Summary by Femke van Rijn
April 2021
Personality Psychology
Larsen, Buss, Wismeijer, Song
Chapter 1 – Introduction to Personality Psychology
Trait-descriptive adjectives are adjectives that can be used to describe characteristics of people (for
example: lazy, optimistic, anxious). They can refer to different aspects of personality.
Definition of personality: the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that
are organized and relatively enduring, and that influence their interactions with and adaptations to
the intrapsychic, physical and social environments.
Psychological traits are characteristics that describe differences or similarities between people, and
they describe average tendencies. They can also help explain and predict behavior. Research
questions on personality traits: how many traits are there, how are they organized, what are the
origins and what are the correlations and consequences of traits?
Psychological mechanisms refer to the processes of personality and consist of inputs, decision rules
and outputs. Not all of our traits and mechanisms are activated all of the time, some are only
activated under certain conditions.
Our personality is organized, which means that traits and mechanisms are linked to each other in a
coherent fashion. Personality traits are relatively enduring (consistent over situations), particularly in
adulthood. Influential forces = personality influences how people act, think, feel, etc.
There is a person-environment interaction. Interactions with situations include perceptions
(interpreting situations), selections (choosing situations), evocations (producing reactions in others)
and manipulations (intentionally influencing others).
Adaptation = a central feature of personality concerning adaptive coping (accomplishing goals,
dealing with challenges, adjusting, etc.). Behavior is goal-directed, functional and purposeful, even
when it does not appear so, and there can be deficits and disorders. Our environment often poses
adaptive challenges. The environment can be physical, social or intrapsychic (within the mind).
Personality can be analyzed on 3 different levels:
- The human nature level: the traits and mechanisms that are typical to everyone of our
species
- The level of individual differences and group differences: how we are like some
people/groups but not like others
- The individual uniqueness level: personal qualities that are not shared by anyone else
Nomothetic research = statistical comparisons of individuals or groups. Idiographic research =
studying single, unique cases.
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,6 domains of knowledge (specialty areas of science):
- The dispositional domain: personality is influenced by the traits a person is born with or
develops
o This domain focuses on individual differences
- The biological domain: personality is influenced by biological events
o 3 main areas of research: genetics, psychophysiology and evolution
o Psychophysiology = nervous system functioning
- The intrapsychic domain: personality is influenced by conflicts within the person’s mind
o Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis is the predominant theory of this domain
- The cognitive-experiental domain: personality is influenced by personal and private
thoughts, feelings, desires, beliefs and other subjective experiences
o Important elements of this domain are the self and self-concept, intelligence, goals
and emotions
- The social and cultural domain: personality is influenced by social, cultural and gendered
positions in the world
o Different cultures and social groups bring out different facets of our personalities in
manifest behavior
- The adjustment domain: personality is influenced by the adjustments a person must make to
the inevitable challenges of life
o Coping, adapting and adjusting to events
o Personality disorders and poor adjustments
Good theories fulfill 3 purposes:
- They provide a guide for researchers
- They organize known findings
- They make predictions
Theories are tested by systematic observations that can be repeated by others and yield similar
conclusions.
5 scientific standards for evaluating theories:
- Comprehensiveness = explaining all facts and observations within its domain
- Heuristic values = providing a guide to important new discoveries
- Testability = rendering precise enough predictions to test them empirically
- Parsimony = containing few premises and assumptions
- Compatibility and integration across domains and levels = not violating principles of other
domains
Chapter 2 – Personality Assessment, Measurement and Research Design
Self-report data (S-data) = information a person reveals about themselves. It is not always accurate
because they want to present themselves positively or have little self-knowledge. But people can
report more information about themselves than others would about them, because they know
themselves the best. Self-report can be unstructured (open-ended) or structured (for example a
Likert scale on adjectives or statements). Experience sampling = reporting (for example symptoms or
moods) every day for a period of time.
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,Observer data (O-data) = evaluating others. Inter-rater reliability = using multiple observers and
evaluating the degree of agreement among them. You can use professional observers who don’t
know the target, or close friends/family to get observer data. Through the latter, multiple social
personalities can be assessed because people display different sides of themselves to different
people. An observation can be naturalistic or artificial. Naturalistic observations can be generalized
to real life but the experimenter has less control over them.
Test data (T-data) = standardized tests, identical to all participants. Challenges arise because
participants try to guess what is being tested and experimenters can influence their behavior. But
experiments can elicit behavior that would be difficult to observe in real life. Data can be collected
for example through the use of mechanical recording devices, physiological measures like fMRI, or
projective techniques (asking what people see when showing an ambiguous stimulus).
Life-outcome data (L-data) = information from events, activities and outcomes in a person’s life that
are available to the public, for example divorces, crimes, creative products, etc. Personality
psychologists often use S-data and O-data to predict L-data.
Meta-analysis = summarizing the findings of a large number of studies in order to look at consistency
across studies in an objective and precise way.
Three standards to evaluate personality measures:
- Reliability = the degree to which an obtained measure represents the true level of the trait
being measured
o It can be estimated through repeated measurement (test-retest reliability)
o Internal consistency reliability = whether the items within a test correlate well with
each other
o Inter-rater reliability between different observers
- Validity = the degree to which a test measures what it is supposed to measure
o Face validity = whether it appears to measure the right thing on the surface
o Predictive validity/criterion validity = whether it predicts criteria external to the test
o Convergent validity = whether it correlates with other measures
o Discriminant validity = whether it doesn’t correlate with measures it shouldn’t
correlate with
o Construct validity = the measure correlates with the theoretical construct
- Generalizability = the degree to which the measure retains its validity across various
contexts
o Different people, different conditions
Non-content responding/response sets = the tendency of participants to respond to questions on a
basis that is unrelated to the content.
- Acquiescence = tendency to agree
- Extreme responding = tendency to give endpoint responses
- Social desirability = tendency to respond in a way that is socially acceptable or makes a good
impression
Social desirability effects can be minimalized by removing it statistically, selecting questions that are
less susceptible to it, asking in a less threatening way or using a forced-choice questionnaire format.
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, Some personality psychologists actually see social desirable responding as part of the trait being
measured. But when response sets are considered errors, they can reduce reliability.
Conceptual definition = clear definition of what you want to measure. A construct can best be
assessed by using multiple items that measure the same thing in a slightly different way, because it
increases reliability and validity. Focus groups can be used to pre-test the items and get feedback.
The reliability and validity can be statistically investigated in the pilot study.
Research designs:
- Experimental method = establishing causality (the influence of one variable on another) with
manipulation and equivalent participants in different experimental conditions
o Random assignment helps ensure equivalence in between-subjects experiments and
counterbalancing in within-subjects experiments (to prevent order effects)
o When comparing groups, you need to know the mean, standard deviation, test
statistic and p-value
- Correlational method = determining whether there is a relationship between two variables
o The most common statistical procedure is the correlation coefficient which describes
the direction and magnitude of the relationship
o Directionality problem = you don’t know which variable causes the changes in the
other
o Third variable problem = there might be a third unknown variable that caused the
changes in both variables
- Case study = examining one person in depth
o Detailed and gives more insight, useful for rare phenomena
o Often cannot be generalized
Part 1: The Dispositional Domain
The dispositional domain concerns the aspects of personality that are stable over time, consistent
over situations and make people different from each other. Personality is seen as a set of common
traits. Disposition/trait = an inherent tendency to behave in a specific way.
Chapter 3 – Traits and Trait Taxonomies
3 fundamental questions:
- How to conceptualize traits
- How to identify the most important traits
- How to formulate a comprehensive taxonomy (classification system) of traits
There are two basic formulations of what a trait is:
- Internal causal property
o Explain someone’s behavior
o The same in different situations
o Traits can lie dormant and not be expressed in certain situations
- Purely descriptive summary
o No assumptions about internality or causality
o Traits only describe expressed behavior
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