Chapter 1: People/The Person:
What are the three layers of personality, and what aspects of personality are studied at each of these layers?
* The three layers of personality are Dispositional traits, Characteristic adaptations, and Integrative life stories. Dispositional traits study the personality traits of a person, which include the Big 5 Traits. These are Extraversion, Openness to experience, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. It focuses on how people are social actors, and how they behave generally/over time and interact with others. Characteristic adaptations are focusing on the person as a motivated agent. It studies a person's motivations, desires, goals, hopes, beliefs, and values. These aspects may change over the life span (e.g. a child changing their goals), are dependent on contexts, and cultures, even though traits remain similar. Integrative Life Stories see the person as an author, where they create a story that is the deepest understanding of the person. It studies how people make meaning out of life, through a story that tells them about the person they are and who they want to be in the future (“who am I”). This helps people stay on track during tough times.
What are the seven criteria for a good scientific theory of personality? Please both name and explain each criterion.
* Comprehensiveness - a good theory covers a larger scope of human nature in its explanation, uses more constructs and covers a larger range of reality. The more a theory explains, the better.
* Parsimony - A theory must be simple and elegant, while explaining as much as it can in few/simple concepts.
* Coherence - A theory must be logical and internally consistent, each part should align and be interrelated within the theory.
* Testability - A theory must have a testable hypothesis, one that can be tested in scientific studies and proven false under certain circumstances.
* Empirical Validity - A theory must have results/data (From hypothesis testing) that supports its claims. It should have observable, replicable research to support.
* Usefulness - A theory must have applied value, should aim to solve real-world problems and should be able to be applied to real-world settings/problems and practical issues.
* Generativity - A theory should generate new and unexpected ideas, spark new conversation and new thinking, challenge existing assumptions. It might inspire future research.
What are the respective strengths and limitations of self-report measures, informant/peer-report measures, and naturalistic observations?
* Self-report measures, such as questionnaires, are easily quantifiable and can quickly create scores to estimate a person against a psychological/personality trait. They are fast to administer and can be done easily, examining a person and what they know about themselves. However, people do not know everything about their behaviours, especially in negative/threatening aspects, and may bias their assessment or lie about themselves.
* Informant/peer report measures can help counter the limitations of self report measures by showing an external perspective on the person's behaviors, and peers might be able to report things that the person may not see themselves. However, they may be biased, such as parents exaggerating how good their child is. Informants also have limited information on the subject at times. (HENCE WHY PEER AND SELF REPORT MAY BE COMBINED)
* Naturalistic observations are objective, capture real world behavior with ecological validity, and produce a direct report towards a behaviour with examples. However, people may behave in different ways if they know you are watching them, making it difficult to capture natural behavior. The method is also costly, time consuming, and you must be clever to develop an observational study outside the lab.
What are the key features of correlational and experimental designs, and what are the important limitations of each of these two research approaches?
Correlational Designs aim to examine the relationship between 2 or more variables under natural conditions, creating a correlation coefficient to indicate strength and direction. They simply observe how the variables co-relate/are associated (no manipulating variable). However, correlation does not equal causation, we cannot infer causation as a confounding variable may account for the relationship between the 2 variables. We don't know the extent to which one variable may cause another, only that they change together.
Experimental designs aim to manipulate an independent variable to see its impact on the dependent variable. Only the independent variable is changed; everything else is held constant. You can draw causal inferences. However, these can have ethical concerns through deception of hiding what is being measured, issues with practicality and how the lab simulations will transfer to real life, and difficulty to evaluate some personality constructs through this method (e,g, extraversion).
Chapter 2 : Evolution of Human Nature
What were the six big steps in human evolution? Please both name and explain each step.
* Bipedalism - The ability for humans to stand upright on our hind 2 legs freed up hands for other uses, such as holding tools or carrying things.
* Tool - Primitive stone tools were created by homo habilis, used to hunt, scavenge meat, which increased the availability of meat.
* Meat - Tools made it easier to obtain meat, first from dead animals and then through hunting. Harvesting meat required social cooperation and complex roles in groups, and also provided lots of energy to the human.
* Fire - Humans learned to use fire/control to cook meat tender, making it easier to digest than raw meat. This shift from raw to cooked helped to enrich the diet and establish social practices on eating of common meals. It allowed the digestive system to shrink, giving more energy to the brain.
* Campsites - Cooking led to the campsite, an area where domestic and labour activities occurred. Campsites led to division and coordination of labour, with some people going out to hunt and some protecting the campfire (as a nest).
* Culture - humans then achieved advances in art and technology, one major catalyst for this was the emergence of human language. Along with this, humans invented agriculture, leading to the world we see today (with social hierarchies, complex societies).
In what sense are biology and culture not competing determinants of behavior? Be sure to explain the concept of gene-culture coevolution as part of your answer.
* Biology and culture are not competing determinants of behaviour because, as humans, we are biologically predisposed to live in culture. Our biology provides a foundation for our behavior, while culture influences evolution itself. Humans evolved to live in culture. Those who display cultural expertise have increased inclusive fitness, helping them gain more access to resources needed for survival/reproduction. This way, those with cultural expertise can pass on more of their genes to the next generation, making these favoured genes more common in a group. This is known as gene-culture coevolution, where culture drives genetic changes/changes in the biology of generations.
What is the problem with human altruism from an evolutionary perspective, and how have scientists resolved this problem? Be sure to explain the ideas of kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and reputational benefits as part of your answer.
* From an evolutionary perspective, altruism goes against the main ideas of evolution, such as increasing one's own fitness and success. However, altruism is something that increases the success and fitness of another person, while possibly putting your own at risk. You increase someone else's welfare without consciously regarding your own interests. This problem can be solved using the ideas of Kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and reputational benefits. Kin selection states that we help those who are close to us and share common genes with us, such as siblings and children. The more genetic similarity, the greater altruism. We do this so that we can indirectly pass on our own (shared) genes between us and the relative. This promotes inclusive fitness.
Reciprocal altruism is based on the idea of helping someone so that they can return the favor, and help you in the future. We expect to be helped in return.
Reputational benefits have to do with the idea of helping to promote your own image/reputation in a positive way. You help someone else to gain a more positive/higher position in your group, and others also see you as a good person. This may increase your respect and even make others want to partner with you in group tasks.
Compare and contrast the dominance and prestige strategies of status attainment.
* Both prestige and dominance strategies are used to gain a higher status within society or a group. However, they differ in the methods they use and how they make the other person acknowledge them.
* Dominance strategies are based on inducing fear or using violence/conflict and intimidation to make another person involuntarily acknowledge your higher status/rank. Dominance leadership thrives under conditions of urgent threat (short term coalitions), and the leader must always show power and strength.
* Prestige strategies are based on competence, admiration and gaining respect by showing a culturally relevant skill. They acquire status through a voluntary way by grabbing attention. These people are also considered role models, and show dignity in their leadership roles. Unlike dominant leaders, they focus on a strategic long term plan for the group, a vision for their present and future.
Chapter 3: Social Learning and Culture
Define the four steps of observational learning and explain the processes at each step.
The 4 steps of observational learning by Albert Bandura:
1. Attentional processes - The learner must have the capacity to pay attention to the model and focus on the behaviour. The learner must have the sensory capacity (Eyes) and arousal level to pay attention. Distinctiveness, uniqueness, and the functional value of the behavior increase likelihood of attention.
2. Retention - The learner must be able to encode, remember, and make sense of the behaviour they observed. They must understand it and must be able to picture more complex behaviours in the mind's eye (motor rehearsal).
3. Motor Reproduction - The learner must have the physical capabilities and availability of the response in their repertoire (the skill to do so) to reproduce the behaviour they observed.
4. Motivation - The learner must want to imitate the behaviour, and must have a reason to do so. Reinforcement (e..g material/social reward, money/praise) may increase motivation to imitate, along with an intrinsic sense of accomplishment.
Define the four styles of parenting and the dimensions around which they are organized.
The 4 styles of parenting revolve around a 2 dimensional plane:
1. Authoritative - These parents are high on demandingness and high on responsiveness. They are sensitive to the child's needs and show warmth and acceptance, but also set firm rules and standards for the child's behaviour and expectations. This was considered the ideal way to parent in past literature, leading to instrumental competence in a child and increased academic success.
2. Authoritarian - These parents are high on demandingness but low on responsiveness. They show little warmth and nurturing to their child, ignoring their perspectives, but enforce strict rules and standards.
3. Permissive/Indulgent - These parents are low on demandingness but high on responsiveness. They do not enforce strict rules and standards for the child's behaviour, and will often tolerate bad behaviour and impulses (e.g. aggression). They are nurturing and accepting of the child.
4. Neglectful - These parents are low on demandingness and low on responsiveness. They do not set standards for the child, and show little warmth/nurturing to them. They do provide the basic needs and shelter, but are not interested in playing parental roles beyond providing needs/protection.
How does social class correlate with people’s attitudes, values, and parenting practices?
* Social class directly correlates with people’s attitudes, values, and parenting practices. Higher social classes tend to be more optimistic, believing that people can be changed for the better. They have higher levels of self confidence, and value autonomy and independence. They have greater extraversion, openness to experience, and emotional stability. Parents from higher social classes teach independence and self-fulfillment to their children, while also providing them opportunities for psychological and cultural enrichment (vacations, dance lessons, camps, etc.).
* Those from lower social classes tend to hold more negative views about human nature, while valuing a shared community (close family and friends) during hard times. Parents teach their children vigilance and to seek out security in an unpredictable world (through shared community). Parents also provide less guidance and support to their child, and also tend to not be involved in school activities (possibly due to stressors, compared to those in higher social class).
Define the collectivism–individualism dimension of cultural differences (noting which societies are especially collectivist/individualistic) and summarize the psychological differences associated with the distinction between collectivist and individualistic societies.
Collectivist cultures focus on the collective, the group. They focus on the goals, aspirations, values, and well-being of the group over the individual. Southeast Asian and African societies tend to be more collectivistic (Japan, China, Korea, and Africa). In these cultures, people idealize calm and positive emotions, and group harmony. People make decisions avoiding negative consequences for the group and themselves, while processing information in a holistic way. Their life stories also focus on group/historical events, downplaying unique personal experiences.
Individualistic cultures focus on the individual, and their goals, aspirations, values, and interests. They prioritize full expression of the autonomous self, and is a culture common in WEIRD societies (like North America, Australia, and Western Europe). This culture idealizes positive self expressive emotions like pride and excitement. Their decision making centers around the self, focusing on something that is good for the self even if it is risking group well-being. They process information in an analytical manner, while their life stories emphasize personal achievements and uniqueness (of personal experiences).