Assigned reading from the text : Cloninger. Pages 1-17.
Sample Essay Question
: Describe how you would develop
a measure to assess people who are generally happy. Propose a sample measure
and describe how you would determine if it were reliable and valid.
A. Defining personality from a the perspective of the
research psychologist:.
Text:
Personality is the psychological functioning of the individual person.
Alternative
definition
: Personality is the study of how people differ from one
another in terms of overt behavior and in terms of the reasons for their
behavior.
B. Approaches to understanding personality:
1. Clinical.
Includes psychoanalytic, cognitive and humanistic traditions. Relies on
personal observations, case studies, and some research with clinical
populations.
2. Practical/Applied.
Determining qualities needed for particular jobs. Relies on standardized
personality scales.
3. Academic.
Study of normal people and how they function.
C. How do academic psychologists study personality?
1. Forming
hypotheses. What about the person causes him or her to act the way he or
she does? Must be testable and based on theory.
2. Testing
the hypothesis. Gathering data about the personality characteristic of
interest and testing the proposed relationships. Seeing if there is a
"significant
difference". Study can be experimental or correlational [see discussion
of Cronbach's "Two disciplines" in the text]
3. Interpreting
the findings. Complex process.
D. Measurement of personality characteristics.
1. Can be done
at the individual or group level.
2. Typically
involves administering some type of questionnaire.
3. Personality
scales must be reliable and valid.
E. Development of a personality scale.
1. Develop
a set of items measuring the construct based on theory or intuition
2. Administer
the items to lots of people. Determine which of the individual items are
reliable and eliminate those that are not.
3. Write additional
items if needed and repeat #2.
4. Make sure
the measure is valid
5. Develop
standardized procedures for administering the measure.