Unit One; Making sense of other people

Personality!

Personality- Thoughts, feelings and behavior that makes an individual unique.

Temperament-  Genetic component of personality.

Temperament study, Thomas, Chess and Birch (1977)

Aim- Discover whether ways of responding to the environment remain stable throughout life.

Method- 133 children's behavior were observed and parents were questioned on their child's behavior to change.

Results- The children fell into three types;

1) Easy children, happy, flexible and regular.

2) Difficult children, demanding, inflexible and cries alot.

3) Slow to warm up, did not respond well to change or new experience.

Conclusion-These ways of responding to the environment stayed with the children as they developed, showing temperament is innate.

Evaluation- 

• Children evaluated were from middle class family's in New York, this means results cant be generalized.
• The parents may be bias in answers in the interview.

Measuring Personality

Eysenck type theory of personality.

• Different types of personality.
• each personality has its own traits.
• Extrovert, introvert, neurotics.

Extroverts- Social, lively and easy going. They seem to need to be having other people around them, They have many friends and enjoy party's and practical jokes.

Introverts- Like to spend time alone.They have a small number of close friends and are usually very serious and organised in what they do, also like routine.

Neurotics- Anxious, irritable, tense, shy and moody. Lacking self esteem and confidence.

• Personality types were inherited.
• Based research on personality of 700 servicemen.
• Gave questioner and analysed results using a statistical technique known as factor analysis. 
• Identified two dimensions of personality; extroversion-introversion and neurotic-ism-stability.

Evaluation of Eysenck's type theory.

Original research used a limited sample to test his ideas. This is because it was only carried out on servicemen. Since this time however, his findings have been supported by further research carried out by thousands of different people.

He used the questioners to test personality, the answers could only have been based on how the participant was feeling at the time of the experiment.

He believed that personality is genetic, but this does not consider personality change from result of experience.

Eysenck's scale to measure personality types.

Personality inventory (EPI)- The scale is used to measure extroversion-introversion and neutrocism-stability. It is made up of a series of questions, answers given can be used to identify an individuals personality.

Personality Questionnaire(EPQ)- Also used to measure extroversion-introversion and neutrocism-stability and a further dimension known as psychotosism. Most people score low on this dimension but those with a high score tend…