PSYC 3450 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Trust Law, Sigmund Freud, Interaction
PSYC 3450
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
What is personality?
Generic: a pattern of behavior and interpersonal processes thought to originate within an
individual.
*How you act around people
*The way we most typically act
*A degree of consistency
*Situations may override our personalities
*having a part in almost everything that we do - our personality comes out mostly when we
interact.
*different theory = different definition
Elements of Personality
Structure: composition of personality - how do we define who you are?
Process: motivations/priorities - Maslow pyramid - reinforcement
Development: what factors shape us? Object relations - first year of life
Psychopathology: what causes maladaptive structure/ process? (Why are my priorities so screwed?)
(What causes dysfunctional behavior?)
Change: How can personality change or adapt in structure and/or process? - "I'm not going to
hage" We alays hage. Easy to hage? Diffiult to hage? What hages ad hat does’t?
Experience causes change. Maturation and change relation?
What is Theory?
A set of related assumption from which, by deductive reasoning (by logic), testable hypotheses may
be drawn.
*set: More than just a singular idea. A series of concepts to explain something we observe
Assumptions must be related and consistent. Can't contradict itself. (Schrödinger's Cat)
Hypotheses must be testable for theory to be scientific. Start by making predictions i.e. No one lies
hard tests, but they are okay with it when it is "fair" vs when the test is "not fair".
What makes a theory scientific?
Psyhology is the astard hild of philosophy ad iology…
Comprehensiveness in explaining observations
Falsifiability : theories must offer predictions which have the chance to be wrong. Floyd's theory:
Have an answer to everything, never has a chance to be wrong.
Internal consistency: elements of a theory should not contradict itself
Predictive power: We want to make predictions for the greatest outcome
Parsimony: simplest explanations are best - as long as everything else is equal
Theoretical Dimensions
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Genetic v. environmental: how much is personality is shaped by nature vs nurture. See page 13 in
text for a table figure.
Free will vs determinism: how much of our behavior is shaped by forces out of our control?
Conscious vs unconscious: how aware are we of the motivations for our behavior? Why do we do
what we do?
Uniqueness vs. commonality: should theorists focus on what constitutes the individual or humans
as a whole? -
CHAPTER 2
Research Methods
Reliability and Validity
Reliability - consistency of measurement
Validity - accuracy of measurement
Assessment cannot be valid if it is not reliable
RELIABILITY TYPES:
-Test-retest reliability: consistency over time.
-Interrater reliability: consistency across administrators
-Internal consistency: reliability across items or components
VALIDITY TYPES:
-concurrent validity: results correlate with another measure at same point in time
-predictive validity: results correlate with some future outcome of criterion (SAT/ACT)
*-Construct validity: whether a measure accurately reflects the theoretical concept of interest.
Costrut is a idea…fro a partiular poit of ie. Theories of itelligee…"Mihelagelo as a
genius" but he was an artist. Intelligence need to include artistic ability. Construct = does this
measure this particular idea?
"What does the professor deem most important?" That is his construct.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Generic: a pattern of behavior and interpersonal processes thought to originate within an individual. *having a part in almost everything that we do - our personality comes out mostly when we interact. Psychopathology: what causes maladaptive structure/ process? (why are my priorities so screwed?) (what causes dysfunctional behavior?) "i"m not going to (cid:272)ha(cid:374)ge" we al(cid:449)ays (cid:272)ha(cid:374)ge. A set of related assumption from which, by deductive reasoning (by logic), testable hypotheses may be drawn. A series of concepts to explain something we observe. Hypotheses must be testable for theory to be scientific. Start by making predictions i. e. no one lies hard tests, but they are okay with it when it is "fair" vs when the test is "not fair". Psy(cid:272)hology is the (cid:271)astard (cid:272)hild of philosophy a(cid:374)d (cid:271)iology . Falsifiability : theories must offer predictions which have the chance to be wrong. Have an answer to everything, never has a chance to be wrong.
