PSY 361: Review sheet for Exam 1
Remember: Think conceptually. Don’t merely know the definitions. Don’t just study the
description of a term or a theory and not spend time thinking about what it means, how it can be
applied to everyday life, how it might compare or contrast with other terms or theories. Be able
to apply theories to situations: Know the main ideas well enough to identify them if you’re given
an example of them. Use both the class notes and the text. Know everything from the notes. If a
topic appears in both the notes and the text, focus more on the notes for that topic.
Test Format: Multiple choice
Intro to Personality Psychology
From the notes:
Personality v. social psychology and the person v. situation debate
Person, personality, self
Individual differences
Grand theories of personality: Generally speaking, what did they do, what were their roles, and
what do personality theories generally do today
Three levels of personality: What are they? What kinds of personality characteristics does each
encompass? How are they related to each other? How are they differentiated from each
other?
Developmental forces on personality: Genes, environment, and the individual personality. How
does each relate to the nature v. nurture debate? Generally speaking, how does each
contribute to the development of personality?
From the text, Ch. 1:
Gordon Allport: who he was; nomothetic v. idiographic approaches
History of personality research in psychology: know briefly the three major periods and what
happened (especially the crisis at the beginning of the third period)
Theory & Research in Personality Psychology
From the notes:
Definitions of science (emphasis on science as a method) as it relates to personality research
Peer review process: Not details, but know why this distinguishes academic journals from mass
media
Know the following elements of the scientific process: theory, data, deductive reasoning,
hypotheses, inductive reasoning, refining/creating a theory, and the historical, interwoven
growth of theory and research methods
Personality research: Surveys, experiments, case studies. For each one, know its method, purpose
and limitations
Interpreting correlation statistics: correlation coefficient (magnitude and direction) and p-values;
be familiar with the difference between translating into professional and everyday language
The Big Five Traits
From the notes:
Supertraits: What is a supertrait? How are they measured?
Know all about the big five: extraversion, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness,
agreeableness (everything from the notes plus the main points from the text)
How do positive and negative affect function in relation to extraversion and neuroticism?
The Big Five over time: How do traits change in adulthood?
Evolutionary significance: Generally speaking, how are traits evolutionarily adaptive (you don’t
have to know the details)?
Pros and cons of the big five model
HEXACO model: Know about trait honesty/humility
From the text, Ch. 5:
Extraversion and the behavioral approach system
Neuroticism and the behavioral inhibition system
The authoritarian personality: basic concept of it (just get a general sense for its characteristics)
From the text, Ch. 6:
Absolute v. differential continuity
The logic of twin & adoption studies: heritability quotient,
Jung and the Myers-Briggs Types
From the notes:
Two general attitudes: What are extraversion and introversion? What do Jung and contemporary
research have to say about how these attitudes change as we get older?
Four functions of consciousness: What are perceiving, sensation, intuition, judging, thinking, and
feeling? How are they structured?
Myers-Briggs Type Inventory: How does it measure personality type? What is it a test of? How
do they map onto the big-five traits?
Traits v. Types of Personality
From the notes:
Basic distinction of traits and types
How does the measurement of traits and types differ?
How are traits used to create types? What is a problem and a benefit of doing so?
From the text, Ch. 4:
Allport: cardinal disposition, central dispositions, secondary dispositions
Test-retest reliability
Reciprocal interactionism: An idea of how the person, situation, and behavior interact
The Evolution of the Individualistic Self
From the notes:
Human evolution and the self: Major milestones in the human capacity for thinking about an
individual self, from the emergence of the species to about 2,500 years ago
Self in recent social history: What general factors have contributed to the increasing value placed
on individuality by Western society in the past 500 years? What specific cultural movements
have contributed to this shift since the 1600s?
The problems and benefits of defining the self agentically
From the text, Ch. 2:
Environment of evolutionary adaptedness: Basic idea in terms of its impact on personality today
Aggression, altruism, and attachment: Briefly, how each plays a role in evolutionary psychology
Intro to Culture and Personality
From the notes:
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of development: individual, microsystem, exosystem,
macrosystem, chronosystem
Individualistic v. collectivistic conceptions of self: What are the differences?
From the text, Ch. 3:
What is a social ecology?
Authoritative v. authoritarian parenting and their apparent effects on children
Race and personality in the U.S. (Feature 3.B): What are Bowman’s four adaptive cultural
resources of African American families?
Gender and Personality: Mars and Venus?
From the notes:
Agency and communion: What are they? How do men and women differ in terms of them? How
are men and women similar in terms of them?
Two kinds of communion: How do relational and collective forms of communion function for
men and women?
Unmitigated agency and unmitigated communion: What are they? What are their characteristics
(or how to others perceive them)? What does each correlate with?