1 Psychology 305A: Personality Psychology November 14 Lecture 19.

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Psychology 305A: Personality Psychology

November 14

Lecture 19

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Scoring Your Questionnaire: SA

1. Reverse score items 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, and 14.

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2. Sum your responses to the 15 items.

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A little R&R ….(Review and Reflect)

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The Cognitive and Motive Perspectives

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1. Can personality be described in terms of “cognitive styles?” (continued)

2. What are needs?

3. What are motives?

4. What is environmental press?

5. How are needs measured?

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2. identify the correlates of: need for cognition.

3. describe Mischel’s cognitive-social learning personvariables.

1. describe the construct: need for cognition.

By the end of today’s class, you should be able to:

5. distinguish between Murray’s categories of needs.

4. define the term need.

7. define the term environmental press.

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6. distinguish between a need and motive.

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8. describe contemporary measures of needs.

9. identify common criticisms of contemporary measures of needs.

4. Need for Cognition

Defined as “the tendency for an individual to engage in and enjoy thinking.”

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Can personality be described in terms of “cognitive styles?” (continued)

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Need for Cognition Scale (NC):

Alpha reliability coefficient: .85

Maximum possible score: 90

Mean (university students): 62.3 (SD = 9.6)

Scores associated with:

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the use of planful, self-regulated study strategies and higher grades.

greater life satisfaction.

less ambivalence about holding conflicting attitudes.

higher levels of intelligence.

greater curiosity.

lower social anxiety.

higher self-esteem (general and social).

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With respect to the Big 5, need for cognition is:

(a) positively correlated with O and C.

(b) negatively correlated with N.

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5. Cognitive-Social Learning Person Variables

Mischel suggested 5 cognitive variables be used to describe personality:

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(b) Encoding strategies and personal constructs (i.e., schemas, self-beliefs).

(a) Competencies.

(c) Expectancies.

(d) Subjective values.

(e) Self-regulatory systems and plans.

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What are needs?

• “A need is a physiochemical force in the brain that organizes perception, intellection, and action in such a way as to transform an unsatisfying situation into a more satisfying one” (Murray, 1981).

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• Murray identified several categories of needs.

• Each person’s needs can be rank ordered from strongest to weakest, creating a “hierarchy of needs” that characterizes the person’s personality.

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What are motives?

• According to Murray, motives:

(a) are elicited by needs.

(b) influence thought.

(c) direct behaviour toward or away from specific objects, people, or goals.

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Need(for food)

Motive(hunger)

Thought (thinking of last night’s dinner, fantasizing about a big meal, perceiving a rock as a loaf of bread)

Behaviour (prepare a meal, go to a restaurant)

E.g.,

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What is environmental press?

• Refers to any environmental or situational factor that influences people’s motives.

• Through its influence on motives, environmental press can alter thought and behaviour.

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Need(for food)

Motive(hunger)

Thought (thinking of last night’s dinner, fantasizing about a big meal, perceiving a rock as a loaf of bread)

Behaviour (prepare a meal, go to a restaurant)

E.g.,

Environmental press(upcoming exam, exposure to a noxious stimulus)

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Need(for food)

Motive(hunger)

Thought (I’ll eat after I finish reading this chapter, I’ll fail the exam if I don’t focus on studying right now)

Behaviour (continue studying)

E.g.,

Environmental press(upcoming exam)

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How are needs measured?

1. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and Picture Story Exercise (PSE)

Currently, the most widely used measures of needs.

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Involves presenting participants with images that depict ambiguous situations.

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Instructions for the TAT:

I am going to show you some pictures, one at a time, and your task will be to make up a story for each card. In your story, be sure to tell what has led up to the event shown in the picture, describe what is happening at the moment, what the characters are feeling and thinking, and give the outcome. Tell a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end. Do you

understand? I will write your stories verbatim as you tell them. Here’s the first card.

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Assumes that people’s needs influence how they interpret ambiguous stimuli.

A projective test; participants “project” their needs onto the images.

“Apperception” refers to the process of projecting needs onto external stimuli; may be conscious or unconscious.

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A participant’s stories are analyzed to identify her/his dominant needs; this is accomplished by counting references to specific needs.

The dominant needs form the defining characteristics of the participant’s personality.

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Interpretation 1

This is a picture of a woman who all of her life has been a very suspicious and conniving person. She’s looking in the mirror and she sees reflected behind her an image of what she will be as an old woman—still a suspicious, conniving sort of person. She can’t stand the thought that that’s what her life will eventually lead her to and she smashes the mirror and runs out of the house screaming and goes out of her mind and lives in an institution for the rest of her life.

Dominant needs: n Abasement, n Dominance, ….

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Interpretation 2

This woman has always emphasized beauty in her life. As a little girl she was praised for being pretty and as a young woman was able to attract lots of men with her beauty. While secretly feeling anxious and unworthy much of the time, her outer beauty helped to disguise these feelings from the world and, sometimes, from herself. Now that she is getting on in years and her children are leaving home, she is worried about the future. She looks in the mirror and imagines herself as an old hag—the worst possible person she could become, ugly and nasty—and wonders what the future holds for her. It is a depressing time for her.

Dominant needs: n Abasement, n Defendance, n Exhibition ….

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Thematic Apperception Test Images

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2. identify the correlates of: need for cognition.

3. describe Mischel’s cognitive-social learning personvariables.

1. describe the construct: need for cognition.

By the end of today’s class, you should be able to:

5. distinguish between Murray’s categories of needs.

4. define the term need.

7. define the term environmental press.

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6. distinguish between a need and motive.

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8. describe contemporary measures of needs.

9. identify common criticisms of contemporary measures of needs.