PSYC 2600 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Personality Psychology, Projective Test, Inter-Rater Reliability
Personality Psychology 1
What is “Personality?”
━ How might we describe someone’s personality?
• Characteristics that makes people unique.
• Ex: Outgoing, charming, neurotic, happy, etc...
• So many adjectives to describe personality (they help us understand people better & know how to
react to them)
• Ex: it's unlikely we will choose a study group partner that is (i.e. unorganized, lazy, or forgetful)
• Thus, personality is important knowledge
━ Personality: the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized &
enduring & that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to the intrapsychic, physical, &
social environments.
━ Innate personalities → personalities that people are born with → stays stable over time.
━ Mechanisms → those aspects of people's personality that changes over time → they are adaptable
━ Within the individual, their personality is organized and enduring (there is consistency)
━ Adaptations in intrapsychic (means inner world)→ how people change their personality to adapt to the needs of
the environment.
Three levels of personality:
1. Like all others:
○ Human Nature level of analysis
○ We all have similarities → things that make us all the same.
○ Ex: we all experience fear, we are all students, we are all capable of emotions.
2. Like some others:
○ Group (and hence individual) Differences level of analysis
○ Everyone belongs to several groups
○ We all belong to a group (i.e. male or female) Or race (i.e. black or white)
○ Ex: Religion, age, hobbies, friend groups, schools (i.e. we are all carleton university students)
3. Like no other:
○ Individual Uniqueness level of analysis
○ What makes individuals unique
Theories vs. Beliefs…
━ Beliefs are not necessarily based on facts.
━ But, this does not mean that beliefs are not true → we just can't assume a belief is true until
research supports it.
━ Ex: if we cannot find a way to test a belief, then it remains a belief
━ Theories are not the same as beliefs
━ Theories are based on facts → bad theories are dismissed or replaced
━ A (good) Theory is:
1) Comprehensive
━ Able to explain most of the known facts
━ If it can’t anymore → it's not a good theory
2) Provides a guide for future research
━ Should not be a closed ended theory
━ It should have room for more questions.
3) Testable
━ Must be testable
━ You must be able to prove it right or wrong.
4) Avoids Assumptions
━ Must have parsimony
━ Parsimony means, if you are building a theory, you only put info you need, nothing
more; nothing less.
━ if you have to assume a 100 things for something to be true, then you are not really
making it a prediction.
5) Compatible with other areas of knowledge
A Fissure in the Field
● There's no grand theory of personality psychology
● There’s a gap in between:
1. Grand theories of personality:
(human nature level of analysis)
What make sus unique and what makes us the same
2. Contemporary research in personality:
(individual and group differences level of analysis)
● What are those human traits we need to learn about ourselves and group differences.
The Elephant Metaphor
● This metaphor is the best way to describe what personality psychology
researchers are searching the field.
● Ex: imagine the elephant is the field of psychology
● And everybody is answering the questions they have
● They are examining one part of the elephant.
● The metaphor is intended to represent that most research rn is fragmented
● We don't have yet a grand theory
● Yet, most of the studies that we have validated adds another level of
understanding, in summarizing our knowledge of (i.e. what makes people
unique?)
Bridging the Fissure
● How do we bridge this gap?
● There are 6 domains of knowledge:
1. Dispositional Domain
a. Disposition = traits.
b. How do people differ from one another?
c. What makes someone more extroverted or less extroverted?
d. What are traits? How many?
e. Where do they come from, how do t ehy change, qhen are they stabel?
f. Goals:
i. identify and measure the most important ways in which individuals differ from one
another
ii. origin of individual differences and how these develop and change over time
2. Biological Domain
a. Core assumption:
i. Humans are collections of biological systems.
1. building blocks for behaviors, thoughts, and emotions
b. Behavioral genetics of personality
i. Twin studies, selective breeding
c. Humans are a colelction of biological system, these ssyems provide the building
bocks of our thoughts, emotions, asspiraions, etc.
d. A recent area in psch looks at those bilolgical systems and how thye translate into
thoughts, motions and behaviours
e. So we talk about twin studies.
3. Intrapsychic Domain
• Deals with mental mechanisms of personality
• Conscious
