AP Review: Personality & Measurement

Personality Theories Psychoanalytic Freud: Unconscious, Id, Ego, Superego, stages of development and fixations. Defense mechanisms Carl Jung: Personal Unconscious, Collective Unconscious, and Archetypes Alfred Adler: Striving for superiority, compensation

Personality Theories Humanists Free will, people innately good Self Concept, Self Esteem, Self Actualization Carl Rogers Abraham Maslow – Hierarchy of Needs People must feel accepted in order to self actualize

Personality Theories Trait Theories: describing people’s personality through dominant characteristic: honesty, laziness, ambition

Personality Traits The Big Five Personalities ( Costa & McCrae ) Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientious Openness to Experience Consistency: Mood

Personality Theory Social Cognitive ( Albert Bandura ) Personality created by interaction between persons traits, environment, and behavior Triadic Reciprocality – person can add to the environment with their personality, the environment can add to one’s personality High Self Efficacy: optimistic Low Self Efficacy: sense of powerlessness

Personality Theories Behaviorism ( Skinner ) Behavior is personality, the way people think is meaningless Behavior determined by the environment Change the environment, change the personality

Personality Assessments Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory ( MMPI ) Self report inventory questions No evaluator bias Problems People may be dishonest Social Desirability Bias Responsibility Sets

Personality Assessments Thematic Apperception Test ( TAT ) Projective Test Participant is shown a number of pictures that have people in ambiguous situation Individuals describe what they see - Projective tests – results open to interpretation, possibly unreliable

Personality Assessment Rorschach Test: Inkblot

Cultural Differences and Personality Big Five Traits universal Possibly some cultural differences between nations on some traits Individualism: personal goals put ahead of the group Collectivism: putting groups goals ahead of personal goals

Culture & Personality Self Concept - USA: independent, individualistic - East Asia: Interdependent, the self is interconnected with group

Testing & Individual Differences Intelligence is the ability to gather and use information in productive ways. Abstract Measures: Fluid Intelligence – reasoning ability, memory capacity, speed of information processing Crystallized Intelligence: ability to apply acquired knowledge and skills in problem solving

Culture & Intelligence There are racial differences in IQ scores Most psychologists attribute differences due to environmental situations such as - socioeconomic factors ( poverty ) - test bias

Intelligence Theory Charles Spearman: Intelligence consists of specific abilities that come down to one factor, the g Factor Howard Gardner: multiple intelligences; linguistic, logical, spatial, musical, body – kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, naturalist

Intelligence Theories Robert Sternberg - Triarchic Theory Componential or Analytic Intelligence traditional intelligence & skills 2. Experimental & Creative Intelligence 3. Contextual / Practical Intelligence

Test Design Standardization: piloted by test groups to establish test norms Reliability: Consistency of the test as a measurement Validity: did test measure what it is suppose to measure?

Test Measurement Normal Curve: Mean ( average ) center of the curve is set at 100 68% of scores will fall within one standard deviation from the mean 95% of scores will fall within 2 standard deviations from the mean

Disability Retarded / intellectual disability IQ = 70 – 75, 1.5% of population Mild: 55 -70 can be self supporting Moderate: 40 – 55 semi independent Severe: 25 – 40 Total support needed Profound: under 25 Total care

Gifted Rely heavily on IQ IQ over 130 Schools consider top 2% - 3%

People Alfred Binet Francis Galton Howard Gardner Charles Spearman Robert Sternberg Louis Terman David Wechsler