When people maintain their relative positions in a group over time the group displays high

11.Botwin and colleagues found that individuals preferred mates with personalitytraits that:

12.Theoretically, over 1000 observations of the same phenomenon this will equalzero:

13.Walter Mischel has pointed out that personality psychologists are NOT very goodat predicting:

14.In the context of person-situation interaction, single measures of behavior:

15.Changing an environment to match a person's characteristics is an example of thisperson-environment fit mechanism:

16.According to George Kelly and Conley (1987), ________ has been the mostconsistent personality predictor of marital instability and divorce.

17.A trip to your favorite restaurant is most likely an example of Buss' PE-Fitmechanism of:

18.The coefficient of determination used by Mischel to discredit personality researchis calculated by:

19.Which of the following formulas is correct:

20.Ozer calculated the correlations for classic studies in social psychology and foundthat:

21.Getting married about the same time in life as other people your age is an example of a(n):

22.Across self-report measures of personality, conducted by different investigatorsand over differing time intervals of adulthood, the traits of neuroticism,extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness all show:

23.Personality changes observed in individuals due to the historical times in which they live arereferred to as:

Chapter 5 personality disposition over time: stability, coherence, & change. Conceptual issues: personality development, stability, coherence & change. What is personality development? can be defined as the continuities, consistencies, & stabilities in people over time & the ways in which people change over time. 3 most important forms of stability are rank order stability, mean level stability & personality coherence. Stability during childhood longitudinal studies- examinations of same groups of individuals over time: block and block longitudinal study: Study of 100 children assessed at three, four, five, seven, and 11 years. Activity level assessed using actometer and assessments of behaviour and personality provided. Actometer- recording device attached to writs of the children during several play periods. Size of correlations decreases as the time interval between different testings increases. Measures taken early in life can predict personality later in life, but predictability decreases over. Stability coefficients (test-retest reliability coefficients)- correlations between the same measures obtained at 2 different points in time.

Week 3 Chapter 5: Personality Dispositions Over Time: Stability, Coherence, and Change

Dispositions Over Time: Stability,

Coherence, and Change

Conceptual Issues: Personality Development, Stability, Coherence, and Change

What Is Personality Development

 Personality development is defined as the continuities, consistencies, and stabilities in people over time and the ways in which people change over time.  The three important forms of stability are: o Rank order stability o Mean level stability o Personality coherence

Rank Order Stability

 Rank order stability is the maintenance of individual position within a group.  If people tend to maintain their positions on dominance or extraversion relative to others over time, then there is a high rank order stability to those personality characteristics.  If people fail to maintain their rank order – if the submissive people rise up and put down the dominants, for example – then the group is displaying rank order instability, or rank order change.

Mean Level Stability

 Mean level stability: A population that maintains a consistent average level of trait or characteristic over time.  Mean level change: Within a single group that has been tested on two separate occasions, any difference in group averages across the two occasions is considered a mean level change.

Personality Coherence

 Changes in manifestation of trait  Personality coherence: maintaining rank order in relation to other individuals but changing manifestations of the trait.

Week 3 Chapter 5: Personality Dispositions Over Time: Stability, Coherence, and Change

 This form of personality coherence does not require that the precise behavioural manifestations of a trait remain the same.  Personality coherence includes both elements of continuity and elements of change – continuity in the underlying trait but change in the outward manifestation of that trait.

Personality Change

 Not all change qualifies as development.  Not all internal changes can properly be considered development. o E., when you get sick o Temporary changes in personality – due to taking alcohol or drugs, for example – do not constitute personality development unless they produce more enduring changes in personality.  If you were to become consistently more conscientious or responsible as you aged, however, this would be a form of personality development.  If you were to become gradually less energetic as you aged, this also would be a form of personality development.  Personality change has two defining qualities: o The changes are typically internal to the person, not merely changes in the external surroundings, such as walking to another room. o The changes are relatively enduring over time, rather than being merely temporary.

Three Level of Analysis

 We can examine personality over time at three levels of analysis: o The population as a whole o Group differences within the population o Individual differences within the groups

Population Level

 Several PP have theorized about the changes that we all go through in navigating from infancy to adulthood.  Freud’s theory of psychosexual development, for example, contained a conception of personality development that was presumed to apply to everyone on Earth. o All people according to Freud, go through an invariant stage sequence. Starting with the oral stage and ending with the mature genital stage of psychosexual development.  Deals with the changes and constancies that apply more or less to everyone. o E., Almost everyone in the population tends to increase in sexual motivation at puberty.

Week 3 Chapter 5: Personality Dispositions Over Time: Stability, Coherence, and Change

Personality Stability Over Time

Stability of Temperament During Infancy

 Many parents of two or more children will tell you that their children had distinctly different personalities the day they were born. o E., Albert Einstein’s children (one loved puzzles, the other music; the first one became a professor while the second died at a psychiatric institution.)  The most commonly studied personality characteristic studied in infancy and childhood is temperament.  Temperament: the individual differences that emerge very early in life, are likely to have heritable basis, and are often involved with emotionality or arousability.  Mary Rothbart studied infants at different ages, starting at 3 months of age. She examined six factors of temperament, using ratings completed by the caregivers: o Activity level: The infant’s overall motor activity, including arm and leg movements. o Smiling and laughter: How much does the infant smile or laugh? o Fear: the infant’s distress at being refused food, being dressed, being confined, or being prevented access to a desired object. o Soothability: the degree to which the child reduces stress, or calms down, as a result of being soothed. o Duration of orienting: the degree to which the child sustains attention to objects in the absence of sudden changes.  The correlations are all positive. This means that infants who tend to score high at one point in time period on activity level, smiling and laughter, and the other personality traits, also tend to score high on these traits at a later time period.

Stability During Childhood

 Longitudinal studies, examinations of the same group of individuals over time, are costly and difficult to conduct.  Block and Block Longitudinal Study: tested children at ages: 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, and adulthood. o Focused on individual differences in activity level o Used an actometer to record activity level, teachers completed ratings of children’s behaviours and personalities.  Individual differences in personality emerge very early in life – most likely n infancy for some traits and by early childhood for other traits, such as aggression.  These individual differences tend to be moderately stable over time, so that people who are high on a particular trait tend to remain high.  The stability coefficients gradually decline over time as the distance between testing increases.

Week 3 Chapter 5: Personality Dispositions Over Time: Stability, Coherence, and Change

Personality Change

 Global measures of personality traits, such as those captured by the five-factor model, gives us hints that personality can change over time.  Researchers have not made studies designed to measures to access personality change.  Terms that refer to absence of change them to be positive: o Consistency o Stability o Continuity o Constancy  Some terms seem undesirable, or unpredictable: o Inconsistency o Instability o Discontinuity o Inconstancy

Changes in Self-Esteem from Adolescence to Adult

 Self-esteem: the extent to which one perceives oneself as relatively close to being the person one wants to be and/or as relatively distant from being the person one does not want to be, with respect to person-qualities one positively and negatively values.  Self-esteem was measured by use of overall difference between a current self-description and an ideal self-description: o The smaller the discrepancy, the higher the self-esteem o The larger the discrepancy, the lower the self-esteem  There was no change in self-esteem with increasing age.  When males and females were examined separately, there was a trend: o Over time, the genders departed from each other:  Men’s self-esteem increased  Males discrepancy is smaller over time.  Women’s self-esteem decreased  Transitioning from adolescence to adulthood is harder on females than males

What is rank order stability?

When measuring height of individuals between ages 14 and 21 is most likely to observe high?

Is defined as both the consistencies in people and the ways people change over time?

Which of the following names the theory that states that individuals select individuals with characteristics similar to their own for marriage partners?