Goals
- Describe the Big Five (OCEAN) and HEXACO models of personality.
- Explain what is meant by a situational influence on personality.
- Explain what the Barnum effect is and its relevance to personality research.
- Explain what the MMPI is and its importance.
Studying Personality is Hard...
- Personality: Consistent patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving
- Traits: Enduring characteristics that influence behavior across a diversity of situations
- Need to be
- Reliable: Produces the same result with each test
- Valid: Actually measures what we think it measures
- Standardized across cultures: Given to many people
- Parsimonious: Have to pick adjectives carefully
- b/c there are over 18,000 English words alone that describe people.
Personality Tests
OCEAN (Big Five) - The Most Backed by Research
- O: Openness
- Prefers routine, practical vs. imaginative, spontaneous
- C: Conscientious
- Impulsive, disorganized vs. disciplined, careful
- E: Extraversion
- Reserved, thoughtful, vs. sociable, fun-loving
- A: Agreeable
- Suspicious, uncooperative vs. trusting, helpful
- N: Neuroticism
- Calm, confident vs. anxious, pessimistic
HEXACO - The Most Backed by Research
- H: Honesty-Humility
- Sincerity, fairness, and moral character
- E: Emotionality
- Sentimentality, fearfulness, and sadness
- X: Extraversion
- Sociability, enthusiasm, and assertiveness
- A: Agreeableness
- Patience, tolerance, trustworthiness, and forgiveness
- C: Conscientiousness
- Organized, thourough, and disciplined
- O: Openness
- Curious, adventurous, open to new ideas and perspectives
Again...studying personality is hard...
- Traits are not as stable as we think
- Major factors of the big five/six will vary across situation
- Predictions are best when averaged over situations
- Barnum Effect
- People tend to believe in personality descriptions that supposedly are specific to them but could, in fact, describe almost anyone.
- People tend to find stories and memories that match a descriptive blurb of personality traits.
- Requires money and time which researchers are in short supply of
- It's hard to reflect on yourself when you're young
- People tend to spin their memories based on their current personality--it changes over time.
MMPI - The Most Researched Clinical Measure
Used to test the personality traits of people. Can be used to jobs, such as police work and high-security jobs that rely on trustworthy and secure people to function appropriately.