Unit 1 - Personality Studies AQA

Thomas, Chess & Birch

To see if temprament is innate

They studied 133 children and later interviewed the parents on reaction to change

They found that the children could fit into two groups these were: easy, difficult and slow to warm.

They found that temprament is innate

This was a longitudinal study. One advantage of this study was that it was carried out over a long period of time and alot of information was obtained from this study.

A disadvantage of this study is that participants could drop out. Another disadvantage is that all the children were from middle class families; this does not represent the population as a whole

Another disadvantage is that parents of the children can be biased during the interview.

Buss & Plomin

To see if temprament is innate

They studied 228 pairs of monozygotic and 174 pairs of dizygotic twins. They tested the twins on emotionality,reactivity & sociability.

They found that the monozygotic twins had a closer correlation in results than the dizygotic twins.

They concluded that tempeament is innate.

you cannot generalise these results for every person as not everyone is a twin. The monozygotic twins are ususally treated in similar ways so their temperament could be explained by their environment rather than their genes.

Kagan and Snidman

Wanted to see if temprament is due to biological differences

They studied four month old babies in new situations. Care giver was placed in babies sight holding a toy and playing with it. Then the caregiver hid from the childs line of sight and researcher played with the baby.

20% were high reactives

40% were low reactive

40% were somewhere between the two.

11 years later they met thechildren and the people that were high reactives were shy and the low reactives were not.

Kagan and Snidman used a large sample so it is easier to generalise their results to the whole population. The research took place in an experimental setting. This is a controlled environment that would not have been familiar to the children taking part. Therefore they may have behaved differently from usual because they were in a strange place. Behaviour was observed and recorded. The researchers may have missed some important behaviours or recorded them innacurately - this would affect the results

Eysenck

Wanted to test the personality of 700 servicemen.

He made them fill out a questionnaire and he used factor analsyis to analyse the results.

He found that there were 2 dimentions to personality and these were stablilty-neuroticm,introverted-extroverted.

Everyone fits into the scale some people lay between the two.

There are advantages and disadvantages to Eysencks study:

A: Since this initial piece of research, Eysencks findings have been supported by futher research carried out on thousands of people.

D: Only used a limited sample of service men. He only described a limited number of personality types. He used questionnaires to test personality. The answers people gave could have been based on their mood at the time. He believed that personality is genetic. This does not consider the idea that personality can change as a result of experience.

Raine 2000

To test the theory that APD is cause by abnormalities in the brain.

He studied 34 healthy men and 21 men with APD using an mri scan

He found that the men with APD had a 11% reduction in the grey matter of the prefrontal cortex of the brain.

APD is caused by abnormalities in the brain.

It adds support to the idea that there are biological explinations of APD. A brain abnormality in the prefrontal cortex.

Only males were used, no females. People were only a volunteer sample so it was not a representative sample. The brain is very complex and capable. It is not based on a single brain structure but use a variety of structures. We can conclude that APD is more complex than what the results suggest.