Methods

Question 1

Why do we collect data?

Answer 1

• We seek to cover all parts of the psychological triad, gather the clues and try to understand personality

Question 2

What’s a mnemonic device for our data gathering?

Answer 2

BLIS

Question 3

Name the 4 kinds of data gathering

Answer 3

• Self Reports
• Informant’s reports
• Life outcomes
• Behavioral Data

Question 4

Self-Reports

Answer 4

= Asking the person directly
- questionnaires or surveys
- high face validity
- most common

Question 5

Advantages of S

Answer 5

• Large amount of info
• direct access to thoughts, feelings etc
• often have definitional truth
• causal force
• simple and easy to collect

Question 6

Definitional truth

Answer 6

Things that literally only YOU can know such as self esteem

Question 7

Causal force

Answer 7

Self-perceptions create their own truths that affect the psychological triad

Question 8

Disadvantages of S

Answer 8

• Bias
• Error (It can be hard to evaluate oneself accurately because it’s all you know)
• Overuse (too simple and easy to collect)

Question 9

Informant’s Reports

Answer 9

= Asking someone who knows the person of interest
- No training needed, can be coworkers, partners, family, friends etc
- May be more accurate than self-judgement especially when evaluating undesirable traits

Question 10

Advantages of I

Answer 10

• Large amounts of info (ask many people)
• Real-world basis, high ecological validity
• Common sense (informants have it and take things like context into account)
• Definitional truth
• Causal force

Question 11

Disadvantages of I

Answer 11

• Limited access to behavioural info
• Lack of access to private experiences
• Error, memory is unreliable
• Bias

Question 12

Life Outcomes

Answer 12

= Obtain real-life facts from archival records or self-report

Question 13

Advantages of L

Answer 13

• Objective, verifiable
• Intrinsic importance (since we kept these records in the first palce)
• Psychological relevance

Question 14

Disadvantages of L

Answer 14

• Multidetermination (life outcomes and facts have MANY causes that might not be obvious in sheer data)
• Some records may not exist or be very hard to get access

Question 15

Behavioural Data

Answer 15

• = Watching what people actually do, either in daily life (natural B data, with diaries, digital footprints, wearable audio recorders etc) or in a lab (laboratory B data, experiments and physiological measures)

Question 16

Advantages of B

Answer 16

• Natural = The most realistic you can get
• Laboratory = Desired contexts can be created. appears to be most objective

Question 17

Disadvantages of B

Answer 17

• Natural Data = Very difficult to achieve, ethical considerations, desired contexts rarely occur naturally
• Laboratory = Difficult, expensive, uncertain interpretation, questionable generalizability

Question 18

3 Main Aspects for Data Quality

Answer 18

• Reliability
• Validity
• Generalizability

Question 19

Reliability

Answer 19

Does the data consistently measure what they want to measure?
–> want to minimize error
–> Is this data stable? is it replicable?
*PRECONDITION for validity

Question 20

Validity

Answer 20

Does the data accurately measure what they want to measure?

Question 21

Generalizability

Answer 21

Do the findings from this data apply to other data, situations, or ppl?
(hard to measure and quantify)

Question 22

Barnum Effect

Answer 22

The phenomenon that occurs when individuals believe that personality descriptions apply specifically to them (more so than to other people), despite the fact that the description is actually filled with information that applies to everyone