prototypical of the trait category must be identified.

3. Recording acts: this step of the act frequency research program involves the observation of act performance of people in their daily lives. Self-reports and observer-reports are the most common method of collecting this data.

How can we evaluate the act frequency formulation?

There are many criticisms on the formulation of traits on purely descriptive grounds. One issue is that there is no distinguishing point as to how much context is needed when evaluating the trait of an act. One act can be interpreted many ways according to the broader social and situational context. This approach also looks only at overt acts, and does not assess the failure to act. It is also uncertain whether this approach can account for more complex personality traits like the fluctuating self-esteem of someone narcissistic.

The Act Frequency Formulation has made some worthy accomplishments. In making explicit descriptions of behavioural acts that reflect personality, it has provided an excellent resource for identifying regular behavioural patterns, and the difference between those of other cultures.

How can we identify important traits?

What do we mean by the lexical approach?

The lexical hypothesis states that all important differences between people have become encoded in language over time. There have been found to be roughly 18 000 trait-descriptive adjectives in the English language. The lexical approach uses two criteria to identify important trait.

1. The first, synonym frequency, examines how many words there are that refer to a certain trait. The more synonyms, the more likely the trait is an important one.

2. Cross-cultural universality is the second criterion. The idea is that the more important the trait, the more universal its presence in language will be, among all cultures.

Considering these criterion, language can be analyzed for the most essential and universal personality traits. Personality nouns have not yet been explored to the same degree. While the lexical approach should not be exclusively depended upon, it makes a good starting point for trait research.

What do we mean by the statistical approach?

The statistical approach applies the procedure of factor analysis on data sets taken from self-ratings of trait adjectives. The groups of items are identified by factor analysis by the fact that they covary (go together). Factor loadings are indexes of how much variation in an item can be explained by the factor.

What do we mean by the theoretical approach?

This approach begins with a theory that determines which variables are important. For example, the theory of sociosexual orientation suggests that individuals are either monogamous and child-oriented or promiscuous and less invested in parenthood.

How can we evaluate these approaches?

While many psychologists favour one approach over the others, in practice most use a combination of the three.

What are taxonomies?

Taxonomies of traits are lists of personality traits, a way of better organizing and making sense of them.

What does the model Eysenck mean?

Hans Eysenck developed a personality model based on traits that he believed were the most heritable, including extraversion-introversion (E), neuroticism-emotional stability (N), and psychoticism (P). Together they make the acronym PEN.

Each of the three major traits is made up of a number of narrower sub-traits that covary with it. Factor analysis has been an important tool in identifying these.

1. Extraversion (E) includes dominance, sensation-seeking and many other sub-traits. Those high in E tend to surround themselves with people, have a carefree manner, and are highly active. Those low in E (introverts) prefer to spend time alone or with an intimate group of friends.

2. Neuroticism (N) includes anxiety, irritability, guiltiness, low self-esteem, moodiness and shyness, among others. Those high in N tend to have more trouble returning to normal after an upsetting event and often overreact to negative emotions. They tend to be more vigilant to both social and physical threats. The low-N scorer tends to be emotionally stable, even-tempered, and quick to recover from stress.

3. Psychoticism (P) includes sub-traits like aggressiveness, coldness, creativity, egocentrism and impulsivity. Those high in P tend to be higher in a number of negative and dangerous behaviours and traits, such as Machiavellianism, antisocial acts, a penchant for violent films, and low empathy. The low P scorer tends to be more religious.

What do we mean by the hierarchy of PEN?

At the lowest level of the hierarchy are specific acts (like talking on the phone or taking a coffee break) which cluster into habitual acts (doing specific acts on a regular basis). Groups of habitual acts make up narrow traits. Clusters of narrow traits, in turn, become super-traits, the highest in the hierarchy.

Both heritability and identifiable physiological substrate are important biological concepts in Eysenck’s personality system. For a trait to be “basic”, it must be highly heritable. It must also have an identifiable physiological substrate, a link with the properties of the brain and the central nervous system. Limits to Eysenck’s personality taxonomy are many – some equally heritable personality traits were left out in favour of extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism.

What does the taxonomy of Cattell mean?

Cattell worked closely with Charles Spearman, the inventor of factor analysis. During his career in the United States he set out to identify and measure the basic units of personality. According to Cattell, true factors of personality mused be found across different types of data (including self-reports and laboratory tests). His taxonomy includes 16 basic traits; all labelled (note: order isn’t alphabetical) A: Interpersonal Warmth. B: Intelligence. C: Emotional Stability. E: Dominance. F: Impulsivity. G: Conformity. H: Boldness. I: Sensitivity. L: Suspiciousness. M: Imagination. N: Shrewdness. O: Insecurity. Q1: Radicalism. Q2: Self-Sufficiency. Q3: Self-Discipline. Q4: Tension.

What are circumplex taxonomies?

Circumplex taxonomies deal with circular representations of personality. Jerry Wiggins began his research into personality with the lexical approach, arguing that trait terms specify the kinds of ways in which people differ. He identified many kinds, including interpersonal trait differences, character traits, temperament traits, material traits, attitude traits, mental traits and physical traits. He was primarily concerned with interpersonal traits.

The dimensions of love and status define the two axes of the Wiggins circumplex, which is used to define interpersonal behaviour. It has the advantage of locating any transaction of the resources of status and love on the circumplex-- giving love or withholding love, granting or denying status. It also specifies relationships between each trait and every other trait in the model. Two traits may be adjacent, close to one another in the circumplex. If this is the case, they are positively correlated. Two traits could be bipolar, located at opposite sides of the circle. These are negatively correlated with each other. Finally, two traits could be orthogonally related, or perpendicular on the model. In cases like these, the traits show no correlation. The circumplex model can help psychologists identify neglected areas of interpersonal study, though it is limited by the simplicity of two dimensions.

What is the Five-factor model?

The most well-known and supported taxonomy of personality is the five-factor model. It was originally based on a combination of the lexical and statistical approaches. Allport and Odbert organized trait terms into four lists – stable traits, temporary states/moods, social evaluations, and metaphorical/physical terms. The deeper study of the stable traits using factor analysis allowed psychologists to come up with a five-factor solution, and finally identify the Big Five.

The Big Five:

1. Surgency/extraversion:
   • Adventurous vs. Cautious
   • Talkative vs. Silent
   • Open vs. Secretive
   • Sociable vs. Reclusive
2. Agreeableness:
   • Cooperative vs. Negativistic
   • Mild vs. Headstrong
   • Good-natured vs. Irritable
   • Not-jealous vs. Jealous
3. Conscientiousness:
   • Scrupulous vs. Unscrupulous
   • Persevering vs. Quitting
   • Responsible vs. Undependable
   • Fussy vs. Careless
4. Emotional stability:
   • Composed vs. Excitable
   • Poised vs. Nervous
   • Calm vs. Anxious
5. Openness-intellect:
   • Intellectual vs. Unreflective
   • Imaginative vs. Direct
   • Polished vs. Crude
   • Artistic vs. Non-artistic

What is empirical evidence for the five-factor model?

The five-factor model is highly replicable. It can be measured using self-ratings of single-word trait adjectives, or using self-rated sentence items. The NEO-PI-R (neuroticism-extroversion-openness personality inventory, revised) is one of the most commonly used measures of the Big Five. Each of the five traits includes facets that allow for more nuance and complexity.

What is the fifth factor?

The fifth factor is a matter of discussion, as it is identified differently among researchers. It has been called culture, intellect, imagination, openness to experience, and even tender-mindedness. It has been identified differently in language as well – for example, the Dutch have a fifth factor more akin to progressive-conservative, and the Italians have conventionality-rebelliousness.

Which empirical correlates does exist?

There are many interesting ways in which the five-factor relates to real-life correlations.

Extraversion: Extraverts, for example, are often involved in social events and tend to seek more social attention. They are often leaders, confident with potential mates, and involved in their work. Introverts, on the other hand, tend to be wallflowers, timid with new people and potential mates, and enjoy their work less than extraverts.

Agreeableness: Those high in agreeableness, when faced with social conflicts, tend to use negotiation tactics to arrive at peaceful ends. They avoid conflicts and are often highly empathic. On the opposite end of this trait is aggressiveness, characterized by a tendency towards violent or rough behaviours, and more conflict.

Conscientiousness: This trait expresses itself in an industrious, hard-working attitude. Life outcomes include high job satisfaction and security, committed social relationships, and perseverance in long-term goals. Those low in conscientiousness tend to perform poorly at school and in the workplace, procrastinating more often and engaging in riskier behaviours.

Emotional Stability/ Neuroticism: Emotionally stable people tend to react less dramatically to the ups and downs of daily life. Emotionally unstable/neurotic individuals have frequent shifts in mood, more grief and depression after a loss, and poorer health. They also tend to have less stable relationships and poor professional success. Much of these problems may be due to a tendency to self-handicap.

Openness: Openness has been correlated with a tendency to experiment with new foods, travel, and even have extramarital affairs. People high in openness are less likely to hold prejudices against minority groups and are more accepting of new information.

How thorough is the five-factor model?

There are many important traits that don’t exactly fall under the five-factor model, including those on the factors of positive and negative evaluation, attractiveness, sexiness, and faithfulness. Paunonen and his colleagues identified 10 traits that do not fit the model: Integrity, Femininity, Religiosity, Thriftiness, Humorousness, Manipulativeness, Risk-taking, Conventionality, Seductiveness, and Egotism. These are more specific that the Big Five. The exploration of personality-descriptive nouns rather than adjectives might be a way to explore more personality factors beyond the Big Five. A sixth factor has been found by using the lexical approach cross-culturally: Honesty-Humility, and could yield to interesting new adjustments to the theory.

What is de HEXACO Model of Personality like?

The HEXACO model includes the sixth factor of Honest-Humility into the five-factor model; which sub-factors like: Sincerity; Fairness; Greed-Avoidance and Modesty. Besides the sixth factor there are other differences: quick temper and irritability are included in the Agreeableness factor in the HEXACO, while in the big five they were part of Neuroticism. In the HEXACO the Neuroticism scale is replaces with the Emotionality scale and includes aspects related to bravery and toughness. The HEXACO scales are usually measured using the HEXACO-PI-R.

What theories are there about measuring personality? - Chapter 4

Why this chapter?

Psychologists are concerned with measuring differences between people. People differ from each other in terms of personality characteristics. A small number of properties can, in combination with each other, be responsible for the uniqueness of individuals. This chapter is about the theory behind and the measurement of personality.

What are important assumptions about personality traits?

Trait theories make three assumptions about personality traits. These assumptions are the foundation of trait psychology:

Assumption 1: Meaningful individual differences

Trait psychology focuses on determining how people differ from one another. For this reason, it is often called differential psychology. The trait perspective is concerned with accurately and quantitatively measuring traits. They believe that every personality is created through a particular combination and interaction of a few basic and primary traits. As all color variations are of the three basic colors red, blue and yellow. And as we all have a different face, each face in the base consists of a pair of ears, eyes, a nose, a mouth, etc.

Assumption 2: Consistency and stability over time

Trait psychologists believe that personality is relatively consistent over time, and that essential traits will remain stable over long periods of time. This is especially true of traits that are thought to have a biological basis, and much less true of attitudes and opinions. While a trait might remain, its expression can change substantially (a temperamental child may become a disagreeable employee when they grow up). Some traits decrease with intensity as a person ages. The concept of rank order describes how people of the same age group all tend to experience a decline in certain traits at the same time, so their relative ordering in accordance with this trait remains consistent. A latent (underlying, invisible) trait can be consistent over time, while the (visible, superficial) manifest behavior of the trait may vary over time. For instance sensation-seeking: when a person gets older he’s less likely to engage in dangerous activities, even though he’s still as sensation-seeking as he was when he was young.

Assumption 3: Consistency across situations

There is more debate over whether traits are consistent across situations. Is a friendly person at a party just as friendly in the workplace or towards strangers? Walter Mischel sparked a great deal of discussion when, in 1968, he suggested that the concept of personality traits was untenable as situations determine behaviour most. This position is called situationism. Trait psychologists have since amended their views and embraced the notion of person-situation interaction, and the practice of aggregation/averaging as a tool to assess personality traits. In this way, they are able to account for situational inconsistencies that may occur.

What do we mean with person-situation interaction?

When looking at behaviour, there are two possible explanations that must be considered: either the behaviour is a function of personality, B=f (P), or behaviour is a function of situational forces, B=f(S). Since it is clear that both personality and situation play a role in behaviour, the equation should look more like this: B=f (P x S). So, given certain circumstances, a normally unnoticed trait might express itself. In some cases, very specific situations provoke behaviour that is otherwise out of character. This is called situational specificity. In some situations (like the death of a pet, for example) nearly all people react in similar ways. These are called strong situations. In weaker or more ambiguous situations, personality has the strongest influence on behaviour.

What are selecting situations?

Situational selection is the tendency to choose the situations in which they participate, either through hobbies, preferences, or general life decisions. Personality influences the choices people make and which situations they select. In turn, situations can affect a person’s personality. For instance, being in a group of energetic, talkative people can raise a person’s positive affect.

What is evocation?

An individual’s personality traits may evoke specific responses from the environment. For example, a temperamental person may evoke anger in the people they deal with, leading to more unpleasant and upsetting situations. This is related to the concept of transference in psychoanalysis, when patients evoke the same reactions in the therapist as they typically do in other persons.

What is manipulation?

When an individual intentionally influences the behaviour of others, this is called manipulation. Manipulative tools are called tactics. Personality affects what sort of tactics a person might use – some might be prone to using charm to get their way, while others might employ the silent treatment or try coercion.

What do we mean with the aggregation process?

Aggregation is the process of adding up and/or averaging single observation to come to a more reliable measure of a personality trait than if a single occurrence of this trait is observed. So, while in one given moment a person might be frustrated, this does not mean that they are a generally angry person. Aggregation can account for unusual events. Because of this, longer tests are more effective than shorter ones, and many observations are better than one. The Spearman-Brown formula was developed to predict exactly how much a test will increase in reliability with more added questions. Personality traits are average tendencies of behaviour, so single acts are very difficult to predict accurately.

What can we say about measurement?

Most trait measurements are self-assessment questionnaires. Traits are often represented as dimensions, and psychologists are most interested in how much of a trait a person possesses. Trait measures must be assessed for accuracy, reliability, validity, and utility.

What is personality testing in the workplace?

It is becoming common practice to administer Intelligence tests and Personality tests during the hiring procedure among more affluent companies. These may assess a broad range of traits (as in the MMPI), or single traits of specific interest to the employer.

How does it relate to selecting personnel?

Sometimes employers use personality tests to determine whether people are more or less suitable to a specific job, like sales. They may also use these tests (like the MMPI) to screen out undesirable personality types.

What is a reason to test integrity?

The most widely administered personality tests in the workplace are honesty/integrity measures. This is to prevent employee theft and fraud, especially in low-level positions.

What is negligent hiring?

In the case that an employee assaults a customer or co-worker, the company can be held liable for negligent hiring. As such, personality testing can provide evidence that the company made an effort to prevent hiring someone dangerous.

What are legal issues?

The Civil Rights Act requires employers to provide equal employment opportunities to all persons. There have been many cases in the past in which tests have been used during hiring procedures that are discriminatory against specific age, race, gender, and socioeconomic groups. A company must be able to prove that the administered tests have a vital importance to the hiring practice and that they are not based on stereotype or have a disparate impact.

What do we mean with a disparate impact?

When a test has a disparate impact, it disadvantages people from a specific, protected group. Disparity is a difference statistically large enough not to have occurred by chance alone. If it is accepted that a disparate impact has occurred, the employer must prove that the selection practice is job-related and vital. This means establishing content validity, criterion validity and construct validity. Criterion validity is the most applicable to personality tests.

What about race/gender norming?

It is illegal to use different norms or cut-off scores for different groups of people. Some test publishers recommend different scoring practices based on norming; this is illegal, discriminatory and should be avoided.

What is A.D.A. (Americans with Disabilities Act)?

During the selection process, the ADA prohibits questions that inquire about the presence, type, or severity of disabilities. Because testing for disability is prohibited, psychological personality tests normally used for this purpose (like the MMPI) should be avoided, and tests that deal with normal-range personality functions, or integrity, should be used in their place.

What about privacy rights?

There is a legal concern over whether some selection procedures might violate the right to privacy. Questions that inquire about sexual, religious, or political attitudes may intrude on this right.

How to select the right person for a job?

In cases where a job is particularly important or dangerous, as in a municipal police force, it can be pertinent to administer screening tests. The MMPI II was designed to detect mental illnesses and can help screen out dangerous or unstable applicants in these dangerous jobs. The 16 Personality Factor questionnaire (16 PF) is used in vocational advising and selection.

What is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator?

The most widely used personality assessment device in business is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which uses forced-choice questions to determine a person's level on 8 fundamental preferences which could lead to any one of 16 personality profiles. There are, however, some problems with the MBTI. First of all, the psychological types theory on which the test is based is not very widely endorsed among academic and research psychologists. Many people don’t see introversion-extroversion as a bimodal “type” form, but rather a dimensional trait in which the average person lies somewhere in the middle. Because cut-off scores are used to categorize people into groups, tests can be unreliable when re-administered on the same individuals. Many people score on the borders between two traits, putting them at risk of being categorized differently each time they do the test. It also assumes that all people within a category will be alike, not accounting for within-category differences. While there are many highly negative reviews of the MBTI among the scientific and psychological community, it’s simple scoring and almost horoscope-like personal quality make it continually popular in the workplace.

What is the Hogan Personality Inventory?

In order to establish an accurate measure of personality that could be used to select personnel, Robert Hogan came up with a theory based on status hierarchy in groups. In social groups, Hogan’s theory states that people need three things: acceptance (respect/approval), status/resource control, and predictability. The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) measures the aspects of the Big Five traits that are most important to these three motives. The HPI contains seven primary scales and six occupational scales that are relevant to business practices. It contains true-false items and requires only 20 minutes to administer. The HPI is based on very thorough research and is high on validity, producing better hiring results than when it is not used. Because of these many factors, it is one of the most useful tests in personnel selection.

Why this chapter?

Psychologists are concerned with measuring differences between people. People differ from each other in terms of personality characteristics. A small number of properties can, in combination with each other, be responsible for the uniqueness of individuals. This chapter is about the theory behind and the measurement of personality.

What about disposition stability, coherence and change? - Chapter 5

What is important to know about conceptual Issues?

What is personality Development?

Personality development is defined as the stable, consistent traits in people and the way these change over time. There are many forms of personality stability and personality change. The three most important are listed here.

What is personality stability?

Rank order stability is the consistency of an individual’s position within a group over time – for example, Dominant people, while they may become less dominant with age, will still be more dominant in their age group than submissive people. Mean level stability is the constancy of the level of a trait shown in a population. For example, when an aging population remains politically liberal, this is mean level stability. In cases where people get increasingly conservative as they age, this is mean level change. In some ways, personality development involves changes in how some traits manifest themselves. For example, a child prone to temper tantrums might develop into an adult prone to aggressive and argumentative behaviour in adulthood. This is called personality coherence.

What is personality change?

Personality change is defined as internal changes in the personality that are relatively enduring over time and not a result of a temporary stimulus.

On which three levels can personalities be analyse?

Personality can be analyzed on three levels: the whole population, group differences within the population, and differences within groups.

What doe we mean witch the whole population in relation to theories?

Theories that are presumed to apply to everyone fit into this level. Nearly everyone, regardless of group, becomes more sexually motivated at puberty and less impulsive in their old age.

What are group differences and individual differences?

Some changes affect different groups of people differently. The most obvious example are changes between genders – women collectively become less prone to risk taking after adolescence than men. Group differences also include cultural and ethnic differences. Research that focuses on the ability to predict which individuals will go through which personality changes fits into the level of individual differences

What do we mean with stability over time?

What is temperament in infancy?

Temperament is the most studied personality characteristic in infancy – it relates to emotionality and arousability. Mary Rothbart came up with six factors of temperament:

1. Activity level: Overall motor activity
2. Smiling/laughter
3. Fear: Distress and reluctance to new stimuli
4. Distress to limitations: Distress at being refused food, being dressed, confined or prevented access from something.
5. Soothability: The ease at which a child relaxes when soothed.
6. Duration of orienting: The degree to which attention is sustained on one object in the absence of sudden changes.

Observer scales are completed by the infant’s primary caregiver, and results tend to be persistent over time, and more stable nearing the end of infancy. Activity level and smiling/laughing show more stability over time than the other traits.

What do we mean with stability in childhood?

Longitudinal studies, while costly, are the best type to use when researching trait stability over time. One test that focused on differences in activity level (using a recording device called an actometer) showed correlations among measures over time. The correlations between identical measures obtained at two different points of time are stable coefficients. The correlations between different measures of the same trait obtained at the same time are called validity coefficients. The longer the time between testings, the lower the stability coefficients, and the less reliable personality predictions will be. Individual differences in personality emerge very early in life and tend to remain moderately stable over time, though they may manifest in different ways.

What is adult rank order stability?

Across self-report measures of personality taken over different intervals of adulthood, the Big Five traits show moderate to high levels of stability. Other dispositions, like self-esteem, prosocial orientation, and interpersonal empathy also show high stability over time. In order to determine when stability of traits peaks (when the traits cease to change) Roberts and DelVecchio conducted a meta-analysis of 152 longitudinal personality studies. They found that personality consistency tends to increase with age and peak in a person’s fifties.

What is adult mean level stability?

The Big Five show relatively consistent mean level stability over time, though there continues to be some change even after the age of fifty. Openness, extraversion and neuroticism tend to decline gradually as age increases (until 50), while conscientiousness and agreeableness show a gradual growth over time. People tend to become more emotionally stable with time and experience less negative affect. The increase in social confidence and decrease in anger and a sense of alienation have together been dubbed the “maturity principle”. The Big Five have also shown to be somewhat changeable through therapy.

What do we mean with change?

What can we say about self-esteem: adolescence to adulthood?

Self-esteem is the gap between the perceived “current self” and the “ideal self” – the higher the discrepancy, the lower the self-esteem. Longitudinal studies show that between adolescence and adulthood, men’s self-esteem increases somewhat, while females tend to experience a large decrease in self-esteem.

What about dominance, leadership, autonomy, ambition?

In a longitudinal study of male AT&T managerial candidates, ambition was shown to drop over time, while scores of autonomy, leadership motivation, achievement and dominance increased over time. This suggests an adjustment in expectations about the individual’s own limitations.

What is thrill seeking?

The Sensation-Seeking Scale (SSS) measures thrill, adventure, experience seeking, disinhibition, and susceptibility to boredom. It has found that sensation seeking increases with age, peaking around age 18-20, and then falling continuously throughout adulthood.

What about femininity/masculinity?

High femininity is defined as dependent, emotional, gentle, high-strung, mid, nervous, sensitive, sentimental, submissive, sympathetic and worrying, in contrast to masculinity which involves such descriptors as forceful, self-confident, and determined. In general, femininity scores drop with age.

What about independence?

The CPI independence scale measures two related facets of personality. The first includes self-assurance, resourcefulness and competence, the second includes the ability to distance oneself from others and act against convention. Divorced mothers, non-mothers, and working mothers tend to become increasingly more independent over time. Traditional homemakers show no decrease in independence over time. This is a correlational result, so causation cannot be determined.

What is assertiveness and narcissism across cohorts?

Cohort effects are those that are determined by the social time in which a person lives. Jean Twenge argues that American society has changed dramatically over the past 70 years, especially in terms of women’s social roles. There have been, for example, significant rises in women’s assertiveness trait scores since the 1930’s. This leads to the conclusion that social change can become internalized during development. Scores on narcissism have increased slightly among Americans.

What can we say about coherence over time?

What about marital stability, satisfaction, and divorce?

A 45-year longitudinal study of engaged and married couples found that some personality traits are predictors of marital dissatisfaction and divorce. High levels of neuroticism of either the wife or husband turned out to be the strongest predictor. Lack of impulse control on the husband’s part is also a strong predictor of divorce. Those high in emotional stability and low on neuroticism are also better able to cope with the death of a spouse.

What role does alcoholism play?

Early personality has been shown to predict the development of alcoholism and emotional disturbance. High neuroticism is the strongest predictor of these issues. High sensation-seeking, low impulse control, low agreeableness and low conscientiousness tend to predict alcoholism.

What role does religion play?

High conscientiousness and agreeableness in adolescents is a predictor of religiousness in later life. Openness to experience predicts religiousness in late life.

What role does education and academic achievement play?

High impulsivity predicts lower GPAs among college students, and a higher tendency to drop out. Conscientiousness is the single best predictor of successful academic and work achievement, though high emotional stability, agreeableness, and openness are also predictors.

What about health?

Longevity can be predicted in high conscientiousness, positive emotionality, and low hostility. This is possibly due to a greater engagement in health-promoting activities and the refraining from the use of harmful and addictive drugs. Extraverts tend to develop and maintain a stronger social support network, which has also been shown to lead to positive outcomes.

What can we say about predicting personality change?

People whose spouses are most similar to themselves tend to show more personality stability over time than those who marry people who are different.

What does Fleeson means with the density distributions of stages?

Fleeson means with the density distributions of stages, that in the descriptions of character traits we have to take into account the fact that behavior differs in different situations.

What can we say about personality and genetics? - Chapter 6

What is the human genome?

A genome is the complete set of genes an organism possesses. The human genome has 20,000-30,000 genes in 23 pairs of chromosomes. Most of the genes within the human genome are the same for every human. Some, however, are different and account for the many individual variations between individuals. A chromosome consists out of many genes that are coded instructions to make proteins. Different versions of the same genes are called alleles. Genes are stretches of DNA, a giant protein code that consists out of four basic protein codons: Thiamine, Adenine, Guanine and Cytosine. 99.9 percent of all DNA in humans is identical. Junk DNA are parts of chromosomes that have less genes. They’re called Junk because initially it was thought they served no purpose, but it was found that they in fact do have a large impact on humans, so they’re not junk at all.

What is the genes-personality controversy?

Researchers into the genetics of personality attempt to determine the degree to which personality differences are caused by genetic versus environmental influences. The identification of certain genes as responsible for personality characteristics raises the controversial question of choosing whether or not to have a child on the basis of their predicted characteristics. Eugenics, the notion that we can design a future race by allowing babies with a certain genetic structure to live while discouraging the reproduction of people with undesirable traits, is a scary and historically dangerous concept. People also fear that behavioural genetics will be used to support political agendas. Psychologists who research genetics are careful about the application of their findings and believe that knowledge is still better than ignorance.

What are the goals of behavioural geneticists?

Behavioural geneticists are interested in figuring out the percentage of variance due to genetic and environmental causes. They also look to determine how genes interact and correlate with the environment. They examine situations in which environmental effects are taking place, as in parent-child interactions.

What is heritability?

Heritability is a statistical term that refers to the proportion of phenotypic variance attributable to genotypic variance. Phenotypic variance defines observed individual differences, such as height or personality. Genotypic variance refers to individual differences in a person’s genes. A heritability of .20 means that 20% of the trait is genetic. The proportion that is due to environmental influences (the other 80%) is called environmentality.

Which misconceptions are known?

Heritability cannot be applied to a single individual, only to a group or population. It is not, as sometimes believed, a constant. It is a statistic that applies only at one point in time in one set of environments. Because of this, different cultural groups may have different heritability in certain traits. Heritability is also not an absolutely precise statistic, merely an estimate.

What is the nature-nurture debate about?

The nature-nurture debate consists of arguments about whether genes or the environment are more important determinants of personality. At the individual level, this distinction does not matter as everyone is a unique mixture of their own genetic structure and their environment. At the level of the population, however, the influence of genes and environments can be analyzed.

What are methods of behavioural genetics?

What is selective breeding?

In pet breeding, selective breeding involves identifying dogs that possess a desired characteristic and having them mate with other dogs who have the same characteristic, thus improving the chances of the offspring sharing the trait. The more heritable the trait, the more success the breeder will have. Breeders look at both physical and behavioural traits that are moderate-high in heritability. There are obvious reasons why this cannot be used on humans, but other methods of behavioural genetics can be applied.

What are family studies?

Family studies look at the correlation of genetic relatedness among family members with the degree of personality similarity. If a personality trait is highly heritable, then family members with the closest genetic relatedness should be more similar than those more distant on the family tree. Since families also often share the same environment, the results from family studies alone can never be definitive.

What are twin studies?

Twin studies estimate heritability by assessing whether identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins. Identical (monozygotic, MZ) twins share 100% of their genes. This is because they come from a single fertilized egg which divides into two during gestation. Fraternal (dizygotic, DZ) twins, like any other siblings, share only 50% of their genes. If identical twins are more similar on a certain characteristic than fraternal twins, chances are that characteristic has a high heritability.

What is the formula for calculating heritability?

One formula for calculating heritability from twin data involves doubling the difference between the MZ and DZ correlation: Heritability2= 2(rmz – rdz)

In this formula, rmz is the correlation coefficient of monozygotic twins, and rdzis the correlation between dizygotic twins. Twin studies assume that the environments of both types of twins are equal. Thus, it cannot account for an increase in similarity among identical twins whose parents treat them the same. Studies have shown, however, that the equal environments assumption is still valid, as environments experienced by identical twins are not functionally more similar than fraternal twins.

What are adoption studies?

Adoption studies can be one of the most powerful behavioural genetic methods available. In adoption studies, the correlations between adopted children and their adoptive parents are examined. If there is a positive correlation, then this provides evidence for a trait being environmentally influenced. The correlations between adopted children and their genetic parents can also be examined – if there is a positive correlation on a trait, than it is likely that the trait is heritable. The reverse is true for a negative correlation. There is a question of representativeness in these studies, however, as couples who choose to adopt children may not be representative of the general population. There is also the issue of selective placement, where adopted children are placed with adoptive parents similar to their birth parents. When twin and adoption studies are combined, however, some of the most powerful results can be observed.

What are the major findings about:

...traits?

Both extraversion-introversion and neuroticism-emotional stability are substantially heritable traits. Activity level has a heritability of .40 and is one of several temperaments that show moderate heritability. Fear, emotionality, sociability, persistence, distractibility and aggressiveness also show roughly 50 percent heritability. “Psychopathic” personality dispositions also show a high heritability. The Big Five traits show heritability estimates of roughly 50%.

...attitudes?

Stable attitudes are considered a part of personality. Traditionalism, contrary to what one might expect, has a heritability of .59. Job preferences have also shown a high amount of heritability. Religious beliefs and attitudes towards racial integration have zero heritability. However, in adulthood, heritability of religious practices rises to .44.

...cigarettes and alcohol?

These habits are seen as behavioural manifestations of sensation seeking and neuroticism. Individuals tend to have relatively stable drinking and smoking habits. Evidence has been found for the heritability of smoking habits. Alcohol drinking is even stronger in heritability, one study suggesting 71% heritability in men.

...marriage commitment?

The propensity to marry has a heritability estimate of 68 percent. This may be due to married men showing higher social potency and achievement traits, which are valued by women in marriage partner selection. Marital satisfaction in women is also roughly 50% heritable, owing perhaps to the disposition of the wives.

...shared and non-shared environmental influences?

The same studies that show heritability also provide useful evidence for environmental influences. There is a distinction to be made between shared and non-shared environmental influences. Shared influences are those that affect both siblings in similar ways, such as the presence of a television, or the quality of food in the home. Non-shared influences are those that are different for each child–whether one child is given preferential treatment by parents, or has a more active group of friends, for example. Some behavioural genetic designs allow us to figure out whether the shared or non-shared environment influences an effect more. Most personality variables are barely impacted by the shared environment. Two conclusions may arise from an inquiry into non-shared environments: either one critically important variable will be found, such as peer influence, or there will be too many environmental variables that all exert a small and barely significant amount of variance.

What are the recent developments?

Research into molecular genetics is one of the most recent scientific developments when it comes to behavioral genetics. The most researched gene is the DRD4, a dopamine receptor. This is on the short side of chromosome 11. Research shows that people with a longer version of the DRD4 score higher when it comes to the desire to experience new experiences, in particular experiences with a high risk factor such as gambling and too hard. to drive. People with a shorter version of the DRD4 have this need much less. Despite multiple repetitions of this study, the result is not always the same. Some studies even revealed that there was no connection between this wish for new experiences and the DRD4.The fact that the research results are not directly reliable and must be interpreted with skill and thoughtfulness is immediately an important warning when it comes to research into behavioral genetics.

What can we say about environmental and genetic influences on personality?

What is the realtion between genotype and environment?

The genotype-environment interaction is the differential response of individuals with different genotypes to the same environments. Extraversion-introversion is a good example of genotype-environment interaction. When a person with an extraverted genotype is in a noisy environment, they will behave and perform differently than a person with an introverted genotype.

The genotype-environment correlation is the differential exposure of individuals with different genotypes to different environments. Passive genotype-environment correlation happens when parents provide both genes and a specific environment to children without them causing that environment in any way. Reactive genotype-environment correlation happens when parents create an environment in response to a child’s behaviour—for example, if one child has a genotype that makes them like being cuddled, a mother might cuddle that child more than a sibling who reacts poorly to such treatment. Active genotype-environment correlation happens when people with a certain genotype create or seek out specific environments, as in the case of high sensation seekers who expose themselves to risky situations. This is also called “niche-picking”. Genotype-environment correlations can encourage or discourage the expression of a trait. For example, inactive children may be encouraged to be more active by parents, thus discouraging their inactivity.

What can we say about genetics at a molecular level?

Molecular genetics is the science of identifying the specific genes associated with personality traits. The most frequently examined gene is DRD4, located on chromosome 11, which codes the dopamine receptor protein. This receptor responds to the neurotransmitter dopamine and is associated with novelty-seeking and risky behaviour. Those with long repeat versions of DRD4 are higher in these traits than those without. However, these studies have been contested.

Which biological / physiological theories exist with regard to personality? - Chapter 7

Why this chapter?

Brain injury can lead to personality changes, most often manifesting in diminished impulse control. This is likely do to disruption between the executive frontal lobes and the rest of the brain. They can lead to behavioural outbursts, mood fluctuations, and aggression. The advantage to a physiological approach to personality is that physiological characteristics are relative easy to measure and produce reliable results. The physiological approach is also simplistic or parsimonious. They can often explain much with very few constructs—while helpful, physiology is only one part of a more complicated structure of influences on personality.

What is the physiological approach?

Most research in physiological personality research focuses on measures of physiological systems like heart rate and brain waves. Researchers need to create theoretical bridges between the dimension of personality they are addressing and the physiological variables they are using to explain them.

What are common physiological measures?

Many measures are obtained using electrode sensors placed on the skin. The use of telemetry, the sending of physiological information through radio waves instead of wires, might be a new development in electrodes that will allow the participant to move around.

What is electrodermal?

The sympathetic nervous system directly influences the highly concentrated sweat glands on the palms of the hand and soles of the feet. Because water (and thus sweat) conducts electricity, the more sweat on someone’s palm, the more electrodermal activity (skin conductance) can be measured. In this technique, electrodes are placed on the palm of the hand to measure how much water is produced by the sweat glands, providing a measure of sympathetic nervous system activity.

What is cardiovascular?

Measures of blood pressure and heart rate fit into measures of cardiovascular activity. Blood pressure can increase as a result of stress, so it is useful in measuring personality. Heart rate is also easily obtained, and expressed in beats-per-minute (BPM). This is important because the heart rate increases as the body is preparing to flee or fight. This preparation occurs when a person is distressed, anxious, fearful, or more aroused than their normal state. Cognitive effort (such as what occurs in solving math problems) also increases heart rate. Cardiac reactivity to pressure is associated with Type A personality (impatience, hostility, and competitiveness).

What are brain scans?

Electroencephalogram (EEG) technology measures the amount of electricity being produced in a specific region of the brain, through the use of electrodes. It can measure brain activation and alertness. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can measure what parts of the brain are activated by monitoring glucose metabolism. It can show which parts are activated by different stimuli. In personality studies, it has been used to demonstrate that people show different degrees of brain activation in response to positive and negative stimuli – neurotic people show more activation to negative stimuli, whereas extroverted people show more activation in response to positive stimuli.

Are there other physiological measures?

Biochemical analyses of blood and saliva can determine how well a person’s immune system is functioning, which is largely related to stress and emotions. Hormones like testosterone can also be tested in saliva, and these are linked to certain personality behaviour patterns. The monoamine oxidase (MAO) enzyme regulates neurotransmitters and can also be a source of information on personality.

What are physiological theories on personality?

What is the realtion between extraversion-introversion and physiology?

Eysenck proposed that introverts are characterized by higher activity in the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) of the brain. This brain stem structure is thought to be a gateway for nervous stimulation of the cortex. Introverts are thought to have a higher resting arousal level causing them to seek less stimulating situations, whereas extroverts have a lower level causing them to seek more stimulation. Eysenck believed in an optimal level of arousal for any given task. Tests showed that in a resting state, introverts and extroverts show a similar amount of arousal, but in a stimulated state, introverts are faster and more reactive to stimuli. This led him to change his theory, stating that it is the heightened arousability of introverts that causes them to seek solitude.

What about reward and punishment?

A biological theory of personality proposed by Jeffrey Gray is called the reinforcement sensitivity theory. It is based on two hypothesized brain systems: the behavioural activity system (BAS), and the behaviour inhibition system (BIS). BAS responds to incentives and promises of reward, causing the person to approach. BIS responds to cues for punishment, and causes avoidance behaviour. According to gray, BAS is responsible for impulsivity while BIS is responsible for anxiety. These traits relate directly to neuroticism (BIS) and extraversion (BAS). Thus, behaviours related to anxiety attacks, worry, fear, depression, phobias, obsessions, etc. are more common in those who are overly sensitive to punishment. In one experiment, BIS persons were found to perform better in situations where bad performance is punished. BAS persons performed better in situations where good behaviour was rewarded. According to Gray’s theory, since impulsive people do not learn as well from punishment, they continue to be impulsive when such behaviour backfires.

What is seeking sensations?

Sensation seeking is seen to have a physiological basis. Most research on this topic deals with sensory deprivation. In sensory deprivation experiments, people tend to be motivated to receive any sensory input, even if it is something they would in normal circumstances consider boring, such as a stock market report.

What is the theory of Hebb?

Hebb theorized that people are motivated to reach their optimal level of arousal – when under-aroused, they are rewarded by an increase in arousal. However, when over-aroused, they seek reward by decreasing arousal. This theory contradicts the general opinion of Hebb’s time that most people are motivated to reduce tension. Hebb’s theory is consistent with sensory deprivation research.

What is the theory of Zuckerman?

In Zuckerman’s sensory deprivation research, he noticed that some people were more distressed by the experiment than others, and tended to quit the experiment early. He hypothesized that some people require more stimulation to reach their optimal level of arousal than others. Zuckerman focuses on the role of neurotransmitters in sensation seeking personalities. Enzymes like monoamine oxidase (MAO) are responsible for the proper maintenance of neurotransmitter levels. High sensation seekers are low on MAO, suggesting that their nervous systems are less inhibited and thus provide less control over behaviour, thoughts and emotions.

What are neurotransmitters?

Dopamine seems to be associated with pleasure and reward. Drugs like cocaine mimic dopamine, but diminish the production of actual dopamine, causing an unpleasant effect when the drugs leave the system. Serotonin plays a role in depression and mood disorders. Antidepressants block the reuptake of serotonin, keeping in the synapse for a longer time. Low serotonin is linked to irritable behaviour, and high serotonin to social and outgoing behaviour. Norepinephrine is another important neurotransmitter, responsible for activating the fight-or-flight response in the sympathetic nervous system.

One personality theory based on neurotransmitters is Cloninger’s tridimensional personality model. He links three traits (novelty seeking, harm avoidance, and reward dependence) with the three main neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine).

What about genes, neurotransmitters and personality?

As mentioned before, the type 4 dopamine receptor gene (DRD4) relates to high levels of novelty seeking. Research has found that multiple genes interact in complex ways to influence neurotransmitter systems, thus making it difficult for genetic psychologists to pinpoint exact causes.

What is the explanation regarding the difference between morning larks and night owls?

Being a person who prefers being active in the morning, or one who gets most done in the late evening, seems to be a stable characteristic called morningness-eveningness. This difference may relate to the underlying biological rhythms called circadian rhythms, around which much of the body processes fluctuate. This is related to body temperature and the rates of endocrine secretion. On average, people’s body temperature follows a 24-25 hour cycle, rising before awakening, and falling shortly before going to sleep. In temporal-isolation studies, where a person is removed from normal sleeping habits and indicators of day and night, people have been found to have a wide range of rhythms. Some have rhythms as short as 16 hours, others as long as 50. In normal circumstances, those with longer rhythms tend to be more energetic late at night, and those with shorter rhythms tend to be more awake and energetic early in the day. It turns out that people with differences in morningness-eveningness tend to be less satisfied living with each other.

What about brain asymmetry and affect?

The fewer alpha waves (those that are most active in rest) show up on an EEG, the more active that region of the brain being measured is. EEG waves have been measured for the left and right hemispheres of the brain, showing that the left activates when a person is experiencing pleasant emotions and the right when a person experiences negative emotions. Studies on crying infants have found that people vary in which side of their frontal brain most often is activated. This is called frontal brain asymmetry. Right-side dominant people show more distress at unpleasant stimuli, and left-side dominant people show more pleasant reactions to pleasant stimuli. Similar results have been found by testing levels of cortisol (the fight-or-flight activator) in monkeys. Right-brained monkeys have more cortisol, and react more often to negative stimuli. The technique of mindfulness training has been found to shift brain activity towards left-sided asymmetry, significantly reducing stress.

What are evolutionary perspectives? - Chapter 8

What is natural selection?

Natural selection is the process by which adaptations and change happen in a species over time. The changes/variants that stay are those that increase the ability for progeny to survive and reproduce. Eventually, successful variants replace unsuccessful ones in the gene pool. This is sometimes called survival selection, as genes interact to the hostile forces of nature like food shortages, diseases, etc. Those that increase survival are called adaptations.

What is sexual selection?

When characteristics evolve because they increase the chances of a successful mating encounter, this is called sexual selection. Darwin suggested that sexual selection takes two forms. The first, intrasexual competition, occurs when same sex members compete for the attention of potential mates. Characteristics that make a successful outcome more likely are thus passed down to progeny. The second, intersexual selection occurs when members of one sex choose a mate based on personal preferences. Characteristics that increase attractiveness lead to more successful mating.

What do we mean with inclusive fitness?

Genes are the DNA that parents pass onto their children. Evolution operates through the process of differential gene reproduction. This means that organisms that reproduce more frequently and successfully will pass their genes onwards to future generations. Inclusive fitness theory is a modern idea that can be defined as the combination of one’s own reproductive success and the effects one has on the reproduction chances of genetic relatives. One example would be saving the life of a sibling – if a gene makes you more likely to do so, and your sibling lives on to reproduce, chances are that they may share that gene and be more likely to pass it on to offspring.

What do we call the results of evolution?

What are adaptations?

Adaptations are things that develop in an organism, meshing with the recurrent structure of the world and solving an adaptive problem. One example would be a tendency to like sweet and fatty foods that would increase the chance of building personal resources in case of hunger. Adaptations emerge from and are structured by environments. Certain aspects of an environment must be stable over time for adaptations to emerge – for example, ripe fruit must continue to be nutritious for a preference to become embedded in the gene pool. Adaptations must solve adaptive problems, those that might impede survival or reproduction. Efficiency, precision, and reliability of an adaptation in solving a problem must be taken into account when recognizing an adaptation. This is called selective design. Since evolution is very slow, people today still retain adaptations meant for ancestral situations, when people lived in small groups, hunting and foraging for food.

What are by-products?

Evolutionary by-products are effects that are incidental and not necessarily considered adaptations. For example, the human nose has developed to increase the ability to smell, but it has the by-product of being a rather nifty place to hold up one’s glasses.

What are random variations?

Evolutionary noise consists of random variations that are neutral in selection. Characteristics/mutations that do not hinder survival or sexual selection might remain in the gene pool.

Adaptations are domain-specific, developed by evolution to solve a specific adaptive problem (ex. we find most poisonous plants bitter and unpleasant). Domain specificity is important because different problems in adaptation require different solutions.

Since over the course of human evolution, many adaptive problems must have arisen, it follows that we have many adaptive mechanisms. Our human psychology also contains a large number of psychological mechanisms, such as the tendency to fear heights, spiders, darkness and strangers.

Since psychological mechanisms are designed through evolution to solve particular adaptive problems, it is important to understand the functionality of these mechanisms.

What is empirical testing?

There is a hierarchy of levels of evolutionary analysis. At the top is the general theory of evolution by selection, which is by now taken for granted by most evolutionary psychologists. At the next level down are mid-level evolutionary theories. For example, the theory that the gender who invests more in child-bearing will be more sexually selective. From this, the next level of hypotheses can be derived. From these hypotheses, one can make predictions that are possible directions for experimentation. This hierarchical approach is called the deductive reasoning approach. Another approach is the inductive reasoning approach, in which a phenomenon is an observed around which researchers develop a theory. Both methods can interact. If a theory is true, than further predictions must follow from it, and empirically confirmed to provide evidence that the theory is a reliable one. If no predictions follow or those that can cannot be confirmed, than the theory may be unreliable.

What do we mean with the nature of human beings?

In the evolutionary perspective, human nature is a product of the evolutionary process.

What is the need for a sense of belonging?

Hogan theorized that due to a survival and reproductive benefit from group membership, people have developed an evolutionary need for acceptance and status within a group. According to this theory, being ostracized would be a damaging experience. This might be why social anxiety (distress or worry about being negatively evaluated) has evolved. Groups share food, information, and resources, provide protection from threat, contain mating possibilities, and offer opportunities for altruism and kinship investment. External threats have been proven to strengthen group ties, lending credence to this theory. Self-esteem has been shown to be higher when people spend more time with friends and relatives.

What is helping behaviour?

An evolutionary perspective on altruism suggests that it is a direct function of the ability to improve the genetic fitness of others. People are thus more likely to help those with a large genetic overlap (siblings, parents, etc.) than those with less or no genetic link. Studies show this to be a valid hypothesis. There is also support for those with more reproductive value (youth) to be helped more than those with less reproductive value (old age). In non-life-or-death situations, however, the oldest people are more likely to be helped.

Which emotions are universal?

There are three distinct evolutionary perspectives on the subject of emotions:

1. Universality of emotion can be seen through shared facial expressions across cultures, and is an adaptive development.
2. Emotions guide a person towards goals that improve fitness within an environment, and avoid those that lower fitness.
3. Emotions are designed to exploit the psychological mechanisms of other people. (manipulation hypothesis)

Research (using expressions of contempt, happiness, disgust, anger, fear, surprise and sadness) has confirmed that in every country that has been studied, emotions are recognized in the same way, through the same facial expressions.

What about sex/gender differences?

In evolutionary psychology, it is predicted that in situations where the same adaptive problems are faced, men and women will have evolved in the same way. In situations where unique adaptive problems have been faced (as in reproduction and mate selection), different characteristics will be displayed. Evolutionary-predicted sex differences raise some key issues: the domains in which the sexes have faced different adaptive problems, the sex-differentiated psychological mechanisms that have evolved in response to different adaptive problems, and the social/cultural influences on the magnitude of these expressed differences.

What about aggression?

Men are much more often the perpetrators and victims of violence. This may be the case because men are more often in competition with other men over access to women. Among males, few will sire many offspring and some will sire none at all. This process is called effective polygyny, and occurs because men have a smaller amount they need to invest in offspring. Species that are highly sexually dimorphic (showing greater differences between the sexes in size and structure) are also high in effective polygyny. That men who are poor and unmarried are more likely to commit acts of violence indicates (but cannot prove) that violence may be a last resort to those facing reproductive failure.

What about jealousy?

Evolutionary psychologists have predicted that men and women differ in the weight that they give to infidelity. Since for men, the biggest threat is that their mate will be carrying the child of another man, sexual infidelity would be worse. In women, however, the allocation of time, resources, and commitment to another woman would have a greater impact, making emotional infidelity worse. Experiments have confirmed this concept. Some psychologists, however, disagree with the causation of these reactions. Instead, they claim that it is the different beliefs about infidelity held by each sex that influence the impact. They suggest that men believe emotional infidelity naturally follows sexual infidelity, while women believe that sexual infidelity naturally follows emotional infidelity.

What about desire for sexual variety?

Men and women differ in how much sexual variety they desire. This can be predicted by the parental investment and sexual selection theories. The result that women desire having less partners in their lifetime than men has been replicated worldwide. One study has found that women think about sex on average 9 times per week, while men think about sex around 37 times a week.

What are mate preferences?

Because women bear children and thus have a higher potential parental investment, it has been predicted that they place more value on a potential mate’s financial resources, status, and ambition. Conversely, men should put a greater value on physical appearance cues that indicate fertility. In studies, this tendency has been noticed. However, personality has been cited as more important than either of these factors, for both sexes.

What are individual differences from an evolutionary perspective?

Evolutionary analysis of individual personality difference is largely speculative as it is difficult to prove empirically. One suggestion is that individual differences are the result of environmental peculiarities that activate psychological mechanisms to differing degrees. Another is that individual differences emerge from contingencies among traits – that the expression of traits may be contingent on environmental or physical cues. Frequency-dependent selection is another possible explanation. It suggests that the fitness of a trait depends on how frequent it occurs relative to the general population. Finally, the fact that the optimum level of a personality trait varies over evolutionary time and space in response to environmental adaptive problems can create heritable differences.

What are environmental triggers?

This theory suggests that the critical childhood issues (like the presence or absence of a father or the availability of resources) trigger the activation of different personality traits among people in different situations. Findings of related studies, while empirical, are largely correlational.

What are trait-contingent heritable differences?

This theory suggests that some differences are contingent on other traits. For example, aggressiveness is likely more present in men that are more stocky and muscular than in thin or chubby men due to a higher chance of success in a fight. This tendency is considered reactively heritable –it is a secondary consequence of a heritable trait.

What do we mean with frequency-dependent strategic differences?

In the context of sexual selection, two heritable variants of sexual strategy among women are present and fluctuate according to frequency-dependence. Women with a restricted sexual strategy tend to delay intercourse in a prolonged courtship designed to encourage and ensure fidelity, thus working best to achieve a relationship with a man who is more committed to providing prolonged resources. The unrestricted sexual strategy causes women to seek men who have more attractive genes (expressed in physical attractiveness, ambition, etc.), even if they may be less committed. As one strategy becomes more common, the benefit of adopting the opposite strategy increases, as the available pool of men grows.

Psychopathic personality traits unfortunately may also continue through frequency-dependent selection, as psychopathic people reproduce more and are less accountable in a more mobile society.

What do we mean with The Big Five and motivation?

One approach to the Big Five in relation to evolutionary psychology suggests that each trait expresses a difference in motivational reaction/solutions to particular adaptive problems. For example, neuroticism might increase vigilance but could also lead to stress. Heritable differences might continue because the optimum level of each trait varies over time and space, balancing their selection. Another approach suggests that personality is a result of difference-detecting mechanisms that are designed to remember the relevance of individual differences.

Which limitations do we know?

The first limitation is that much of evolutionary psychology is largely speculative, even if it is a helpful way of putting the past into perspective. The second limitation is that there is still a great lack of knowledge about the nature, details and design features of psychological mechanisms. The third limitation is that modern environments offer many different adaptive problems than ancestral environments. A fourth limitation is that one can often come up with two entirely opposing evolutionary explanations for the same behaviour. There is also an issue in the fact that evolutionary hypotheses are largely untestable and un-falsifiable, and so are not scientifically useful.

What is the psychoanalytic approach to personality? - Chapter 9

Who was Sigmund Freud?

Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 and spent most of his life in Vienna. He developed the concept of the subconscious mind, and theorized that it was expressed in dreams. Freud has been both praised and criticized for his ideas.

What are important assumptions of psychoanalytic theory?

What did Freud say about sex and aggression?

According to Freud, psychic energy motivates all human behaviour. Innate forces, instincts, provide the source of this energy. In Freud’s initial formulation, the fundamental instincts are the instinct for self-preservation, and sexual instincts. (This distinction follows Darwin’s selection theory) Later, Freud revised his theory, combining these two instincts as libido (life instinct) and formulating another: thanatos, the death instinct. The death instinct is a broad idea referring to any urge to destroy, harm, or be aggressive against the self or others.

Which three parts of the mind consists according to Freud?

According to Freud, the mind consists of three parts:

1. The conscious mind: all thoughts, feelings, and perceptions that one is immediately aware of.

2. The preconscious mind: all memories, dreams and thoughts that are not immediately present but readily available for retrieval.

3. The unconscious mind: all unacceptable, troubling, or distasteful memories, feelings, thoughts and urges.

Since society does not allow the unbridled expression of libido and thanatos, these instincts must be pushed down to the unconscious and controlled.

What is according to Freud psychic determinism?

Freud maintained that all behaviour, thought, and feeling is an expression of the mind and not merely a matter of chance. From this comes the idea of a “Freudian slip” in which a person accidentally says one word in place of another that reveals an unconscious desire. The reasons for every seemingly accidental act can be discovered when the unconscious is examined. He believed that mental illness is a result of unconscious motivations. Freud was consulted in the case of Anna O., who was being treated by physician Joseph Breuer for hysteric symptoms. Through talking about troubling memories, the symptoms began to disappear. Freud adopted the “talking cure” technique and developed it further, believing that for a psychological symptom to be cured, the unconscious cause must be revealed. This process involves discovering repressed memories of unpleasant experiences.

What is the Id?

The id is the most primitive part of the human mind and the source of all drives and urges. The id functions according to the pleasure principle, the desire for immediate gratification. The id dominates in infancy when all urges must be satisfied. It also operates with primary process thinking, thinking that has no rule of logic or anchor in reality, such as dreams or fantasies. Sometimes urges can be directed at a mental image or fantasy, instead of being expressed in the real world, in a process called wish fulfilment.

What is the Ego?

The ego is the part of the mind with executive function; it controls the id according to reality. Thus, the ego operates according to the reality principle. Since the urges of the id cannot always be satisfied, the ego avoids, redirects, or postpones the direct expression of these impulses. It engages in secondary process thinking, the development of problem-solving strategies. The theory of ego depletion states that self-control is limited, and the exertion of self-control in one task might lead to lower self-control in immediately subsequent tasks.

What is the Superego?

The superego is the conscience, the part of the mind that internalizes societal and moral values. Freud believed that the development of the superego is closely linked to parental relationships. It is what makes us feel guilt when we do something morally wrong and pride when we do something morally right. The superego is not bound to reality and is free to set unrealistic standards.

What does Freud mean witch the interaction of the three parts?

These three parts of the mind, according to Freud, are in constant interaction. When confronted with a situation in which there are opposing demands from the id and superego, a person might experience anxiety. This is an unpleasant state that signals a threat to the ego. A strong ego ensures a well-balanced, un-anxious mind.

Whicht three types of anxiety identified Freud?

Freud identified three types of anxiety:

1. Objective: normal fear, which occurs in response to a real external threat.

2. Neurotic: direct conflict between the id and the ego in which there is a danger that the ego might lose control over the id.

3. Moral: direct conflict between the superego and the ego in which a person feels shame or guilt for not meeting the standards of the superego.

What does Freud mean with defense?

The ego defends against threats and anxiety using defense mechanisms. In the conversion reaction, conflict is converted into a physical symptom helping to avoid psychological anxiety. The defense mechanisms are: repression, denial, deisplacement, rationalization, reaction formulation, projection and sublimation. They will be discussed in more detail below.

What is repression?

When unacceptable thoughts, feelings and urges are pushed down to the unconscious mind, this is called repression. It allows people to avoid the anxiety that might result from an awareness of these unacceptable urges.

What is denial?

When the reality of a situation might produce anxiety, denial is a refusal to see that reality. This may be a complete denial of reality, or a restructuring of reality to make it less anxiety-producing. The fundamental attribution error, a tendency to blame external events for one`s personal failure but accept responsibility for success, is considered a form of denial.

What is displacement?

Displacement involves the redirection of an unacceptable impulse from its original source to a less threatening target. For example, when one suppresses anger at an employer, they may unleash their frustration on their family. This may also occur with sexual impulses or fear.

What is rationalization?

In the process of rationalization, a person might generate acceptable reasons for behaviour and outcomes that might otherwise be morally distasteful. This explanation might be easier to accept than the reality.

What is the reaction formulation?

In the reaction formulation, the expression of an unacceptable urge is stifled by an exaggerated expression of its opposite. When one might want to yell, they may become very quiet. When one might want to express their anger, instead they might be overly kind.

What doe we mean with projection?

Projection involves the tendency to see our own unacceptable qualities on other people. For example, a person who is unfaithful to their spouse might become suspicious of their spouse, believing that they themselves are being cheated on. Homophobia might be a projection of repressed homosexual urges. A similar effect is called the false consensus effect, in which people believe that many others share their own preferences, motivations and traits. Having a false consensus over negative traits might be defensive.

What does sublimation involves?

The most adaptive mechanism, sublimation involves channeling unacceptable urges into socially desirable activities. For example, becoming a professional boxer as a way to relieve repressed anger, or taking a dangerous job as a way to sublimate a death wish.

What are daily defences?

While many stresses and anxieties of daily life would be worse without the employment of defence mechanisms, they can sometimes make situations worse. Projection and displacement could cause social conflict.

What are the psychosexual stages of development?

Freud believed that every person goes through set stages of development, each of which requires the resolution of a conflict. These stages all occur in childhood and are necessary for the formation of a full personality. In his theory of psychosexual stages, each stage is marked by a direction of libidinal energy into a specific body part in the search for gratification. Failing to resolve a conflict at any stage is called a fixation, as the individual becomes stuck.

• Oral stage (0-18 months): Pleasure and tension revolves around the mouth. Weaning from the breast or bottle is the main conflict of this stage. Excessive pleasure and dependency must be confronted. If fixated on this stage, an adult might tend to overeat or smoke, and may want to be nurtured or taken care of. They might also becoming “biting”, hostile or quarrelsome.

• Anal stage (18 months-3 years): Pleasure and tension revolve around the expulsion and retention of feces. Toilet training is the main conflict of this stage, as self-control over the urges of the id is taught. Too little control and a person might become lazy or sloppy. Too much control and they become compulsive and overly neat.

• Phallic stage (3-5 years): Pleasure and tension revolve around the discovery of the penis (or lack of penis). Sexual desire begins to awaken, and children fall in love with their parent of the opposite sex while seeing the same sex parent as a competitor. This is called the oedipal conflict. The fear of losing the penis, castration anxiety, drives the boy to give up lust for his mother and identify with his father, wanting to become more like him. This is the beginning of the superego and morality. Girls desire their father but envy them for their penis – this is called penis envy. Jung termed this stage the Electra complex for females.

• Latency stage (6 years-puberty): Freud believed that little psychological development occurs at this stage, but skills and tools are learned that are needed for living in the world as children attend school.

• Genital stage (Puberty onwards): Puberty brings about a sexual awakening, in which the libido becomes focused on the genitals and signals the resolution of all prior stage conflicts.

The poorer the conflict resolution at a specific stage, the more psychic energy is left to deal with that conflict, causing a fixation to manifest.

What is psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis is a theory of personality and a method of psychotherapy. Undergoing psychotherapy is considered a requirement for the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Which techniques are used in psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis has the goal of revealing the unconscious. All psychological problems are considered a result of unconscious conflicts. Once these conflicts are identified, they can begin to be dealt with maturely. There are different techniques to uncover the unconscious, of which the following will be discussed: free association, dream analysis and projection.

What is the free association technique?

Saying anything that comes to mind, as it occurs, is called free association. It involves relaxing the personal censor that blocks unacceptable thoughts. The psychoanalyst must be able to recognize subtle signs of importance through the body language, tenor, and hesitation of the patient.

What is dream analysis?

Freud believed that dreams contain a disguised form of unconscious wishes and desires. Dream analysis is a technique for uncovering this material and distinguishing between manifest content (actual content of a dream) and latent content (the hidden meanings). This involves interpreting the symbols in dreams.

What is projection?

Techniques that deal with projection involve presenting the patient with ambiguous stimuli (like an inkblot) and analyzing their interpretation. People project their personalities into how they interpret the stimuli. A similar technique involves asking the person to draw something, like a person.

What is a psychoanalytic process?

Through these previously mentioned techniques, the psychoanalyst begins to understand the unconscious of the patient. Near the end of the treatment, the psychoanalyst offers the patient interpretations of their problems. Through the understanding of unconscious sources for problems, the patient gains insight. This involves an intense release of emotion that accompanies the release of repressed material. Repressive forces work to resist psychoanalysis, often manifesting in aggression, reluctance, or avoidance. Resistance is a cue that important progress is being made. Transference is also an important step, and involves the patient reacting to the analyst as an important figure from their own life, relating to them as a father or mother.

Why are psychoanalysis important?

Many of Freud’s ideas and techniques continue to influence the field of psychology today. Research psychologists are experiencing a resurge of interest in the topics of the unconscious, psychic energy, and defence mechanisms. In popular culture, many of Freud’s ideas have become incorporated into language and our understanding of people’s behaviour. Freud’s ideas have also laid the foundation for many of the topics still being addressed by psychologists today.

What about personality and motives? - Chapter 10

Why this chapter?

In this chapter, the importance of motives is discussed. Motives are the internal states that direct and encourage behaviour towards specific goals. They are often based on the tense state of being in need, as happens when one becomes hungry and is motivated to find food. Motives are intrapsychic because they are internal psychological needs and urges that lead to action. Motives are often unrecognized or projective.

What is the theory of motivation?

Motive psychologists are similar to dispositional psychologists in that they stress the difference of motive strength and type between different individuals. They claim these differences can be measured, and are associated with life outcomes like marital success. These differences between people are stable over time. Successfully defining a motive may enlighten us on the cause of certain behaviours. Henry Murray was one of the first psychologists to develop a modern theory of motivation (between the 1930’s and 1960’s).

What are the principles of motivation?

1. Need

According to Murray, a need is a state of tension that one seeks to reduce, finding the process of this goal striving often more satisfying than the tensionless state it produces. Needs compel people towards necessary action, even when such action requires sacrifice. Murray proposed a list of human needs that each associate with a set of emotions, tendencies towards actions and specific desires. Each individual has a hierarchy of needs that determines how they act. These various needs interact, making the concept of motive a dynamic one. Some of Murray’s needs include: achievement, exhibition, order, dominance, abasement, aggression, autonomy, blame-avoidance, affiliation, nurturance, and succour.

2. Press

The term press was used by Murray to refer to the aspects of a person’s environment that are need-relevant. Press is divided into the real environment (alpha press) and the perceived environment (beta press). Events that may mean something entirely different in reality (such as a smile from a passing stranger) may be interpreted according to an individual’s need-influenced perceptions.

3. Apperception

Apperception is a term that refers to the individual interpretation and perception of a situation’s meaning. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) uses ambiguous images to seek out the particular needs and motives that influence their interpreter, by having them describe creatively what may be happening in the picture. TAT can be used to assess state levels and trait levels of needs. State levels of a need are momentary, based on a person’s immediate situation. Trait levels, on the other hand, are based on a person’s average tendency towards a specific need. A newer technique is the Mutli-Motive Grid, which combines TAT with self-report questionnaires.

What are 'The Big Three' motives?

Three big needs/motives will be discussed: the need for achievement, the need for power and the need for intimacy.

What is the need for achievement (nAch)?

This need (nAch) is defined as the desire to improve, be successful, and feel competent. Individuals with this need tend to choose tasks that are moderately challenging, and thus allow the strongest possibility of feeling successful (not too hard that nobody can succeed, nor too easy that everyone can). They tend to enjoy tasks in which they are responsible for the outcome and those that provide feedback on their performance.

What do we mean with increasing achievement?

To determine one’s level of nAch, a correlation of TAT need for achievement scores with other measures is considered to be helpful. People with high nAch tend to more often pursue entrepreneurial careers and to take deliberate care in their choice of classes and in their studies. Training in nAch can improve success in business. NAch is expressed differently among cultures.

What are gender differences regarding the need for achievement?

Female nAch has been found to occur on different trajectories, either focusing on work success, family success, or a combination of the two. One of the main differences in nAch comes from childhood influences. Where male children, when provided with a stable, supportive environment showed greater levels of nAch, female children in divorced, critical environments showed greater levels of nAch.

What is promoting achievement in children?

A parenting practice called independence training can help encourage autonomy and nAch. Strict toilet training in early childhood has been associated with high nAch later in life, demonstrating the idea that encouraging independent self-care promotes a sense of mastery and confidence. Setting clear and moderately challenging standards is also important to encourage striving for excellence. Children with secure attachment styles tend to be higher in nAch than others. It has been found that the belief in the malleability of one’s skills actually improves the effort one puts into achievement, and this believe is now being encouraged in schools.

What do we mean with the need for power (nPow)?

The need for power (nPow) is one’s desire to have an impact on other people. This need energizes and directs behaviour in situations that afford opportunities to exert power. The TAT is used to assess need for power.

What are the research results?

NPow correlates with argumentativeness, presence in student government, risky gambling, and acquiring possessions that demonstrate prestige. People with a high nPow are more likely to seek submissive partners and unpopular friends.

What are gender differences regarding the need for power?

There are not many differences in need for power between genders. One difference is that women with high nPow are less likely to engage in impulsive and aggressive behaviours than men with high nPow. Men are more likely to exhibit profligate impulsive behaviours (drinking, aggression, and sexual exploitation) than women. Responsibility training in childhood diminishes this tendency.

What about health and nPow?

People high in nPow are susceptible to stress when their power is denied. This can have a negative effect on health and can increase blood pressure and cause hypertension.

What about politics and nPow?

An interesting study applied the criteria of TAT to presidential speeches in history, and discovered that in and around times of war, power imagery was highest. In communications, power imagery can escalate conflict.

What do we mean with the need for intimacy (nInt)?

The need for intimacy (nInt) is the reoccurring preference for close, warm and communicative interaction with others. High nInt people need more meaningful human interactions than low nInt people.

What are the research results?

Like the other motives, TAT is used to measure the strength of this motive. Those with high nInt spend more time thinking about relationships, feel more pleasant emotions in company, make more eye contact, and have more conversations. Unlike extraverts, high nInt individuals are more likely to have a few close friends. High nInt is associated with life satisfaction in women and diminished strain in men, and overall eases adjustment.

What are humanistic tradition of motives?

The humanistic tradition approach to motivation emphasizes the conscious awareness of needs, choice, and personal responsibility. Taking responsibility for one’s choices allows one to create a meaningful life. According to the humanistic tradition, human nature is marked for the need for personal growth and self-actualization. A great deal of motivation, in this view, is based on the need to develop into what one is meant to be. Contrary to other traditions which view motivation as arising from a deficit, the humanistic tradition sees most motivations as being growth-based. Self-actualization is defined as becoming more attuned to oneself and becoming all that one can be.

What is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

According to Maslow, needs are organized in a hierarchy. Each level of needs must, according to him, reach a certain stage of fulfilment for the next to be possible. Needs lower in the hierarchy are more pressing than those at the top. Maslow defines five levels:

1. Physiological (the base of the pyramid): This category includes all biological and survival-important needs, including food, sex, and sleep.
2. Safety: This category includes needs that ensure the safety of the person, shelter and security. Routines and insurance purchases can be seen as an expression of this need.
3. Belonging: This category includes needs that are related to group membership and acceptance, and may arise out of an evolutionary pack tendency.
4. Esteem: This category includes the need for self-esteem and for the esteem of others. We want to feel respected and admired by our peers and to have high levels of self-confidence.
5. Self-actualization: The need to develop to one’s full potential.

What are the research results?

Studies have shown that people feel more distressed when the lower level needs (rather than the higher ones) are not satisfied, and happier when the higher level needs (rather than lower ones) were satisfied.

What are self-actualized individuals?

Maslow studied people who had made contributions to society as self-actualized individuals, though ordinary people can be self-actualized just as easily. He was able to determine fifteen characteristics that these case studies shared: an efficient perception of reality, acceptance of themselves and nature, spontaneity, problem-focus, affinity for solitude, independence of cultural trends, continued freshness of appreciation, frequent “peak” experiences, desire to help humanity, deep ties with few people, democratic values, ability to discriminate between means and ends, philosophical sense of humour, creativity, and resistance to enculturation.

What is a flow?

Flow is a state of being in which one is so involved in something that they forget all but the activity itself. It is a point of balance between skill and challenge, with a clear goal and prompt feedback. This is said to be an indication of experiencing self-actualization.

What was the contribution of Carl Rogers?

Rogers believed in the idea that humans are naturally good and benevolent, but are turned astray by life influences. For him, the fully functioning person is one who is on the way to self-actualization. These people are open, living life on a daily basis, and trust themselves to make their own decisions.

What did Rogers mean with positive regard and conditions of worth?

Rogers believed that all children are born with an innate desire for the love, acceptance and positive regard of their parents. Parents often make positive regard contingent on good behaviour and success – these parameters are called conditions of worth. When positive regard must be earned, it is called conditional positive regard. Children who are given too many conditions may grow into adults who think first about what others want, about making others happy and winning approval. They may lose track of their own desire and responsibility. Unconditional positive regard, on the other hand, allows children to understand that even in their shortcomings, they are still loved. In not needing to earn regard, they are able to develop their own directions and develop unconditional positive self-regard.

What is promoting of self-actualization?

Anxiety can occur when someone has an experience that is counter to their self-conception. If they believe that academic achievement earns the regard of their parents, and they incorporate this into their self-image, they may feel anxiety if they begin to get lower grades. Fully-functioning individuals might change their self-concept to incorporate the new experience. However, less functional individuals might use defense mechanisms. Distortion occurs when one modifies their experience to reduce a threat. Emotional intelligence (EI) has been found to correlate with a self-actualization tendency.

What are the core conditions of the client-centred therapy?

Rogers’s therapy is called client-centred therapy. In this, the therapist tries not to influence the client’s choices, but instead creates the right conditions for self-change. There are three core conditions:

1. Genuine acceptance: the therapist accepts the client in an honest way.
2. Unconditional positive regard: the therapist accepts everything the client says without passing judgement.
3. Empathic understanding: the therapist tries to understand their client from their point of view. This can be shown using the parroting technique, restating what is said.

What is the cognitive approach to personality? - Chapter 11

What is personality?

Cognitive approaches to personality look at the difference in how people think and perceive their environments. Two major types of cognition employed in understanding situations include personalizing cognition, in which the individual relates a situation to their own life and experiences, and objectifying cognition, in which the individual recalls objective facts that relate to the situation. The term cognition refers to thinking. This includes information processing, which consists of the mental acts of perception, attention, interpretation, memory, belief, judgement, decision, and anticipation. Information processing psychologists study the differences between how people deal with information. The three levels of cognition that personality psychologists focus on are expanded in this section – they include perception, interpretation, and goal-making.

What is perception?

Perception is the process of imposing order on information received through the senses. Perception is a very subjective and often individual process.

What is the difference between field dependence versus field independence?

Herman Witkin studied perceptual differences and how they reveal personality. He designed an apparatus called the Rod and Frame Test (RFT). This test studies individual differences in how one perceives a situation, by changing various aspects of a simple situation involving a glowing rod, a frame, and a chair to create the same resulting perceptual image. Based on what the individual does to right the image, the experimenter can determine what the participant’s perception is based on. Field dependent perception relies on cues received in the field of vision. On the other hand, field independent perception relies more on the individual’s sensations, rather than the visual field. A simpler test is called the Embedded Figures Test (EFT). It involves a large image in which smaller pictures have been embedded. When people have trouble finding these images, they may be focusing more on the field provided (field dependent), rather than separating objects from the bigger picture (field independent).

Which life choices are influenced by field dependence/independence?

Studies have shown differences in study choices related to field differences – field dependent people tend to favour social sciences and education while field independent people favour maths and natural sciences. Field dependent people are also attentive to social cues, seeking more interaction with others. Field independent people are more autonomous and prefer non-social situations

What about recent research?

Recent research has come up with much new information on the differences between these perception styles. Field independent people are better able to focus on important details of a situation while filtering out distracting information and noise, and are better at decoding facial expressions in photographs. Field independent students learn more easily in complex hypermedia lessons than do field dependent students, demonstrating that they may be better able to focus on the important information in a high-stimulus situation, and switch the focus of their attention more easily. Field independent people also have an easier time picking up a second language. They also tend to be more creative, though less social.

What is pain tolerance?

People experience pain differently. Those with a high pain tolerance report feeling less pain when receiving the same treatment as someone with a low pain tolerance. Petrie had a theory that people with a high tolerance for pain have a nervous system that reduces pain, while people with a low tolerance have a nervous system that augments (amplifies) it. This is the reducer/augmenter theory. Reducers seem to be motivated towards stimulus-intense activities that correct for low sensory reactivity. These include coffee drinking, louder music preferences, drug and alcohol use.

What do we mean with interpretation?

Interpretation is the process of explaining things or events, giving them meaning. Interpretation is often used in dealing with questions of blame and responsibility.

What is George Kelly’s personal construct theory?

Kelly believed that all people want to better understand their experiences and circumstances so they can predict future occurrences. He sees humans as scientists who want to explain situations so they can predict and control events. People use personal constructs, individual sets of observations and rules, to help them interpret their world. All constructs, according to Kelly, consist of a characteristic understood by its opposite (nice-mean, boring-interesting). These are used to create social groups and determine who to interact with. Kelly can be considered an early postmodernist thinker. His theory included the notion that people, even if largely different, will get along if they share a personal construct system. He believed anxiety arises from a lack of understanding one’s circumstances.

What is the difference between internal/external locus of control?

Locus of control is a person’s perception of responsibility for experienced events. If one has an internal locus of control, they find themselves responsible. If they have an external locus of control, they see others, fate, or chance as holding responsibility. This concept began with Julian Rotter, who was working on social learning theory. His expectancy model of learning behaviour suggested that some people expect that their actions will bring reinforcement, while others do not see the connection between their behaviour and reinforcement. Rotter found that these generalized expectations held over a variety of situations, and fashioned a questionnaire to determine locus of control. Internal locus of control is a predictor of lower obesity, timely degree completion, and higher credit rating. Researchers are now more interested in specific expectancies, when locus of control affects specific parts of life.

What is the realtion between learned helplessness and interpretation?

Learned Helplessness occurs when a person is subjected to a repeated and unpleasant situation from which there is no escape. Eventually, even if an escape becomes possible, they will not try to avoid their unpleasant circumstances. They have learned that trying is hopeless, and thus feel unable to act. This has been seen to occur in real-life circumstances, including among abused wives.

What do we mean with conscious goal-making?

Goals are the standards people hold themselves to and the tasks they set for themselves. The focus of this approach to cognition is on what people intend. Self-guides are standards by which people measure themselves.

What are personal projects?

Personal projects are sets of actions that are performed with the intent of achieving a goal. Personal projects vary in importance and priority on a daily basis. Little’s Personal Projects Analysis method assesses how people choose, manage, and feel about their personal projects. It has been related to the Big Five personality traits, with results showing more dissatisfaction and stress among those high in neuroticism over the completion of personal projects. Little has determined that bringing personal projects to a successful completion is important in overall levels of life satisfaction and happiness.

How can we describe social cognition?

Cognitive psychologists aim to understand how we receive, perceive and store information regarding other human beings. One point of particular interest is that we can learn from watching others. Other points are group membership, reputation, group identification.

What is the cognitive social learning approach?

Theories that focus on the notion that personality is expressed in goal choice make up the cognitive social learning approach to personality.

What about self-efficacy and Albert Bandura?

Bandura expanded on the behaviourist concept of human behaviour by including intentions, forethought, and social observation in classic learning theory. One of his most important concepts is self-efficacy, one’s belief that they are able to execute a course of action to complete their goals. Higher self-efficacy leads to more concerted effort and persistence towards goal-completion and more ambitious goals. Splitting large objectives into more easily achievable sub-goals can increase overall self-efficacy. Seeing others succeed (in a process called modeling) can also influence self-efficacy.

What about mastery orientation and Carol Dweck?

Carol Dweck’s research deals with helpless and mastery-oriented behaviours in children. Children with an entity view of intelligence believe that it is an unchangeable personal trait. Conversely, children with an incremental view of intelligence believe that it is something that can change and improve. These children tend to try harder and have a higher sense of self-efficacy and self-esteem than entity children.

What about regulatory focus and E. Tory Higgins?

According to Higgins, there are two different ways that people regulate their goal-oriented behaviour. Those with a promotion focus are concerned with growth, advancement and accomplishments and tend to approach goals with eagerness. Those with a prevention focus are concerned with safety, protection, and avoidance of negative outcomes. They tend to act vigilant and cautious. People with a promotion focus have been found more likely to write a possibly incorrect answer on a test than to omit an answer when they are not sure.

What is the Cognitive-Affective Personality System (CAPS) of Walter Mischel?

In the late 60’s, Mischel was critical of the concept that personality traits cause behaviour and argued for the importance of situational influences. More recently, he has developed the Cognitive-Affective Personality System (CAPS), which views personality as combination of affective and cognitive activities that influence behaviour and reactions to situations, rather than a collection of traits. CAPS takes situation into account, seeing personality expressed in “if…then…” propositions. Profiles could be made up for individuals according to their reactions to certain situations.

What is Intelligence? - Chapter 12

Why does intelligence matter?

In our society it seems that intelligence isn’t always the most important aspect of people. However, intelligence is in fact very predictive of various life outcomes. Studies show IQ is related to a decreased rate of death by poison, fire, falls, drowning, road injury, military casualties and even cancer. Intelligence is not directly linked to health and death, but may give people the ability to care better for themselves and their health. Intelligent children also show less signs of mental decline in later age. In a 42 year longitudinal study it was found that intelligence is a salutogenic (health-causing factor). A correlation of .56 was found between intelligence and education success has been found. Intelligence is also a better predictor of, and independent from, career success than parental socioeconomic status and academic performance.

How can we define intelligence?

Intelligence is a latent trait (cannot be observed directly). Implicit theories of intelligence are based on intuitive or lay persons’ judgements of people’s behavior or looks. Explicit theories of intelligence are more formally construed. Behaviors or abilities associated with intelligence are usually abstract reasoning, problem solving, capacity to acquire knowledge, memory, ability to adapt and speed of mental processes, but theses can vary from culture to culture.

What are implicit theories of intelligence?

The Incremental Theory of intelligence states it is malleable, while the Entity Theory states it is stable over time. In a study it was found that children who believed in the incremental theory showed increased academic performance over time and more positive emotions and self-regulation, while those who believed in the entity theory did not have increased academic performance, and showed more negative emotions and self-handicapping.

In Uganda the concept of intelligence is linked to slowness among unschooled people, but to quickness among schooled people. Through factor analysis, however, is was found that quickness and intelligence are not systematically linked. In Africa intelligence is also commonly associated with respect for other (elderly) people and social skills. From research into associations with intelligence in northern countries (Finland and Russia), it seems intelligence in typically portrayed as more masculine rather than feminine. US students compared to German students associate intelligence more with effort, and believe more in the malleability of intelligence. In Singapore mothers reported patience as a factor of intelligence, but this is likely because they believed this to be something other mothers would also approve of. This can be seen as a way of competing with other mothers. Kiasu-ism is a cultural value in Singapore that entails the obsession with competition and always appearing as though one is a winner in all aspects of life. This is a sign cultural values and norms can influence people’s associations with intelligence.

What are psychometric approaches?

Measuring psychological processes is called psychometrics. Galton measured people’s perceptions of differences and stated that people with better mental ability can detect subtle differences. James Cattell started using the word mental test and improved on Galton’s work by measuring reaction times. Alfred Binet invented the first intelligence test, the Binet-Simon Scale of Intelligence. It consisted of 30 tasks with increasing difficulty. By comparing the results of children a child’s mental age could be established. Wilhelm Stern’s system of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) states that IQ is the mental age divided by the chronological age times 100. The Binet-Herderschêe variant was used in the Netherlands to assess mentally retarded children, but was too focused on verbal and scholastic knowledge. The Stanford-Binet test was an improved version and was very successful.

In 1927 Spearman proposed the concept of general intelligence (g). Through factor analysis he found the biggest factor to account for the high inter-correlations between intelligence tasks and named it g. He noted people who scored high on one mental task also scored high on the other, and named this the positive manifold. Performance on a (mental) task is predicted by g, but also by s, which are task specific skills. In 1958 the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test came out. The primary advantage of this test is the use of the same items for each individual. The items are arranged in increasing difficulty. The second key difference is the use of deviation IQ and the use of norms. Deviation IQ is the test score divided by the expected score for that person’s age times 100. The average IQ is always set to 100, with a standard deviation of 15 on a normal distribution. In 1938 Thurstone again used factor analysis to determine seven primary mental abilities instead of one (g). This was called the multifactor theory of intelligence. They are Verbal Comprehension, Word Fluency, Number, Space, Associate Memory, Perceptual Speed and Reasoning. Raymand Cattell proposed a 2-factor model. The two factors are Crystallized Intelligence (gc), which is factual knowledge and grows with age, and Fluid Intelligence (gf), which are flexible mental processes such as reasoning and seeing relationships between things. gf generally decreases with age. Guilford proposed a mutli-factor theory with 120 factors, but its limited practical application didn’t get it much support.

Next to multi-factor theories there are also Hierarchical Theories. These try to organize the factors into a hierarchical structure. Vernon propose a theory with Spearman’s g at the top, and s at the bottom. John Carrol introduced the Three-Stratum Model of cognitive ability, with g at the top stratum (III), 8 factors in stratum II (Fluid Intelligence (Gf) Crystallized Intelligence (Gc), General Memory and Learning (Gy), Broad Visual Perception (Gv), Broad Auditory Perception (Gu), Broad Retrieval Ability (Gr), Broad Cognitive Speediness (Gs), Processing Speed (Gt)), and 69 specific abilities in stratum I. Newer versions of the Three-Stratum Model include Catell’s, Horn’s and Carrol’s theories and have identified 10 stratum II factors, as well as revised the old ones. They include Fluid Reasoning (Gf), Comprehension-Knowledge (Gc), Visual (Gv) and Auditory (Ga) Processing, Short-Term Memory (Gsm), Long-term Storage and Retrieval (Glr) and Processing Speed (Gs).

Gardner proposed the multiple intelligences theory, in 1983, that states there are seven or more intelligences that are independent, and he criticized the idea of g and IQ. This theory however has been criticized because it is not thoroughly tested and based on iffy literature. The latest cognitive neurological data also suggests that the intelligences are in fact linked to each other. Sternberg called for more focus on peoples’ adaptive ability and proposed the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, consisting of analytical, creative and practical intelligence.

What do we mean with cognitive-experiential approaches?

These approaches work mainly from the assumption that intelligence is a result of mental processing speed. The latest study by Schweizer reports that as much as 70 percent of the variance between people’s intelligence can be explained by elementary mental processes, such as mental speed.

What involves the Stanford-Binet Test and the Wechsler Scales?

The Stanford-Binet test is considered the golden standard for all intelligence tests. It involves adaptive testing, so items that are too easy are presented to the candidate, preventing boredom and saving time. It is based on a hierarchical model that has g at the top, and broad factors on the lower levels (Knowledge, Fluid Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning, Visual-Spatial Processing and Working Memory). It gives a Full Scale IQ, Verbal IQ and nonverbal IQ for each person. It can be used for persons from 2 to 85 years, is taken individually, and features items in order of increasing difficulty.

The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) is useful for persons between 16 and 90 years old and yields a full scale IQ for each person, but no verbal or nonverbal IQ. There are four scales each with their own subtests: Verbal Comprehension (subtests: Vocabulary, Similarities, Information Comprehension), Working Memory (subtests: Digit Span, Arithmetic, Letter-Number Sequencing), Perceptual Reasoning (subtests: Block Design, Matrix Reasoning, Visual Puzzles, Figure Weights, Picture Completion) and Processing Speed (Symbol search, Coding, Cancellation). Normative samples consist of 200 people per age span between 16-69 and 100 persons per age span between 70-90, 2,200 in total. Norms also include country-specific information, and there are even country-specific versions of the WAIS. It takes 67 minutes to administer.

What are the Raven’s Progressive Matrices?

This test consists of 5 sets of 12 matrices in order of increasing difficulty. Each item consists of a matrix with one part missing, and people are given a choice which answer fits the matrix. It works only with pictures, and is considered to be a culture-free test. It measures g. There are also versions for children and gifted individuals.

What are modern intelligence tests?

In the Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test (STAT) all three aspects of the Sternbergs Triarchic model of intelligence are measured. However, subtests inter-correlations leave much to be desired. Nonetheless this test does measure aspects of intelligence, like practical intelligence, that other tests don’t.

The Naglieri-Das Cognitive Assessment System (CAS) is based on the PASS-model (Planning, Attention-Arousal, Simultaneous Processing and Successive Processing) of cognitive functioning. These four dimensions are based on brain-behavior relationships described by Aleksandr Romanovich Luria. It can be used for children between 5 and 17 years old and consists of 12 subtests, three for every competence scale.

What are psychophysical measurements?

Psychophysical measurements are said to be less reliant on culture, and the psychophysical approach aims to replace intelligence tests with elementary cognitive tasks, such as measurements of mental speed. Choice Reaction times are often used as a measurement. It involves measuring the time it takes someone to make simple choices like placing a finger on a button when a light turns on. Mental Speed is negatively correlated with IQ. Inspection time is another well-known method. A visual inspection time task involves the showing of two lines of unequal length for a short amount of time (30 to 250 milliseconds), after this time the stimulus is removed. The candidate then has to decide which of the lines he saw was longer. Visual inspection times are also negatively correlated to intelligence, with meta-analyses showing correlations of -0.51 and -0.51. There are other factors involved in the relationship, like the time of day the test is taken, with the relationship between Visual Inspection times and IQ is stronger in the afternoon than in the morning.

What are some biological measurements?

Using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and PET (positron emission tomography) scans it was found that pre-frontal cortex activity is linked to fluid reasoning (especially during visual-spatial reasoning tasks like Raven’s test), executive functions and working memory, all of which are related to intelligence. Studies have linked frontal, posterior temporal and parietal areas to verbal abilities. Lateral frontal cortex activity has been linked to g, but different studies show different findings so this remains controversial.

Electroencephalography (EEG) and Event-Related Potentials (ERP) are both measurements of electric activity through the scalp, and have a better temporal tracking ability than fMRI’s and PET’s. They are graphically shown as a wave-form, with the variables amplitude (intensity in micro-Volts), latency (time between stimulus and reaction) and string length (the length of the entire wave, as a means of measuring wave-complexity). The latter is most strongly linked to g, but why this is isn’t known. Individual differences in IQ seem to be linked to the use of different brain regions to complete tasks.

Biological measurements are supposedly free of culture, but this view might be too simplistic. Studies showed that level of previous exposure to cognitive tasks played an important role in task performance and that the cultural background of the task, even though it might seem irrelevant, can also have big impact.

What is the link between personality and genetics?

The heritability of intelligence has been estimated to lie between 0.4 and 0.6, and as high as 0.7. However, this heritability is not the same of all groups. In lower social-economic status (SES) children the estimate was lower, suggesting environment influence in higher is low SES groups. One explanation for this is that children from low SES environments have less opportunity to develop their genetic potential. In adoption studies, correlations between the IQ of the child and that of their birth-parents are higher than those with their adoption-parents. However, adoption-parents are usually from higher SES, so the genetic effect may be overestimated.

Attempts to map certain genes to cognitive ability have been made, but with little result. The polygenic view says there are many genes involved in intelligence, so to try to pinpoint intelligence to specific genes is pointless.

What is the link between personality and environment?

A longitudinal study of 10,424 Scottish children showed children from a higher SES scored one standard deviation higher than those from the lower SES on IQ tests. Also within-family factors have been considered, like learning experiences outside of home, accessibility to learning materials and encouragement. Infants who were breastfed showed an IQ of 6 to 8 points higher than those who weren’t, but this might be related to other aspects of breastfeeding like, what type of mother is more likely to breastfeed, or what is the SES of a breastfeeding mother? Another study by the WHO showed an increase of 6 IQ points in children who were breastfed, yet a third study argued interpretations of these findings are still unclear.

The Flynn-effect is the observed increase in IQ scores over generations. This increase is explained by the modernization process of countries, where countries that are still in the process of modernization show greater increases in IQ than those who are already modernized. Nutrition increases have been cited as an explanation for this effect, and are especially important to those on the lower end of the IQ scale. Other explanations include more exposure to the IQ-test material in more developed societies.

What is the link between personality and race?

Of all previous research mentioned about intelligence, 96 percent of the participants were from so called WEIRD cultures (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic). All conclusions about intelligence in other cultures should be viewed in light of this.

Some studies have shown differences in IQ scores between whites, black, Latino’s and Orientals, yet differences are small. There is no evidence to suggest a genetic racial predisposition towards intelligence. There are those who say ‘race’ isn’t even a biological phenomenon, but a sociocultural one. Trait differences between races might be better explained by environmental factors than by genetic ones. After WW2 UNESCO even made a declaration that race is a scientifically unsound concept and use of it in scientific context was advised against.

What about intelligence, learning styles and personality in education?

Teacher’s implicit views of intelligence may influence the way students see their own abilities. These views in turn might be influenced by culture. Through ERP’s it was found that students who subscribe to the entity view of intelligence spend less time processing feedback than those who subscribe to the incremental theory. Those of the entity view see negative feedback as a threat to their abilities, while those of the incremental view see it as a chance to improve.

Intelligence is highly predictive of academic success. In a study about high IQ students, the openness to experience/intellect personality factor predicts academic success.

Learning styles are also related to academic success. The four learning styles by Vermunt are the undirected learning style, reproduction-directed style, application directed-style and the meaning-directed style. In a Dutch study with 409 university students the undirected learning style was found to be negatively correlated with academic success. Conscientiousness was positively correlated with academic success. Openness to experience was positively related to the meaning-directed style. However, no other styles were linked to academic success. They suggested that the effort put in learning is more important than a strategic approach, but this might be because the Dutch school system encourages a more superficial understanding of learning material.

Learning approaches are another approach similar to learning styles. There are three approaches: The deep approach, the surface approach and the strategic approach. The first focusses on understanding, the second focusses on memorizing things without understanding, and the thirds on optimizing academic results. The third is positively linked to academic success whereas the second is negatively linked to academic success. However, the deep approach was also found to be negatively linked to academic success. Intelligence, learning approaches, openness to experience and conscientiousness together explained 40 percent of the variance in academic success.

How can we describe emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence (EI) in the ability to reason about emotions, to understand them and utilize them in thought processes. It’s a popular concept brought about by Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. It’s been linked to academic success, leadership, workplace performance, psychological wellbeing and relationship-quality. The ability approach views EI as an ability that can be measured through emotional recognition, emotion-usage and emotion-understanding tasks. The mixed approach views EI as both traits mixed with abilities and uses self-report questionnaires to measure it. The ability EI correlates with traditional intelligence, whereas the mixed (or trait) EI correlates with personality measures. EI contributes to job performance, but only in jobs that require a lot of emotion regulation. There is evidence that EI can be improved over time.

How do emotions and personality relate to each other? - Chapter 13

What are the three components of emotions?

Emotions are made up of three components: subjective feelings (affects), bodily reactions (expressions, posture, etc.), and action tendencies (a likelihood for certain behaviours). Some theories of emotion deal with its evolutionary basis. Darwin’s functional analysis of emotions and expressions sought to explain the evolutionary benefit of emotions. Personality psychologists look at individual differences in emotional reactions to situations and events.

What is the link between states versus traits?

Emotional states are transitory and usually dependent on a situation. Their cause is usually external. On the other hand, an emotional trait is a consistent pattern of emotional responses that an individual might experience over time, and is generally stable.

What is the link between categorical versus dimensional?

The categorical approach to emotion research suggests that the primary, distinct emotions are most important to study. Researchers taking this approach try to discern the basic emotions out of a complex web of secondary emotions. There is disagreement, however, on which emotions are the primary ones, and what criteria to use in defining them.

The dimensional approach to emotion research applies statistical measures to self-rating tests. It has determined two main dimensions: how pleasant or unpleasant an emotion is, and whether it is highly active or less active. This approach deals more with how emotions are experienced than how they are reflected upon.

What do we mean with content and style?

The content of emotion is the specific sort of emotion a person experience (happiness, anger), and the style is the way in which it is experienced (frequently, intensely). These are useful terms for discussing emotion and personality.

How can we describe content?

The content of a person’s emotional life is made up of the type of emotions they most often feel. “Happy” people experience more pleasant emotions overall than “angry” people.

How can we describe happiness and life satisfaction?

Studies on happiness most often take the form of self-report questionnaires. One such questionnaire asks people to express their happiness in terms of a percentage. Results predict many happiness-related aspects of personality. Happiness is divided by researchers into a rating of life satisfaction, and of the predominance of positive emotions in one’s life. These two aspects are often correlated. Studies have found that people who have positive illusions about themselves are generally happier. People who are measured to be happier tend to be less hostile, self-centred, and more trusting, energetic, and healthy.

What are the benefits of happiness?

Happiness is correlated with positive outcomes in life tasks like marriage, self-esteem, and job satisfaction. The causal direction of the relationship is a matter of debate. Evidence has been found that happiness is often involved in the positive outcome of life events. These successes can, in turn, increase happiness. This complex, back-and-forth interaction is called reciprocal causality.

How do people become happy people?

It has been found that there is roughly no difference between levels of happiness in men and women. Circumstances that make people happy have been found to change with age, but no specific age has been found to be the “happiest”. There is also little difference in happiness levels between ethnic groups. Among countries, however, there is a difference in reported subjective well-being. Those with more civil and political rights and protections tend to have higher levels of happiness.

What is the link between personality and general well-being?

Costa and McCrae determined that general happiness might be based in a disposition towards positive emotion. They theorized that happiness is affected by levels of neuroticism (related to negative affect) and extraversion (related to positive affect). Many studies support this notion, although they tend to be correlational and thus unable to determine the causal relationship. Findings of the mood induction tests performed by Larsen, et.al. have shown that extraversion amplifies positive emotions and neuroticism amplifies negative emotions.

What is neuroticism and trait anxiety?

People high in neuroticism are more prone to negative emotions, and often overreact to unpleasant situations, taking a longer time to return to a neutral state. They tend to worry and be more anxious than other individuals. They are also more easily irritated.

What involves the biological theory?

Eysenck argues that neuroticism is based on a biological tendency of the limbic system in the brain to be more easily activated. Because of this, they have more emotions related to flight or fight reactions dictated by the limbic system. While this has not been sufficiently proven due to issues in measurement, there are three logical arguments that support the theory that neuroticism is biological:

• Neuroticism is consistent and stable over a period of 45 years.

• Neuroticism is listed as a major personality dimension across cultures and data sources.

• Neuroticism has been shown to be somewhat heritable.

Studies have found that the anterior cingulate portion of the brain is most active when strong emotions are experienced. In the self-regulation of negative emotions, the prefrontal cortex was found to be most active.

What are cognitive theories?

Studies have shown that people with high neuroticism recall more negative criticism about themselves than people with low neuroticism. This is perhaps due to the fact that individuals high in neuroticism tend to have more negative experiences and thoughts with which to associate new information, thus making information processing more efficient for negative events. They also recall and report more symptoms of illness than low neuroticism individuals. Recent studies have shown that this may be due impart to the diminished state of the immune system immediately following stress. Chronic stress related to a neurotic's worries and anxieties can leave one vulnerable to threats. A modified version of the Stroop test has been used to determine that people high in neuroticism pay more attention to anxiety and threat-related words, further indicating that they pay more attention to negative things than people low in neuroticism.

What is melancholy?

Depression is a dimension of emotion that is also trait-like. The diathesis-stress model suggests that some people have a pre-existing tendency towards depression, which must be triggered by a stressful life event in order to manifest.

What involves Aaron Beck's cognitive theory?

Beck suggests that a vulnerability towards depression stems from a cognitive schema that distorts information in a negative light. He suggests that three main areas of life are most influenced by this schema: information on the self, information on the world, and information on the future. This is the cognitive triad. An overgeneralizing distortion may take negative events and use them as proof for personal inadequacy, an unfair world, or a hopeless future. Other distortions include arbitrary inferences (assuming the most negative conclusion), personalizing (assuming blame), and catastrophizing (assuming the worst is bound to happen). These distortions in thinking can lead to issues – when people behave as if they will fail, they might well do so out of a lack of motivation. This is called self-fulfilling prophecy.

What is the neurotransmitter theory of depression?

The neurotransmitter theory of depression suggests that depression is a result of a neurotransmitter imbalance (involving norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine). Some anti-depression medications work to correct this issue. Exercise is suggested as another method to both prevent and treat depression.

What about anger and hostility?

Certain situations, like being treated unfairly or being frustrated in trying to attain a goal, tend to illicit anger responses in most people. However, individual differences to reactions indicate personality factors to be involved. Hostile people are more irritable and prone to uncooperative, antagonistic and angry ways to everyday situations. Hostility is related to coronary heart issues and is linked to the type A behaviour pattern. Anger can lead to a loss of self-control. People with a certain biology (problems in the prefrontal cortex) may be more prone to violent expression of anger than others.

What do we mean with intensity of affect?

The dimension of affect intensity is ascertained by measuring an individual's self-reported moods over a period of time to determine the typical intensity of their moods. Those with high affect intensity experience emotions strongly and with more variation. They alternate between extremes of mood more rapidly and frequently than those with low affect intensity. Those with low affect intensity experience milder emotions with minor reactions and only gradual mood changes. This term reflects a tendency and may not be the case in the wake of extremely emotional life events like deaths and marriages.

What is the link between assessing mood variability and affect intensity?

A questionnaire called the Affect Intensity Measure (AIM) is used to quickly assess emotional style, rather than the traditional longitudinal measure. It is hard to say if high or low affect intensity is better, as extremes in emotion also allow for heights of joy, but have the risk of deep depression. It can be said that high affect intensity can be a stress on the sympathetic nervous system.

What are the research results?

Individuals with high affect intensity have been shown to rate their life events more severely (both the good and the bad) than objective raters. They are, therefore, more emotionally reactive to life events than low affect intensity people. Affect intensity correlates with both extraversion and neuroticism. High affect intensity is also characterized by an extreme variability in moods, as well as a tendency to seek emotionally intense situations.

How does content and style interact?

The hedonic balance is the degree of pleasantness over a person's lifetime that can represent the content of a person's emotional life. Hedonic balance and affect intensity are unrelated to one another, though they interact to create unique personality characteristics.

How does the self-concept come about? - Chapter 14

Why this chapter?

Who am I? How do I find myself? Do I know myself well? How will I introduce myself?
These are questions that everyone ever asks themselves. These questions are about the self-concept that a person has of himself.

What do the terms self-concept, self-confidence and social identity mean?
The self-concept is the basis through which someone can understand himself. Self-confidence is about how someone feels about themselves. The social identity of a person is the image that is presented to the environment. There may be a difference between the social identity and the self concept of a person. This can lead to feelings of falsehood in relationships with others.

Is our self-image a fixed fact?

Our self-image is subject to change through our lives. Some young people in secondary school notice that they do not really have a talent for sport. They will find another way to define themselves, perhaps by dyeing their hair red or taking music lessons. When people have acquired a stable image of themselves, this image is used to evaluate events and objects. When a student has received a bad grade, he or she will start thinking about what this is about, am I smart enough, have I learned enough? By answering these questions on the basis of the self-image, the situation will be evaluated. When the student sees himself as very smart, this figure will result in a less good mood. How we see ourselves affects how we evaluate the world.

What are the steps in the development of the self-concept?

The development of the self-concept starts in the baby time and proceeds according to the following steps:

• A baby realizes at a given moment that he is separate from others. This is an important point in the development of self-awareness of one's own body.
• 1.5 to 2 years: a child recognizes himself in the mirror and can therefore also start to play out situations and use personal pronouns.
• 2 to 3 years: extension of the self-concept to add references of the family. Others have expectations of the child.
• Around 3 years: children begin to identify themselves with gender and age.
• 3 to 12 years: the self-concept of children is mainly based on the development of skills and talents.
• 5 to 6 years: development of social comparison with others. Children begin to compare their skills and abilities more and more with those of others. Children also learn the private-self concept, so that they learn to lie and keep secrets. The so-called 'imaginary friend' also makes its appearance here.
• Teens: children learn to take the perspective of someone else and see themselves as others see them. They also learn about the objective self-awareness. Objective self-awareness is the beginning of a social identity. It means that someone sees himself as an object of someone else's attention. This is often experienced as embarrassment, which is a chronic problem for some people. Objective self-awareness is a more abstract addition to the description of the self.

How do we define the self-concept?

The self-concept is a network of information in the memory that ensures
coherence in the way people perceive themselves. It is also a kind of guide for the information process within a person. A self-schedule is a specific knowledge structure or cognitive representation of the self-concept. It consists of the past, present and the future of ideas, especially in social interaction. An important part of the self-concept is the 'possible selves'. These can be ideals that someone wants to achieve, but also negative things that someone wants to avoid. Schemes work as inspiration and encouragement for behavior. There are also the ideal and the expected self:

• The ideal self is the person who wants to be the person.
• The expected self is how the person thinks the environment feels that he or she should be.

Higgins sees the ideal and expected itself as self-guides. According to him, self-guides are standards that people use to organize information and motivate appropriate behavior. According to Higgins, this is where the roots of different emotions lie.

What do we mean by self-respect?

Self-respect is the evaluation that a person makes of his or her self-concept in a good / bad dimension. People differ from each other in terms of whether they value themselves. Self-respect is the sum of the positive and negative reactions to all aspects of the self-concept. Usually someone has an average self-respect, so between good and bad. Self-esteem research has shown how people respond to failures and it appears that people with low self-esteem avoid failures as much as possible and give up earlier after a failure. They often use the self-handicapping defense mechanism.

What do we mean by self-handicapping?

In self-handicapping someone does things that increase the chance of a failure so that he has an excuse when things really go wrong. An example of this is not studying for a test.

Is there a link between the degree of self-respect and dealing with feedback?

People with a high degree of self-esteem seem to be good at enduring everyday business and feel challenged to improve themselves. A strategy for this is to positively evaluate a negative experience. People also differ in sensitivity in evaluating life events in terms of self-esteem. With regard to feedback, recent research shows that self-respect is a buffer for negative feedback. People with high self-esteem seem to have a buffer for negative feedback, but people with low self-esteem do not. This is probably because people with high self-esteem do not see failure as a reflection of their self-esteem.

What are possible causes of self-esteem fluctuations?

The extent to which self-esteem varies varies greatly from person to person. Kernis believes that the degree of self-esteem fluctuations in some people is high for various reasons. For example, some people are very sensitive to social evaluation and social events. These people can react badly and aggressively to evaluations and are very worried about and insecure about their self-image.

What misconceptions about self-respect can we name?

In America, the misconception arose that psychological health is related to a high degree of self-respect. Six myths are mentioned below:

• A high degree of self-esteem correlates positively with physical attractiveness: it is true that people with a high degree of self-esteem find themselves more attractive. The same connection applies to intelligent and kindness.
• A high degree of self-esteem leads to success at school: only weak empirical evidence is available for this. Research has even shown that increasing self-respect can lead to primary school performance.
• A high degree of self-esteem leads to success at work: when this is measured objectively, namely by assessments of supervisors, there is no relationship between the variables at all.
• A low level of self-esteem leads to drug and alcohol use: some studies show a weak positive correlation, others a negative.
• Only persons with a low level of self-respect are aggressive: recent research shows that aggressive people often have a positive image of themselves.
• A high degree of self-respect makes that someone is liked.

What do we mean by embarrassment?

When objective self-awareness is chronic, there is embarrassment or social anxiety. Shy people do not feel comfortable with social interactions or just the idea of ​​it. They interpret negative social interactions and expect others to not. Shy people love friendship and social interactions (and are therefore not naturally introverted), but are reticent because of their fears and uncertainties.

What were Kagan's findings in terms of embarrassment?

Kagan discovered that parents of shy children encourage their children to move among peers. When parents really pushed their shy children into this ('tough love'), these children turned out to be much less shy a few years later than the shy children who were not pushed that way. In shy people there is evaluation anxiety, which means that they are worried about how they are evaluated by others.

What were Stocker's findings regarding shyness?

Stocker (1997) came up with a number of steps through which shy people can tackle their problems:

• Appear (show up): shy people avoid situations that make them anxious. If the person wants to be less shy he or she will have to expose themselves to anxious situations such as going to a party or talking to a stranger. Once exposed to the situation, anxious feelings will decrease.
• Attention to others: shy people often have attention focused on themselves. When the shy person shifts attention to others, the nerves will become less.
• Taking small steps: it is good to divide large goals into smaller pieces.
• Give self respect: shy individuals should stop criticizing themselves and should not see their own social performance as too negative.
• Radiating heat: people who are nervous can be seen by others as less friendly people, which is not the intention. As a shy person, an attempt should be made to give a more positive impression to other people around them, by laughing for example.
• Joining the rest: nobody is perfect when it comes to social skills, think about this during the conversations.
• Dealing with failure: a shy person does not immediately get rid of his embarrassment, this is a learning process that goes together with trial and error. If something goes wrong, do not give up immediately but keep going.

What do you mean by social identity?

Social identity is what someone shows oneself to others, the part that is used to create an impression and let others know what they can expect. Identity develops over time in relation to the environment. Social identity is different from the self-concept because identity consists of elements that are socially observable and that are publicly accessible. It covers, among other things, ethnicity, height and sex. For many people, identity follows after a period of experimentation, but for others it is easier to accept ready-made social roles. People can undergo an identity crisis in their lives and adjust their social identity.

What was an identity crisis according to Freud?

According to Freud, an identity crisis is a feeling of anxiety when someone wants to change their Id. Developing an identity is a lifelong task and the development is changing with time.

What are the two most important characteristics of identity?
Identity has two important characteristics, namely continuity and contrast:

• Continuity means that tomorrow people are usually the same person as today.
• Contrast means that everyone has a different social identity, making everyone unique.

What is an identity crisis?

Erikson came up with the term identity crisis to describe the fear associated with changing the social reputation of a person. Especially adolescents undergo an identity crisis, but the midlife crisis is also common. In the latter case, there are often unfulfilled wishes and, therefore, disappointment about what one has achieved in life.

Which two types of crises did Baumeister distinguish?

Baumeister distinguished two types of crises, namely identity problems and identity conflicts. Identity problems do not create a 'correct' identity, which can cause a person to have problems with important choices. An identity problem often occurs when people reject old ideas to put new ones in their place. They often have an empty and curious feeling. In case of an identity conflict, two or more aspects of the identity come into conflict.

What is the link between personality and social interaction? - Chapter 15

Into which three parts can be all social behaviors be divided?

In short, all social behaviors can be divided into three parts: Selection, Evocation and Manipulation.

What do we mean with selection?

Situational selection is the decisions we make regarding which situation we chose to attend and which situations not to attend. Personality influences the decisions we make.

What about personality characteristics in a long-term romantic partnership?

In a large international study it was found that after mutual attraction, the personality characteristics like dependability (Conscientiousness), emotional stability and a pleasing disposition (agreeableness) were universally desired in long term partners. Another big study showed that the top 5 most desired qualities were intelligence (openness to experience), humor (extraversion), honesty (conscientiousness), kindness (agreeableness) and good looks.

What is assortative mating?

The complementary needs theory states people look for partners with different (complementary) characteristics. The attraction similarity theory states that people look for partners with similar characteristics. The scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the attraction similarity theory. Assortive Mating is the finding that in every aspect of life (from single actions to lifestyles) people tend to choose partners that are similar to them. Usually people partner up with people close to them. This could also account for the similarity. Studies show however that this is not the case, that people really desire someone like them.

Do People Get the Mates They Want?

Relationship satisfaction is predicted by partner’s personality traits. Agreeableness, Emotional Stability and Openness all predict relationship satisfaction. However, the difference between someone’s ideal partner’s personality and their actual partner’s personality made no difference. Disagreeableness was especially dangerous to relationship satisfaction.

In the first year of marriage people rate their spouse higher on extraversion, agreeableness, openness and conscientiousness. After the first year these ratings decline. This is called the honeymoon effect. In Northern compared to Southern Europe, people tend to cohabit more often. Also, in the entirety of Europe, there is a shift to more unmarried couples living together.

What is the link between personality and the selective break-up of couples?

The violation of desire theory states that people are more likely to break up when their partner shows less desirable qualities. Emotional instability is the biggest predictor of break-ups. Low agreeableness and high angreeness also predict dissatisfaction. Similarity in overall personality profile and a match between an individual’s conception of an ideal mate and their actual mate also predict marriage satisfaction.

What about shyness and the selection of social situations?

Shyness is the tendency to feel tense or worried, anxious or nervous in social situations. It occurs with 90 percent of all people, but some seem to be shyer than others. Shyness can result in the avoidance of social situations and difficulty in forming new relationships. Shy women have more trouble bringing up the use of contraceptives before sexual intercourse and also avoid going to the gynecologist, putting themselves at risk of STD’s.

What can be said about selection in the digital era?

It was found Neuroticism is positively correlated with how much time people spend on Facebook. Extraverts were reported to be part of more Facebook groups, and have more Facebook friends than introverts. Extraverts report less regret than introverts over stuff they put online. Agreeable people report more regret in that regard. Narcissistic users upload more self-promoting and sexy content than others.

Facebook users reported themselves as more neurotic, extraverted sociable and less needy of cognitive stimulation than Twitter users. Facebook is also a form of impression management, leaving out the bad things and emphasizing the good things. A study showed that heavy Facebook users believed others were happier than they were.

Facebook information can end up in wrong places. For instance, it was found that over 40 percent of recruitment operations used LinkedIn and Facebook as a way of assessing candidates prior to an interview. Trait Jealousy and Facebook Jealousy also correlate highly and reinforce each other.

What about other personality traits and situation selection?

Empathic people tend to engage more in voluntary work. High psychoticism leads to choosing more volatile and spontaneous situations, instead of stable ones. High need for closure (preferring order and predictability over chaotic, ambiguous situations) leads people to engage in more predictable situations, like going to the cinema. Low need for closure enjoy more loosely structured activities, like a party. High Machiavellianism (High Machs) like close and personal situations, perhaps because then they can apply their manipulative skills better. High Machs also use more manipulation and deceit to get what they want, even in situations where cooperation might be better. High sensation seekers volunteer more for risky or unusual experiments, involving drugs and sex, and are engage more in these types of situations. They also enter into more risky sexual behavior.

Affective Forecasting is the accuracy with which we predict our own emotional reactions to events. For instance if you’re asked how you would feel if a family member died. Studies have shown the correlation between predicted reactions and actual reactions are pretty low, and most of us overestimate our own reactions (this is called the impact bias), both positive (how good you’d feel on holiday) and negative (like when the family member would die). Neuroticism was connected to high negative anticipation, while extraversion was connected with high positive anticipation. It is believed that our anticipated emotions cause us to engage more (or less) in the behavior anticipated on, even if these anticipations do not hold to be accurate.

What is evocation?

Evocation is the way certain personality characteristics cause reactions in others. For instance, a highly active child tends to elicit more competiveness in other children. Aggressive people elicit aggressiveness in others. Aggressive people interpret ambiguous events as more hostile, and then react with hostility of their own (called the hostile attributional bias). In partners there are typically two ways people invoke hostility. The first way is a direct way, where a person’s personality causes them to act in a certain way which causes frustration in their partner. A second way is that sometimes people can influence their partner by systematically behaving in a certain way (dominant people being dominant), eliciting certain reactions from their partner (low self-esteem) and then getting frustrated with their reactions (angry that their partner has low self-esteem).

In marriage studies, a few of these effects have been examined. Dominant people elicit frustration from their partners by being condescending. Low conscientious people upset their partner more by way of extra-marital affairs. People low openness upset their partner by giving less attention to their partner’s emotions, withholding sex, being very self-absorbed and also by alcohol abuse. Disagreeableness and Emotional instability are the strongest predictors of evoking anger and upset and can lead to a number of negative behaviors like abuse, infidelity, name-calling etc.

High agreeableness, high conscientiousness and low neuroticism are predictive of using more compromise and better interpersonal problem-solving and less conflict. These three are also predictive of better relationships.

What do we mean with expectancy confirmation?

Expectancy confirmation is the effect that beliefs about someone’s personality evokes reactions in that person that are in correspondence with these beliefs. The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is a form of expectancy confirmation. Children that were told by their teachers that the teacher believed they would succeed, had more chance of succeeding. In another experiment, two strangers who had never met were told they were to meet an aggressive person. They initially reacted hostile because of their anticipations, and this hostility was met with more hostility in return. Because of unconscious expectancy confirmation evocations of behavior, it is said you should move to a place where no one knows you if you want to change your personality.

What do we mean with manipulation and social influence tactics?

Manipulation is the way we consciously use social influence to get people to behave in a certain way.

What is a taxonomy of eleven tactics of manipulation?

A taxonomy is a classification system. The taxonomy of manipulation was developed using the act-nomination scheme, simply by asking people to name acts that get other people to do something. Then factor-analysis was used to identify the different factors.

1. Charm: Be nice to people to get what you want
2. Coercion: Be nasty to people till they do what you want
3. Silent Treatment: Be silent until they do what you want
4. Reason: Explain reasonably why they should do it
5. Regression: Keep whining till they do what you want
6. Self-Abasement: Act submissively till they do it
7. Responsibility Invocation: Get them to make a commitment
8. Hardball: Hit them (lying, deceiving, physical violence) so they do it
9. Pleasure Induction: Show them how much fun it will be
10. Social Comparison: “Everyone else is doing it”
11. Monetary Reward: Pay them to do it

What are sex differences in tactics?

Women use slightly more of the regression tactic, but differences are small. Both genders equally use the rest of the tactics. It was however found that women overall use more manipulation tactics, except the use of charm.

What are personality predictors of tactics?

Dominant people (high extraversion) tend to use more coercion and responsibility invocation. Low-dominance people use more self-abasement, and also more hardball tactics. Agreeable people use more pleasure induction and reason. Disagreeable people use more coercion and silent treatment. They also show more selfishness and more revenge-tactics. Conscientious people use more reason. Low conscientious people more likely to use criminal tactics to gain resources. Emotionally unstable people use a lot of different tactics: hardball, coercion, but also reason and monetary rewards. The biggest tactic they use is regression. People that score high on openness use reason. People low on openness use social comparison.

What is Machiavellianism?

Machiavellianism is a social strategy, and also a personality type, that disregards moral and social values, and uses any kind of social influence to get what is wanted. Its effectiveness is highly dependent on the environment. In an unrestricted environment a high Mach has more room to use his influence and get away with it, and high macs can be very effective in these fluid situations. However, in situations with lots of rules and restrictions, high macs get caught in their cheating and lying and get a bad reputation, and soon no one wants to interact with them anymore. Low macs on the other hand are more cooperation focused, preferring tit-for-tat strategies over manipulating others.

What is Self-Concealment (SC) and social interaction?

SC is the tendency to keep personal information from others and keep secrets. It is associated with low socio-emotional regulation and negative social outcomes. Self-concealers tend to withdraw from social situations where they have to talk about themselves, and don’t like to seek help. They have more trouble trusting and evoking trust of others. High SC can evoke feelings of not belonging and being left-out in others. People that rated their partner with high SC also reported less trust and more conflict. High SC people don’t give off the impression they’re open for bonding, leading others to eventually avoid them. In terms of active manipulation, self-concealers apply tactics to avoid giving away personal information, for instance by switching the topic of conversation.

What about gender, sex and personality? - Chapter 16

What are the politics and science of sex and gender studies?

Gender is made up of the social interpretations of what it means to be male or female. Gender stereotypes are beliefs held about how men and women are supposed to differ, rather than how they truly differ. The study of sex differences is controversial, because some believe that the findings of sex differences might encourage gender stereotypes, or even arise out of biases towards one gender or the other. Some believe that finding sex differences may undermine the goals of egalitarianism.

What can we say about the history of this kind of studies?

Prior to 1973, it was common to use only male participants in psychological research, and differences were not sought out. In the early 1970’s, research on sex differences began with the work of Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklyn. They determined that women exceeded at verbal abilities where men excelled at mathematical and spatial abilities. They also concluded that men were more aggressive than women. After this research, standards were put into place encouraging the inclusion of both genders in psychological studies, and the clear recognition of sex differences in these studies. Meta-analysis has been developed as a more precise way of determining sex differences over multiple studies. It allows for more objectivity and precision, and allows for the measurement of effect size.

How can we calculate the effect size?

The effect size is also known as the d statistic. It expresses a difference in units of standard deviation. When the d is 0.50, the difference between the groups is half of a standard deviation. When the d is 1.00, the difference is one standard deviation. Effect size is calculated in each study, and then averaged across studies to provide a more objective assessment. The accepted convention for reading effect sizes is as follows: when the d score is 0.20 or -0.20, there is a small difference. When it is 0.50 or -0.50, there is a medium difference. When it is 0.80 or -0.80, there is a large difference. Positive d scores indicated that men score higher than women; negative d scores indicate the opposite. Of course, even large effect sizes do not have implications for every individual.

Who are maximalists and minimalists?

People with a maximalist perspective argue that the magnitude of sex differences should not be trivialized, and some differences have a stronger magnitude than others. They argue that even small differences can have a large impact on behaviour. Minimalists, on the other hand, argue that most differences show small magnitudes and are not very practically relevant to real-world situations.

What is the link with childhood temperament?

Inhibitory control, the ability to suppress inappropriate responses, is much stronger in females than males, and is the strongest sex difference in temperament. Perceptual sensitivity, the ability to detect subtle stimuli in an environment, is also strongest in girls. Surgency is a cluster of temperamental traits that includes high activity level, impulsiveness, and approach behaviour. In this, boys score higher than girls. A combination of these tendencies may indicate why boys more frequently tend towards physical aggressiveness. Boys and girls show barely any difference in negative affectivity, the tendency towards expressing negative emotions, though girls are slightly more fearful than boys. There is little to no evidence that girls are more emotional than boys between age 3 and 13.

What about the Five-Factor model of personality?

• Extraversion
  Extraversion can be split into three main aspects: gregariousness, assertiveness, and activity. Women are slightly higher on gregariousness; men are slightly higher on activity. Men score moderately higher than women on assertiveness, and place a higher importance on the value of power than do women.
• Agreeableness / Aggressiveness
  Women tend to score a small-medium amount higher than men on agreeableness, a trait that includes two main aspects: trust and tender-mindedness. Trust is a tendency to cooperate with others and believe that they are inherently good. Tender-mindedness involves being nurturing and sympathetic to those who are down. Women also smile more than men, though this may be a sign of submissiveness rather than agreeableness. Men are more physically aggressive than women, and more often fantasize about acts of violent aggression. This is reflected in the global differences in violent crime between the genders.
• Conscientiousness
  There is not much of a sex difference to be found in the trait of conscientiousness. Women surpass men only slightly in the facet of order.
• Emotional Stability
  This dimension includes calmness and stability at one end, and volatility and changing moods at the other. Women are moderately lower in emotional stability than men.
• Intellect-openness to experience
  There are essentially no sex differences in intellect-openness to experience.
• Frequency and intensity of basic emotions
  Significant but small differences exist between the sexes in the experience and expression of both negative and positive emotions. Internationally, women show a slightly more frequent and intense experience of both positive and negative emotions. They especially experience affection, joy, fear, and sadness more than men do.

What can be said about self-esteem between the sexes?

Global self-esteem has been found to be slightly higher in men. The difference is most noticeable in the mid-late teen years, when girls show a significantly lower self-esteem than boys the same age. This evens out later in life.

What can be said about the difference of sex and sexuality between the sexes?

One of the largest differences in sexuality between the sexes is that men show much more interest in casual sex than do women. Men also have more issues keeping sexuality out of a platonic friendship than do women. A subset of men who are narcissistic, lack empathy, and display hostile masculinity, are more likely to be sexually aggressive than women.

What is the people-things dimension?

The people-things dimension relates to the nature of vocational interest. Individuals who are higher in the things direction prefer vocations that involve tools, machines and materials. Those who are higher in the people direction prefer jobs that have social application, such as nursing, teaching, and religion. There is a strong sex difference in the people-things dimension, as women tend towards people and men towards things.

What are sex roles, masculinity, femininity and androgyny?

For most of the sex differences that do not seem to relate specifically to a known dimension of personality, the masculinity-femininity dimension is used. But when people are both masculine and feminine, androgyny may be an important concept.

What is androgyny?

In contrast to the earlier concept that masculinity and femininity are on opposite ends of a spectrum, new researchers start with the premise that they are two separate dimensions – one can be high in both, low in both, or higher in one and lower in the other. In this new conception of sex roles, personality instruments were developed to assess these traits. Masculinity includes assertiveness, boldness, dominance, self-sufficiency and instrumentality. Femininity includes nurturance, emotional expression, and empathy. People high in both dimensions are considered androgynous in their sex roles. These people are considered to be the most highly developed.

What is the criticism about the sex roles theory?

Critics to the sex roles theory argue that masculinity and femininity are multidimensional constructs that cannot be so clearly established. Others argue that masculinity/femininity is a singular, bipolar trait. In light of these arguments, the Janet Spence (the author of one measure) asserts that instead of sex roles, her measure looks at instrumentality and expressiveness. Instrumentality consists of traits involved with working with objects, direct task-completion, independence and self-sufficiency. Expressiveness involves ease with emotional expression, empathy for others, and nurturance. Sandra Bem (another measure’s author) suggests that her measure looks at gender schemata, the cognitive processes that process sex-linked social information. The ideal in this is to be gender-aschematic rather than androgynous. Both genes and environment have been found to influence sex roles. External validity of all of these measures is hard to say.

What are the three components of gender stereotyping?

Gender stereotypes consist of three components:

1. Cognitive: The way in which social categories are formed (ex. “cads” vs. “dads”)
2. Affective: The warmth or hostility felt towards a person due to a social categorization.
3. Behavioural: Discriminating against people due to their social category.

What is the content of stereotypes?

Gender stereotypes seem to be internationally similar. Men are often considered more aggressive, ambitious, autonomous, dominant, persevering and exhibitionist. Women are more often seen as affiliative, heterosexual, nurturing, deferent, and self-abasing. Women are considered communal where men are instrumental.

What are subtypes of gender stereotypes?

Men are typically viewed as falling into five stereotype subtypes, which include the playboy subtype and the career man subtype. Women fall into less subtypes, including the classically feminine, the over-sexed, and more recently, the career woman.

What about prejudice?

Gender stereotypes can have damaging consequences when acted upon, especially in legal decisions, medical treatment, job hunting and sales. Many prejudices favour men, although some favour women.

What is de socialization theory?

The socialization theory suggests that sex differences are taught and reinforced by parents, teachers and the media. Since young girls and boys are treated different, given different toys and praised for different behaviours, they grow into their gender roles. In Bandura’s social learning theory, children also learn from observing the behaviours of models (parents, teachers, etc.) and behave according to what they see. Across cultures, parents raise their children differently according to their gender. Girls are protected and taught to stay near home and be more nurturing, where boys are encouraged to roam and compete.

What is the criticism?

Critics question whether the parents or the tendencies of the children shape the way they are raised – perhaps little girls just like dolls, and respond better to them than to trucks. The origin of gender-specific parenting practices is also unclear. The social role theory suggests that sex differences come from the distribution of men and women into different roles (bread-winner versus child-raiser). Still, the social role theory does not account for the possible origins of these practices. As social roles change, it is becoming more apparent that sex differences are actually increased in sexually egalitarian countries.

What are hormonal theories?

Hormonal theories suggest that sex differences arise due to a difference in underlying hormones. Research in this theory looks at links between hormones and sex-specific behaviours. Studies of girls who experienced congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) in the womb, in which the female foetus has an overactive adrenal gland, give credence to this theory. Girls with CAH show a number of male preferences and an increase in typically male abilities (like spatial and mathematical skills). Men have ten times the level of testosterone than women, which is linked with aggression, dominance, and career choice. Women with higher levels of testosterone tend to also show higher levels of these traits. High testosterone levels are also linked with an increased in sex drive. Of course, these observations are correlations and the causal relationship is unclear. And still, the question of origins remains unanswered.

What is the evolutionary psychology perspective on sex differences?

The evolutionary psychology perspective on sex differences suggests that men and women differ only in categories in which they were once faced with different adaptive challenges. These adaptive problems are those that need to be solved for the successful reproduction and survival of the species. Both genders like similar foods, but differences occur in the domains of mating and sexuality. Because women bear children, they must secure resources and protect their children, and so choose mates that show more “masculine” tendencies – the ability to hunt, protect, and gain social power. Men might attempt to reproduce with more women, and have more casual sex. Critics of this theory question why there are individual differences within the sexes, if this is the case.

What do we mean with integrated perspective?

Evolutionary psychology answers the why but not the how of sex differences. Hormonal and socialization theories answer the how and not the why. An integrated theory looks at all of these theories when analyzing sex differences.

Are there significant differences in personality between different cultures? - Chapter 17

Why this chapter?

Yanomamö is one of the last primitive societies on earth. There are two groups of this society. In the highlands the peaceful Yanomamös live and in the countryside the more aggressive tribe. How did these differences arise? With such questions, many studies into cultures and personality have begun. Some aspects of personality are very different between cultures, but other aspects seem universal.

What is cultural variation?

People live in different cultures between which there are several differences, for example physical differences and differences in attitude or behavior. These differences are called cultural variation.

What are the three goals of cultural personality psychology?
Cultural personality psychology has three goals, namely:

• discover the underlying principles of cultural diversity;
• discover how human psychology can form culture;
• discover how cultural concepts form our psychology.

On which three points can we explain personality differences between cultures?

There are certain characteristics that occur in all people, but others differ. Psychologists have found three points to explain personality differences between cultures:

• Recalled culture: qualities that every human being possesses, but which only come to the fore in some cultures. Examples include sharing, aggression or choosing a partner.
• Transfer of culture: representations that are put into the heads of others through interaction. An example of this is standards and values. For example, many Asian cultures are dependent and contextual. European Americans are just independent. The self-concept, which differs for each culture, is also very important when transferring culture.
• Cultural universals: that which is the same in all cultures. Some personality traits are universal, for example how men and women are characterized. Another universal characteristic is the experience and recognition of emotional states. The dimensions used for the personal evaluation of others are also universal.

What do we mean by a culture called for?

Sharing with others or focusing on the self varies by culture. For example, a culture in which hunting is important is often cooperative. This way every hunter and his family are assured of food, even if he himself has been unable to catch anything.
Another example of culture evoked is the theory that children learn in uncertain and unpredictable environments that they can not rely on a single partner. Because of this they will find many different partners (short term mating) and start early with sex. Children who grow up in stable families, however, will rather look for long-term relationships because they expect their partner to be stable and invest a lot in the relationship. Evidence for this theory comes from research among children of divorced parents. These children are more impulsive, start earlier with sex and have more different sex partners than children whose parents are together.

What do we mean by transfer of culture?

The way in which a person presents himself and how he behaves (the self-concept) differs per culture. In Western cultures the emphasis is mainly on the way a person distinguishes himself from the group, while in non-Western cultures the emphasis is mainly on the way someone relates to others within the group. This is called interdependence. A cultural task that someone has in collectivist cultures is to create harmony within a group and to promote a group unit.

Other researchers have made a similar distinction between cultures. This is how Triandis distinguishes between individualistic and collectivist cultures:
In individualistic cultures one sees oneself as autonomous and strives for personal goals. In collectivist cultures one strives for group goals and one is sensitive to a social context.

Using the Twenty Statements Test empirical evidence was found for this distinction. From this it emerged that North Americans ascribe themselves more abstract internal characteristics than Asians. Asians speak more about social roles. The difference in self-concept in different cultures can be extended to a difference in information processing. Japanese describe events in a holistic way. They emphasize relationships and the environment. However, Americans explain events analytically and separate objects from the environment.

What is acculturation?

Acculturation is the process of adapting to life in a new culture.
There has been much criticism of the issue of independence versus interdependence and individualism versus collectivism. There are studies where the significant difference is minimal. In addition, the terms are very broad. For example, an American can be very individualistic at work, while at home he is very collectivistic.

Recent research in which evolutionary psychology was combined with cultural psychology brought a new explanation. This is the hypothesis that people have both mechanisms in themselves and form themselves into the environment. For example, if someone lives in the countryside with poor transport, the person is collectivist more quickly if there is family living nearby who can ride. If someone lives in a city where there are many transport options and that person has no family in that city, then the conclusion is quickly that that person is individualistic.

Yet there are indeed differences between cultures that can be explained on the basis of the transfer of culture, for example the cultural difference in the dimension of individualism-collectivism: the adhered and observed concept can be the result of ideas, attitudes and self-concepts that have been passed on from generation to generation. However, following evolutionary psychologists, people have developed psychological concepts for both types of self-concepts. Depending on survival chances, they will adhere to a certain type.

What do we mean by self-enforcement?

Another cultural difference is visible in the field of self-enforcement. This is the tendency of an individual to assign themselves positive and / or socially valued values. Self-enforcement is stable over time and every culture has a self-enforcement 'bias'. Koreans and Japanese, for example, give themselves more negative values ​​than Americans, and Scandinavians depart from the Law of Jante, which means that nobody should feel better than anyone else.

The above paragraphs dealt with people in their country of origin. What about the personality characteristics of migrants? Research has shown that they are extrovert and open to new experiences. Migrants who come to live in a place where previous generations of their people also lived, show a lot of accuracy and emotional stability.

Which differences in personality profiles do we distinguish?

Social class can have an effect on personality. From a study of 51 different cultures to differences in the Big Five, it emerged that the biggest difference is in extraversion. Americans and Europeans score higher than Asians and Africans. However, the differences are small. Most differences are within and not between cultures. Differences within cultures can come from different sources of sources, including differences in growing up in different socio-economic classes.

What is the hypothesis of Whorfian?

In 1956, Whorfian introduced his theory that language brings thoughts and experiences. His hypothesis therefore means that the ideas that people can think of and the emotions they feel are limited by the words that exist in their language and culture and with which they express them.

What are cultural universals?

Dominance and warmth are used for the description and evaluation of personal characteristics of others. The five-factor system also seems universal. However, this has not been proven unambiguously. For example, the structure was not present in cultures with low intellectual skills. A recent study also provided empirical evidence for a sixth factor, namely honesty modesty.

Different cultures have different words to describe emotional experiences. Yet, experiences and expressions of emotions, happiness, anger, fear, sadness, surprise and disgust are universal. The Worfian hypothesis or inguistic relativity states that language creates thoughts and experiences.

What about stress, coping, adjustment and health? - Chapter 18

What is health psychology?

Health psychology is the field of psychology that focuses on the mind and the body, and behavior that influences the health of the mind and the body.

What are models of the personality-illness connection?

Stress is the feeling produced by situations that are uncontrollable or threatening. It is important to note that stress is a reaction, and not an environmental factor. The interactional model states personality moderates the relation between a stressful event and the amount of physiological effects this event will have. Personality influences which coping behavior is used, and thus what potential effects the stressor will have. In this model, a stressor holds an amount of stress which is the same for all people. However, this model was not complete enough, and soon was replaced with the transactional model. In the transactional model, personality doesn’t only influence coping behavior, but also the appraisal of stressful events, and even the events themselves. In this model it is the appraisal of events that determines how much stress they bring about.

Also, different people respond differently to situations, therefore creating different situations as a result. In the health behavior model another factor is added, that of the health behavior. Health behavior is behavior that influences health (both positively and negatively), and certain personalities might be prone to certain health behaviors more than others (like smoking, eating fat, exercising etc.). The predisposition model is not a continuation of the other three, but a stand-alone model that states personality and illness are linked because they are both the result of a third variable, namely predisposition. So instead of the view that a personality aspect like novelty seeking would lead to drug abuse, it is thought that the natural (genetic) predisposition of a person leads to drugs abuse and novelty seeking. A fifth model, the illness behavior model states that illness is in fact a collection of sensations, and that the interpretation of these sensations differ from person to person depending on personality. These sensations can lead someone to believe he’s ill and, regardless of whether this person actually is or not, can lead to (health) behaviors such as complaining or going to the doctor.

What is the concept of stress?

Stressors can cause stress, which is a feeling of being overloaded or overwhelmed that can be paired with anxiety, fear and indecision. Stressors are often beyond our control, can be quite extreme and often produce conflicting tendencies (such as wanting to study but also put it off for as long as possible).

What is stress response?

Stressors first cause a fight-or-flight response. Physiological and psychological symptoms are things like increased heart-rate, startling or sweating. If the stressor is removed, so are the symptoms. However, if prolonged exposure to the stressor occurs, something called General Adaption Syndrome (GAS) can be experienced. After the initial Alarm stage of fight-or-flight, it can progress to a second stage called the resistance stage. In this stage bodily resources are used up at a higher-than-normal rate. This can result in a third stage called the exhaustion stage, in which bodily resources are depleted and a person becomes extra vulnerable to illness.

Which major life events can change people's lives?

Major Life Events are events that bring about a (drastic) change in people’s lives. Holmes and Rahe comprised a list of MLE’s, the top five being: Death of a family member, death of a close friend, Divorce between parents, jail term and major personal injury or illness. Research has shown that people who’ve had more MLE’s in the last year were more likely to develop a cold after infection with common viruses, and since then it has been shown repeatedly that people with more stress have a lower function of the immune system.

What do we mean with daily hassles?

Daily hassles (think weight concerns, small problems, construction workers next to your bedroom window etc.) are not as dramatic as MLE’s, but chronic exposure to daily hassles can also cause stress and lowered immune system.

Which varieties of stress do we know?

Acute Stress arises from a sudden onset of demands or (uncontrollable) circumstances. Episodic Acute Stress is a more serious and recurring form of acute stress. Traumatic Stress refers to instances of overwhelming acute stress, and differs from acute stress only in the intensity of the symptoms. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a reaction often to life-threatening experiences and is comprised of (heavy) stress reaction symptoms that keep recurring even after the event has passed. Finally, Chronic Stress is stress that doesn’t go away, and can have severe physical and emotional consequences. Health Psychologists believe that stress adds up over time (additive effects) in an individual and this can trigger more serious ailments.

What are a primary and secondary appraisal?

Stress is in the subjective reaction to stressors, rather than in the stressor itself. Lazarus proposed that in order for stress to be perceived, two cognitive processes must be present. If one of the two is absent, stress is not perceived. The first (primary appraisal) is having the idea a certain circumstance is a threat to your well-being or goals, and the second (secondary appraisal) is having the idea you do not possess the cognitive or material means to deal with the circumstance.

What are coping strategies and styles?

Attributional style is the disposition to attribute causes of bad events, usually either to intrinsic or extrinsic factors, and to coincidental or intentional factors. Peterson called this the optimism/pessimism scale. Optimists make unstable, external and specific explanations for bad events (such as blaming it on coincidence), whereas pessimists make stable, general and intrinsic explanations (blaming it on a deep, stable feat of the state of affairs). Dispositional optimism refers not on how bad events are interpreted, but more on how much good events are expected to happen in the future. Bandura introduced the concept of self-efficacy, the belief in one’s ability to handle what comes your way, which is related to optimism. Generally people underestimate their own risk of running into bad things (like cancer, plane crashes etc.). This is called the optimistic bias.

What are the role of positive emotions in coping with stress?

It was speculated that positive emotions can help dealing with stress in three ways: 1) They may sustain coping efforts, 2) they provide a break from stress and 3) they give people time to restore depleted resources and fix relationships. Frederickson introduced the build and broaden model of positive emotions, and suggested they can help build up social support and mental energy reserves. It was found that the experience of positive emotions facilitated (bodily) recovery from stress. Three coping strategies were found that can bring about positive emotions under stress, instead of only dealing with negative ones. There is positive reappraisal, which is focusing on the good things instead of the bad. There is problem-focused coping which is set on eliminating the deeper lying problem of the stress, rather than the symptoms. And then there is the creating of positive events, which implies creating a positive time-out from the stress. These approaches to stress fall under what is called positive psychology which focuses not on what is wrong with people, but what the right things can do to improve people’s psychological state.

What is the link between optimism and physical well-being?

Optimism is positively correlated with recovery after illness, self-reports of health and reports of health by physicians, but also health behaviors such as exercise and avoiding unhealthy foods. It is however unknown, due to all research being correlational, what aspects of optimism influence what aspects of health, and what the exact causal relation is. Nonetheless, there have been programs to measure and improve people’s optimism and overall happiness. For example, the Bhutanese king has instigated the use of the gross national happiness (instead of the gross domestic product, a financial measure) to measure the country’s welfare.

What do we mean with management of emotions?

Emotional inhibition is the suppression of emotions and not acting on them, often for the sake of not hurting others. Early psychoanalysts saw emotional suppression (pushing away negative emotions into the unconscious) as the primary source of psychological problems. From another perspective, emotional control is seen as a very mature attribute in our society, and those who do not control their emotions are often viewed as unstable or childish. Research shows that the suppression of emotions costs physiological resources over and above that of the emotion itself, and can also diminish positive experiences later on. Emotional suppression can disrupt normal communications, leading to worse relationship forming. It is also associated with lower well-being. In the brain the pre-frontal cortex is most associated with successful suppression of emotions. Chronic suppression of emotions can lead to the effects of chronic sympathetic nervous system activity, which can have nasty effects on health such as increased chances at recurrence of cancer, heart disease and a suppressed immune system. In romantic relationships, emotional suppression leads to decreased satisfaction and commitment.

What is disclosure?

Disclosure is telling someone about private things. It is believed that disclosure can be curative, and that keeping secrets can be unhealthy. Writing about problems has been linked to better wound healing, less respiratory problems and better therapy progression. It has been linked to less symptoms of depression, even when writing about trauma that one hasn’t experienced at all. Pennebaker hypothesized that these positive effects are due to a relief of keeping a secret, that the energy that is required to keep the secret is released. Recently a second theory by Pennebaker came forward, saying that writing allows someone to reframe and reinterpret events, leading to better understanding the event and being able to deal with it. Both theories may be correct. In Holocaust victims, it was found that the using of more insight words (‘realize’, for example, or ‘understand’) was related with lower ratings of visceral emotions, less avoidance and better physical health. Self-Concealment is negatively related to various psychological and physiological measures of health.

What is the link between Type A personality and cardiovascular disease?

Type A personality is a collection of behaviors including: Competitiveness, aggression, active and energetic speaking and acting, ambition and drive. In recent studies it was independently associated with higher rates of cardiovascular and heart disease. It is however not so that people fall into the Type A category. Instead, Type A personality could be considered at one of the ends of the normal distribution (so very few people really fit all the behaviors). It is also not a single trait, instead it consists of three sub traits: competitive achievement motivation, time urgency and hostility. When blocked from their goals (the definition of frustration) people with Type A personality resort to aggression and hostile behavior.

What about hostility: the lethal component of Type A behavior pattern?

Later research discovered that it was in fact the sub trait of hostility that was the predictor for heart disease, and not Type A personality as a whole. Hostility isn’t necessarily aggression. Hostile individuals tend to react disagreeable to disappointments, frustrations and inconveniences. Hostile personality is associated with higher leukocyte (white blood cell) count and systemic inflammation. This might be the link between hostile personality and increased heart disease.

How are arteries damaged by hostile Type A behavior?

The hostile component of Type A personality is linked to much frustration and stress, which causes the body to go into fight-or-flight state. This results in higher blood pressure, increased heart rate and vaso-constriction (narrowing of the blood vessels), and increased cortisol levels (the stress-hormone). This will cause microscopic damage to the arteries. These damaged places can become places where fatty acids and cholesterol can heap up, thus making the arteries narrower over time (arteriosclerosis). This can eventually lead to heart attacks.

What is the link between Type D personality and heart disease?

The “distressed” personality. Just like Type A it is not really a type, but syndrome of behaviors and cognitions. It refers to two underlying traits: negative affectivity, and social inhibition. Negative affectivity is the tendency to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, worrying, irritability. It is very similar to neuroticism. Social inhibition is very much like shyness. These people feel disapproved of by others, and are socially anxious and insecure. When someone scores high on both traits, he/she is at risk of cardiac problems. In people that already have cardiac problems, Type D personality leads to worse outcomes, faster degeneration and increased mortality. Type D personality people show increased cortisol levels, leading to inflammations in the blood vessels. Type D people were also found to spend less time outside, eat healthily, more distress about their lives, and were less likely to go to the doctor.

What are personality disorders? - Chapter 19

What does a psychological disorder consist of?

A psychological disorder consists of a pattern of behavior or experience that causes stress or pain in a person and that can lead to inability or damage in different life domains (work-related problems, marriage, friendship). These damages in different life domains are associated with an increased risk of further stress and pain, loss of functions or ultimately death.

What is a personality disorder?

A personality disorder is a long-lasting pattern of experiences and behavior that is very different from the expectations of the person's culture. These different patterns of a person's personality arise from experiences, thoughts and interactions with the world. When a draft is no longer flexible or no longer functions, this can cause stress and damage, increasing the chance of developing a personality disorder.

What is the difference between ego syntoon and ego dystoon?

Previous chapters can help us understand that there are different personality disorders. The symptoms of a personality disorder can vary greatly and cover different domains, making the normal functioning of an individual more difficult. Often the person is not even aware of this because the symptoms are already perceived as personality traits (= ego syntoon). Ego dystoon means that the person sees the symptoms as inappropriate to his or her personality and experiences them as very annoying. The symptoms can relate to the traits, emotions, cognitions, motives, interpersonal behavior, and self-concepts of a person.

What are indicators of a personality disorder?

To understand personality disorders, one can look at:

• Motivation: describes what people want and why they behave in a certain way. Examples of motivations can be power or intimacy. If someone has little intimacy with other people, this can cause a personality disorder. Drawing personality describes the consistencies in behavior. Thoughts and actions represent significant differences between people (as described in chapter 3). When someone scores high on fear and low on the social level, there can be a chance of an evasive personality disorder.
• Cognition: cognition contains mental activity that is used during the observation, interpretation and planning of things. These processes can become disrupted during a personality disorder. Often these disorders are also maintained by misinterpretations of situations and a vicious circle is created. People with paranoid disorder think they are being chased or spied on by others. This is often because the social interactions and situations are misinterpreted.
• Emotions: characteristic of people with a personality disorder is that the experiences of emotions can vary extremely. One personality disorder shows extreme aggressive emotions (Borderline) while another disorder is characterized by extreme anxiety experiences (avoidant personality disorder).

In which three clusters can we divide personality disorders?

First, there is the strange, eccentric cluster, which consists of 3 personality disorders: schizoid, paranoid and schizotypal personality disorder. Secondly, there is the dramatic, emotional, impulsive cluster, which consists of 4 personality disorders: borderline, antisocial, narcissistic and theatrical personality disorder. Third, there is the anxious cluster. it consists of 3 personality disorders: dependent, evasive and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

Which specific personality disorders do we distinguish in the eccentric cluster?

• Schizoid personality disorder
  People with schizoid personality disorder feel disconnected from normal social relationships. There is no need for intimate relationships, friendships or close ties with family members. People with schizoid personality disorder prefer to spend their time alone. They will rather opt for an individual hobby, such as photography, reading or watching TV. When it comes to choosing a working environment, a job is often chosen where as few people as possible are involved. There is also little pleasure experienced by the person in general. In most cases, the person has never developed (or learned) the ability to have fun during social and physical contact. For the environment, these people appear as cold and distant.
• Schizotypal personality disorder
  Individuals with schizotypal personality disorder do not feel comfortable in social relationships or friendships. There is often a lot of fear during social situations and contact with others is also perceived as threatening. The condition is also characterized by unusual thoughts, beliefs and ideas. There is magical thinking, suspicion, strong social anxiety and unusual sensory perceptions.
• Paranoid personality disorder
  The most characteristic of people with paranoid personality disorder is that they perceive the behavior of others as intentional or threatening. They almost all feel exploited or threatened. There is an extreme suspicion among other people as a result of which little personal information is shared (out of fear that this is being used against them). During romantic relationships, there is a lot of jealousy and a lot of doubt about the fidelity of their partner, which can cause relationship problems.

Which specific personality disorders do we distinguish in the erratic cluster?

• Antisocial personality disorder
  An antisocial person has had a long history of problems such as lying, cheating, theft, substance abuse, fighting and illegal practices since puberty. They also show problems in social interaction with people. By people of the opposite sex, antisocial persons are often experienced as charming and courteous, whereas they are perceived by the same sex as compelling and manipulative. These people have little trouble with fear and uncertainty during difficult situations where almost no escape is possible.
• Borderline personality disorder
  Borderline patients have a very unstable lifestyle. Relationships, friendships, behavior, emotions, and the self-concept are very unstable and have a huge impact on daily functioning. The relationships that borderline patients have are very intense, emotional and sometimes violent. Often these people suffer from a huge fear of being alone. Whenever there is any idea that a person will abandon them, extreme emotions will be expressed. This includes aggression. There can also be self-multilating behavior, which means that the patient hurts himself (cutting or burning).
• Theatrical personality disorder
  Individuals with a theatrical personality disorder (histrionic personality disorder) prefer to be at the center of attention. If this is not the case, these people will feel uncomfortable soon. They can then behave remarkably or sexually challenging to yet again draw the attention of others to themselves. Often opinions about events or people are expressed very dramatically, but they remain very superficial, without any depth.
• Narcissistic personality disorder
  Persons with narcissistic personality disorder have a strong need to be admired or adored by others in the environment. Their self-image is extremely positive and this is something that other people also need to know clearly. Narcissists have little understanding, are difficult to empathize with the feelings of others and relationships are therefore very vulnerable. They can put people in front of their cart and even exploit them by only using a person to put themselves in the spotlight again. They often feel superior and think that certain rules do not apply to them.

Which specific personality disorders do we distinguish in the anxious cluster?

• Evasive personality disorder
  Persons with an evasive personality disorder (avoidant personality disorder) often feel less than others and are more sensitive to criticism from others. As a result, these people will avoid many situations that might cause criticism, for example at work, at school or at home. There is an extreme fear of being rejected and rejected by others. The relationships that these people enter into are superficial and you will never really get to know the person.
• Dependent personality disorder
  People with a dependent personality disorder ask for confirmation and have difficulty making a decision. They are submissive and there is an excessive need to be cared for and guided by others around them. It can easily happen that such a person is found boring or sad, this can also cause irritation in some cases.
• Obsessive - compulsive personality disorder
  Someone with an obsessive - compulsive personality disorder is very perfectionist and prefers to perform things in his or her own way. The person is only busy getting order in daily life, both at home and at work. There is a great need to draw attention to details, rules, procedures and rituals to do everything as perfectly as possible. Often these people are very stubborn and are not easily prepared to adapt to a situation. This disorder is the most common personality disorder in the world population.

How are personality disorders categorized in the DSM-V?

In the DSM - V these personality disorders are clearly categorized and this categorical approach is used worldwide by psychiatry and clinical psychology. The DSM - V ensures that there is a difference between people with, for example, an antisocial personality disorder and people who do not have this disorder.

What criticism is there about this categorical approach?

There has been much criticism of this categorical approach in that it is not based on empirical data and clinical observations. There is little scientific research that supports this approach. Another criticism is that there is often comorbidity in disorders. Often patients do not have one disorder but 2 or more combinations of disorders. Different disorders include social isolation, avoidance or obsessive - compulsive rituals. These complaints can be accommodated in multiple disorders and as a result combinations arise.

What is a dimensional approach?

In addition to the categorical approach, there is also a dimensional approach where every disorder is seen as a continuum: ranging from normal on the one hand and serious inability or disturbance on the other. In this way, the degree of difference between people with or without a disorder can be shown more clearly.
In the dimensional model of personality, the differences between people with normal personality traits and people with disorders are distinguished in terms of:

• Degree of seriousness
• Rigidity
• Degree of adaptation (maladaptiveness)
  What are possible causes for developing personality disorders?

The personality disorders are described very accurately in the DSM-V, but researchers also look at the causes of these personality disorders mentioned above. Research is done into the biological and environmental factors of an individual with a personality disorder, where both factors are of influence. Some examples:

• It has been shown that the attachment that takes place during childhood did not go well in borderline patients and that there has also often been sexual abuse. Genetic factors in borderline play a lesser role, most evidence goes to environmental factors such as growing up with aggressive parents or a chaotic household.
• Genetic factors are found more in studies of heredity in the antisocial and schizotypical personality disorder. Outcomes from family and twin studies have demonstrated the presence of genetic factors in these personality disorders.
• Research has also shown that the schizotypic personality disorder has common genetic characteristics with the schizophrenia disorder. It is therefore the case that persons with this personality disorder are more vulnerable to developing schizophrenia.

Which six domains exist within personality psychology? - Chapter 20

What is the purpose of personality psychology?

The goal of personality psychology is to understand the whole of human nature. To make this goal easier, personality psychology is divided into six domains. The complete concept comes from combining and integrating these domains.

Nowadays, personality psychologists focus on specific parts of personality, whereas former psychologists formed theories about the entire person. For about 50 years, the idea has been that the whole can be understood by understanding and examining the parts. It is believed that "the whole is the sum of its parts".

What are the 6 domains of personality psychology?

1. The biological domain - physiology, genetics and evolution:
   People are biological systems and a lot of research is done in this field into the influence of physical and biological functioning on personality. In the future, more attention will be paid to the psychology of rapprochement and avoidance because these 2 tendencies are underlying human behavior and emotion. The tendency to approach is because people want to approach positive emotions when they are present. Conversely, negative emotions will be avoided by man, this is avoidance. More research will also be done into the influence of genes on personality versus the influence of the environment. Evolutionary explanations of personality will be further explored.
2. The intrapsychic domain - psychoanalysis, motivation and dynamics:
   This domain is about the influence of factors in our consciousness on behavior, thoughts and emotions. Freud had an enormous influence in this domain and came up with the theory that man's motivation consisted of sexual and aggressive urges and conflicts. The latest vision focuses more on social crises rather than sexual conflicts. Psychologists remain interested in unconscious thoughts. The big theories are on the human nature level. Further research into repressed memories remains interesting.
3. The dispositional domain - properties, taxonomy and stability:
   This domain examines which aspects of personality are stable and what makes people so different from each other. The dispositional domain is pre-eminently well-measurable as there are new statistical techniques. More new techniques will be added in the future. There will also be collaboration with researchers who approach personality differences in a different way. Finally, one will continue to focus on the interaction between people and situations.
4. The cognitive-experiential domain - cognition, intelligence, emotion and self:
   This domain represents the subjective experiences and other mental processes such as thoughts, feelings and beliefs about themselves and others. The most important concept within this domain is the self-image. It remains very interesting how people develop this self-image and how experiences are processed. Intelligence also plays an important role in this domain because it has a big influence on personality. Intelligence gives a picture of how people process information and how they adapt in the world. Emotions also remain important.
5. The socio-cultural domain - relationships, sex and culture:
   In the social domain the social and cultural aspects of personality are central. Personality is very much influenced by these aspects, just like sex differences. Also dealing with people from different cultures in daily life, understanding why people differ and agree, and cross-cultural differences will continue to be explored.
6. The adaptive domain - stress, coping and disorders:
   This domain takes care of the role of personality and positive emotions with regard to health. Personality is related to the degree of healthy or unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, drinking and taking risks.

Personality Psychology: Domains of Knowledge About Human Nature of Larsen & Buss - 2nd international edition - ExamTickets

What is personality? - Exam Tickets 1

• A mnemonic to remember the five scientific standard for evaluating personality theories is VP-TUCI

• To remember the difference between the nomothetic method and the idiographic method: nomo means law and idios means own .

How can personality be measured? - Exam Tickets 2

• To remember the term 'aggregation': think of the aggregation of a course.

• LOST: L-data, O-data, S-data and T-data.

How can personality traits be described and classified? - Exam Tickets 3

• The word lexicale (from lexical approach) contains the word 'lexicon' (dictionary) and a lexical approach refers to language.

• HEXACO model has 6 letters and means The Big Five + a sixth factor

What theories are there about measuring personality? - Exam Tickets 4

• SEM (Situation, Evocation, Manupulation): the three ways in which personality interacts with the situation.

• Remember 'Barnum statements' by thinking of horoscopes: generalized statements that apply to everyone.

Does personality develop during different phases of life? - Exam Tickets 5

• The three research levels of personality go from large to small: population> group> individual.

• The word 'longitudinal' contains the word long (long) and this form of research focuses on the development, change and stability of characteristics of the same people over a longer period.

Is someone's personality (also) genetically determined? - Exam Tickets 6

• To remember the difference between phenotypic variance and genotypic variance: the word genotypic already contains the word gene, and genotypic variance consists of individual differences in the field of genes.

• The two main limitations of twin studies both have to do with the environment: the environment is often the same and twins are not representative of the environment (the population).

Which biological / physiological theories exist with regard to personality? - Exam Tickets 7

• In BIS and BAS, the B and S stand for the same thing: Behavioral and System.

• For Sensation Seeking, think of the dance party Sensation: the more someone needs 'Sensation', the lower their dopamine level.

What influences has evolution had on personality? - Exam Tickets 8

• DoTaFu: Domain specificity, Numerousness, Functionality; the three main assumptions regarding evolutionary psychology.

• To remember the meaning of the word altruism: this word contains the word 'alter', which means 'another'. The opposite of altruism is selfishness, which contains the word ego (I).

What is the psychoanalytic approach to personality? - Exam Tickets 9

• The order of Freud's Id, Ego and Superego can be remembered by the length of the words: Id (first and primitive part of the personality), Ego, (derivative of Id) and Superego (in which moral values, ideals and expectations of the society).

• ReOnDi-RaRe-PS: The abbreviation for the seven defense mechanisms against anxiety.

How do motives and personality relate to each other? - Exam Tickets 10

• The word humanist contains the word human (human) and the humanist approach emphasizes human needs, choices and personal responsibility.

• For the hierarchy of need by Abraham Maslow, think of a pyramid shape: number 1 is the bottom and widest stone and the most important, number 5 is the top and smallest stone and the least important.

What is the cognitive approach to personality? - Exam Tickets 11

• To remember the difference in the reducer / augumenter theory: think of reducer as reducing (decreasing) and with augmenter as augmentum (increasing).

• Remember the difference between internal and external 'locus of control': locus comes from 'loci' or 'location'. Internal locus is about the feeling that you are controlling events, while external locus is about the feeling that the control is outside yourself.

How do intelligence and personality relate to each other? - Exam Tickets 12

• To remember the difference between incremental theory and entity theory: incremental means something increases in size and an entity is something that already exists.

• Measurement methods for intelligence test are always psychophysical or biological.

How do emotions and personality relate to each other? - Exam Tickets 13

• To remember the three aspects of emotions: AAL (Association with subjective feelings, Action possibilities, Body changes).

• Remember the difference between emotional content and emotional style: emotional content is an emotional experience and emotional style is how this emotional experience is experienced.

How is the self-concept created? - Exam Tickets 14

• To remember the defense mechanism self-handicapping: you apply a handicap to yourself, so that you increase the chance of failure.

• The two crises that distinguished Baumeister both relate to identity: identity problems and identity conflicts.

What are interpersonal aspects of personality? - Exam Tickets 15

• There are three ways in which personality enhances social interaction. Remember this by the abbreviation MES: Manipulation, Evocation, Selection.

• To remember the Pygmalion effect: from the Greek myth in which a sculptor falls in love with his own made statue. Stories like Pinokkio and 'My fair lady' are also based on this myth.

How does gender affect personality? - Exam Tickets 16

• To remember the difference between Spence's instrumentality and expressiveness: instrumentality is about personality traits (personal instruments) and expressivity is about what you show (expression) of emotions.

• To remember the three components of gender stereotypes: GAC (Behavior, Affection, Cognition).

Are there major differences in personality between different cultures? - Exam Tickets 17

• To remember the concept of acculturation: in acculturation is the word culture and acculturation refers to the process whereby one group takes over cultural or social characteristics from another group (other culture).

• To remember the Whorfian hypothesis: this hypothesis is also referred to as the linguistic relativity hypothesis. Whorfian's hypotheses are all about language: the ideas people can think of and the emotions they feel are limited by the words that are in their language and culture and with which they express themselves.

How do stress and health affect personality and vice versa? - Exam Tickets 18

• To remember what different types of stress exist: ATEC (Acute, Traumatic, Episodic, Chronic).

• To remember what emotional repression is: think of the meaning of repression (repression) and emotional repression is about suppressing one's own emotions.

What are personality disorders? - Exam Tickets 19

• To remember the difference between ego syntone and ego dystone: in ego syntone, the ego (ego) is in sync with how the symptoms of a personality disorder are experienced as personality traits. This is the other way around with ego dyston.

• Remember the three clusters of personality disorders with EGA: Eccentric, Whimsical, and Anxious.

Which six domains exist within personality psychology? - Exam Tickets 20

• Remember the focus of personality psychology through the expression "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" (the whole concept comes through the combination and integration of the six domains).

• To remember the six domains of personality psychology: BID-COSO-AA (Biological, Intrapsychic, Dispositional, Cognitive, Social, Adaptation).