PSYC 221 CHAPTER 2

Question 1

Research Methods in Personality

Answer 1

• Each one of us is a Personality theorist.
• Personality theorists gather and categorize evidence about people.

Question 2

Self-data

(S-DATA)

Answer 2

• Asked to analyse oneself
• asked questions about one’s behavior.
• Usually done one person at a time, not in groups.
• Very often built on questionaires with True/false, Agree/disagree.
• FLAW: getting honest responses reflecting on their own personality can be challenging.

Question 3

Others- Data

(O-Data)

Answer 3

• Good sources of information such as parents, siblings, friends, roommates.
• we all conform to the expectations of others.
• expectancy effect.
• FLAW: observers can be biased. It is best to have several observers.

Question 4

Life Data

(L- DATA)

Answer 4

• Certain information about a person’s life (such as school records) may be hidden, inaccessible, or destroyed.

Question 5

Behavior Data

( B-DATA)

Answer 5

• how you behave (childhood temper tantrums)
• the behavior of adults is sometimes determined by childhood behaviors.
• Early tantrums seem to reflect on poor work record, lower rank in the military and marital disfunctions.
• having Early childhood trantrums seem to conveniently predict these types of adult behaviors.

Question 6

The Experiment - Control and Manipulate

Answer 6

• The most powerful research method.
• It control and manipulates.
• Confirms cause and effect.
• Difficult research method to use in personality psychology because of the many variable to consider because of the uniqueness of the individual.

Question 7

Clinical Method

Answer 7

• Interview, test, observe, listen, interpret.
• used by psychologists to study personality
• grew out of psychotherapy
• couches are used instead of beds
• most are normal individuals but some are neurotic and psychotic.
• personality has a close relationship with one’s neurotic behavior.

Question 8

Measuring Personality

Answer 8

• Reliability: consistency of scores
• Validity: we have to make sure that the tests must be valid in themselves.
• test must be consistent
• must be consistent between subtests
• test, re-test reliability (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
• the test is testing what it’s supposed to test
• the content of the test must be consistent with what you are supposed to test

Question 9

Ethnic Bias + Gender Bias

Answer 9

• A type of bias in which a test fails to take into account the relevant culture, subculture, and gender of the person being tested.

Question 10

types of personality measures

Answer 10

• self-report: MMPI- focused on psychopathology
• Projective: Draw-a-person, Rosach inkblots
• Biological: EEG, PET, fMRI

Question 11

Relational Experiment

Answer 11

• Correlational studies: Correlation is NOT CAUSATION.
• Correlational numbers are called coefficiants. highest is 1.00 (the closer the decimal is to 1.00, the higher the correlation).
• consists of independent and dependent variable.

Question 12

Naturalistic Observation + Contrived situation

Answer 12

• Going out into the field (real-life situations) and observing people’s behaviour in day-to-day life.
• contrived situation: we can choose to set-up or change the situation and observe the reaction to it.

Question 13

Psychotherapeutic Interviews

Answer 13

• Sample survey: a subset of the population (e.g 100 students at concordia) chosen at random to fill out surveys. Answers would be a good reflection of the total (student) population.
• Bias survey: Choosing a specific group of people to fill out surveys.

Question 14

Ethics

Answer 14

• Privacy agreement between the client and clinician.
• Client must be over-age to give consent in order to be part of a research.
• Children need parental consent