1
Q
What did Roese (1994) do for experiment 1 and the results for counterfactual?
A
- Experiment 1: half sample do upward and other do downward and asked how events made SS feel
- Result: downward = more relief than upward, direction of counterfactual influence emotional well being (self protective function makes SS feel better about negative event)
2
Q
What did Roese (1994) do for experiment 2 and the results for counterfactual?
A
- Experiment 2: manipulate upward and downward and ask SS to report intentions to engage in specific behavior
- Result: Upward report greater intentions to perform success facilitating behavior than downward, direction of counterfactual may have preparative function (self improvement by increase motivation to engage in behavior)
3
Q
What did Roese (1994) do for experiment 3 and the results for counterfactual?
A
- Experiment 3: SS did anagram and got failure feedback, then asked upward or downward, then do another anagram
- Result: SS with upward improved more than downward, direction for counterfactual may result in better performance (self improvement by using knowledge for what to do better next time)
4
Q
What makes counterfactual thoughts adaptive?
A
- Allow us to learn to be able to apply to later and gives advantage to achieving a desired or undesired outcome
- Adaptive for humans to evolve capacity to construct counterfactual thoughts to help with deal with life and survive human species
5
Q
What is a counterfactual thought?
A
- Construct alternative to what happens in reality
6
Q
When do we create counterfactual thoughts?
A
- In a surprising event which may help explain things and find causes for events (something you did not expect)
- In a negative event where it may help to cope with the event and future life (when something goes wrong)
7
Q
What is the difference between upward and downward counterfactual thinking?
A
- Upward: imagine a scenario that would have resulted in a better outcome
- Downward: imagine a scenario that would have resulted in a worse outcome
8
Q
What is the function of upward counterfactual thoughts?
A
- Preparative function: prepare for future behaviors
- Provide useful information: achieve improved outcomes later on
- May support self improvement: in terms of what is important in the future
9
Q
What are the functions of downward counterfactual thoughts?
A
- Affective function: thinking that we could have been much worse and give sense of relief
- May elicit positive affect: relief
- Self protection: by creating scenario that could have been much worse than we experienced it, it protects our emotional well being
10
Q
What are moderating factors of upward counterfactual thoughts?
A
- Can be uplifting if it gives hope for future improvement
- If controllable
11
Q
What are moderating factors of downward counterfactual thoughts?
A
- Maladaptive if people have good opportunities for improvement
- If controllable downward thoughts are not useful bc need to learn from mistakes
12
Q
What is regret?
A
- More or less painful cognitive and emotional state of feeling sorry for misfortunes, limitations, losses, transgression, shortcomings, mistakes
- Associated with negative emotions
13
Q
What are the links and differences with regret and counterfactuals?
A
- Regret relates to upward counterfactual thoughts and also involves emotional experiences
- Regret relate to our behaviors (action or inaction) whereas counterfactual can come from many things
14
Q
What are things people regret the most?
A
- Education, career, then romantic , parenting, your own self
15
Q
What is the difference between co-omission and omission?
A
- Omission: regret something you did not do
- Co-omission: regret something you did
16
Q
What is the type of regret that is seen as worst the most by people (inaction or action)?
A
- 92% of people find that co-omission leads to more regret (doing something) instead of omission (not doing anything)
17
Q
What is the type of regret that is the worst long term versus short term (action or inaction)
A
- Short term: 76% regret action taken (co-omission) bc more salient and less malleable
- Long term: 63% regret doing inaction (omission) bc when life does not turn out the way we want it is easier to generate omissions
18
Q
What are the types of emotions in regret?
A
- Despair emotions: feeling desperate, helpless or sorrow
- Hot emotions: feeling embarrassed, angry or irritated (short run)
- Wistful emotions: feeling sentimental, nostalgic or contemplative (long run)
19
Q
What is the future opportunity principle?
A
- People regret most if they have opportunity in the future to undo negative consequences of the regretted behavior
- Adaptive function: elicits active attempts to change undesired state
- Regret minimized if outcome cant be changed so dissonance happens
- Regret maximized after negative outcome that can be changed
20
Q
What is the lost opportunity principle?
A
- Previously available and now lost opportunities that elicit intense regret
- Intense regret felt if people feel they could have changed undesired outcome in past but have no more opportunity to do so
21
Q
What did Bieke et al., do for their first study and results for regret?
A
- Ask SS to report regret that involves future opportunity and regret without future opportunity, then asked to report intensity, thought and ease of changeability
- Result: More intense regret for future with no opportunity (lost opportunity principle)
22
Q
What did Bieke et al., do for their second study on regret?
A
- SS report greatest regret, rated intensity, past and future opportunity, closure, disappointment and responsibility of event, recency of regret
- Result: more intense regret with disappointment, how long ago it was, closure, and past opportunity
23
Q
What are the effects of age for regret?
A
- Future opportunities declines with age
- Opportunities for undoing the consequence of regretted behaviors decline with age
- Regret intensity is the same with age
- Regret being a motivator for adaptative behavior if have good opportunities to undo regretted event (young adults)
24
Q
What is self esteem?
A
- Relates to how much value people place on themselves
- Evaluative components of self knowledge
25
What is the difference between high and low self esteem?
- High: highly favorable global evaluation of the self
| - Low: unfavorable definition of the self
26
What is the difference between global versus specific self esteem?
- Global: how do you feel about yourself across all domains in your life
- Specific: how you worthy yourself as a specific role (athlete, student), important to capture persons overall self worth
27
How is self esteem linked to quality of life?
- High self esteem people may be happier and do better in life than low self esteem
- Self actualization will not occur is self esteem is not satisfied
28
What did Baumesiter et al (2003) review conclude and main message for self esteem?
- Except for predicting happiness, effects of self esteem on adaptive behaviors and outcome are modest
- High self esteem stronger in face of adversity, high coping, contribute to group performance, buffer adverse effects of stress
- All in all, self esteem has fewer effects than expected
29
What are the sex and age differences for self esteem?
- Females: report lower self esteem,
Males: report higher self esteem (except for children and for not very old people, high around puberty then decline bc self esteem associated with job
- 9-12 yrs self esteem is high, goes down after puberty (goes steeper extent for women), then goes slightly up from young adults to mid life and older age for both genders
30
What are the effects of coping on self esteem?
- Downward comparison principle
- low self esteem people under threatening conditions they will engage in downward comparison (put other group down to increase self esteem)
- Other studies have shown high self esteem people also engage in downward comparison (some may have high self esteem bc of downward comparison)
- high self esteem with failure feedback will engage in downward comparison
- low self esteem with success feedback engage in downward comparison
31
How do high versus low self esteem people react to threats of interpersonal setting?
- Low self esteem: rejection, social exclusion lead to pro-social or reparative behaviors
- High self esteem: expect others to like them and threat to them may not elicit fear or rejection, may use downward social comparison to cope with ego threat
32
How were people with low versus high self esteem viewed by others (as being more liked) after ego threat?
- Low: seen as more likeable by other
- High: seen as less likeable compared to low self esteem (seen as arrogant, fake or less likeable/rude)
- Ego threat predicted antagonism (opposition) only among high self esteem but not low self esteem
- Antagonism mediated the relation between ego threat and likeability for high but not low self esteem
33
What is self compassion?
- Conceptualizes self worth in different ways
- May not involve some of problem that are associated with high self esteem
- Predict quality of life if individuals confront difficulty
34
What are the problems with self esteem?
- High self esteem may be dependent on certain outcomes
- People may become pre-occupied with implications of negative outcomes on their self worth
- based on evaluation of self and other
- People may have high self esteem bc they downgrade others
- People may engage in dysfunctional or aggressive behaviors, take less responsibility for negative outcomes or dismiss feedback
- Can be related to narcissism
35
What is true self esteem?
- Reflects a self determined and autonomous ways of self evaluations of particular outcomes or social approval
- Don't need others to evaluate yourself
36
What are the three main components of self compassion?
- Self kindness: if confront own limitation people may become over identified and pre-occupied by negative thoughts, self kindness promotes self worth
- A sense of common humanity: people forget that others are imperfect and this leads to negative self evaluation, considering to being human shows that we are flawed and and buffers elf worth and promote learning
- Mindfulness: people may ignore negative information, being non judgmental but balanced in evaluation of positive and negative feelings and relating our experience to other enhances feelings of compassion for ourselves and promotes self worth
37
What are the implications for self esteem and self compassion?
- Both predict higher well being
- self compassion: may eb associated with more stable self worth and less contingent self worth, less social comparision, public self consciousness or anger
- Self esteem stronger associated with narcissism
38
What was found in first research for self esteem and self compassion?
- Correlation between global self esteem and self compassion was 0.68
- 46% of variability between self esteem and self compassion is shared
- Self esteem predicts quality of life
- When controlled self compassion, association for self esteem became non significant
- Self compassion predicted unique variance in indicators of quality of life
39
What was found for second research for self esteem and self compassion?
- Global self esteem and self compassion was .62
- 39% of variability between self esteem and self compassion is shared
- Self compassion predicted unique variance in positive outcomes above and beyond self esteem
Effects of self esteem fit not become non significant if controlling of compassion
- Both self esteem and compassion explain unique variability in positive outcomes
40
What was found in the experimental study by Leary et al 2007 for differences between self compassion and self esteem?
- Self compassion predicts low NA among low self esteem who receive negative feedback
- Self compassion and self esteem are independent of self worth
- Self compassion can explain much of the effects of self on outcomes
- Both predict unique variance in positive outcomes
- Self esteem and self compassion can interact with each other
41
What did Mischels research in the literature find for personality and behavior?
- Low relation between self reports of personality and behaviors
- Only between 9 and 12% of behavior is explained by personality = contradict importance of personality, situations being more important than personality
42
What were some answers and development from Mischels research about personality and behavior?
- Interaction between situation and personality: traits may matter more in some situations than others
- Dynamic interactionism: difficult to disentangle situation and personality bc traits may determine situation a person seeks
- Interactions between different personality constructs: traits may predict behavior for some people
43
What is the difference between within person variance and between person variance?
- Within person variance: people can behave differently across situations
- Between person variance: peak and/or average for each person
44
What is Fleeson, (2000) paper arguing for personality and situations?
- the question of whether personality or situation are important does not matter anymore
- His approach assumes that trait related behaviors can form for each person a density distribution
45
How did Fleeson test his idea of density distribution?
- Daily diary studies over weeks to sample for each person a lot of trait related behaviors across different situations
- Found that extraversion has largest variability than all other factors
46
What was the evidence found for the importance of situations?
- People vary from themselves across situations as much or more than they vary from other people
- Within person variability is high or higher than between person variability (how much typical individual differs from themselves and situations)
- Extraversion and conscientiousness has much larger differences
- Situation approach beat personality approach
47
What did Fleeson find for the stability of behavior and traits?
- Correlated behavior of one situation with randomly chosen second situation, no correlations which means there no stability in behavior = importance of situations
- Correlated one half of all sampled situations with other half, correlation almost perfect, there can be stability in behavior
- To show stability researcher needs to sample many trait related behaviors across different situations
48
What was found in conclusion for Fleesons research for situations and traits mattering?
- Siutaitons amtter: there is much variability in trait related behaviors within a person across situations
- Traits matter: there are stable individual differences in peoples tendencies (averaged trait behaviors across time)
49
How can a person move from density distribution to improve, what did Fleeson (2002) find?
- Engage person in extraverted behaviors (positive affect)
- Have people act wither introverted or extraverted, results show that for both extraverts and introverts, acting more extraverted predicted increased levels of positive affect
50
What are peoples individual differences in their density distributions?
- Some people are more flexible than others
- Flexibility allows people to make demands to new situations and are able to meet those demands
- Also could be sign of psychopathy, emotions vary too much and may not be related to demands = maladaptive
51
How were the five personality dimensions determined?
- Factor analyses ad observed across cultures and subgroup populations
- Can predict outcomes of persons life (happiness, career success, marital satisfaction, longevity)
52
How are social cognitive theories different from trait approach?
- behavior can be explained by social-cognitive system that interacts with environmental context
- I.e., someone is anxious, trait approach = report levels of anxiety, social cognitive approach = threat appraisal (primary appraisal), poor coping tactics
53
What is the relationship between a theory and an assessment?
- Different personality theories require different assessment techniques
- Data can only inform theory if they match the assumptions of a theory
Theory and assessment tools need to match and overlap
54
What are the three cognitive capacities that contribute to personality?
- Knowledge structure, self reflective processes, self regulation processes
55
What are the knowledge structures that contribute to personality?
- general beliefs about personal characteristics and the environment
organized as cognitive schema
- help encode situations
56
What are the self reflective processes that contribute to personality?
- Beliefs about yourself AND your relations to the environment (appraisals)
- what is threat appraisal and what is appraisal of resource to deal with circumstances
57
What are the self regulation processes that contribute to personality?
- Setting of personal standards and goals
- Reducing negative discrepancies (negative feedback loop)
- Coping or control
58
What is the top down approach of personlity?
- Formulate simple set of over achieving principles
- Fit the individual object into this framework
- Does not explain the underlying causal mechanisms
- Trait theories can be described as top down = attempt to fit each person into this framework
59
What is the bottom up approach?
- Uncover the underlying causal mechanisms that may give rise to overt behavioral tendencies
- Individual behavior is not explained by higher order dispositional variables
- social cognitive approach theories are described as bottom up
60
What are the implications for research on personality using social cognitive perspective?
- Distinguish between internal personality structure and overt behavioral tendencies
- Same overt behavioral tendency may be based on different underlying reasons
- Not being conscientiousness may relate to many social-cognitive factors
- Comprehensive assessment can allow to study personality as a system where different social-cognitive elements can influence each in determining behavioral outcomes
- Allow to study functional relations between different response systems
- Assess persons in context
61
What did Eyesenck work focus on?
- Two super traits introversion-extraversion & emotional stability (neuroticism)
- Combination describes four personality categories of Hippocrates and Galen = phlegmatic (introvert and emotionally stable), melancholic (introvert and emotionally unstable), sanguine (extravert, emotionally stable), choleric (extravert, emotionally unstable)
62
What did Gray focus on?
- Existence of two physiological personality systems: behavioral activation and behavioral inhibition systems
- BAS in left frontal lobe
- BIS in right frontal lobe
63
What did Eysenck find for extraversion and cortical arousal?
- ARAS (ascending reticular activation system) activates higher parts of the brain
- categorize extravert and introvert on cortical arousal
- Introvert: brain more aroused, easily over-aroused, prefer situation with low level of stimulations
- Extraverts: brain less aroused, stimulus hungry, prefer situation with high levels of stimulation
64
What does the BAS relate to in a person?
- Move toward incentive (go toward reward = impulsive)
| - Creating positive emotions, high levels of left frontal activity
65
What does the BIS relate to in a person?
- Avoid punishment, tendency to stop if danger (prone to anxiety)
- Involved in negative emotions, high levels of right frontal activity
66
How do you develop and provide support for a self report scale?
- Demonstrate structure of the scale: amount of factors, independent or dependent, reflect individual differences
- validity: convergent and discriminative validity
- show that scale predicts important behavior: in line with theory
67
How did they devise predictive validity for BIS and BAS?
- Individual differences in self report scale should predict important and theory related experiences
- BAS should predict positive affect in rewarding situation
- BIS should predict negative affect in anxiety/dangerous producing situations
- orthogonal systems
68
What were the different factors found for both BIS and BAS for structure of self report scale?
- BIS: I worry about mistakes
- BAS: reward responsiveness, drive, fun seeking
- More factors in BAS bc attaining reward is more complex than voiding punishment's
69
What was found for both convergent and discriminant validity for the BIS and BAS scales?
- BAS associated with more positive affect and extraversion and less with negative affectivity
- BIS only related to negative affect (convergent), discriminative validity for positive affect and extraversion
- Show uniqueness of scales to predict something new
70
How did the researchers test predictive validity for both BIS and BAS
- BIS: putting hands in cold water and given negative feedback
- BAS: gaining extra credits
71
What did Bolger argue for the two mechanisms related to how personality influences important outcomes?
- Exposure hypothesis: personality exposes you to events
| - Reactivity hypothesis: personality leads to reaction to certain outcomes
72
How would the BAS work for both reactivity (moderator) and exposure/mediation hypothesis?
- Reactivity: if have positive events a strong BAS will elicit positive affect
- Exposure: people with strong BAS will more likely experience positive events and positive affect
73
What was the daily events and daily affect study and results?
- Examined daily event and affect for students over one week, report events and mood
- When experience positive event there is positive affect, same result for negative events and affect
- Causal association where events predict emotions (but negative affect does not predict next day event)
74
What was the BIS/BAS experiment on daily affect and results?
- Looked at daily events and affect, report events and mood for 5 days
- BIS predicted daily negative affect
- BAS predicted daily positive affect
- Reactivity hypothesis partly confirmed for BIS (not BAS)
75
What was found in experiment on exposure hypothesis for BIS and BAS?
- Got daily events and mood for 1 week
- BIS predicted negative affect and BAS predicted positive affect
- BAS predicted frequency an importance of positive event (BUS did not)
76
What is the potential explanation for why BIS system is designed as reactivity?
- Cope with negative events when they are occur, inevitable
| - Adaptive if personality system (BIS) help people to deal with negative events
77
What is the potential explanation for why BAS is designed as exposure?
- Positve evtns are less likely to occur without active initiation
- Facilitate process (people don't seek negative events)
- Adaptive bc helps people go after rewards and create positive events
78
What are the different automatic processes?
- Skill acquisition: become more efficient over time until they can operate without conscious control
- Preconscious perceptual processes: perception of stimuli without conscious processing
79
What are the advantages of unconscious processes?
- Frees ones limited attentional capacities from tasks for which they are no longer needed
- impossible to consciously control mental processes while writing for example (need a flow)
- function better if there is no need for conscious control acts or behaviors
80
What are the roles of internal and external conscious and automatic processes?
- Internal: conscious thoughts about behavior
- External: mere perception of another's behavior
Both external and internal processes lead to behavior relevant cognitive activity, which then leads to behavior
81
Can goal directed behavior be automatic?
- Our goas determine behavior
- Goals like other mental representation are capable of becoming automatically activated by environmental features
- Unintentional acquisition of automaticity: if same choice is made a lot and consistently then it may become automatic
82
What did Chartrand and Bargh 1996 find for activation of cognitive goals?
- SS with primed impression goal showed superior memory performance than people who were primed with another goal (memorizing)
- External means may be capable of putting goals into actions with conscious information processing
83
What did Bargh et al 2001 find for automatic achievement?
- Primed high performance goals and neutral condition with word search puzzle, puzzle needed to be done, DV; total number of words found
- People high performance found more words than neutral group
84
What was the research done by Fishback et al (2003) on the role of long term goals?
- hypothesis: higher order goals are being automatically activated if people confront temptations that could interfere with long term pursuits
- Results: when goal was presented with relevant prime, faster recognition of goal after temptation
- Goals are activated more easily after temptations, mechanism to give into temptations
85
What was the research done on the importance and past success of weight watching?
- SS report importance and success of weight watching with questionnaire, computer with subliminal temptation primes and weight watching target words
- The more important weight watchin was the faster successfully recognized diet targets after food primes
- Adaptive: they can get faster for words related to goal when they wont go eat that chocolate and so may be able to achieve goal better
86
What are the implications of self relevant goals and temptations?
- Self relevant goals can protect people from giving into temptations
- Observable among successful self regulators
- Represents an automatic personality process
87
What are the assumptions behind the ego depletion?
- The self is guided by limited resources that should control desires and impulses and contribute to behavior
- Resources needed in one domain may lead to problems with self regulation in other domains
- Depletion of resources may lead to self regulation failure
88
What was the research done on ego depletion by Baumeister et al (1998)
- Is active self a limited resource
- Choco chips and white radishes, solve puzzle, taste or no taste, measure how long people work on task
- By having people engage in self control, less persistent in subsequent task and so they are also more likely to be unsuccessful in general
- Controlling yourself resulted in less persistence
89
What was another study done by Baumeister et al (1998) on ego depletion?
- SS watch funny or sad movie, SS asked to suppress or let emotions flow, then puzzle
- Those who didn't have to use resources for self control had solved more puzzles
90
What was found for the study on chronic dieters vs non chronic dieters by Von and Heatherton (2000)?
- asked SS not to eat for 2hrs, snacks placed (temptation), asked to either have some or not (self control), measured amount of ice cream eaten
- SS who were asked to help themselves (chronic dieter) engaged more in self control (more ego depletion) ate highest amount ice cream = placing food within reach may have elicited eating related cognitions and primed eating
91
What was the study done by Von and Heatherton about dieters?
- Had same paradigm as other study
- Results: dieters who were asked to not experience negative emotions while watching sad movies ate afterwards significantly more ice cream in second part of study
Current Issues in Personality
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