Studying Personality

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Studying Personality
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Lecture contents

• Methods used to study personality
• Characteristics of each
• Relative strengths and weaknesses
• Examples and demonstrations of each

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Concerns of personality researchers

• Human nature
• Individual differences
• The organisation of bits of people (e.g.,
  goals, moods, actions, thoughts) that gives
  direction and pattern (coherence) to those
  peoples (common and unique) existences (Pervin,
  2002, p. 447)
• Psychology (I.e., anything to do with
  individuals psyches)

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3 approaches to studying personality

• Clinical
• Correlational
• Experimental

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Whats the story?
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The clinical approach

• Essential feature Ideographic
• Understanding individuals uniquely and
  holistically.
• Key question What is this person like?
• Individual differences To what extent are other
  people like this?
• Human nature Does this person have any
  characteristics in common with all humans?

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The clinical approach

• Common characteristics
• Secondary to a non-research purpose (e.g.,
  therapy, selection)
• Conducted by researchers aligned with therapeutic
  schools
• Small sample
• Socially interactive
• Open-ended (verbal) data
• Multivariate
• Negotiated focus
• Non-consensual conventions of analysis

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The clinical approach

• Breadth and depth of data
• Naturalistic
• Structure and process
• Discovery
• Justice to concept of person
• - Idiosyncratic situation and social effects
• - Researcher errors and biases
• - Evaluation by others

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The correlational approach
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The correlational approach

• Essential feature Attribute covariance
• (i) Finding within-sample patterns of
  similarities and differences among lots of
  personality variables, and then (ii) seeing how
  reliably these patterns are obtained across
  samples, and (iii) seeing how individuals vary
  within samples in the extent to which they
  manifest each pattern
• Key question On what personality dimensions may
  all individuals be compared?
• Individual differences Does this individual
  have more or less of this personality attribute
  than other people?
• Human nature Have we parsimoniously identified
  each set of attributes that all people have?

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The correlational approach

• Common characteristics
• Normative
• Large samples
• Questionnaire measures
• Self-completion
• Fixed-response alternatives
• Highly intelligent and educated participants
• Factor analytic methods
• Established items from previous research
• Reliability focus

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Factor Analysis

• Principle statistical method of correlation
  approach.
• It clusters lower-level items according to
  redundancy.
• Two crucial skills
• Factor labeling
• Input variable selection

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Steps in developing a correlational personality
measure

• Develop a pool of face-valid items
• Factor analyse
• Pick or develop questions that have high and
  unique loadings on the factor of interest
• Establish scale reliability
• Establish scale validity
• Establish scale utility

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SWLS How are you doing?

• A. ___ In most ways my life is close to my ideal.
  
• B. ___ The conditions of my life are excellent.
• C. ___ I am satisfied with my life.
• D. ___ So far I have gotten the important things
  I want in life.
• E. ___ If I could live my life over, I would
  change almost nothing.
• 1 - Strongly disgree 2 - Disgree 3 - Slightly
  disagree
• 4 - Neither agree nor disgree
• 5 - Slightly agree 6 - Agree 7 - Strongly agree

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The correlational approach

• Large samples
• Considerable replication
• Semi-complex
• - Largely self-report
• - Descriptive
• - Procrustean
• - Risk of triviality

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The experimental approach
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The experimental approach

• Essential feature Identifying causes
• Experimental demonstration of a causal
  relationship between a personality variable and
  another variable.
• Key questions What causes personality and what
  does personality cause?
• Individual differences Can stable dispositional
  differences be predicted/controlled?
• Human nature Are any aspects of personality
  unresponsive to situational changes?

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The experimental approach

• Common characteristics
• Normative
• Large samples
• Objective measures
• Few variables

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Non-emotional writing is bad for you?

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The experimental approach

• Causal identification
• Low interpretation
• - Restricted to observable phenomena
• - Artificiality
• - Focus on testing rather than discovering or
  importance
• - Relevance to personality
• - Risk of triviality

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