PS2007 Personality and Differential Psychology Lecture 1 Notes PDF

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29 January 2017 Week 1 - Conceptual and Historical Theories! The Personality Problem I: From Proteins to Politics! - anyone who reaches the highest office of president of the USA must be remarkable person, and few past Presidents have been more remarkable than the current 45th one, Donald Trump! - few gave him much chance of winning the presidential race in 2016 and his success shocked many people! - the marmite president - people love or hate him, and few sit still on the judgemental fence! - can ask about Trump’s personality to help explain his remarkable success but what is perhaps more important about his success is how other people (voters) perceive him! - many will have voted for him on what they saw as his personal characteristics! - we can ask some relevant questions about perceptions of personality:! 1. Which aspects of Trump’s personality appealed and appalled voters, and why?! 2. What is the relationship between personality and political policy: do you think that some types of policies could be better received when projected with a certain personality style?! 3. What might be the differences between the personality required to win a highly combative presidential race and the one needed to succeed as President of the USA?! The Personality Problem II: First Person and Third Person Perspectives! - different perspectives on personality - first person vs. third person! - subjective first-person narratives are often rich, lively and appealing, but may be error-prone! - difficulty of knowing true causes of our own behaviour! - implicit personality theories - intuitively based theories of human behaviour! - seldom have the chance to test them properly! - based on observations that have not been systematically selected! - subject to all manner of heuristics and biases, of which we are generally unaware! Types of Individual Differences! - temperament - innate, shown from birth (or early age), assumed to have strong genetic component (e.g. behavioural inhibition to novel objects)! - personality - emerges in adulthood and thought to reflect interplay of genes and environment! - the ‘big-5’ - OCEAN! • openness - curious, original, intellectual, creative and open to new ideas! • conscientiousness - organised, systematic, punctual, achievement oriented and dependable! • extraversion - outgoing, talkative, sociable and enjoys being in social situations! • agreeableness - affable, tolerant, sensitive, trusting, kind and warm! • neuroticism - anxious, irritable, temperamental and moody! - intelligence - cognitive individual differences, reflecting general intelligence (g) and specific abilities (e.g. verbal, mathematical, performance, etc.)!

! What is Personality and Differential Psychology?! - personality - “A dynamic organization, inside the person, of psychophysical systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns of behaviour, thoughts and feelings” (Allport, 1961); “An individual’s characteristic pattern of thought, emotion, and behaviour, together with the psychological mechanisms – hidden or not – behind those patterns” (Funder, 1997); “The psychological qualities that influence an individual’s characteristic behaviour patterns in a distinctive and consistent manner across different situations and over time” (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2005)! - hogan assessment survey - proven assessment tool that uses 11 personality scales to help leaders recognise shortcomings, maximise strengths, and build successful teams; measures a person's tendencies when under stress! - Cloninger (2009) - extraversion!

! Why Should We Care About Personality?!

- aims of studying personality:!

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• understand the basic nature of human beings - science! • provide descriptions or categorisations of how individuals behave - useful in applied contexts! • explain the motivational basis of behaviour - we all do this all the time! • measure personality - to have a method of assessing personality! • understand how personality develops (developmental theories) - especially in relation to clinical disorders! • facilitate behaviour change (e.g., smoking cessation)! • assess effects of heritability versus environment! BIG personality data - collect naturally-occurring everyday behaviour (e.g., Facebook or Twitter chat or ‘ likes’) and use advanced statistical procedures (e.g., machine learning – a form of latent pattern recognition) to relate these data to well-established personality traits! - everyday behaviour can be used to infer personality and, thus, predict future behaviour - e.g., commercial campaigns! personality traits have consequences - happiness, vulnerability to mental illness, marriage satisfaction, vulnerability to physical illness, occupational success! - conscientiousness and intelligence consistently relate to occupational performance and success! three aspects of individual differences:! 1. theories (theoretical)! 2. methods and tools (research)! 3. consequences (implications)! - e.g. we can take a model of personality with strong theoretical grounding, which can be assessed using a questionnaire and then applied to understand individual differences in university exam performance!

Personality: Surface and Source - Levels of Explanation! - description (structural/taxonomic models) - systematic individual differences have structure, as measured via various trait measures (e.g. five-factor model - extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness)! - explanation (causal/biological models) - the systematic structure of individual differences reflects systematic causal brain-mind systems (e.g. arousal or reinforcement-based systems)! - hundreds of descriptive models of personality (e.g. Cattell’s 16 PF, five factor model (‘big-5’), Eysenck’s three dimensions of personality)! - excellent at prediction (e.g. occupational performance)! - naming not explaining - why personality exists - the causal question! Personality: Common and Unique Features! - do differences between people really capture individual personality?! - nomothetic approach - universal traits and laws! - assumes that there is a finite set of predefined variables that can be used to describe human personality - aims to identify these traits or variables that can establish norms! - place an individual within this set of variables! - acknowledges each person is different but concentrates on the similarities across humans! - aims to identify a universal set of variables that underpins the basic structure of human personality! - idiographic approach - uniqueness is important!

- focuses on the individual, describes the personality variables within the individual! - sees each person as having a unique personality structure; no two people can be described using the same concepts!

- differences between individuals are seen to be much greater than similarities! - studies individuals one at a time (single case study approach)! - mainly use qualitative research methodologies (e.g. interviews, diaries, etc.)! Feature

Nomothetic

Idiographic

Strategy

focuses on similarities emphasises the uniqueness between groups of individuals; of individuals individuals are unique only in the way their traits combine

Goal

to identify the basic structure of personality and the minimum number of traits required to describe personality universally

Research Methodology quantitative methods to explore the structures of personality; produce measures of personality; explore the relationships between variables across groups

to develop an in-depth understanding of the individual

qualitative methodologies to produce case studies mainly; some generalisation across series of case studies is possible

Data Collection

self-report personality questionnaires

interviews, diaries, narratives, treatment session data

Advantages

discovery of general principles depth of understanding of that have predictive function the individual

Disadvantages

can lead to a fairly superficial understanding of any one person; training needed to analyse personality profiles accurately

can be difficult to make generalisations from the data

Scientific Criteria for a Personality Theory! - describe - describes and organises the complexity of behaviours observed! - explain - helps in understanding the reasons behind behaviours! - empirical validity - successfully predicts behaviour! - testable - concepts can be operationalised and tested! - comprehensive - should encompass a wide variety of behaviours! - parsimony - uses as few concepts as possible to explain the data under consideration (Ockham’s razor)! - heuristic value - generates interest and further research in the area! - applied value - is useful in practice! The ‘Two Schools’ of Psychology! 1. experimental psychology (cognitive psychology; e.g. Wundt)!

- general processes! - average performance! - ANOVA - individual differences are in ‘error’ term! 2. & differential psychology (e.g. Galton)! - differences between people! - variable performance! - correlation/regression, trying to predict variance (differences) between people! - problem famously articulated by Cronbach (1957) in his APA presidential address “Psychology continues to this day to be limited by the dedication of its investigators to one or the other method of inquiry rather than to scientific psychology as a whole.”! - echoed by Hans Eysenck (1965) - “Individuals do differ….and it seems to me that psychology will never advance very far without a recognition of the complexities which are produced by this fact of personality.”! - Eysenck (1997) - “It is suggested that the scientific status of psychology is put in danger by the lack of paradigms in many of its fields, and by the failure to achieve unification, psychology is breaking up into many different disciplines. One important cause was suggested by Lee Cronbach…: the continuing failure of the two scientific disciplines of psychology – the experimental and the correlational – to come together and mutually support each other.”! Genetics: Why We Should Expect Systematic Individual Differences Between People!

- polygenic model -!

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