Personality OUTLINE OF RESOURCES Introducing Personality Lecture/Discussion Topic: Issues in Personality Theory (p. 787) Classroom Exercises: Introducing Personality (p. 787) Your Theory of Personality (p. 789) Classroom Exercise/Critical Thinking Break: Evaluating Personality Measures Avaiable on the Internet (p. 788) NEW Feature Film: Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (p. 787) Psychodynamic Theories Freud’s Psychoanalytic Perspective: Exploring the Unconscious Lecture/Discussion Topics: Freudian Slips (p. 791) Freud’s View of Humor (p. 792) The Case of Little Hans (p. 793) Classroom Exercises: Fifteen Freudian Principle Statements (p. 790) Demonstrating Personality Structure (p. 790) new Defense Mechanisms (p. 793) Defense Mechanism Miniskits (p. 794) Worth Video Anthology: Personality Structure: Id, Ego, and Superego* The Neo-Freudian and Psychodynamic Theorists Lecture/Discussion Topic: Freud’s Legacy and the Neo-Analytic Movement (p. 795) Student Project/Classroom Exercise: Earliest Recollections (p. 795) Worth Video Anthology: Psychodynamic Theories of Personality* NEW Assessing Unconscious Processes Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective and Modern Views of the Unconscious Lecture/Discussion Topic: Unconscious Insights (p. 796) Terror-Management Theory and the Scrooge Effect (p. 796) Classroom Exercise: The False Consensus Effect (p. 797) Worth Video Anthology: Repression: Reality or Myth?* Humanistic Theories Abraham Maslow’s Self-Actualizing Person Lecture/Discussion Topic: Obstacles to Self-Actualization (p. 797) Carl Rogers’ Person-Centered Perspective Classroom Exercise/Student Project: Perceived Self Versus Ideal Self (p. 798) Feature Film: D  ead Poets Society—Burying the True Self (p. 798) Worth Video Anthology: Self-Image: Body Dissatisfaction Among Teenage Girls* *Titles in the Worth Video Anthology are not described within the core resource unit. They are listed, with running times, in the Lecture Guides and described in detail in their Faculty Guide, which is available at www.worthpublishers.com/mediaroom. 785

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Assessing the Self Evaluating Humanistic Theories Lecture Break: Generating Support for Humanistic Theories (p. 799) Trait Theories

NEW

Exploring Traits Lecture/Discussion Topic: Personality Traits of U.S. Presidents (p. 799) Classroom Exercises: Shyness (p. 799) Extraversion and Emotional Stability (p. 800) Worth Video Anthology: Trait Theories of Personality* NEW Personality Traits* Genes and Personality: Understanding Williams Syndrome* A Happiness Trait?* Personality and the Brain* Assessing Traits Classroom Exercises: Empirically Derived Tests and the Importance of Cross-Validation (p. 800) Assessing Social Desirability (p. 801) Lecture Break/Student Project: What Makes a Test a Good Test? (p. 801) NEW The Big Five Factors Lecture/Discussion Topics: The NEO Personality Inventory (p. 801) Evolution and the Big Five Personality Traits (p. 802) Personality Traits in the Workplace (p. 805) The Hogan Personality Inventory (p. 806) Classroom Exercise: “Big Five” Inventories (p. 803) Student Project/Critical Thinking Break: The Enneagram System (p. 805) NEW Evaluating Trait Theories Lecture/Discussion Topic: The HEXACO Model of Personality Structure (p. 806) Classroom Exercises: The Barnum Effect (p. 807) The “Validity” of Astrology (p. 807) Social-Cognitive Theories Lecture/Discussion Topics: Perceived Efficacy and Acquirable Skills (p. 808) George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory (p. 808) Classroom Exercise: Self-Efficacy Scale (p. 808) Reciprocal Influences Classroom Exercise: The Self-Monitoring Scale (p. 809) Feature Film: The Shawshank Redemption and Reciprocal Influences (p. 809) Personal Control Lecture/Discussion Topic: Locus of Control (p. 810) Classroom Exercises: Satisficers Versus Maximizers (p. 811) The Life Orientation Test and Optimism (p. 811) Defensive Pessimism (p. 812) PsychSim 5: Helplessly Hoping (p. 811) Feature Film/Classroom Exercise: Schindler’s List and Personal Control (p. 810) Assessing Behavior in Situations Evaluating Social-Cognitive Theories Exploring the Self Classroom Exercises/Student Projects: Possible Selves (p. 813) Exploring Possible Selves as Roadmaps to the Future (p. 814) The Benefits of Self-Esteem Lecture/Discussion Topics: The Dark Side of Self-Esteem (p. 816) The Sociometer Theory of Self-Esteem (p. 817)

NEW

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Classroom Exercises: Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (p. 814) A Single-Item Measure of Self-Esteem (SISE) (p. 814) Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale (p. 815) Self-Concept Clarity (p. 817) Self-Serving Bias Classroom Exercises: The Name-Letter Effect (p. 818) Biased Self-Ratings (p. 818) Self-Handicapping (p. 819) Taking Credit for Success, Denying Responsibility for Failure (p. 819)

RESOURCES Introducing Personality Feature Film: Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring The text uses J. R. R. Tolkien’s character Sam Gamgee, loyal companion to Frodo Baggins, to illustrate the distinctiveness and consistency that define personality. Sam never fails Frodo. He is cheerful, conscientious, optimistic, and, most notably, loyal. You may want to show a clip that occurs at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first in the series. Scene 39 on the DVD, titled “The Road Goes Ever On . . .,” contains the moving moment in which Frodo leaves by boat for the dreaded land of Mordor. Sam, following at some distance, pursues Frodo, even though he can’t swim. Sam’s near-drowning ends with the friends clasping hands and Sam’s statement of allegiance never to leave: “I made a promise, Mr. Frodo. . . .” Scene 39 begins at 2:44 hours. You can run it for four minutes, or if you prefer, to the end of the scene. Classroom Exercise: Introducing Personality John Brink provides an excellent small-group exercise for introducing the topic of personality. Tell your class that in attempting to understand personality, a good place to start is with ourselves. Have students describe their own personality by simply answering the question “Who am I?” on a piece of paper. Have them write at the top of the page “I am . . .” and then number from 1 to 20. Beside each number they should list what they consider to be some of their own positive and negative personality qualities. After giving them 5 minutes or so to answer, have them form small groups of 4 to 6 students each. Write the following instructions on the chalkboard: 1. Introduce yourself to the other group members and tell them about your personality. 2. As a group identify the four descriptive terms used most frequently on the exercise. Why do you think these specific terms were used to describe personality?

3. Identify any of the self-descriptive terms that do not really qualify as personality characteristics. What makes a personal quality part of your personality? Brink concludes the exercise by introducing a definition of personality that parallels the one in the text: “Personality is the organization of enduring behavior patterns that often serve to distinguish us from one another.” In highlighting important components of this definition, he notes first that personality involves distinctiveness or uniqueness of character. Thus, understandably, personality psychologists study individual differences and construct tests to measure those differences. Sec­ond, personality involves enduring behavior patterns, and thus consistency or predictability of character. We expect people to stay somewhat the same over time. Thus, when we see an old friend after an absence of several years, we often think, “Yes, it’s the same old Harry.” Finally, personality involves the organization of individuality. Personality involves an internal coherence or unified organization of character that embraces the whole person. Personality theorists have argued that an adequate understanding of behavior demands an integrative understanding of various processes operating within the individual. In attempting a grand synthesis, personality psychologists easily run the risk of generalizing and providing speculative analyses. But this is also what makes personality theory exciting. It seeks to address big questions such as the following: How are mind and body related? Is personality inherited or learned? Do humans have free will? Is there a self? Is the self knowable? Lecture/Discussion Topic: Issues in Personality Theory B. R. Hergenhahn observes that while other psychologists are concerned with human perception, intelligence, motivation, or development, personality theorists are in the unique position of studying the entire person. They have the monumental task of synthesizing the best information from the diverse fields of the discipline into a coherent, holistic configuration. In the course of their work, personality theorists address fundamental issues of human nature and individual differences. Duane

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Schultz has suggested that a theorist’s answers to the following basic questions define his or her image of human nature. 1. Free will or determinism? Do we have a conscious awareness and control of ourselves? Are we free to choose, to be masters of our fate, or are we victims of biological factors, unconscious forces, or external stimuli? 2. Nature or nurture? Is our personality determined primarily by the abilities, temperaments, or predispositions we inherit, or are we shaped more strongly by the environments in which we live? 3. Past, present, or future? Is personality development basically complete in early childhood? Or is personality independent of the past, capable of being influenced by events and experiences in the present and even by future aspirations and goals? 4. Uniqueness or universality? Is the personality of each individual unique or are there broad personality patterns that fit large numbers of persons? 5. Equilibrium or growth? Are we primarily tensionreducing, pleasure-seeking animals or are we motivated primarily by the need to grow, to reach our full potential to reach for ever-higher levels of selfexpression and development? 6. Optimism or pessimism? Are human beings basically good or evil? Are we kind and compassionate, or cruel and merciless? Hergenhahn, B. R., & Olson, M. H. (2007). An introduction to theories of personality (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Schultz, D., & Schultz, S. (2009). Theories of personality (9th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Classroom Exercise/Critical Thinking Break: Evaluating Personality Measures Available on the Internet It is a given that a lot of information available on the Internet is inaccurate or misleading. Many of the most egregious examples of “bad science” and information “illiteracy” on the web relates to personality measures. “Authoritative” websites seem to exist everywhere, all of which promise to help a person interpret behavioral patterns, predict preferences, achieve more successful relationships, and lead a more fulfilling life. Although much of the content on these sites stands in stark contrast to the scientific psychological literature, many of the personality websites provide engaging (and even humorous) case studies of how some people conceptualize personality; they also try to measure it and use personality indexes to predict psychological outcomes. These sites provide useful fodder for classroom activities, lecture breaks, and/or homework assignments to help reinforce what students are learning about the

science of personality, namely, the different theoretical perspectives on personality, the characteristics of a “good” personality test, and how personality test results can and should be used. Here are some examples: • Personality Quiz.net (www.personalityquiz.net/ index.htm): This site offers a number of different categories of “personality tests” that reportedly help you link your preferences (e.g., favorite animals, ice cream flavors) to stable personality traits, match your horoscope to predictions for the future, and provide insight into the hows and whys of your love life. • Personality Test Center (www.personalitytest.net/ links/Personality_Tests/): This site offers a host of different categories of tests ranging from personality tests to intelligence/problem-solving tests. Some of the tests linked to the pages of this site have better scientific validity and reliability than others. • Similar Minds (www.similarminds.com/ personality_tests.html): This site includes many kinds of tests, including left- and right-brain tests and “global” personality tests. You can do many things with these sites, both in class and out of class. For instance: 1. Assign to small groups the task of scientifically reviewing specific personality tests (e.g., the Enneagram test [see later Student Project], a word association test, a “Famous Leader Test”). Have them prepare a summary of the information provided by the website regarding some or all of the following: the theoretical perspective that forms the basis of the test; the purpose of the test; the type(s) of people the test is intended for; how the test’s validity and reliability were established; any scientific literature about the test; their ethical concerns about this test being administered online; and how scores are meant to be used by test-takers. 2. Ask students to complete a couple of different tests that supposedly measure similar personality concepts. Then have them report on their scores from the various tests. Were the scores consistent? Why or why not? What variables (other than the personality components being measured) may have influenced the test results? How might taking the test expose the person to harm? Are the results useful in any way? 3. Have students select one personality test found on the web. They can work independently or in small groups. Then ask them to evaluate the results of the selected test. Fnally, ask them to “improve upon” the test to make it a better, more scientifically valid and reliable measure of personality. How would they do that?

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Classroom Exercise: Your Theory of Personality In a once-popular text on personality, Charles Potkay and Bem Allen provided a brief questionnaire, Handout 1, that enables students to explore their own personality theory. It serves as a good introduction to a discussion of personality, demonstrating that we all have a personal theory of human behavior. It can also be used after personality has been discussed. Have students compare their responses with the ideas of the major theorists,

as provided by Potkay and Allen and reprinted below. Not all theorists are covered on every dimension; the authors have included only theorists whose positions are clearest or most representative of a particular school of thought. The scale uses a range of 1 to 7, with the theorists listed below 1 closest to the left-hand perspective and those listed under 5 closest to the right-hand perspective.

Theorists’ Assumptions About Personality 1. heredity

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ environment Eysenck, Cattell, Skinner, Watson, Rotter, Sheldon, Freud, Jung Bandura, Rogers

2. self

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ Rogers, Maslow, Erikson, Watson, Skinner, Rotter, Horney, Jung Mischel

no self

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 3. unchanging _________________________________________________ changing Freud, Eysenck, Cattell Rogers, Mischel, Social Learning 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 4. past _________________________________________________ future Freud, Jung, Fromm, Adler, Rogers, Maslow, Eysenck Bandura 5. general

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ unique Watson, Skinner, Eysenck, Adler, Rogers, Bandura, Fromm Rotter

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 6. self-centered _________________________________________________ altruistic Freud, Jung Adler, Fromm, Maslow, Rogers, Bandura 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7. reward _________________________________________________ punishment Skinner, Bandura, Freud, Watson Maslow 8. personal

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ social Rogers, Maslow, Fromm Skinner, Bandura, Mischel

9. constructive

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ destructive Adler, Rogers, Maslow Freud

10. no purpose

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ purpose Skinner, Watson, Adler, Fromm, Horney, Bandura, Mischel Rogers, Maslow, Jung

Source: Reprinted by permission of the authors from Potkay, C. R., and Allen, B. P. (1986). Personality: Theory, research, and applications. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. © Charles R. Potkay.

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Psychodynamic Theories Freud’s Psychoanalytic Perspective: Exploring the Unconscious Classroom Exercise: Fifteen Freudian Principle Statements Marianne Miserandino has designed an exercise to introduce psychoanalytic theory, and more specifically to help students appreciate the impact of Sigmund Freud on modern American culture. In Hand­out 2 students indicate their degree of agreement or disagreement with 15 statements designed to represent the breadth of Freudian concepts. The statements are worded so that a Freudian psychologist would strongly agree with 9 and disagree with 6 of them. In scoring their own responses, students should first re­verse the numbers they placed in front of statements 1, 2, 7, 9, 13, and 15. Then, to obtain a total score, they should add the numbers in front of all 15 statements. Scores can range from 15 to 75, with higher scores re­flecting greater agreement with a Freudian perspective. Miserandino suggests that discussion focus on why students believe as they do. How did they come to accept or reject these statements? What kinds of evidence should be used to evaluate the truth or falsehood of the statements? Were some of the statements true in the past but not today? Would people from other cultures respond to these statements differently? Do responses indicate a double standard of acceptable behavior for men and women on questions about fathers and daughters (statement 8) versus mothers and sons (statement 4) or of dating an older person (statements 11 and 14)? Finally, can students identify the Freudian concepts and reasoning behind the statements? Miserandino provides a brief summary of the basic tenets of Freud’s theory as they relate to Handout 2: —Freud argued that humans are driven by life instincts (e.g., sex) and by death instincts (e.g., aggression). —If either anxiety or social constraints prevent direct expression of these drives, they will be expressed indirectly or unconsciously. Freud maintained that the aggressive drive is often sublimated into competition and achievement. —Dreams and Freudian slips provide two ways of studying unconscious wishes or impulses. —Individuals pass through a series of psychosexual stages during which id impulses of a sexual nature find a socially acceptable outlet. —Unresolved conflicts between id impulses and social restrictions during childhood continue to influence one’s personality in adulthood. —People who smoke, overeat, or chew gum presumably have had trouble with feeding and weaning early in the oral stage.

—Problems with toilet training during the anal stage may lead to the development of anal-expulsive or anal-retentive personalities in adulthood. —Problems during the genital stage may be expressed in an Oedipus complex and castration anxiety in men and in an Electra complex and penis envy in women. Because of penis envy, women fixated at this stage symbolically castrate men through embarrassment, deception, and derogation. Miserandino, M. (1994). Freudian principles in everyday life. Teaching of Psychology, 21, 93–95.

Classroom Exercise: Demonstrating Personality Structure Dan J. Segrist provides a very helpful exercise for demonstrating Freud’s view of personality structure. After you have introduced the id, ego, and superego in class, recruit nine volunteers for the demonstration. Take them outside the classroom and randomly assign them to one of three groups. Briefly tell each group that it will play a part of your psyche and give them instructions for id, ego, or superego. Although the scenario involves sexual attraction, it can readily be changed to a nonsexual situation, for example, being hungry, feeling angry at a parent, finding a lost wallet with money in it, or being in a crowd of customers during a store special sales event and attempting to get a high-demand consumer product that has been advertised but is in short supply. ID instructions: Welcome to my psyche! Your group is going to be my ID! Imagine that I am at a shopping mall and have just seen an attractive woman walk by. Remember that the ID is driven by the pleasure principle and seeks to have physical needs met immediately—with no regard for consequences. Your group’s task is to come up with ideas of what the ID might “say” in this situation. EGO instructions: Welcome to my psyche! Your group is going to be my EGO! Imagine that I am at a shopping mall and have just seen an attractive woman walk by. Remember that the EGO is governed by the reality principle and seeks to gratify the id’s impulses in realistic ways that will bring long-term pleasure rather than pain or destruction. Your group’s task is to come up with ideas of what the EGO might “say” in this situation. SUPEREGO instructions: Welcome to my psyche! Your group is going to be my SUPEREGO! Imagine that I am at a shopping mall and have just seen an attractive woman walk by. Remember that the SUPEREGO is the voice of conscience, strives for perfection, and focuses solely on how we ought to behave. Your group’s task is to come up with ideas of what the SUPEREGO might “say” in this situation.

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Tell the groups that they should be prepared to respond to statements from other parts of the psyche. Add a few important caveats. If you use sexual attraction, make it clear that the model does not implicitly assume heterosexuality. For simplicity, Segrist indicates that the volunteers should assume he is attracted to women. Also tell the groups (the id group in particular) that their comments have the potential to be offensive to some students and disconcerting to any student who has been sexually victimized. Thus, they should avoid clearly objectionable or hostile comments. When you return to the classroom, place each group behind you, corresponding to how “conscious” Freud considered each structure to be. So, place the id farthest back, behind you on your right. Place the ego immediately behind you on the left side, and the superego behind the ego even farther to the left. Sit facing the class and announce theatrically, “Here I am sitting in the mall, and look at that. . . . an attractive woman is walking by.” The groups then shout out statements according to their psyche role (e.g., id: “WOW, look at THAT! She’s HOT!; superego: “You should be ashamed of yourself! Look at the ring on your finger! What would your wife and kids say!”; ego: “Go ahead and look, just don’t touch.”). In class discussion, include consideration of the placement of the three structures relative to their levels of consciousness. You can also include discussion of the defense mechanisms the ego might employ (e.g., denial: “She’s really not that attractive.”). Ask your class which group was “loudest” or “strongest” and what might that imply about your personality. For example, if the superego is dominant, one might feel anxious or ashamed and experience little pleasure. Segrist suggests possible alternatives to this exercise, including dividing the entire class into triads in which each student plays the role of id, ego, or superego. Another option is to have each student alternate between the three structures, discussing which role seems most difficult and why. Students can even create their own scenarios in which the id, ego, and superego would be in conflict. These various strategies all enable your class to see the id, ego, and superego in action and provide a better understanding of Freud’s view of personality structure. Segrist, D. J. (2009). What’s going on in your professor’s head? Demonstrating the id, ego, and superego. Teaching of Psychology, 36, 51–54. Copyright 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Freudian Slips The president of the Austrian parliament opens a session by thundering, “I declare this meeting closed!” In answer­ing his phone, a preoccupied business execu-

tive picks up the receiver and bellows, “Come in.” At a copying machine, a secretary counts copies: “eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king.” A jogger, just finishing her run, tosses her shirt into the toilet instead of the laundry hamper. Freud believed that such slips were motivated by unconscious conflicts. A hidden motive could presumably be found for even the most innocuous mistake if it were investigated with psychoanalytic methods. “The Austrian president,” wrote Freud, “secretly wished he was already in a position to close the meeting from which little good was to be expected.” Today’s cognitive psychologists favor a more parsimonious explanation for the slips that are part of everyday life. They argue that they are a natural by-product of how our minds process information and direct action. For example, the single most common type of slip seems to involve the intrusion of a strong habit. An activity that is more familiar, is more frequent, or has been recently performed interferes with the intended behavior. The secretary at the copy machine had recently been playing cards. Psychologist Donald Norman calls this kind of mistake a “capture error.” Norman states: “Pass too near a well-formed habit and it will capture your behavior.” If the habit is strong enough, even cues that only partially match the situation in which it usually occurs are likely to activate it. Norman cites William James’ report of the absentminded person who went to the bedroom to dress for dinner but instead put on his pajamas and got into bed. Most actions, argues Norman, are carried out automatically, by subconscious mechanisms. At a conscious level we make a general selection, but the actual execution of the intended act occurs without further reflection. Such “mental laziness” is typically beneficial, for it permits us to save our mental resources for more important things. Occasionally, however, we may forget whether we have performed the action, as is evident in this psy­chologist’s report: “As I was leaving the bathroom this morning, it suddenly struck me that I couldn’t remember whether or not I had shaved. I had to feel my chin to establish that I had.” Attention is the critical factor in preventing slips. When attention lags, a competing response is more likely to replace the intended one. Sometimes the components of an action may become “misblended,” as when inde­cision about whether to say “momentary” or “instantaneous” produces “momentaneous.” Or Norman gives an example many of us can identify with: We decide not to take another bite of a delicious but calorie-laden cake but, after a brief lapse, the cake somehow is eaten anyway!

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Jerry Burger notes the inherent difficulty of studying Freudian slips experimentally. They occur when we least expect them and research participants could talk a long time without ever making one. However, researchers have developed ingenious ways of circumventing the problem. For example, male undergraduates in one study were asked to complete some innocent-looking sentences either in the presence of an attractive and scantily clad female experimenter or with a male experimenter. According to Freud, which group would make more slips of the tongue? When completing sentences such as “With the telescope, the details of the distant landscape were easy to . . . .” those in the femaleexperimenter group were more likely to say “make out” than were other participants. For the sentence, “The lid won’t stay on regardless of how much I . . .” the same men were more likely to respond with “screw it.” In a second study, men were asked to read quickly presented word pairs. Those in the presence of the woman were more likely to read “bine-foddy” as “fine body” and “lood-gegs” as “good legs.” As Burger indicates, these findings may be used to support Freudian theory. However, other interpretations are clearly possible. For example, linguists would be likely to explain these slips in terms of cognitive connections and the activation of linguistic pathways. That is, the salience of sexuality in these situations activates our memory of sexually related information. They prepare a kind of cognitive pathway between the beginning of the sentence and the double-entendre word, making selection of the sexually related word more likely. Burger, J. (2008). Personality (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Norman, D. A. (1980, April). Post-Freudian slips. Psychology Today, 42–50.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Freud’s View of Humor The text notes that Freud viewed jokes as expressions of repressed sexual and aggressive tendencies. Was he right? It’s a fascinating classroom topic. For example, researchers have found that one type of aggressive humor never disappears. It seems particularly popular among adolescents, but no age group is exempt. Your older students may recognize it in the form of “dead baby,” “Helen Keller,” or “Mommy, Mommy” jokes (“Mommy, why do I keep running in circles?” “Shut up, kid, or I’ll nail your other foot down.” “Mommy, mommy, may I go out and play with Grandma? “Shut up, kid, you dug her up twice already this week.”) In Freud’s day, “marriage broker” jokes were popular. They always began with a young man visiting a broker to arrange a marriage with a young woman. For example, Freud relates the following:

 he bridegroom was most disagreeably surprised when T the bride was introduced to him, and drew the broker to the side and whispered his remonstrances: “She’s ugly and old, she squints and has bad teeth and bleary eyes . . . .” “You needn’t lower your voice,” interrupted the broker, “she’s deaf as well.”

Most people groan, half-smile, and follow it with a complaint about the joke being in bad taste. Nonethe­ less, the jokes are passed on and remain popular. Freud analyzed such humor in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Although he fully recognized that jokes could take different forms, he was most interested in tendentious humor, which presumably brought insight into the unconscious of the joke teller as well as the listener who laughs. Tendentious jokes, maintained Freud, deal with hostility and sex. For Freud, “Mommy, Mommy” and “marriage broker” jokes allow the expression of impulses normally kept in check. Our egos and superegos typically prevent attacks on others. Aggressive jokes allow us to express our hostile impulses in a socially appropriate manner. Who could object to an innocent and harmless joke? Freud wrote, “By making our enemy small, inferior, despicable, or comic, we achieve in a roundabout way the enjoyment of overcoming him.” Similarly, jokes on sexual topics provide a socially appropriate outlet for our sexual impulses. Jerry Burger shares his experience of normally conservative and proper people who would never bring up the topic of sex in public yet feel comfortable dealing with the taboo topic by repeating a joke “someone told me.” Researchers have found that sexual jokes provide adolescent girls with a way to introduce embarrassing topics into their lunchtime conversations. Freud observed that laughter following a tendentious joke is rarely justified by the content of the joke itself. We laugh not because the joke is funny but as a form of tension reduction, or catharsis. The description of aggressive or sexual behavior creates tension at the beginning of the joke. The punch line releases that tension. We experience pleasure from the jokes not because they are clever or witty but because they reduce anxiety. “Strictly speaking,” concluded Freud, “we do not know what we are laughing at. The technique of such jokes is often quite wretched, but they have immense success in provoking laughter.” Contemporary research indicates that people often find jokes and cartoons funnier when they contain sexual or aggressive themes. We also enjoy hostile humor more when it is aimed at someone we dislike. Several studies also indicate that laughter can be an effective means to combat daily tension and stressful events. One alternative explanation is that humor is often a response to incongruity. That is, it results from an inconsistency between what we expect in a situation and what

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happens in the joke. According to this analysis, people may find sexual and aggressive humor funny simply because sex and aggression are out of place in the joke setting. Burger, J. (2008). Personality (7th ed). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Freud, S. (1886–1936/1964). The complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vols. 1–24). London: Hogarth.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Case of Little Hans Charles Potkay and Bem Allen describe Freud’s case study of Little Hans as the cornerstone of Freud’s ideas about the Oedipus complex. Five-year-old Hans was afraid to leave his house because of an irrational fear that a horse would bite him. Hans developed the fear after having seen a horse fall down in the street. Freud believed that the real target of Hans’ fear was something else; through displacement Hans’s unconscious anxiety had merely been redirected from its original source onto horses. Freud suggested that Hans was actually afraid of his erotic feelings toward his mother and aggressive wishes toward his father. He supported his hypothesis with the following observations. 1. Hans has said he wanted to sleep with his mother, “coax with” or caress her, be married to her, and have children “just like daddy.” 2. Hans experienced castration anxiety. His parents warned that if he continued to play with his “widdler” (penis), it would be cut off. He noticed that his sister had no “widdler.” 3. Hans wanted his mother all to himself, was jealous of his father, and feared his mother would prefer his father’s bigger widdler, which was “like a horse.” Key: A. Repression B. Regression C. Reaction Formation D. Rationalization

1. E 2. A 3. C 4. G 5. F 6. D 7. E

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

4. Hans was most afraid of horses with black muzzles, similar to his father’s black moustache. Hans had “accidentally” knocked a statue of a horse from its stand. When he saw a real horse fall down, he recognized his own aggressive impulse that his father fall down and die, an idea that frightened him and that he could not consciously acknowledge. Horses, then, were symbolic substitutes for Hans’s father, whom he both feared and hated. 5. Through psychoanalysis, the unconscious was made conscious. Hans’s fears were brought into the open and he achieved insight. Freud observed, “Hans was really a little Oedipus who wanted to have his father ‘out of the way,’ to get rid of him, so that he might be alone with his handsome mother and sleep with her.” Potkay, C. R., & Allen, B. P. (1986). Personality: Theory, research and application. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Classroom Exercise: Defense Mechanisms Handout 3 allows students to apply their understanding of a number of the major defense mechanisms: repression, regression, reaction formation, rationalization, displacement, sublimation, and projection. The exercise will help them move from the abstract to the concrete and to recognize the operation of these defenses in everyday behavior. After students have read the text material and you have briefly reviewed the general form each defense mechanism takes, distribute the handout, asking students to work individually or in small groups. Correct answers (students may suggest other possibilities) are given below, using the following key.

E. Displacement F. Sublimation G. Projection

F B A C E G D

15. B 16. F 17. A 18. C 19. D 20. B 21. E

22. A 23. F 24. G 25. D 26. C 27. G 28. F

29. C 30. B 31. D 32. G 33. B 34. E 35. A

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Classroom Exercise: Defense Mechanism Miniskits Mary Inman of Hope College uses miniskits to provide students with the opportunity to apply their understanding of the major defense mechanisms. Your class is certain to find her exercise both helpful and enjoyable. Prepare copies of the dialogues below and solicit pairs of volunteers to enact the skits for the rest of the class. Give the actors a minute or two to review the scenarios before presenting (reading) them to their classmates. After each dialogue, ask your students what defense mechanism was illustrated. Also ask your class why they gave that answer. Correct answers are the following: 1. regression; 2. displacement; 3. sublimation; 4. reaction formation; 5. rationalization; 6. repression; 7. projection; 8. rationalization; 9. sublimation (Although the text also includes denial, that defense mechanism was not part of Inman’s exercise.) Skit 1 (Two friends: a college student [coll] and a senior in high school [hs]) (hs: knock on the door of college friend) coll: (Answers. Surprised to see hs. Very happy) coll: Come in! Welcome to college! hs: What’s college like? coll: I love it. I’m so independent. I have my own checkbook, car, I do what I want. I can skip class if I want. I’m my own boss. I call the shots. I feel so mature. hs: That’s cool. I’d like to stay the weekend if that’s OK. coll: Sure! hs: By the way, do you have that $50 you owe me? I won’t be able to go to the prom without it. I need it now. coll: (Hostile) I can’t believe you demand this out of the blue! I don’t have it. hs: Well, I want it now. You are so irresponsible. I’m leaving! (Storms out) coll: (Whines, pouts, picks up the phone and calls mom for help and advice, looking for comfort, sucks thumb if necessary.) Hi, Mommy, it is so nice to hear your voice. You won’t believe what Jane/John Smith just did. (Whining) He/she just showed up out of the blue and demanded money from me. I miss you so much. Could you give me advice like you always used to? (pause) I miss the days when you would take care of me. Skit 2 (One person) Act like you are a top baseball player. You are up to bat. Twice you swing and miss (two strikes). The third is an easy pitch. Again you swing and strike out. When this happens you throw the bat, kick the dirt, and yell at the umpire with all your might.

Skit 3 (Two friends, one returning from the Iraqi war) Person 1: Welcome back, buddy! I hear you have been back from the Gulf war for about a month. I heard there was a lot of violence over there. What are you doing with yourself now? Person 2: (Enthusiastically) I had a good time in Iraq. Now, I’m working as a police officer in the dangerous upper side of town. Skit 4 (One person: male) (You have a strong attraction toward women but you will become a woman hater.) (call up a friend on the phone) male: Hi, Bill. This is Kevin. What are you doing? Oh, you have Shelly there. Yeah, aren’t women great? It would be nice to have a relationship. (pause) Oh, you ask how my date went with Kathy? Well, (pause) you know, I was looking forward to going out with her. She did not take to me too well.

Now, I figure . . . What’s the use? You know the phrase: Women, you can’t live with them and you can’t shoot them. I have decided, who needs women?—they are the cause for many of our society’s problems.

Skit 5 (Two friends at a bar: John, who is a habitual drinker, and Tim, his friend) John is sitting at the bar drinking. Tim approaches. Tim: Hey, John. How long have you been sitting here? John: All day. (guzzling beer) Tim: Hey, don’t you think you had enough? You have been drinking a lot every day for several months. John: Don’t worry. I really don’t like the taste of alcohol. I’m just drinking to hang out and be sociable. Skit 6 (Two people: an interviewer [I] and a concentration camp survivor [Eisel]) I: I’m talking with Eisel who lived in Auschwitz concentration camp for two months when she was 15 years old. Tell me, Eisel, what was it like in the camp? Eisel: I really don’t remember. I recall the police taking us to the trains and the next thing I knew, we were being released. Skit 7 (Two people: an employee and boss) Employee: (Works at a store and shows temptation to steal some of the merchandise.) Another day at Sears. (Look around making sure no one is watching. Start dusting

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a CD player.) Boy, this CD player looks mighty fine. It would go great in my room, with that big 36-inch TV over there. (You spot the boss and go back to work. Then you go over to the boss, a little nervous, and start a conversation). Employee: Hello, Mr. Biggs. I must say you are running a great store here. (pause, show nervousness) I must tell you something though. I think that other employees are stealing from you. I’ve seen a few of them looking hungrily at the CD players and television sets. Boss: Why, thank you, Peters, I’ll keep a close look out. Skit 8 (Two students coming out of an exam) Student 1 (noncheater): Boy, that was a hard exam. Don’t you agree? In fact, I saw you peeking at Kim’s answers. Student 2 (cheater): Yeah, I cheated, but I think cheating is legitimate with an unfair exam like this one. Student 1: (rolls eyes). Yeah, whatever. Skit 9 (Two females: Kim, a concerned mother, and her friend Becky) Kim: Hi, Becky. I am really worried about my son, Johnny. He pulls wings off flies and jabs pins in the dog. Becky: Don’t worry. His pulling wings off flies is a good sign that he might become a dentist (pause) and his pleasure in sticking animals could be useful if he becomes a nurse. The Neo-Freudian and Psychodynamic Theorists Lecture/Discussion Topic: Freud’s Legacy and the NeoAnalytic Movement In reflecting on Sigmund Freud’s legacy, Drew Westen begins, “Freud, like Elvis, has been dead for a number of years but continues to be cited with some regularity.” Westen notes that “Many aspects of Freudian theory are indeed out of date, and they should be: Freud died in 1939, and he has been slow to undertake further revisions. His critics, however, are equally behind the times, attacking Freudian views of the 1920s as if they continue to have some currency in their original form. Psychodynamic theory and therapy have evolved considerably since 1939 when Freud’s bearded countenance was last sighted in earnest.”

Westen argues that contemporary psychoanalysts and psychodynamic theorists no longer write about ids and egos or view psychotherapy as the search for lost memories. However, they do embrace the following five core postulates, which in large measure reflect Freud’s enduring contributions to the understanding of human personality. 1. The most central proposition is that much of mental life—thoughts, feelings, and motives—is unconscious. This means that people show behavior patterns and develop symptoms that are inexplicable to themselves. 2. Mental processes, including affective and motivational processes, operate in parallel, so that individuals can have conflicting feelings toward the same person or situation. These conflicting feelings motivate them to act in opposing ways and often lead to compromise solutions. 3. Stable personality patterns start to form in early childhood, and people’s early experiences play a significant role in personality development, especially in the ways they form later social relationships. 4. Mental representations or understandings of the self, others, and relationships guide people’s social interactions and influence the ways in which they develop psychological symptoms. 5. Personality development involves more than learning to regulate sexual and aggressive impulses. It requires moving from immature, social dependence to mature independence. Cooper, A. (2006). Contemporary psychoanalysis in America: Leading analysts present their work. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing. Dufresne, T. (2007). Against Freud: Critics talk back. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Orange, D. (2009). Thinking for clinicians: Philosophical resources for contemporary psychoanalysis and the humanistic psychotherapies. New York: Routledge. Westen, D. (1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 333–371.

Student Project/Classroom Exercise: Earliest Recollections Page 456 of the Memory unit includes this project/exercise, which provides an introduction to Alfred Adler’s view that our earliest recollections are the “most trustworthy way of exploring personality.” If you did not use it then, you may want to use it now in relation to psychodynamic theories of personality.

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Assessing Unconscious Processes Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective and Modern Views of the Unconscious Lecture/Discussion Topic: Unconscious Insights Robert Siegler asks the following intriguing questions: Do our insights occur at an unconscious (i.e., nonreportable) level before they occur consciously? Do our insights arise suddenly or gradually? The questions have been difficult to address empirically simply because we cannot know that people have an insight until they tell us. Working with Elsbeth Stern, Siegler found a way to obtain independent measures of conscious and unconscious insights and thus to examine the relation between them. On an inversion problem of the form A + B – B (e.g., 18 + 24 – 24), the answer is always A. Such a problem can be solved in either an insightful or a computational way. In addition to allowing both insightful and noninsightful solutions, the inversion task has the unusual property of allowing independent measurement of conscious insight through verbal report and unconscious insight through solution time. (Insightful solution times are significantly shorter.) Previous research has indicated that young schoolage children are quite accurate in reporting their arithmetic strategies. Thus, they were involved in testing the unconscious activation hypothesis, namely, that people first use a strategy unconsciously and then, as the activation increases they become conscious of using the strategy. In short, the unconscious shortcut emerges before the conscious version of the strategy. Siegler and Stern created two experimental conditions. In the blocked-problems condition, children were presented only problems that could be solved by the inversion principle. In the mixed-problems condition, half the problems could be solved by the shortcut strategy. On the basis of the unconscious activation hypothesis, the researchers predicted that presenting inversion problems on all trials would lead children to activate the shortcut more rapidly, which in turn would lead to (a) more rapid discovery of the shortcut strategy (discovery after fewer inversion problems), (b) a shorter gap between discovery of the unconscious shortcut (short solution time but nonreport of strategy) and conscious (short solution time and report of strategy) discovery of the shortcut, (c) more consistent use of the shortcut on inversion problems once it was discovered, and (d) greater generalization of the strategy to novel problems. Working with 31 German second graders, the researchers found support for each of their predictions. Almost 90 percent of the children discovered the unconscious version of the shortcut before the

conscious version. Moreover, relative to the children in the mixed-problems condition, children in the blockedproblems condition discovered both the unconsciousshortcut and shortcut strategies after seeing fewer inversion problems, they exhibited a shorter gap between discovery of the two strategies, they used the strategies more often once they discovered them, and they generalized the strategies more widely to novel types of problems. Interestingly, results in the blocked-problems condition indicated that just before their first use of the unconscious shortcut, all the children used the computational strategy. After their initial use of the unconscious shortcut, most of them continued to use the unconscious shortcut over the next three trials. By the fourth trial, half the children reported using the shortcut. By the fifth trial, 80 percent of the children did so. Results indicated that insights are not always conscious. Furthermore, insights are abrupt in one sense but gradual in another. The dramatic reduction in solution times that accompanied the first use of the unconscious shortcut indicated insight was abrupt. On the other hand, insight was gradual in that children initially discovered the strategy in a nonreportable form and only later became able to report using it. The Consciousness and the Two-Track Mind unit in these resources provides examples of unconscious adult insights, including the role of the unconscious in decision making and evaluative judgment. If you did not use the Lecture/Discussion topics “DeliberationWithout-Attention Effect” or “Psychological Distance and Evaluative Judgment” earlier, you may want to do so now. Siegler, R. (2000). Unconscious insights. Contemporary Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 79–83.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Terror-Management Theory and the Scrooge Effect Research on terror-management theory indicates that thinking about one’s mortality provokes enough anxiety to intensify prejudices. Findings suggest that death anxiety motivates contempt for others and esteem for oneself. All of this points to a rather bleak picture regarding the effect of mortality salience (our awareness of our personal mortality). However, as Jeff Joireman and Blythe Duell have noted, other studies suggest that thinking about one’s death has a silver lining. For example, mortality salience seems to lead people to contribute more money to ingroup charities, a result that has been dubbed the Scrooge effect (after, of course, Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol). Because mortality salience increased contributions to ingroup but not outgroup charities, Joireman and Duell wondered whether the Scrooge effect reflected a strengthening of ingroup bias or a fundamental shift

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toward a more prosocial orientation. In an effort to answer that question, they examined how mortality salience and preexisting individual differences in social value orientation (“proselfs” value their own wellbeing, “prosocials” value others’ well-being) jointly influence the importance that people assign to selftranscendent values (benevolence and universalism) versus self-enhancement values (power, achievement, hedonism). The researchers reasoned that thinking about one’s death might make proselfs but not prosocials more likely to endorse self-transcendent values (i.e., the Ebenezer Scrooge hypothesis). This hypothesis assumes that both prosocials and proselfs share the common worldview that prosocial values and behavior are good. However, when that worldview is made salient, proselfs are reminded that they are not living up to those values; prosocials already live up to the worldview, so they will remain unaffected. Another possible explanation is that mortality salience will exaggerate preexisting differences between prosocials and proselfs because they hold different worldviews, with the former emphasizing the importance of morality and the latter the importance of power. A final possibility is that both prosocial and proselfs will show an increase in self-transcendent values. In initial experiments, proselfs were less likely than prosocials to endorse self-transcendent values in a dental pain-control condition but were indistinguishable from prosocials in a mortality salience condition as proselfs increased their endorsement of self-transcendent values. This was consistent with the Ebenezer Scrooge hypothesis. Subsequent studies, however, indicated that proselfs did not transform into prosocials as a result of mortality salience if they were given reasons to disidentify with self-transcendent values and behavior or to identify with self-enhancement values. (In effect, they read an unfavorable story about a prosocial person or a favorable story about a proself person before thinking about death.) Joireman and Duell conclude that their first hypothesis is correct, that at a fundamental level proselfs and prosocials share a common cultural worldview that prosocial values and behavior are good and that proselfs believe they fall short of meeting the standards of that worldview. Thus, mortality salience transforms Ebenezer Scrooges into being more prosocial but does not have the same effect on the Mother Teresas of the world, who already are inclined to be prosocial. At the same time, it does not seem difficult to eliminate the Scrooge effect. This is consistent with other studies that have found that mortality salience does not increase ingroup bias when people are given reasons to disidentify with their ingroup.

Joireman, J., & Duell, B. (2005). Mother Teresa versus Ebenezer Scrooge: Mortality salience leads proselfs to endorse self-transcendent values (unless proselfs are reassured). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 307–320.

Classroom Exercise: The False Consensus Effect Mary E. Kite provides a brief yet effective classroom demonstration of the false consensus effect, a modernday version of Freud’s defense mechanism of projection. Present students with an opinion—for example, “Barack Obama is a good president,” or “I like Jay Leno,” and ask them to indicate their degree of agreement on a scale ranging from (1) strongly agree to (5) strongly disagree. (To simplify, you could use a yes-no format.) Also ask students to estimate the percentage of people in the class that they believe share their opinion. By a show of hands, ask how many selected each response and record the number on the board. After computing the percentage of students choosing each option, have students indicate by a show of hands whether they overestimated the number of people in agreement with them. Kite reports that in her classes at least 60 percent of students overestimated the commonality of their opinions. Note that research indicates that the false consensus effect seems to hold across reference groups (e.g., friends in school versus all students in general) and issues (e.g., preferred type of bread or preferred presidential candidate). However, the strongest false consensus effects emerge with factual information or political expectations (e.g., future use of nuclear weapons, outcome of presidential elections). Some have suggested that the bias may reflect people’s tendency to overestimate the probability of events easily brought to mind (the availability heuristic). Ask students what might be some costs and benefits of a false consensus for individuals and society. Finally, ask them whether having others agree with us makes our opinions “correct.” Kite, M. (1991). Observer biases in the classroom. Teaching of Psychology, 18, 161–164.

Humanistic Theories Abraham Maslow’s Self-Actualizing Person Lecture/Discussion Topic: Obstacles to SelfActualization If the tendency toward self-actualization is innate, why are not more adults self-actualized? Maslow estimated that only 1 percent are. He offered four basic explanations for this low number. 1. Self-actualization is at the top of the motivational hierarchy. This makes it the weakest of all needs

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and the most easily impeded. He wrote, “This inner nature is not strong and overpowering and unmistakable like the instincts of animals. It is weak and delicate and subtle and easily overcome by habit, cultural pressure, and wrong attitudes toward it.” 2. Maslow identified the Jonah complex as another obstacle to self-actualization. We fear and doubt our own abilities and potentialities. To become self-actualized, one must have enough courage to sacrifice safety for personal growth. Too often, fear takes precedence over the challenge of selfactualization. 3. The cultural environment may also stifle selfactualization by imposing certain norms on major segments of the population. Definitions of “manliness” may prevent the male child from developing traits such as sympathy, kindness, and tenderness, all of which characterize the self-actualized person. 4. Childhood experiences may inhibit personal growth. Maslow observed that children from warm, secure, friendly homes are more likely to choose experiences that lead to personal growth. Excessive control and coddling is obviously harmful but so is excessive permissiveness. Too much freedom in childhood can lead to anxiety and insecurity, which can prevent further growth. Maslow called for “freedom within limits” in which there is the right mixture of permissiveness and regulation. Hergenhahn, B., & Olson, M. (2011). An introduction to theories of personality (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Carl Rogers’ Person-Centered Perspective Feature Film: Dead Poets Society—Burying the True Self Dead Poets Society, an older film students are sure to appreciate, and readily available on DVD, provides a good opportunity to explore some of the central themes of the humanistic perspective. Robin Williams portrays English professor John Keating, who inspires students to find and express their true selves. He tries to provide a growth-promoting environment through genuineness, acceptance, and empathy. Like Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, Keating obviously recognizes the human need for self-actualization. At the same time, his school promotes conformity and his students’ parents, in imposing their own dreams for their children, inhibit their sons’ growth. They bury their children’s true selves. One of the most moving scenes comes 93 minutes into the film and runs approximately 14:30 minutes. Students who have wrestled with parental expectations will clearly identify with Neal Perry. Set the scene for your class by describing how, inspired by Keating, Neal is for the first time fulfilling his dream to be an actor. He does so in spite of

his father’s strong objections and expectation that his son will become a doctor. The clip begins with Neal’s extraordinarily well-received performance in a community play. Clearly, Neal relishes his role as actor; he has found his true self. However, midway through the play his father unexpectedly appears in the audience. His strong disapproval is obvious. Taking his son away immediately after the play, he delivers a tongue-lashing. He announces that Neal will be transferring to a military school. Initially protesting, Neal succumbs. Asked by his father what he’s feeling, he finally responds, “Nothing.” He buries his true self. The scene concludes tragically. During the night, Neal commits suicide. Classroom Exercise/Student Project: Perceived Self Versus Ideal Self Patricia Jarvis, Cynthia Nordstrom, and Karen Williams suggest a useful classroom exercise to highlight the distinction between the perceived self and the ideal self. Carl Rogers suggests that if our self-concept is negative, that is, if we fall far short of our ideal self, we feel dissatisfied and unhappy. It follows that parents, teachers, and friends should help others know, accept, and be true to themselves. Distribute two sheets of paper and have your students label the first sheet “Perceived Self.” Give them 10 minutes or so to write a description of how they see themselves. Giving them some examples of how you yourself might begin such an essay will help them get started. After the allotted time, have them label the second sheet “Ideal Self.” Tell them they have some “fantasy” time to describe who they would like to be. Again give them 10 minutes or so to write. Begin the discussion by asking your class if anyone wrote the same thing on both pages. Probably no one has described the perceived and ideal selves in the same way. Note that from a humanistic perspective, a fully functioning, self-actualized person finds the perceived self as completely congruent with the ideal self. Ask volunteers to indicate what might account for the discrepancies or incongruence. Why is there not complete overlap? Among the possible answers might be that people, particularly young people, are growing or maturing, or that most people have not yet achieved all the goals that parents or teachers have set for them. From a humanistic perspective, self-actualization includes the process of completely knowing and accepting ourselves. So, our major challenge is to achieve congruence among who we think we are (description 1), who we really are, and who we want to be (description 2). Jarvis, P. A., Nordstrom, C. R., & Williams, K. B. (2001). In-class activities manual for instructors of introductory psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Assessing the Self Evaluating Humanistic Theories Lecture Break: Generating Support for Humanistic Theories The humanistic perspective, despite having contributed greatly to the fields of counseling and education, has had limited influence on the discipline of psychology per se. The perspective has been criticized for producing little empirical scientific support for its principle tenets. Give your students an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of the humanistic perspective by asking them to summarize its key features and to outline the kinds of research that could be done—and the findings they would have to produce—in order to demonstrate support for it. Trait Theories Exploring Traits Classroom Exercise: Shyness You can extend a discussion of the trait perspective by introducing shyness, a trait that 80 percent of Americans claim to have possessed at some time and that 40 percent say continues to cause problems. Indeed, some celebrities have considered themselves to be shy, including David Letterman and Garrison Keillor. What is shyness? One model suggests that it consists of a cognitive component (acute public selfconsciousness, self-deprecating thoughts, and worries over a negative evaluation), a physiological component (heart pounding, upset stomach, and sweating), and a behavioral component (social incompetence, reticence, and inhibition). Jonathan Cheek reports that shy people suffer most from interactions with strangers, particularly those of the opposite sex. Shy people also typically feel more responsible for failure than for success, they remember mostly negative information about themselves, and they have a low expectancy for social success. Neuroscientists suggest that shy persons may have a more reactive amygdala (the part of the limbic system associated with fear). For example, Carl Schwartz and his colleagues found that adults who had been assessed as shy in early childhood showed a greater fMRI response within the amygdala to novel versus familiar faces, compared with “nonshy” adults. Jacqueline Bruce’s research team examined levels of the stress hormone cortisol in first-graders during the first week of school. They found that, in contrast to their nonshy counterparts, shy first graders showed an elevated cortisol level continuing into the fifth day. Jules Asher’s review examines the interaction of biology and environment in shyness. Some infants show

a strong physiological response to even mildly stressful situations and seem inherently inhibited. Others do not become shy until early adolescence, perhaps because their parents are socially anxious and provide models of shyness. Even the temperamentally shy, however, can be helped through good parenting and, if necessary, psychotherapy. Handout 4, the Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale, can be used to test students for this trait. Reverse the scores for items 3, 6, 9, and 12 (5 = 1, 4 = 2, 2 = 4, and 1 = 5). Cheek and Buss report a mean score of 36 for students. Keep the handouts anonymous; the shy students will naturally be embarrassed. Asher, J. (1987, April). Born to be shy? Psychology Today, 56–64. Bruce, J., Davis, E. P., & Gunnar, M. R. (2002). Individual differences in children’s cortisol response to the beginning of a new school year. Psychoneuroendo­ crinology, 27, 635–650. Cheek, J. M., & Buss, A. H. (1981). Shyness and sociability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 330–339. Cheek, J. M., & Melchior, L. A. (1990). Shyness, selfesteem, and self-consciousness. In H. Leitenberg (Ed.), Handbook of social and evaluation anxiety (pp. 47–82). New York: Plenum. Schwartz, C. E., Wright, C. I., Shin, L. M., Kagan, J., & Rauch, S. L. (2003). Inhibited and uninhibited infants “grown up”: Adult amygdalar response to novelty. Science, 300, 1952–1953.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Personality Traits of U.S. Presidents Steven J. Rubenzer and his colleagues have provided an interesting analysis of the personality traits of past U.S. presidents. The researchers asked 115 biographers, historians, and political scientists to help them rate the presidents on detailed personality trait scales in the five years before they took office. Rubenzer and his colleagues were particularly interested in the qualities linked to successful presidential job performance (ratings of success were obtained from hundreds of historians). The researchers reported that “openness to experience” produced the highest correlation with historian’s ratings of greatness. The best performers could learn as they went along. Being an extravert, assertive, and achievement-oriented were also strongly associated with success. On the other hand, being agreeable was not. That is, being cooperative and easily led did not mesh with greatness. Being straightforward was not predictive of greatness. In fact, a tendency to tell the truth, suggests Rubenzer, can actually harm a president’s shot at being considered historically “great.” Finally, “tendermindedness” is predictive of effective-

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ness. Great presidents “know it’s all about feelings,” argued Rubenezer, “theirs and the voters’.” Other interesting findings: • In general, the historians rated all the presidents as far less “straightforward” than typical citizens. Presidents scored only at the fifteenth percentile. Among those scoring lowest on being honest were Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lincoln seemed to soften his position on slavery in an attempt to keep the country unified. • Over time, presidents have become more extraverted but less curious and creative. • Washington was at the top of the class at being conscientious but ranked lower than today’s average American in openness, extraversion, and agreeableness. • Lincoln was moderately extraverted, agreeable, and conscientious. But, unlike other successful presidents, he was neurotic, occasionally suffering bouts of deep despair. • Being a bit disorganized, like Lincoln, was also an asset. Tidiness was not. • Openness to experience overlaps with intelligence, because one must be intelligent to appreciate new experiences. Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson scored high on both. • Jimmy Carter had two fatal flaws: a lack of assertive­ness and a tendency to be straightforward (as demonstrated). Dingfelder, S. F. (2004, November). A presidential personality. Monitor on Psychology, 26–28. Rubenzer, S., Ones, D. S., & Faschingbauer, T. (2000, August). Personality traits of U.S. presidents. Paper presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.

Classroom Exercise: Extraversion and Emotional Stability Hans and Sybil Eysenck believe that we can reduce many of our individual variations to two or three genetically influenced dimensions, including extraversion– introversion and emotional stability–instability (also called neuroticism). Analysis of the answers to specific questions given by people around the world have found that these two factors inevitably emerge as basic personality dimensions. A scale to assess these two personality factors is provided in the Intelligence unit (see “The Factor Analysis Approach”); if you did not use it earlier, you may want to use it now to introduce the Eysencks’ trait approach to personality. Each factor represents a continuous, normally distributed range between polar opposites. Each respondent can be placed somewhere along the line between extreme introvert and extreme extravert or between per-

fect emotional stability and complete emotional chaos. Most people fall somewhere near the middle. The third underlying aspect of personality, which is not identified in the text, is psychoticism. Playing a somewhat smaller role in personality than the first two factors, psychoticism is not a dimension with polar opposites. Rather, it is an ingredient that is present to varying degrees in individual personalities. Psych­ot­ icism is characterized by 11 dispositions: solitary (not caring for people); troublesome or not fitting in; cruel; lacks feeling; sensation seeking; aggressive; likes odd, unusual things; disregards danger; likes to make fools of other people, upsetting them; opposes accepted social customs; engages in little personal interaction— for example, prefers “impersonal sex.” Liebert, R., & Spiegler, M. (1998). Personality: Strategies and issues (8th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Assessing Traits Classroom Exercise: Empirically Derived Tests and the Importance of Cross-Validation An inventory is empirically derived by testing a large pool of items and then selecting those that are found to differ­entiate particular groups. For example, Alfred Binet developed the first intelligence test by selecting items that successfully discriminated children who were and were not progressing in Paris schools. When the original pool contains a large number of items, there is the real possibility that some will distin­ guish between the criterion groups by chance alone. To deal with this problem, the researcher must administer the test again with a new sample of participants. This cross-validation is a crucial step because an item is not likely to dis­tinguish between both groups on a chance basis. Any item that does discriminate twice is likely to be a valid item. W. S. Blumenfeld demonstrated the importance of the cross-validation process by using Art Buchwald’s amusing North Dakota Null-Hypothesis Brain Inventory, Handout 5, as his item pool. Distribute the test and have students complete it. Blumenfeld attempted to determine whether the items would discriminate be­tween different levels of college or university ability using grade point average (GPA) as the criterion. Students in an introductory management course at Georgia State University completed the test, and nine items distinguished those with a higher GPA from those with a lower GPA. The items that correlated positively with GPA are scored as follows: 5-F, 6-T, 11-F, 16-T, 17-T, 18-T, 20-T, 27-T, 31-T. Is the nine-item test a good measure of postsecondary ability? When these items were given to a new sample of participants, all nine were unrelated to GPA.

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In this way, Blumenfeld demonstrated the importance of cross-validation. It would, of course, be relatively easy to replicate Blumenfeld’s study in class. If students anony­mously place their GPA at the top of their completed survey, you can do a median split and see if any items discriminate between different levels of ability. These items can then be administered to a second group of students. Blumenfeld, W. S. (1972). “I am never startled by a fish.” APA Monitor, 3(9, 10), 3, 14.

Lecture Break/Student Project: What Makes a Test a Good Test? Even if the concepts of test reliability and validity are covered earlier in the text, you may find it useful to review those concepts at this point. You may want to put up on the board (or projector screen) the terms validity and reliability and briefly define these for your class. Then, ask your students to generate synonyms for each term. For validity, your students may come up with terms like trueness, soundness, purity, and demonstrated accuracy. Reliability may be associated with terms like consistency, dependability, consensus, and repeatable pattern. After discussing these terms in general, ask your students to connect the set of terms they’ve generated with a personality trait or measure. For instance, suppose your class decides to create a 20-question paper-and-pencil test to measure shyness in college students, how would they develop potential questions? Then, how would they determine that their new test had all the features of validity and reliability that they just listed as synonyms? Such a discussion allows you to introduce such psychometric concepts as test-retest reliability, splithalf reliability, face validity, construct validity (both convergent and discriminant validity), factor analysis, and criterion validity. You might also find it useful to present the reliability and validity data from some published or widely used personality tests. You can browse a range of different kinds of tests online at the website for the Buros Institute of Mental Measurements’ Test Reviews Online (www.unl.edu/buros). Reviews are available in the Mental Measurements Yearbook. Instructional resources on using the Yearbook and on the appropriate use and selection of tests can be found on the Buros Institute’s website at www.unl.edu/buros/ bimm/html/subarts.html. You can conduct this exercise as a 10–15 minute activity in class, or you can assign it as homework or as a student project. Classroom Exercise: Assessing Social Desirability One problem with self-report personality inventories is that some respondents tend to give socially desirable

rather than honest responses. Handout 6, the MarloweCrowne Social Desirability Scale, attempts to assess this response tendency. To score the inventory students should give themselves one point for indicating true to items 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 13, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31, and 33, and one point for indicating false to 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 19, 22, 23, 28, 30, and 32. Douglas Crowne and David Marlowe report a mean of 13.72 for undergraduate students. People with high scores tend to present themselves in a favorable light that probably does not reflect reality. Explain the purpose of the scale by reviewing a few specific items with students. For example, the fourth item states that “I have never intensely disliked anyone.” Probably everyone has at one time or another intensely disliked another person. People who indicate they have not are trying to present themselves in a socially desirable light. As Jerry Burger notes, Marlowe-Crowne scores are particularly useful when testing the discriminant validity of a new scale. For example, suppose you had developed a self-report inventory for friendliness in which most of the items were relatively straightforward, such as, “Do you make a good friend?” While high scores may reflect friendliness, they might instead be respondents’ attempts to present themselves as pleasant people. If the scores on the new scale and that of Marlowe-Crowne are highly correlated, you really have no way of knowing whether the scale is measuring friendliness, social desirability, or both. If, however, friendliness scores do not correlate highly with social desirability scores, you can be fairly confident that the new scale does in fact measure friendliness. Social desirability is only one response tendency testers have to worry about. Another is an acquiescence response set in which people tend to agree with test questions regardless of their content. For this reason, it becomes important that scores for a particular trait are not simply the number of “true” answers on a scale. To be safe, many test makers word as many as half the items in the opposite direction. The Marlowe-Crowne scale is itself a good example—social desirability is a sum of both true and false statements. Burger, J. (2008). Personality (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Crowne, D. P., & Marlowe, D. (1960). A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 24, 349–354.

The Big Five Factors Lecture/Discussion Topic: The NEO Personality Inventory You might complement your discussion of the Big Five and the MMPI with coverage of the NEO inventories in

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class (see also the Classroom Exercise on Empirically Derived Tests and the Importance of Cross-Validation). The NEO Personality Inventory and its successors, the NEO-PI-3 and the NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEOFFI-3), were developed by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae in an effort to assess the major domains in the five-factor model of personality described in the text. In contrast to the MMPI, which measures psychological disorders, the NEOs are designed to measure “normal” personality. These inventories have become among the most popular for research on personality and for clinical use. The five-factor model states that emotional stability (or neuroticism), extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are the basic personality factors. The NEO-PI-3, the current full inventory that replaced the original NEO-PI in 2010 with new normative data, consists of 240 items, each answered on a 5-point scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” Any given statement is scored for only one factor and thus each factor is assessed with 48 items. (The NEO-FFI-3, a shortened version with five 12-item scales measuring the major domains, can usually be completed in 10 to 15 minutes. It comes as a combination test booklet and answer sheet and, remarkably, can be scored in less than a minute.) Unlike the MMPI, NEO items were not empirically derived. Rather, the items were chosen on the basis of their correlation with other measures of the factor being studied (criterion validity), as well as their adherence to standards of plausibility and reasonableness (content validity). Thus, it is fairly obvious what each item is designed to assess. For example, “I am easily frightened” is an item from the neuroticism scale; “I am a warm and friendly person” is a statement from the extraversion scale. In addition to measuring the major domains of personality, the NEO-PI-3 assesses the narrower traits or facets covered by each domain. In fact, because each dimension includes six “subtraits,” the NEO-PI-3 has a total of 30 different scale scores. Neuroticism covers anxiety, anger-hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, and vulnerability. Extraversion includes warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement-seeking, and positive emotions. Openness covers fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, and values. Agreeableness includes trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tendermindedness. Conscientiousness is composed of competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, and deliberation. Developed for use with normal populations, the inventories have separate norms for men and women, and for postsecondary-age individuals and adults. PAR (also known as Psychologi­cal Assessment Resources),

who publish the test, provide machine-scorable answer sheets that can be interpreted by a computer. The interpretations provide a global assessment of the respondent’s personality, along with a detailed interpretation of the facets and possible implications (e.g., how the individual is likely to cope with daily stress). Finally, there are two versions of the NEO-PI-3: one for the respondent and one for an observer, which can be completed by a peer, spouse, or psychologist. If both complete the inventory, a fairly detailed and complicated profile emerges. The test can be administered individually or in small groups. Assuming small enough classes and the necessary time and competence, it is possible that you could have your students complete the inventory. The NEO-PI-3 Comprehensive Kit (approximately $330) includes a manual, 20 reusable test booklets (10 for respondents, 10 for observers), 25 hand-scorable answer sheets, 50 profile forms (25 for respondents, 25 for observers), and 25 feedback sheets. Address: Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc., 16204 N. Florida Avenue, Lutz, FL 33549. Telephone: 1-800-331-8378. The website is www4.parinc.com. Liebert, R., & Liebert, L. (1998). Personality: Strategies and issues (8th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (2011). The NEO™ Inventories: NEO™ Personality Inventory-3 (NEO™PI-3). Retrieved October 18, 2011, from www4.parinc. com/Products/Product.aspx?ProductID=NEO-PI-3#Items.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Evolution and the Big Five Personality Traits Lawrence Pervin and his colleagues note that many personality theorists view traits from within an evolutionary perspective. For example, Lewis Goldberg suggests that, over time, humans have found that certain basic traits underlie all social interaction and that knowing how people differ in these traits can help us understand these interactions. These traits can be identified through answers to the following questions, using terms that we all recognize from the list of the Big Five (X refers to the person with whom we are interacting). 1. Is X active and dominant or passive and submissive (Can I bully X or will X try to bully me)? 2. Is X agreeable (warm and pleasant) or disagreeable (cold and distant)? 3. Can I count on X (Is X responsible and conscientious or undependable and negligent)? 4. Is X crazy (unpredictable) or sane (stable)? 5. Is X smart or dumb (How easy is it for me to teach X)? Goldberg, L. R. (1981). Language and individual differences: The search for universals in personality lexicons. In L. Wheeler (Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology (pp. 141–165). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

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Goldberg, L. R. (1990). An alternative “description of personality”: The Big-Five structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 1216–1229. Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A., (2008). Personality: Theory and research (10th ed.) New York: Wiley.

Classroom Exercise: “Big Five” Inventories Handout 7, designed by Samuel Gosling and his colleagues, provides a brief measure of the Big Five personality dimensions. The authors state that the instrument, although somewhat inferior to standard multi-item scales, showed significant convergence with widely used Big Five measures in self, observer, and peer reports; test-retest reliability; patterns of predicted external correlates; and self and observer ratings.The scale takes only a minute to complete, so it can provide an efficient introduction to trait theory. In scoring, students should reverse the numbers they place in response to items 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 (1 = 7, 2 = 6, 3 = 5, 4 = 4, 5 = 3, 6 = 2, 7 = 1). Then they should combine the numbers for items 1 and 6 to obtain their extraversion score, 2 and 7 for agreeableness, 3 and 8 for conscientiousness, 4 and 9 for emotional stability, and 5 and 10 for openness to experience. Scores can range from 1 to 14 for each trait, with higher scores reflecting strong exhibition of a trait. Handout 8, the Big Five Inventory designed by Oliver P. John and his colleagues, provides another assessment of the Big Five personality dimensions. Following are directions for students to measure the degree to which they exhibit each dimension: • E  xtraversion: First reverse the numbers placed in front of items 6, 21, and 31 (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1), then add all the numbers for 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26, 31, and 36. Scores can range from 8 to 40, with higher scores reflecting greater extraversion. • Agreeableness: First reverse the numbers placed in front of items 2, 12, 27, and 37 (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1), then add all the numbers for 2, 7, 12, 17, 22, 27, 32, 37, and 42. Scores can range from 9 to 45, with higher scores reflecting greater agreeableness. • Conscientiousness: First reverse the numbers placed in front of items 8, 18, 23, and 43 (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1), then add all the numbers for 3, 8, 13, 18, 23, 28, 33, 38, and 43. Scores can range from 9 to 45, with higher scores reflecting greater conscientiousness. • Neuroticism: First reverse the numbers placed in front of items 9, 24, and 34 (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1), then add all the numbers for 4, 9, 14, 19, 24, 29, 34, and 39. Scores can range from 8

to 40, with higher scores reflecting greater neuroticism. • Openness: First reverse the numbers placed in front of items 35 and 41 (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1), then add all the numbers for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 41, and 44. Scores can range from 10 to 50, with higher scores reflecting greater openness. Stephen Dollinger and Anne Kilman LaMartina describe a class exercise that encourages students to reflect on the relationship between the five personality dimensions and behavior. The exercise also provides a good review of the correlational approach in psychological research. Dollinger and LaMartina suggest that some time before your discussion of personality, invite students to participate in an extra-credit research day in which the volunteers complete various questionnaires, including the NEO Personality Inventory (or you could use the Big Five Inventory—Handout 8) and a “twentyto forty-item behavior checklist of actions or activities that college students occasionally perform and that are of psychological interest.” You may want to use Dollinger and LaMartina’s questions or you can design your own. Their questions follow: “Have been in (or currently in) therapy/ counseling?” “Been addicted to the Internet?” “Ever cheated on a college test?” “Ever had a spring break in Florida or Mexico?” “Ever dated a person of a different race or nationality?” “Ever kept a personal journal or diary of your life and feelings?” “Ever read twelve or more books in one year, not counting those for school assignments?” “Ever marched or protested against an injustice?” “Ever fell in love at first sight?” “Ever thrown a party for twenty or more people?” “Ever got drunk for the sake of getting drunk?” “Ever written a poem spontaneously (not for a class assignment)?” “Ever smoked marijuana?” “Ever listened to music by yourself in the dark?” “Ever had a lover whose name you have forgotten?” “Ever pulled an all-nighter to complete an assignment?” Have students use optical scanning forms to respond so their answers can be readily scored and intercorrelations between the personality dimensions and behavior can be more easily calculated. (Scores on each personality dimension are correlated with each

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behavior, with 0 = did not engage in the behavior or 1 = engaged in the behavior.) These calculations are to be completed in preparation for the small-group, inclass activity. After you have introduced the five-factor model of personality, divide your class into small groups of four or five students each and have them predict the relationship (positive or negative correlation) that they think might exist between each personality factor and each behavior that appears on the checklist. To simplify the process, Dollinger and LaMartina suggest creating a handout with a grid listing the five personality factors

as column headings and the specific behaviors as rows. Include only those behaviors that showed a significant correlation with one or more of the personality factors. To further simplify the task for students, you can (in parentheses behind each behavior) indicate how many personality dimensions (from 1 to 5) correlated with the behavior. After the small groups have made their predictions, announce the results and, if you like, declare the small group with the best predictions the winner. Alternatively, you can use Dollinger and LaMartina’s results, which are listed below.

Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Agreeableness Conscientiousness Correlation Correlation Correlation Correlation Correlation

“Have been in (or currently in) therapy/counseling?” positive positive “Been addicted to the Internet?” negative “Ever cheated on a college test?” “Ever had a spring break in positive Florida or Mexico?” “Ever dated a person of a different race or nationality?” positive “Ever kept a personal journal or diary of your life and feelings?” positive “Ever read twelve or more books in one year, not counting those for school assignments?” negative positive “Ever marched or protested against an injustice?” negative positive “Ever fell in love at first sight? positive “Ever thrown a party for twenty or more people?” positive “Ever got drunk for the sake of getting drunk?” “Ever written a poem spontaneously (not for a class assignment)?” positive “Ever smoked marijuana?” positive “Ever listened to music by yourself in the dark?” positive “Ever had a lover whose name you have forgotten?” negative “Ever pulled an all-nighter to complete an assignment?”

negative

negative

negative

Source: Stephen J. Dollinger. “Predicting Personality-Behavior Relations: A Teaching Activity.” Teaching of Psychology, 2004, 31(1), 48–51. Copyright 2004. Reprinted by permission of Stephen J. Dollinger.

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Dollinger and LaMartina also found interesting correlations between the Big Five and other personality measures, including the following: Emotional Stability and Extraversion showed a negative correlation with shyness, social anxiety, and loneliness. Openness showed a negative correlation with authoritarianism. Emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness all correlated positively with life satisfaction. Dollinger, S. J., & LaMartina, A. K. (1996, August). Predicting behavior from personality: A teaching activity. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto. Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. Jr. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504–528. John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The big five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. O. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 102– 138). New York: Guilford Press.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Personality Traits in the Workplace Psychologists have long debated the usefulness of personality tests to predict occupational success. Research with the Big Five traits provides much stronger support for the relationship between personality and job performance than was found in earlier research that typically used a larger number of personality variables as predictors. Jerry Burger poses this dilemma: Assume that you own a business and have to make a quick decision to hire one of five nearly identical applicants. You do have the applicants’ scores on the Big Five personality dimensions. Each applicant is high on a different dimension—emotional stability, extraversion, open­ness, agreeableness, or conscientiousness. Which of these people should you hire? Who is likely to be the best employee? Although one could build a case for each applicant, significant research indicates that, of the Big Five, conscientiousness may be the best predictor of job performance. Respondents who score high on this dimension are careful, thorough, and dependable. In addition, they take time to do a job accurately and completely. They tend to be organized, plan oriented, and persistent. One study examined the job performance of sales representatives for an appliance manufacturer. Consis­ tent with other research, conscientiousness was a significant predictor of how many appliances the salespersons sold. A closer look at these employees indicated why this trait may be associated with superior job performance. Highly conscientious workers set higher goals

for themselves than did other employees. In addition, they were more committed to reaching those goals. They expended greater effort to reach their targets and were more persistent than others when encountering the inevitable obstacles. One team of investigators concluded, “It is difficult to conceive of a job in which the traits associated with the conscientiousness dimension would not contribute to job success.” Research findings also indicate that highly conscientious employees receive higher evaluations from their supervisors and are least likely to be laid off when companies are forced to reduce their labor force. Obviously, conscientiousness is not the only trait related to job performance. Depending on role requirements, a case could also be made for hiring applicants high in agreeableness. These people are trusting, cooperative, and helpful—characteristics particularly important if the job requires teamwork. Other studies indicate that extraverts may have the advantage over introverts in the business world. Clearly, the best match between personality and job demands varies across occupations. Handout 9 provides Lewis R. Goldberg’s measure of conscientiousness. Have students reverse the numbers they placed before the 10 items with an asterisk and than add all 20 responses together. The mean score obtained in a sample of students was 123.11. Burger, J. (2008). Personality (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4, 26–42.

Student Project/Critical Thinking Exercise: The Enneagram System The Enneagram is a system developed to explain the nature and relationship of nine proposed personality types (reformer, helper, achiever, individualist, investigator, loyalist, enthusiast, challenger, and peacemaker) arranged together in three emotion-themed centers. Each personality type is supposed to respond to the dominant emotion of its center in a unique way, particularly when a person loses touch with his or her core self. The Enneagram concept includes a complicated set of relationships among adjacent types, and each type is structured along several levels of development that help explain the differences among individuals possessing the same types and centers. One of the most cited measures of the Enneagram is the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI). The Enneagram model and RHETI have become very popular in the United States and Europe as a basis for personal insight and improved understanding in the workplace. Unfortunately, there is very little published, peerreviewed literature supporting the Enneagram model.

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Most of what exists comes from dissertations and trade publications, as well as workshop materials and information on websites. Many of your students are probably familiar with it. Very little information exists about the psychometric properties of the RHETI, or about its predictive usefulness. Have students go to the Enneagram Institute’s website (www.enneagraminstitute.com) and on the home page, click on the link that says “Research Reports” to review the empirical evidence for the claims made about the RHETI. Have them review that information, and then click on “Free RHETI Sampler” in the menu on the left to access an abbreviated version of the test. Ask students to form small groups outside class to discuss the website and each member’s Enneagram results to formulate their answers to the following questions. 1. Thinking critically about the information provided on the Enneagram Institute’s website, are the claims of the organization supported with good science? Provide an answer to either a, b, or c. a. If so, what information do you consider good science? b. If it is supported with bad science, what is that bad science and why is it bad? What would make it good science? c. If the claims are not supported at all, what would be good scientific support? Why would this be good science? 2. After completing the sampler on the website, what did you find out? Answer both a and b. a. Did each of you find that your results were consistent or inconsistent with what you expected? Why or why not? b. How consistent were your results across the group? 3. Did the organization responsible for the website and the test provide you with information about alternative explanations, potential biasing variables, or other important variables with which you could evaluate their claims? Answer either a or b. a. If so, what information was provided? b. If not, what information was lacking? Riso, D. R., & Hudson, R. (1999). The wisdom of the Enneagram. New York, Bantam.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Hogan Personality Inventory The Motivation and Work unit in these resources includes a discussion of the Hogan Personality Inventory (p. 637), which focuses on the relationship between specific personality traits and job performance. Robert Hogan utilized research on the Big Five traits in developing his own measure of personality relevant to

the workplace. You may choose to discuss his research now. Evaluating Trait Theories Lecture/Discussion Topic: The HEXACO Model of Personality Structure Recently, Michael C. Ashton and Kibeom Lee have proposed a new six-dimensional framework for personality structure as an alternative to the Big Five model. HEXACO has been developed in the same way that the Big Five model emerged, namely with a lexical approach that analyzes personality-descriptive adjectives. HEXACO’s six factors have emerged across numerous languages, including English, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, and Polish. The analyses have found variants of the Big Five factors, plus a new sixth factor: Honesty-Humility. HEXACO’s six factors (along with common descriptive adjectives) include the following: Honesty-Humility: sincere, honest, faithful, loyal, modest/unassuming, fair-minded versus sly, greedy, pretentious, hypocritical, boastful, pompous Emotionality: emotional, oversensitive, sentimental, fearful, anxious, vulnerable versus brave, tough, independent, self-assured, stable eXtraversion: outgoing, lively, extraverted, sociable, talkative, cheerful, active versus shy, passive, withdrawn, introverted, quiet, reserved Agreeableness: patient, tolerant, peaceful, mild, agreeable, lenient, gentle versus ill-tempered, quarrelsome, stubborn, choleric Conscientiousness: organized, disciplined, diligent, careful, thorough, precise versus sloppy, negligent, reckless, lazy, irresponsible, absent-minded Openness to Experience: intellectual, creative, unconventional, innovative, ironic versus shallow, unimaginative, conventional Ashton and Lee note that the HEXACO model (partly by virtue of its inclusion of the HonestyHumility factor) has outperformed the Big Five model in predicting several variables of practical importance. For example, HEXACO better predicts workplace delinquency and the likelihood that the person will engage in sexual harassment. Ashton, F. C., & Lee, K. (2007). Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 150–166.

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Classroom Exercise: The Barnum Effect Before students read the text, you might demonstrate the Barnum effect in class. Have students com­plete some bogus personality scale, such as the North Dakota Null-Hypothesis Brain Inventory in Handout 5. At the next class meeting, give each student a computerized personality description supposedly based on responses to the inventory. (Alternatively, you can have them submit a sample of their handwriting to be analyzed or even some basic information such as their birthdate, hair color, sex, weight, height, etc.) Make a copy of B. R. Forer’s set of Barnum descriptions (see below) for your students and ask them to evaluate its accuracy. Most will agree that the description fits very well. You can then reveal the hoax, using it to introduce the Barnum effect—our tendency to accept as valid descriptions of our personality that are generally true of everyone. This tendency is strongest, of course, when the descriptions are generally

favorable. Explain how astrologers, palm readers, and crystal-ball gazers regularly use the effect to persuade people that they can accurately assess their personalities and problems. You can conclude discussion of the Barnum effect with Handout 10, which contains quotes from David Levy’s hilarious “Psychometric Infallibility Realized: The One-Size-Fits-All Psychological Profile.” Students will surely want to share it with their friends. Forer, B. R. (1949). The fallacy of personal validation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44, 118–123. Copyright 1949 American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the author. Levy, D. A. (1993). Psychometric infallibility realized: The one-size-fits-all psychological profile. Copyright © 1993 by Wry-Bred Press, Inc. Journal of Polymorphous Perversity, 10, 3–6.

Personalized Personality Description for _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ You have a strong need for other people to like you and for them to admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused energy which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. Your sexual adjustment has presented some problems for you. Disciplined and controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You pride yourself on being an independent thinker and do not accept other opinions without satisfactory proof. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extraverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic. Levy, D. A. (1993). Psychometric infallibility realized: The one-size-fits-all psychological profile. Copyright © 1993 by Wry-Bred Press, Inc. Journal of Polymorphous Perversity. Reprinted by permission of Dr. Glenn Elenbogen.

Classroom Exercise: The “Validity” of Astrology William Balch provides a classroom exercise that permits testing the validity of astrology. Distribute Handout 11 to students and have them complete the 12 items. Each set of adjectives denotes traits associated with one of the zodiacal signs. After students have completed the exercise, instruct them to draw a vertical

line through all the scales, so that six of their responses (vertical marks) appear on each side. Next, read the zodiacal signs for each set of traits along with the following corresponding dates. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Aries: March 21–April 19 Taurus: April 20–May 20 Gemini: May 21–June 21 Cancer: June 22–July 22 Leo: July 23–August 22 Virgo: August 23–September 22 Libra: September 23–October 22 Scorpio: October 23–November 21

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9. Sagittarius: November 22–December 21 10. Capricorn: December 22–January 19 11. Aquarius: January 20–February 18 12. Pisces: February 19–March 20 Now have students determine whether their rating of the description for their own sign is relatively appli­ cable (on the right side of the median line) or inapplicable (on the left side). A show of hands will indicate a roughly equal number of each. Also ask students to indicate whether the median line they drew falls to the right of the midpoint. Most hands will go up. People tend to agree with all the personality descriptions, a fact that helps explain the apparent validity of astrologers’ descriptions. Balch, W. R. (1980). Testing the validity of astrology in class. Teaching of Psychology, 7(4), 247–250.

Social-Cognitive Theories Classroom Exercise: Self-Efficacy Scale The Nature, Nurture, and Human Diversity unit in these resources included Gilad Chen and his colleagues’ measure of self-efficacy along with relevant research findings. If you did not use the scale earlier, you may choose to do so now. Lecture/Discussion Topic: Perceived Efficacy and Acquirable Skills “Unless people believe they can produce desired effects, and forestall undesired ones by their actions,” argues Albert Bandura, “they have little incentive to act, or to persevere in the face of difficulties.” Further­more, he observes that perceived efficacy is closely linked to our belief that important skills can be acquired through practice. In a study conducted with his colleague Bob Wood, Bandura asked business graduates to manage a computer simulation of an organization. Perceived efficacy was manipulated by telling the participants that the simulation demanded skills that were either innate, or that could be acquired through practice. Those who thought the skills could be acquired set challenging goals for themselves, were efficient in their analytic thinking, and achieved high performance. In contrast, those who believed the skills were innate set lower goals and were more erratic in their thinking, and their performance gradually deteriorated. These findings highlight the danger of what Bandura calls “Bell Curve thinking,” the belief that intelligence is largely innate. “We argue over small ethnic and racial differences (but) we ignore the huge influence of motivation and self-management factors in intellectual performance.”

Bandura’s daughter, Mary Bandura, has demonstrated that children who view intelligence as an acquirable skill are highly resilient in their personal efficacy beliefs. Setbacks are viewed as correctable, as due to insufficient effort, lack of knowledge, or faulty strategies rather than as the result of inherent personal deficiencies. Children with strong efficacy beliefs re­double their efforts in the face of difficulty. While one must be realistic about difficult odds, it is equally important to be optimistic that one can beat the odds. Bandura’s ideas are related to the distinction Carol Dweck has made between entity theorists who believe human traits are fixed and incremental theorists who maintain that traits are malleable. A Classroom Exercise to assess this difference (“Is Human Nature Fixed or Changeable?) can be found on page 7 of these resources. If you did not use it earlier, you may want to do so now. Kester, J. D. (2001, July/August). Bandura: Beliefs, Bobo, and behavior. American Psychological Society Observer, 8–9.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory You can extend your discussion of the socialcognitive perspective on personality by introducing George Kelly’s personal construct theory. Kelly’s basic assumption is that we are strongly motivated to make sense of our worlds. Like scientists, we are always attempting to make better predictions about what will happen to us. Thus we generate and test hypotheses. Kelly argued that we use bipolar personal constructs to interpret and predict events. For example, we might use the personal constructs warm–cold, flexible–dogmatic, intelligent–unintelligent, and tall–short to create an image of a new acquaintance. Using these bipolars, a person might conclude that the stranger is warm, flexible, intelligent, and tall. One may use further bipolar constructs to judge the nature of his intelligence, for example, academically intelligent–common sense intelligent. Personality differences result largely from differences in the way people construe their worlds. We may use very different descriptors to characterize the same person. Those different construals will produce different social behaviors toward the person. Our relatively consistent patterns of behavior occur because of the relatively stable way we construe the world. To understand their own personal constructs, students need only reflect on what they tend to notice first about a person. To assess individual differences in personal constructs, Kelly introduced the Role Construct Repertory Test, or the Rep Test for short. Handout 12,

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designed by Jerry Burger, represents a shortened version of the Rep Test. Although it is abbreviated, it can provide students with insight into how they construe the world. They may be surprised by the ways they typically organize the people in their social lives. As a practicing psychotherapist, Kelly rejected the idea that psychological disorders are the result of past traumatic experiences. Rather, people suffer from psychological problems because of defects in their construct systems. He called anxiety the “most common of all clinic commodities.” We feel anxious when our personal constructs fail to make sense of life events. Healthy people are constantly generating new constructs to replace old, inadequate ones. Burger, J. (2008). Personality (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Reciprocal Influences Feature Film: The Shawshank Redemption and Reciprocal Influences The Stress and Health unit in these resources identifies a clip from The Shawshank Redemption (p. 752) that illustrates the principle of reciprocal determinism (as well as perceived control, as noted earlier) and how individuals and situations interact. If you did not show the clip in connection with stress and health, you may want to use it now. Responses by Andy and Brooks to the prison environment illustrate how our personalities shape interpretations and reactions to events. Andy’s success in prison also illustrates how our personalities help create the situations to which we react. Classroom Exercise: The Self-Monitoring Scale People who perceive themselves as strongly innerdirected tend to act more consistently across different situations than do people who perceive themselves as shaping their behavior to fit specific situations. Mark Snyder has de­veloped the Self-Monitoring (SM) Scale (Handout 13) to assess the extent to which people observe and control their expressive behavior and selfpresentation out of a concern for social appropriateness. Have students complete the scale and score their own responses. The items are keyed for high selfmonitoring. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

F F F F T T T T F

10. T 11. T 12. F 13. T 14. F 15. T 16. T 17. F 18. T

19. T 20. F 21. F 22. F 23. F 24. T 25. T

Snyder conducted a series of studies to validate the scale. In one study, he had participants complete the scale themselves, then asked their peers to complete the scale as the items related to the participants. He found, for exam­ple, a significant positive relationship between scores and peer ratings on a number of self-monitoring attri­butes (e.g., “To what extent does he express his true inner feelings, attitudes, and beliefs?”). Snyder also reasoned that professional actors are in particularly good control of their expressive behavior and self-presentation, while the behavior of hospitalized psychiatric patients is likely to be less variable across situations. Thus, the former should score higher on the scale than the latter. Results were consistent with this prediction: Stage actors scored 18.41 and patients scored 10.19. In yet another study, Snyder found that high self-monitors, when given the opportunity, were better at communicating an arbitrary emotional state through their vocal and facial expressions. Jeffrey Simpson has suggested that individual differences in self-monitoring can be strongly and systematically related to important aspects of social behavior. In research on commitment to dating relationships, Mark Snyder and Simpson hypothesized that because the social behavior of low self-monitors tends to be guided by relatively stable factors, such as personal attitudes and feelings, they should have more stable relationships with persons toward whom they have strong, positive attitudes and feelings (e.g., dating partners). In contrast, high self-monitors, who are guided by more transient external factors, should have less durable and rather short-term relationships with others. Two separate studies confirmed the hypothesis. Simpson devised Handout 14 for classroom demonstration of their research. After students have completed and scored the SM scale on Handout 13, distribute this dating survey. If time permits and your class is not too large, collect and analyze student responses immediately. Otherwise, analyze the data outside of class and report the results during the next session. A median split on the SM scale divides the class into high and low self-monitors. Students who answer “yes” to the first question on the dating survey are referred to as exclusive daters. Those who answer “no” to the first question but “yes” to the third are referred to as multiple daters. (Those who respond “no” to both 1 and 3 because they are married or do not date cannot provide data for analysis. However, Simpson reports that they represent only about 15 to 20 percent of students and they still find the exercise interesting and valuable.) A larger percentage of exclusive daters should be low rather than high self-monitors. Con­ versely, a larger percentage of multiple daters should be high rather than low self-monitors.

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Responses to the second question should indicate that among exclusive daters, low self-monitors have dated their current partner for a significantly longer time than have high self-monitors. Responses to the fourth question should reveal that among multiple daters, high self-monitors have dated a larger number of persons than have low self-monitors. Finally, responses to questions 6 to 8 should show that high self-monitors choose a significantly larger number of friends as preferred dating partners than do low self-monitors. Simpson, J. (1988). Self-monitoring and commitment to dating relationships: A classroom demonstration. Teaching of Psychology, 15, 31–33. Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances/private realities: The psychology of self-monitoring. New York: Freeman. Snyder, M. (1974). Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 526–537.

Personal Control Feature Film/Classroom Exercise: Schindler’s List and Personal Control A brief clip from Schindler’s List provides an excellent introduction to the psychological research on personal control. Start the clip at 98 minutes 16 seconds into the film and run it for 4 minutes, 35 seconds. While at the commandant’s house party, Schindler walks down the steps to the basement and introduces himself to Helen, a Jewish maid and prisoner. In reflecting on her experience, Helen explains her despair to Schindler. She has learned that her actions and outcomes are unrelated. After vividly describing the arbitrary beating she received at the hands of the brutal commandant on her arrival, she goes on to give an account of how he recently shot and killed a passerby without reason. “There are no set rules to live by,” she laments. Although Schindler tries to reassure her, it is clear that Helen has lost all sense of personal control. After showing this powerful clip you might form small groups to discuss the following questions. 1. One important aspect of personality is our sense of personal control—whether we learn to see ourselves as controlling, or as controlled by, our environments. Briefly describe a time in your life when your efforts seemed to make little difference. What effects did those feelings have on you? 2. Concentration camp and prison inmates experience little control over their lives. What other groups are likely to feel that they have little control over their outcomes? What do you think are the long-term effects on them? 3. How do you think gender, age, and race might influence one’s feelings of control? How might religious faith influence one’s feelings of control?

4. Do you feel you have more control in some areas of life than others? Describe and explain one difference. 5. What are the most important factors influencing one’s sense of control? Lecture/Discussion Topic: Locus of Control Handout 15 is the Personal Efficacy subscale of Delroy Paulhus’ locus of control measure. It measures one’s sense of control in personal achievement situations; two other subscales measure control in interpersonal encounters and in social and political matters. Researchers find that respondents’ sense of personal control may vary across different situations. To score, have students reverse the numbers they placed before statements 3, 6, 7, 8, and 10 (i.e., 1 = 7, 2 = 6, 3 = 5, 5 = 3, 6 = 2, 7 = 1). Then they should add the numbers in front of all 10 items. Jerry Burger reports that for a sample of students, the means were 51.8 and 52.2 for men and women, respectively. Considerable research has been done on the locus of control concept. Internals not only believe that they can control their own destinies, but in fact they are more effective in influencing their environments. Re­searchers consistently find that internals receive higher grades and better teacher evaluations than do externals. Although this is true across ages, the relationship is particularly strong for adolescents. Internals feel more responsible for their achievements, believe that studying will pay off, and generally seem to have a better idea of how to prepare for an exam. They are more likely to attribute their grades to their abilities or effort and thus are more likely to study for the next exam. Given the task of changing others’ beliefs, they are more successful. In one study, for example, internals proved more persuasive in altering students’ attitudes toward frater­nities and sororities. Internals themselves, however, seem to be less susceptible to control and influence from others. They are particularly resistant to subtle forms of attempted influence. Internals are less likely to conform and are not as likely to respond to the prestige of a message’s source as are externals. Internals are, however, more accepting of information when it has merit. Just as internals are more effective in controlling their social world, they also seem to exhibit greater self-control. Among those who attempt to quit smoking, internals show fewer relapses. They are also more likely to engage in physical exercise, better at losing weight, more apt to use seatbelts, and more likely to practice preventive dental care. As hospital patients, they are likely to know more about their medical condition and to be less satisfied with the amount of information they receive from physicians and nurses. Although many studies find a positive correlation between internality

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and health, it is not always true. Julian Rotter noted that behavior is a function of both expectancy and value. Thus, believing that your actions affect your health is not enough. One must also place a high value on good health if one is to take appropriate action. What fosters internality? Research suggests that family environments characterized by warmth, protection, and nurturance are likely to lead to an internal locus of control. Furthermore, consistent parental behavior is posi­tively correlated with internality. Ordinal position in the family also seems to affect locus of control. Generally, first-born and earlier-born children tend to be more internal. Conversely, persons with limited access to social power or material resources often develop external orientations. Minority membership and lower socioeconomic status is associated with externality. Hostages and prisoners of war often report that the most debilitating aspect of their experience was the uncer­tainty of their fate and the loss of personal control over their environment. The sense of helplessness may lead to physical illness, sometimes even death. Every effort will be made by these people to maintain some sense of control. Among the Americans held captive by Iranian students in the early 1980s, one hostage would save a small bit of food and then offer it to anyone who came to his cell. That strategy had the effect of turning the cell into a living room and the hostage into a host welcoming visitors. Although it may be better to be internal than external, internality also has limits. To believe one can control everything is maladaptive. Some Jews in Nazi Germany who were forewarned of disaster remained, believing they could control their fate. Believing one can control the uncontrollable may also lead to unwarranted self-blame when success does not come. Burger, J. (2008). Personality (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Lefcourt, H. M. (1982). Locus of control: Current trends in theory and research (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Paulhus, P. (1983). Sphere-specific measures of perceived control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 1253–1265.

Classroom Exercise: Satisficers Versus Maximizers The Stress and Health unit included this Classroom Exercise (p. 753) in relation to a discussion of outlook on life. According to Barry Schwartz and his colleagues, satisficers set “good enough” as their criterion for outcomes. For maximizers, outcomes must be optimal. If you did not use that material and the accompanying handout then, you might want to do so now.

PsychSim 5: Helplessly Hoping In this activity, students learn the importance of a sense of personal control over the events in their lives. Students participate in a simulated experiment on learned helplessness in dogs and then consider how the results might apply to the behavior of people trapped in unpleasant situations. Classroom Exercise: The Life Orientation Test and Optimism Handout 16 is Michael Scheier and Charles Carver’s Life Orientation Test, which assesses a person’s optimism, or more specifically, a person’s expectations regarding the favorability of future outcomes. In scoring their scale, students should first reverse their responses on items 3, 8, 9, and 12 (0 = 4, 1 = 3, 2 = 2, 3 = 1, 4 = 0) and then add up their responses for items 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, and 12 to obtain a final score (items 2, 6, 7, and 10 are filler items). Scores can range from 0 to 32, with higher scores reflecting greater optimism. The mean score is approximately 21. Scheier and Carver have conducted a comprehensive review of relevant research. For example, a growing number of studies have now shown that optimists typically maintain higher levels of subjective well-being during times of stress than do people who are less optimistic. A study of undergraduate students’ adjustment to their first semester of school indicated that optimism was associated with lower distress three months after starting school. The effects of optimism were independent of other personality variables, such as self-esteem and locus of control. Another study investigating the development of postpartum depression in women having their first child reported that initial optimism was inversely associated with depression three weeks postpartum, even when the initial level of depression was controlled statistically. Optimism also confers benefits on physical wellbeing. A study conducted on men undergoing heart bypass surgery found that optimism is negatively associated with certain physiological changes that would make one susceptible to suffer a heart attack during surgery. Optimism also predicted rate of recovery during the immediate postoperative period. Optimists were faster to achieve behavioral milestones of recovery, such as sitting up in bed and walking around the room. The benefits of optimism were also apparent at the six-month follow-up. Optimistic patients were more likely than pessimistic patients to have resumed vigorous physical exercise and to have returned to work fulltime. In a much larger study involving 2428 Finnish middle-aged men, Susan Everson reported that those who felt hopeless about the future and their chances of attaining goals were far more likely to die early than

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those who were equally healthy but more hopeful. Everson and her colleagues controlled for risk factors such as blood pressure, weight, and smoking. Six years later, the researchers found that, as compared with the hopeful, hopeless men were about twice as likely to have died of any cause. The hopeless had double the heart attack risk; they were also significantly more likely to die from accidents and violence. In 2009, Hilary Tindle’s research team, using data from the Women’s Health Initiative (an ongoing government study of more than 100,000 women older than age 50) found that, eight years into the study, optimistic women were 14 percent more likely to be alive than their pessimistic peers. “Taking into account income, education, health behaviors like controlling blood pressure and whether or not you are physically active, whether or not you drink or smoke, we still see optimists with a decreased risk of death compared to pessimists,” reported Tindle. “I was surprised that the relationship was independent of all of these factors. . . . Our study reveals interesting findings. Now we need to replicate them and find out why this association is happening.” According to Scheier and Carver, research from a variety of sources indicates that optimists cope in more adaptive ways than do pessimists. They are more likely to take direct action to solve their problems, are better at making plans to deal with adversity, and are more focused in their coping efforts. Optimists tend to accept the reality of the stressful situations they encounter, and they also seem intent on growing personally from negative experiences. They try to make the best of bad situations. In contrast, pessimists are likely to react to stressful events by denying that they exist or by avoiding dealing with problems. Pessimists are more likely to quit trying when difficulties arise. There may be additional pathways through which optimism conveys its benefits. For example, optimism seems to promote social contact, and so optimists may enjoy greater social support. In contrast, pessimists tend to be loners, and social isolation is a reliable predictor of poor health. Optimists, of course, are also resistant to depression, which has been linked to increased risk for disease and poor health. Finally, findings indicate that the immune systems of optimists respond better to a challenge than do the immune systems of pessimists. This may explain why, compared with pessimists, optimists have a longer survival time after the development of AIDS symptoms. Both nature and nurture probably play a role in the development of optimism. Differences in optimismpessimism may be partly inherited. For example, in a sample of more than 500 same-sex pairs of middle-aged Swedish twins, the heritability of optimism and pessimism was estimated to be about 25 percent. It also seems reasonable that optimism and pessimism are learned from prior experiences with success and fail-

ure. To the degree that a person has been successful in the past, he or she should expect success in the future. Children may also acquire a sense of optimism from their parents through modeling. Finally, parents may shape children’s tendencies by instructing them in problem solving. Parents who teach adaptive coping skills will produce children who are better problem solvers and thus ultimately more optimistic. Scheier and Carver recognize that optimism may not always be good. Unbridled optimism may lead people to become inactive, that is, to simply sit and wait for good things to happen. Optimism may also be detrimental in situations that are not amenable to constructive action. For example, the optimist’s head-on approach may be maladaptive in situations that are uncontrollable. Elias, M. (1995, March 23). Pessimism linked to early death. USA Today, p. D1. Larsen, R. J., & Buss, D. M. (2008). Personality psychology: Domains of knowledge about human nature (3rd ed). New York: McGraw-Hill. Park, A. (2009, March 5). Study: Optimistic women tend to live longer. Posted at www.time.com/time/health/ article/0,8599,1883402,00.html. Scheier, M., & Carver, C. (1993). On the power of positive thinking: The benefits of being optimistic. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2, 26–30.

Classroom Exercise: Defensive Pessimism Does pessimism ever work? Nancy Cantor and her students coined the term defensive pessimism to refer to a cognitive strategy in which people set low expectations for a future performance despite having done well in similar situations in the past. Obviously, setting low expectations helps “cushion” the blow of possible failure. More important, people may use the strategy to reflect on what might happen, and thus give special attention to problems they might encounter. They then work hard to prepare for the upcoming situation or performance. Often, defensive pessimists feel anxious and out of control. Their strategy helps them harness their anxiety as motivation, with the result being a better performance. Handout 17, designed by Nancy Cantor, is the Defensive Pessimism Questionnaire (DPQ). The items reflect two important characteristics of defensive pessimists. In addition to having negative expectations, they reflect extensively about possible positive and negative outcomes. Items 1, 2, 6, and 15 assess the “pessimism” factor, and items 4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 17 assess the “reflectivity” factor. To score, students should reverse the numbers (1 = 7, 2 = 6, 3 = 5, 4 = 4, 5 = 3, 6 = 2, 7 = 1) placed before items 2 and 16 and then add the numbers in front of these 12 items. Scores

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can range from 12 to 84, with higher scores reflecting greater defensive pessimism. Items 5 and 9 are filler items and items 11 and 13 are experimental items. Item 3 tests for “realistic” pessimism—that is, if respondents have done poorly before in a similar situation, they are simply being realistic when they think their future performance may be poor. Cantor indicates that in student samples, fewer than 20 percent rate themselves below 5 on this item. Theoretically, defensive pessimism has its basis in the need to manage anxiety. Thus, it is not surpris-­ ing that it is positively correlated with trait anxiety, neuroticism, the fear of negative evaluation, and selfhandicapping. It correlates negatively with self-esteem and with self-clarity. Most of the research on defensive pessimism has contrasted it with strategic optimism (they obtain low scores on Handout 18). Whereas defensive pessimists manage anxiety through extensive reflection about possible outcomes, strategic optimists distract themselves to avoid anxiety and thereby maintain their positive outlook. Both perform well in tasks in which they are allowed to pursue these respective strategies. On the other hand, defensive pessimists perform more poorly if they are instructed to focus only on positive outcomes and strategic optimists perform more poorly if they are encouraged to reflect about the upcoming task. As Jerry Burger notes, the benefits of defensive pessimism extend beyond achievement to social interactions. For example, in one study defensive pessimists were told that after a short conversation with a stranger, they would be evaluated by the stranger. (This experimental situation is similar to first dates and job interviews in which we are concerned about making a good impression.) Some defensive pessimists were instructed to think about all the things that could go wrong (what defensive pessimists typically do); other defensive pessimists were told to imagine positive outcomes. All the participants then spent 5 minutes talking to a stranger. In comparison to the defensive pessimists told to think about positive outcomes, the defensive pessimists who had contemplated negative consequences talked significantly more with the stranger and were liked more by the person. The pattern was not found for optimists. Thus, in both social and achievement situations, thinking about the worst seems to help some people do their best. In her review of the research, Cantor suggests that defensive pessimism seems to be an excellent strategy for those who are tense because it addresses their psychological reality, namely, the need to control anxiety, which does not simply go away by wishful thinking. At the same time, there may be long-term costs. Prelimi­ nary data indicate that after three years in college, defensive pessimists report slightly lower grade-point

averages and more physical and psychological symptoms. Because people often react negatively to others’ anxiety, defensive pessimists may also create negative impressions, annoying the people around them. Defensive pessimists do not necessarily become less anxious or generally more positive over time. In fact, the strategy, because it works, may be self-perpetuating. Burger, J. (2008). Personality (7th ed). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Norem, J. K. (2001). Defensive pessimism, optimism, and pessimism. In E. C. Chang (Ed.), Optimism and pessimism: Implications for theory, research, and practice (pp. 77–100). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Assessing Behavior in Situations Evaluating Social-Cognitive Theories Exploring the Self Classroom Exercise/Student Project: Possible Selves Handout 18, designed by Randy Larsen and David Buss, introduces students to the concept of possible selves. Proposed by Hazel Markus and her colleagues, possible selves include our visions of the self we dream of becoming but also the self we fear becoming. After students have completed the survey, have them compare their ratings for items that describe them now with their ratings of future descriptions. When the ratings are the same, this indicates that they believe this attribute will remain stable over time. The items that change reflect ways in which they believe their personality will change. Ask your students to identify aspects of their desired self, that is, the sort of person they want to become, as well as aspects of their feared self, the sort of person they do not wish to become. Hazel Markus and her colleagues have suggested that possible selves motivate us by identifying specific goals and eliciting energy to work toward them. Possible selves provide an important bridge between our present and our future. Tory Higgins expands the concept of possible selves by distinguishing the ideal self (what persons themselves want to be) from the ought self (a person’s understanding of what others want him or her to be). Higgins refers to these two types of possible selves as self-guides, that is, standards that one uses to organize information and motivate appropriate behavior. They can generate strong emotion. If the real self fails to match the ideal self, one may feel sad, disappointed, despondent. If the real self does not match the ought self, one can feel anxious and guilty.

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Higgins further argues that the ideal self focuses our attention on achievement and goal attainment, what he calls a promotion focus. The ought self, on the other hand, shifts our attention to avoiding harm and seeking safety, what he calls a prevention focus. Some people tend to be more promotion focused and direct their behavior to goals they want to achieve; others are more prevention focused and direct their behavior to what they do not want to happen. Higgins, E. T. (1996). The “self digest”: Self-knowledge serving self-regulatory functions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 1062–1083.

Classroom Exercise/Student Project: Exploring Possible Selves as Roadmaps to the Future To help your class understand how the concept of possible selves may motivate us to lay out specific goals and call forth the energy to work toward achieving them, challenge students to apply the concept to themselves. In their investigations, Daphna Oyserman and her research team have had participants think of “next year” possible selves. The procedure is straightforward. First, students think about who they would like to be next year. Explain that each of us has some image or picture of what we will be like and what we want to avoid being like in the future. Have your students describe what they expect they will be like and what they will likely be doing next year. Next to each expected goal, they should also indicate whether they are currently doing something to achieve that expectation. And, finally, for each goal, they should write down specifically what they are doing this year to attain it. Students should then describe what they do not want to do or want to avoid being. They should identify the concerns or selves to be avoided, indicate whether they are currently working on avoiding that concern or self, and write down specifically what they are doing this year to reduce the chances that this will describe them next year. After students have completed the exercise (in or between classes), conduct a full-class discussion of the importance of possible selves. Have volunteers share what they learned from applying the concept to themselves. In particular, have them comment on how possible selves and specific strategies for attaining possible selves are, as Oyserman’s team suggests, “roadmaps” to the future. Larsen, R., & Buss, D. M. (2008). Personality psychology: Domains of knowledge about human nature. New York: McGraw-Hill. Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologists, 41, 954–969.

D. Oyserman et al. (2004) “Possible selves as roadmaps.” Journal of Research in Personality, 38, 130–149. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Benefits of Self-Esteem Classroom Exercise: Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale Self-esteem is a person’s feelings of high or low selfworth. Handout 19, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (SES), has been the most frequently used instrument for assessing self-esteem. In scoring it, students should first reverse the numbers (1 = 4, 2 = 3, 3 = 2, 4 = 1) placed in front of items 3, 5, 8, 9, and 10, then add the numbers in front of all 10 items to obtain a total score. Scores can range from 10 to 40, with higher scores reflecting a greater sense of self-worth. The SES is designed to assess the degree to which people are generally satisfied with their lives and consider themselves worthy people. Other researchers have attempted to measure self-judgments relative to specific areas of daily functioning, with self-esteem being a summation of subscale scores. Research suggests that those with high self-esteem are less likely to conform; are more persistent at difficult tasks; and are less shy, anxious, and lonely. They are also more persistent at difficult tasks and experience a greater sense of wellbeing. Feeling good about oneself in a general way seems to cause a rosy glow over one’s specific selfschemas and possible selves. Rosenberg, M. (1989). Society and adolescent socialimage. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Classroom Exercise: A Single-Item Measure of Self-Esteem (SISE) Richard Robbins and his colleagues demonstrated that a single item can provide a valid measure of global selfesteem. The item? Rate on a 5-point scale from 1 (not very true of me) to 5 (very true of me) this statement: “I have high self-esteem.” Undergraduates from diverse backgrounds scored a mean of 3.5, a median of 4, and a mode of 4. In three separate studies using adult participants, correlations with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE) were in the range of .75 to .80. The SISE and RSE had nearly identical correlations with a wide range of criterion measures, including domain-specific self-evaluations, self-evaluative biases, social desirability, personality, psychological and physical health, peer ratings of group behavior, academic outcomes, and demographic variables. Self-esteem scores correlated positively with extraversion, conscientiousness, optimism, life satisfaction, and physical well-being. Self-esteem also related

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positively to peer ratings of effectiveness at a group task, talkativeness, and being task-oriented. Self-esteem scores correlated negatively with neuroticism, shyness, depression, and perceived stress. No significant correlation was found between self-esteem and SAT scores, high school GPA, college GPA, or attrition rates. Men showed higher self-esteem than women. Those higher in self-esteem also proved more prone to selfenhancement bias and self-serving attribution. Robins, R. W., Hendin, H. M., & Trzesniewski, K. H. (2001). Measuring global self-esteem: Construct validation of a single-item measure and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 151–161.

Classroom Exercise: Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale Jennifer Crocker and Connie Wolfe argue that we can better understand the links between self-esteem and behavior by examining specific sources of selfesteem. “Contingencies” of self-worth are the areas of life in which people believe that success means they are worthwhile and failure means they are worthless. Handout 20 contains sample items from the Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale designed by Crocker and her colleagues. The scale identifies several possible domains that are relevant to a person’s selfesteem. The full Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale uses five items, not just one, to assess the importance of each domain to one’s sense of self-worth. Still, students can make some initial comparisons with Crocker and Wolfe’s (2001) sample of 1300 college students, comparing their number for each statement with the following mean scores (also on a scale from 1 to 7) from the researchers’ sample. (1) Family support = 5.3 (2) Competition = 5.0 (3) Appearance = 4.9 (4) God’s love = 4.2 (5) Academic competence = 5.3 (6) Virtue = 5.5 (7) Others’ approval = 4.6 Crocker and Wolfe do not claim that this is an exhaustive list of the areas in which people find their self-worth or that one contingency is necessarily preferable to another. The list merely reflects some of the more common domains that respondents identify as important to their self-esteem. Perhaps your students can identify other domains that might be important. The source of our self-esteem provides a powerful guide for our behavior. If our self-worth is rooted in being virtuous, we will act quite differently from someone whose self-esteem is based on appearance.

In a study of 600 college freshmen, self-esteem based on appearance was linked to spending more hours per week grooming, shopping, and partying. Selfesteem rooted in God’s love was linked to spending more hours in religious activities, such as praying and going to church, synagogue, or mosque, and to fewer hours partying. Self-esteem based on academic competence was associated with greater success in gaining admission to graduate school. Crocker and Wolfe argue that major problems such as depression, drug abuse, and aggression may be linked not so much to our general level of self-esteem as to the source of our self-esteem. For example, research indicates that basing one’s self-esteem on physical appearance increases one’s susceptibility to eating disorders. Similarly, people who have high but fragile self-esteem that is based on social approval seem especially prone to anger and hostility when others challenge them. People who are unable to secure self-respect on one basis may shift to another source. Frustrated in their pursuit of self-esteem, they may even reject goals that are important to a successful life. Some research suggests that the high drop-out rate among AfricanAmerican college students is the result of disconnecting self-worth from academic performance after numerous frustrating attempts to succeed in an environment that assumes they are academically inferior. Others who don’t have the means to garner a positive image on the basis of good grades in school or strong relations with peers may organize their self-esteem around strength, power, or physical superiority. Shifting sources of selfworth also explains why overall level of self-esteem does not decline as we grow older. As people age, contingencies of self-worth typically shift from competition and appearance to a more internal and intrinsic basis such as virtue or family. More recently, Crocker and Katherine Knight have challenged the notion that self-esteem is a fundamental human need and have argued that, in fact, pursuing selfesteem by attempting to prove one is a success—for example, through competition or appearance—is costly. Although the successful pursuit of self-esteem may have short-term emotional benefits such as increased happiness, such boosts are “analogous to sugar: tasty but not nutritious.” The long-range pursuit of selfesteem has costs for learning, relatedness, autonomy, self-regulation, and, over time, physical and mental health. People are distracted from the task, become focused on themselves rather than on others, feel pressured, and experience extraordinary stress. Rather than attempting to help children find some area in which they can prove their self-worth, parents and teachers

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might better help children by focusing on what they want to contribute, create, or accomplish and what they need to learn or improve in themselves in order to do so. Crocker, J., & Knight, K. M. (2005). Contingencies of self-worth. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 200–203. Crocker, J., Luhtanen, R., Cooper, M. L., & Bouvrette, A. (2003). Contingencies of self-worth in college students: Theory and measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 894–908. Crocker, J., & Wolfe, C. T. (2001). Contingencies of self-worth. Psychological Review, 108, 593–623.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Dark Side of SelfEsteem In a Psychological Review article, Roy Baumeister and his colleagues draw the following provocative conclusion: “The societal pursuit of high self-esteem for everyone may literally end up doing considerable harm.” In a massive interdisciplinary review of the literature on aggression, crime, and violence, the authors conclude that high (not low) self-esteem underlies violent behavior, particularly “favorable self-appraisals that may be inflated or ill-founded and that are confronted with an external evaluation that disputes them.” In short, some people turn aggressive when they receive feedback that contradicts their favorable images of themselves. Clearly, Baumeister and his colleagues are not saying that everyone with high self-esteem is predisposed to violence. Rather, it is primarily those who refuse to lower their inflated self-appraisals who become violent. Teenagers who do not feel they have received the respect they deserve are more likely to strike out than those who genuinely believe themselves unworthy. Studies of murder, rape, domestic abuse, and even terrorism show that violence occurs when a person with a high, often inflated, opinion of himself or herself is challenged by someone considered inferior. For example, one study of sexual offenders found that rapists sometimes choose a particular victim in order “to disabuse her of her sense of superiority. That is, the woman gave the man the impression that she thought she was better than he was and so he raped her as a way of proving her wrong.” Another interesting example of the relationship between high self-esteem and aggression involves racist violence. Nazism includes an ideology of racial superiority that justifies violence against those deemed weak or inferior. At its peak, the Ku Klux Klan was most

violent toward two groups that challenged the idea of White supremacy, namely upwardly mobile Blacks and Whites who helped Blacks by treating them as equals. One study of Whites belonging to hate groups indicated that those engaged in violent behavior actually were better educated and had higher career aspirations than the less violent members of such groups. Baumeister and his colleagues conclude that if, as some have argued, low self-esteem (or even hidden self-doubts) is the cause of violence, “it would be therapeutically prudent to make every effort to convince rapists, murderers, wife-beaters, professional hit men, tyrants, torturers, and others that they are superior beings.” However, there is clear evidence that this is something they already believe. “If any modifications to self-appraisals were to be attempted,” suggest the authors, “then perhaps it would be better to try instilling modesty and humility.” Clearly, questions about the relationship between self-esteem and aggression continue. M. Brent Donnellan and his colleagues reported a significant relationship between low self-esteem and real-world externalizing problems such as delinquency and antisocial behavior. The relationship held for research participants from both the United States and New Zealand and for both adolescents and college students. In attempting to reconcile their findings with Baumeister’s results, the researchers suggest that we must draw a distinction between narcissism (Baumeister’s primary focus) and healthy self-regard. They believe it is reasonable to conclude that both low self-esteem and narcissism contribute to externalizing problems. In addition, Donnellan and his colleagues suggest that self-esteem may relate differently to laboratory aggression than it does to real-world aggression. For example, lab studies typically examine aggression provoked by a competitive task in which self-evaluation processes have been activated. It may be socially appropriate to blast one’s opponent with white noise in the context of an experiment that has been sanctioned by a university. In contrast, real-world externalizing problems occur in a wide range of contexts and may have distinct correlates. Clearly, real-world externalizing problems are explicitly undesirable, antisocial, and in most cases illegal. Baumeister, R. F., Smart, L., & Boden, J. M. (1996). The relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem. Psychological Review, 103, 5–33. Donnellan, M. B., et al. (2005). Low self-esteem is related to aggression, antisocial behavior and delinquency. Psychological Science, 16, 328–335.

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Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Sociometer Theory of Self-Esteem The construct of self-esteem has long occupied a central place in psychology. Some psychologists have assumed that people have an inherent need to feel good about themselves. Humanistic psychologists suggest that self-esteem tells us when we are behaving in selfdetermined, autonomous ways. Still other psychologists propose that people seek high self-esteem because it fosters goal achievement. Mark Leary has proposed that self-esteem is a psychological meter or gauge that monitors the quality of people’s relationships with others. His socio­meter theory states that the so-called self-esteem motive does not function first of all to maintain self-esteem but rather to minimize the likelihood of social rejection or more precisely relational devaluation. The theory assumes that people’s pervasive drive to maintain significant interpersonal relationships evolved because early human beings who belonged to social groups were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who did not. Leary argues that in focusing on the monitor rather than on what it measures, psychologists have been distracted from the underlying interpersonal process and the importance of social acceptance to human well-being. Leary argues that sociometer theory provides a parsimonious explanation for much of what we know about self-esteem. For example, it explains why events that are known by others have much greater effects on self-esteem than events only known by individuals themselves. It also accounts for why the primary determinants of self-esteem involve the perceived reactions of others as well as self-judgments on dimensions that the person thinks are important to significant others. Most often, self-esteem is lowered by criticism, rejection, and other events that have negative implications for relational evaluation. On the other hand, self-esteem is positively associated with the belief that one possesses socially desirable attributes such as competence, personal likability, and physical attractiveness. Sociometer theory challenges the humanistic assumption that self-esteem based on the approval of others is false or unhealthy. If, in fact, the function of self-esteem is to avoid social ostracism, then the system must be responsive to others’ reactions. Sociometer theory also challenges the notion that low self-esteem is a cause of psychological difficulties such as depression, loneliness, substance abuse, or criminal behavior. Leary notes that, in fact, the relationships between self-esteem and psychological problems is weaker and more scat-

tered than typically assumed. Moreover, problems are not caused by low self-esteem but rather by a history of low relational evaluation if not outright social rejection. As a gauge of relational evaluation, self-esteem may parallel these problems, but it is a co-effect, not a cause. Leary, M. (1999). Making sense of self-esteem. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8, 32–35.

Classroom Exercise: Self-Concept Clarity A good classroom complement to a discussion of selfesteem is self-concept clarity. It refers to the extent to which the contents of an individual’s self-concept (e.g., perceived personal attributes) are clearly and confidently defined, internally consistent, and temporally stable. Handout 21 is Jennifer Campbell and her colleagues’ Self-Concept Clarity Scale. In obtaining a total score, students should first reverse the numbers they gave in response to items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12 (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1) and then add the numbers in front of all the items. Total scores can range from 12 to 60, with higher scores reflecting greater self-concept clarity. Mean scores for men and women are approximately 40 and 39, respectively. Ask students how self-concept clarity might make a difference in a person’s life. Campbell and her associates’ research indicated that self-concept clarity showed a strong positive relationship to self-esteem. If there is a causal relationship between clarity and self-esteem, its direction is unclear. Higher self-esteem may contribute to greater self-clarity, or vice versa. In terms of the “Big Five” personality dimensions, self-concept clarity was positively related to conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability but showed little correlation with extraversion or openness to experience. Findings also suggested that whereas people with confused self-concepts may have a greater tendency toward chronic self-analysis, they may be less in tune with their internal states than people with more clearly articulated self-schemas. Interestingly, Japanese research participants showed lower levels of self-concept clarity and lower correlations of self-concept clarity with selfesteem. You might ask students to explain these latter relationships in terms of Japan being a more collectivist society. Campbell, J. D., Trapnell, P. D., Heine, S. J., Katz, I. M., Lavallee, L. F., & Lehman, D. R. (1996). Self-concept clarity: Measurement, personality correlates, and cultural boundaries. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 141–156.

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Self-Serving Bias Classroom Exercise: The Name-Letter Effect Angela Lipsitz and Lance Gifford suggest using the name-letter effect to illustrate self-serving bias as well as processing without conscious awareness. Both are important topics in relation to research on the self. Research indicates that people think of the letters in their own name as better letters. This name-letter effect may be a specific example of the mere ownership effect—valuing objects that are part of oneself more than objects that are not. To demonstrate the name-letter effect distribute a copy of Handout 22 to each student. Acknowledge that, although the task may seem silly, you would like them to rate how much they like each letter. Each student should do so rapidly just giving immediate impressions. After everyone has finished, have each student print his or her first and last names at the top of the handout. Next, explain the meaning of the letters above the columns on the right: IYFN represents “in your first name,” NIYFN stands for “not in your first name,” IYLN represents “in your last name,” and “NIYLN” stands for “not in your last name.” Tell students to fill in the rating for each letter under the appropriate column and finally calculate the mean for each column. Then ask, “How many of you had a higher average for letters in your first name than for letters not in your first name?” Most hands will go up. Repeating the question for the last name will typically give the same result. Explain the name-letter and mere-ownership effects. Indicate that they have been found in over a dozen languages. Through careful research, psychologists have shown that the name-letter effect is not due to name letters being more frequent, to an attachment to letters first written, or to participants guessing the purpose of the research. Lipsitz, A., & Gifford, L. A. (2003). The name-letter effect. Teaching of Psychology, 30, 58–59.

Classroom Exercise: Biased Self-Ratings USA Today “Snapshots” provide good examples of self-serving bias. A total of 85 percent of respondents rated their own manners as good or excellent but only 23 percent rated others’ manners as good or excellent. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi reported that adolescents have particularly unrealistically high expectations of becoming professionals. In his survey, 15 percent expected to become either doctors or lawyers (about 15 times more than the actual number of doctors and lawyers in the labor force). And the 6 percent who expected to become

professional athletes were overestimating their chances by about 500-fold. More recently, Nicholas Epley and Erin Whitchurch found that self-serving bias extends to more automatic, perceptual judgments as well. They reported that people see their own faces as being more physically attractive than they actually are. In the study, participants’ faces were made more or less attractive using a morphing procedure. Epley and Whitchurch found that participants were more likely to recognize themselves in an attractively enhanced version from a lineup that included their actual face along with attractive and unattractive morphs. The participants also identified an attractively enhanced version of their face more quickly in a lineup of distractor faces. The enhancement bias correlated with implicit but not explicit measures of self-esteem. This latter finding is consistent with the notion that this particular form of self-serving bias is relatively automatic rather than a deliberative process. On nearly any dimension that is both subjective and socially desirable, most people see themselves as better than average. Handout 23 provides a vivid demonstration of the better-than-average phenomenon. Have students complete the exercise and then calculate their mean rating for the 15 items and write it at the top of the sheet. To avoid invading privacy, collect the handouts, shuffle, and redistribute so that each student reports another’s score. By a show of hands ask how many have a mean over 5.0. Virtually every hand will go up. Handout 24 demonstrates how self-serving bias is also reflected in unrealistic optimism. The key questions are 3 and 5. You can tally your students’ responses between classes or, alternatively, collect the handouts, shuffle, and redistribute so students report on a response other than their own. By a show of hands ask how many have surveys predicting a higher GPA for the upcoming term than that obtained for the prior term. Virtually all hands will go up. Even more telling will be students’ responses to 5. The vast majority, if not all, will predict a grade well above the average grade given the prior semester. Handout 25, designed by John Brink, provides another dramatic demonstration of self-serving bias. There’s an extremely high correlation between our self-rating on a trait and its perceived importance to us. Although you may want to collect the handouts and calculate the correlations for the entire class, it’s not necessary. The effect is so powerful students will see it by simply examining their own responses. Three explanations have been offered for selfserving bias. First, self-presentation theory states that

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we like to present a good image both to an external audience (other people) and to an internal audience (ourselves). This explains why people express more modesty when their self-flattery is vulnerable to being debunked or when experts will be scrutinizing their self-evaluations. The other two explanations suggest that we genuinely perceive ourselves in self-enhancing ways. First, self-serving bias is a by-product of the way we process and remember information about ourselves. For example, we may assume more responsibility for our successes than for our failures because we intend success, not failure, and our efforts usually do produce positive out­comes. If we occasionally fail, it makes sense for us to blame unusual circumstances. Second, we are strongly motivated to protect and enhance our self-esteem. Studies indicate that the emotions we ex­perience after success and failure play a role in selfserving bias. For example, after people have completed a test, those given information that implicates their self-esteem by casting doubt on their ability exhibit greater self-serving bias than do people who are less ego-involved. Epley, N., & Whitchurch, E. (2008). Mirror, mirror on the wall: Enhancement in self-recognition. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1159–1170. Myers, D. G. (2008). Social psychology (9th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Classroom Exercise: Self-Handicapping Self-handicapping—protecting one’s self-image by creating a ready excuse for failure—is an interesting topic for class discussion. It fits well with a discussion of self-serving bias. Studies indicate that we often protect our self-image by attributing our failure to external factors rather than to ourselves. With selfhandicapping, we enhance the opportunity to externalize failure. If we fear failure on a job interview, for example, we might deliberately party the night before. Similarly, we might avoid studying before an important exam. If we fail, we have a ready excuse and we have not damaged our sense of competence. If we succeed, we have done so despite a significant obstacle. Only when we are provided a ready excuse for failure does self-handicapping become unnecessary. Self-handicapping creates a no-lose situation for our self-esteem, as shown in Michael Strube’s review of research. Researchers have shown, for example, that high self-handicapping intercollegiate swimmers and golfers practice little or not at all prior to competitions that pose a threat to their self-esteem. Similarly, shy individuals are more likely to admit to shyness in situations where their performance might be evaluated negatively. Interestingly, when students were required to

solve anagrams, they performed best on those that were alleged to be very difficult when supposedly distracting music was played. Having an excuse for failure, students could try hard without risking their self-esteem. In a series of studies, Miron Zuckerman and Fen-Fang Tsai examined the association of selfhandicapping to various health-related measures. They found that, over time, self-handicappers scored lower on measures of well-being, higher on negative mood and symptoms, lower on competence satisfaction, higher on substance use (of alcohol and marijuana, for example), and lower on intrinsic motivation. Zuckerman and Tsai report that self-handicapping was related over time to lower self-esteem, and lower self-esteem was also related over time to higher self-handicapping. These reciprocal relations between self-handicapping and poor adjustment tend to make a bad situation worse. Once you have students thinking about selfhandicapping behavior, administer the Self-Description Inventory designed by Edward Jones and Frederick Rhodewalt (Handout 26). It is called the SelfDescription Inventory so as not to give its purpose away. Reverse the score for items 3, 5, 6, 10, 13, 20, 22, and 23 (5 = 0, 4 = 1, 3 = 2, 2 = 3, 1 = 4, 0 = 5). The mean scores for undergraduate men and women were 32.99 and 33.15, respectively. Rhodewalt, F. (1990). Self-handicappers: Individual differences in the preference for anticipatory, self-protective acts. In R. L. Higgins, C. R. Snyder, & S. Berglas (Eds.), Self-handicapping: The paradox that isn’t. New York: Plenum. Strube, M. F. (1986). An analysis of the selfhandicapping scale. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 7, 211–224. Zuckerman, M., & Tsai, F. F. (2005). Costs of selfhandicapping. Journal of Personality, 73, 411–442.

Classroom Exercise: Taking Credit for Success, Denying Responsibility for Failure Studies indicate that people readily accept credit for success but attribute failure to such external factors as bad luck or a problem’s inherent “impossibility.” Hand­ ing back a psychology test provides a good opportunity to demon­strate this self-serving bias. After students have received their score and grade on a test, distribute Handout 27 and have them complete it. Collect the questionnaires and, between class sessions, perform the necessary calculations. Do a median split on the basis of test performances and calculate the mean ratings on each item of Handout 28 for high scorers and then for low scorers. Comparisons between these ratings will show that those who did well are more likely to attribute their scores to their ability or effort, while those

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who performed poorly are more likely to explain their performance in terms of test difficulty or bad luck. The latter are also less likely to see the test as a good measure of what they know. When you report these results

to your students, be sure to note that teachers make similar attributions, taking credit for positive outcomes of their students and blaming failure on the student.

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HANDOUT 1 A Personal Personality Theory

Instructions: For each of the following statements, circle the number that corresponds most closely to your point of view. 1.

Human behavior results primarily from heredity, what has been genetically transmitted by parents, or from environment, the external circumstances and experiences that shape a person after conception has occurred. heredity

2.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ environment

An important part of every person is a self, some central aspect of personality referred to as “I” or “me,” or there really is no self in personality. self

3.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________

no self

Personality is relatively unchanging, with each person showing the same behavior throughout a lifetime, or personality is relatively changing, with each person showing different behavior throughout a lifetime. unchanging

4.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ changing

The most important influences on behavior are past events, what has previously occurred to a person, or future events, what a person seeks to bring about by striving to meet certain goals. past

5.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ future

The most important characteristics about people are general ones, those commonly shared by many people, or unique ones, those that make each person different from every other person.

general 6.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ unique

People are motivated to cooperate with others mainly because they are self-centered, expecting to receive some personal gain, or mainly because they are altruistic, seeking to work with others only for the benefit of doing things with and for others. self-centered

7.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ altruistic

People learn best when they are motivated by reward, involving pleasure, or by punishment, involving pain. reward

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ punishment

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HANDOUT 1 (continued ) 8.

The main reason you behave as you do (for example, attend college) is because of conscious personal decisions to do so, or because social factors outside your control leave you little real choice in the matter.

9.

personal

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ social

Human nature is essentially constructive, with people showing positive, personal growth and a desire to help others fulfill their potentials, or destructive, with people showing behavior that is ultimately self-defeating and a desire to keep others from improving themselves. constructive

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ destructive

10. Human beings have no purpose or reason for their existence other than what they experience on a day-to-day basis, or human beings have some purpose for living that is outside themselves. no purpose

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 _________________________________________________ purpose

Source: Reprinted by permission of the authors from Potkay, C. R., and Allen, B. P. (1986). Personality: Theory, research, and applications. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. © Charles R. Potkay.

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HANDOUT 2 Issues in Personality

Indicate the extent to which you agree with each of the following statements using the following response scale. Place the appropriate number in the blank before each item.

1 = strongly disagree 2 = disagree 3 = neutral 4 = agree 5 = strongly agree 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Events that occurred during childhood have no effect on one’s personality in adulthood. Sexual adjustment is easy for most people. Culture and society have evolved as ways to curb human beings’ natural aggressiveness. Little boys should not become too attached to their mothers. It is possible to deliberately “forget” something too painful to remember. People who chronically smoke, eat, or chew gum have some deep psychological problems. Competitive people are no more aggressive than noncompetitive people. Fathers should remain somewhat aloof to their daughters. Toilet training is natural and not traumatic for most children. The phallus is a symbol of power. A man who dates a woman old enough to be his mother has problems. There are some women who are best described as being “castrating bitches.” Dreams merely replay events that occurred during the day and have no deep meaning. There is something wrong with a woman who dates a man who is old enough to be her father. A student who wants to postpone an exam by saying “My grandmother lied . . . er, I mean died,” should probably be allowed the postponement.

Source: TEACHING OF PSYCHOLOGY by Miserandino. Copyright 1994 by Taylor & Francis Informa UK ltd. - Journals. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Informa UK Ltd. Journals in the format Other Book via Copyright Clearance Center.

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HANDOUT 3 Defense Mechanisms

Next to each of the statements below indicate with the appropriate letter the defense mechanism that is illustrated. Use the following code.





A. Repression B. Regression C. Reaction Formation D. Rationalization

E. Displacement F. Sublimation G. Projection

1. Even a top baseball player will sometimes strike out on an easy pitch. When this happens, his next action may be to throw his bat or kick the water cooler with all his might. 2. Soldiers exposed to traumatic experiences in concentration camps during wartime sometimes had amnesia and were unable to recall any part of their ordeal. 3. The mother of an unwanted child may feel guilty about not welcoming her child. As a result, she may try to prove her love by becoming overindulgent and overprotective of the child. 4. Mrs. Brown often accuses other women of talking too much and spreading rumors. It is rather obvious to those who know her that she is revealing her own inclinations in that area. 5. Paul, an aggressive child, had problems in elementary school, as he would frequently fight with other children. Paul found when he entered high school that he could channel this hostility into sports such as football and soccer. 6. The habitual drinker may insist that he really doesn’t care much for the taste of alcohol but feels that he is obliged to drink with friends “just to be sociable.” 7. Mrs. James can’t understand why her husband has been so grumpy and irritable for the past week. It certainly isn’t her fault that he didn’t receive the anticipated promotion at the factory. 8. Parents might be reassured to know that children who pull wings off flies and jab pins in the dog may eventually find their niche in the areas of dentistry or surgery. 9. Mike is always trying to impress his pals with how strong and independent he has become. However, when Mike has social or emotional problems, he still wants his dad to figure out the solution. 10. A student forgot that his dreaded final exam in geometry was scheduled for Friday. This seemed unusual as the date of the exam had been marked on his calendar for several weeks. 11. A boy will sometimes react against the strong sexual attraction that he feels toward girls by becoming a confirmed “woman hater.” 12. The majority group of a culture may blame all the various ills of society on a small minority group. This is a process termed “scapegoating” and is a factor in racial and religious prejudice. 13. The individual who actually likes to have others do things for him may be quick to criticize other people for being dependent and lazy. 14. James Riley has suffered heavy financial losses recently while playing the stock market. Upon trading his big luxury car for an old small car, Jim informed his associates that he bought the cheaper car to do his part in the battle against air pollution. 15. David Walters recently lost his executive position in a large corporation. Rather than seek a new job, David finds comfort and escape through drinking, as alcohol helps him forget the details of being fired. 16. Tory is apt to become annoyed when he recalls his earlier conviction as a Peeping Tom. Tory has left his sordid past behind and now is a busy photographer for Playboy magazine. 17. Joan has discovered an amazing coincidence in relation to her attendance at school. Every time a test in Spanish is scheduled, she oversleeps and arrives at school too late for the class. 18. Reformers may conduct campaigns against pornographic literature in order to fight their own erotic interest in such material. They campaign to convince others of their own purity and goodness.

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HANDOUT 3 (continued )











19. Margaret is convinced that she received a “C” in her chemistry class instead of an “A” because of widespread cheating by her fellow students. She is sure that she must be as capable in the chemistry course as in her other subjects. 20. The young wife, after a bitter conflict with her husband, gives up her marriage as a failure and returns to the home of her parents. She again takes on the role of the dependent child who expects unlimited love and indulgence. 21. The high school teacher was criticized by the principal for having a disruptive class. When the teacher got home that night, he argued with his wife and kicked the dog. 22. Adults who were sexually molested during childhood often report that all the details of the painful episode have been forgotten. 23. It is possible that smokers have graduated from earlier stages of thumb-sucking and pencil-chewing, neither of which would be acceptable behavior in adult society. Smoking is a socially acceptable outlet for the oral need. 24. The woman with a strong sexual drive may feel that most other women exhibit flirtatious behavior or wear revealing clothes. 25. After John was rejected by the admissions office at Yale, he claimed that he wouldn’t enjoy attending such a large school anyway. Besides, he might receive higher grades at a smaller local college. 26. Mary has secretly disliked her mother since she was a young child. As these feelings arouse anxiety, Mary usually tells friends that she loves her mother very much. 27. Roger is a heavy drinker but has managed to keep this behavior a secret from his friends. He is sure that most people actually drink as much as he does. 28. One psychological theory holds that the desire for sexual gratification, if frustrated or blocked, may eventually find expression in painting or the writing of poetry. 29. A number of psychologists believe that social crusaders who advocate various forms of social control may in reality be struggling with their own unconscious desires. 30. A 6-year-old child, who gave up bed-wetting at the age of 3, moves with his parents to a new neighborhood. During the stressful period of adjusting to his new home, he again wets the bed for several nights. 31. The girl who was not invited to the school dance told her friends that she would not have attended if asked. She said that her teachers had assigned more homework than usual and that she was simply too busy for any unimportant social functions. 32. It is typical for the person who is most difficult to convince in an argument to say that everyone else is stubborn. 33. When a new baby arrives in the family, the older child will sometimes cry more than usual and be more insistent about receiving caresses from the parents. 34. Billy always teases and annoys his younger brother after he himself is disciplined by his parents. 35. Mr. Martin carried around a letter in his coat pocket for weeks. The note, which he somehow neglected mailing, was an invitation to his mother-in-law to visit the family for several months. Source: SIMULATION AND GAMING ONLINE by Kellogg. Copyright 1976 by Sage Publications Inc., Journals. Reproduced with permission of Sage Publications Inc., Journals in the format Other book via Copyright Clearance Center.

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HANDOUT 4 Cheek and Buss Scale

Instructions: Please read each item carefully and decide to what extent it is characteristic of your feelings and behavior. Fill in the blank next to each item by choosing a number from the scale printed below.

1 = very uncharacteristic or untrue, strongly disagree 2 = uncharacteristic 3 = neutral 4 = characteristic 5 = very characteristic or true, strongly agree

1. I feel tense when I’m with people I don’t know well.



2. I am socially somewhat awkward.



3. I do not find it difficult to ask other people for information.



4. I am often uncomfortable at parties and other social functions.



5. When in a group of people, I have trouble thinking of the right things to talk about.



6. It does not take me long to overcome my shyness in new situations.



7. It is hard for me to act natural when I am meeting new people.



8. I feel nervous when speaking to someone in authority.



9. I have no doubts about my social competence.

10. I have trouble looking someone right in the eye. 11. I feel inhibited in social situations. 12. I do not find it hard to talk to strangers. 13. I am more shy with members of the opposite sex. 14. During conversations with new acquaintances, I worry about saying something dumb. Source: Cheek et al. Shyness, self-esteem and self-consciousness. In H. Leitenberg (Ed.), Handbook of social and evaluation anxiety (Table 1, p. 56). Copyright 1990. Reprinted with kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media.

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HANDOUT 5 North Dakota Null-Hypothesis Brain Inventory

Respond to each item by circling the “T” for true or “F” for false. T F 1. T F 2. T F 3. T F 4. T F 5. T F 6. T F 7. T F 8. T F 9. T F 10. T F 11. T F 12. T F 13. T F 14. T F 15. T F 16. T F 17. T F 18. T F 19. T F 20. T F 21. T F 22. T F 23. T F 24. T F 25. T F 26. T F 27. T F 28. T F 29. T F 30. T F 31. T F 32. T F 33. T F 34. T F 35. T F 36.

I salivate at the sight of mittens. If I go into the street, I’m apt to be bitten by a horse. Some people never look at me. Spinach makes me feel alone. My sex life is A-okay. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit. I like to kill mosquitoes. Cousins are not to be trusted. It makes me embarrassed to fall down. I get nauseous from too much roller skating. I think most people would cry to gain a point. I cannot read or write. I am bored by thoughts of death. I become homicidal when people try to reason with me. I would enjoy the work of a chicken flicker. I am never startled by a fish. My mother’s uncle was a good man. I don’t like it when somebody is rotten. People who break the law are wise guys. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend. I think beavers work too hard. I use shoe polish to excess. God is love. I like mannish children. I have always been disturbed by the sight of Lincoln’s ears. I always let people get ahead of me at swimming pools. Most of the time I go to sleep without saying goodbye. I am not afraid of picking up door knobs. I believe I smell as good as most people. Frantic screams make me nervous. It’s hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room full of mice. I would never tell my nickname in a crisis. A wide necktie is a sign of disease. As a child I was deprived of licorice. I would never shake hands with a gardener. My eyes are always cold.

Source: Reprinted by permission of Art Buchwald from his North Dakota Null-Hypothesis Brain Inventory (1965). Quoted in Blumenfeld, W. S. (1972). “I am never startled by a fish.” APA Monitor, 3(9, 10), 3, 14.

828 Personality

HANDOUT 6 Personal Attitudes and Traits

Listed below are a number of statements concerning personal attitudes and traits. Read each item and decide whether the statement is true or false as it pertains to you personally. 1. Before voting, I thoroughly investigate the qualifications of all the candidates. 2. I never hesitate to go out of my way to help someone in trouble. 3. It is sometimes hard for me to go on with my work if I am not encouraged. 4. I have never intensely disliked anyone. 5. On occasion, I have had doubts about my ability to succeed in life. 6. I sometimes feel resentful when I don’t get my way. 7. I am always careful about my manner of dress. 8. My table manners at home are as good as when I eat out in a restaurant. 9. If I could get into a movie without paying and be sure I was not seen, I would probably do it. 10. On a few occasions, I have given up doing something because I thought too little of my ability. 11. I like to gossip at times. 12. There have been times when I felt like rebelling against people in authority, even though I knew they were right. 13. No matter who I’m talking to, I’m always a good listener. 14. I can remember “playing sick” to get out of something. 15. There have been occasions when I took advantage of someone. 16. I’m always willing to admit when I make a mistake. 17. I always try to practice what I preach. 18. I don’t find it particularly difficult to get along with loudmouthed, obnoxious people. 19. I sometimes try to get even rather than forgive and forget. 20. When I don’t know something, I don’t at all mind admitting it. 21. I am always courteous, even to people who are disagreeable. 22. At times, I have really insisted on having things my own way. 23. There have been occasions when I felt like smashing things. 24. I would never think of letting someone else be punished for my wrongdoings. 25. I never resent being asked to return a favor. 26. I have never been irked when people expressed ideas very different from my own. 27. I never make a long trip without checking the safety of my car. 28. There have been times when I was quite jealous of the good fortune of others. 29. I have almost never felt the urge to tell someone off. 30. I am sometimes irritated by people who ask favors of me. 31. I have never felt that I was punished without cause. 32. I sometimes think when people have a misfortune, they only got what they deserved. 33. I have never deliberately said something that hurt someone’s feelings. Source: Crowne, D. P., & Marlowe, D. (1960). A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 24, 349–354.

Personality 829

HANDOUT 7 Following is a list of personality traits that may or may not apply to you. Please write a number next to each statement to indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with that statement. You should rate the extent to which the pair of traits applies to you, even if one characteristic applies more strongly than the other. Disagree Disagree Disagree strongly moderately a little 1 2 3

Neither agree nor Agree disagree a little 4 5

Agree moderately 6

Agree strongly 7

I see myself as:

1. Extraverted, enthusiastic.



2. Critical, quarrelsome.



3. Dependable, self-disciplined.



4. Anxious, easily upset.



5. Open to new experiences, complex.



6. Reserved, quiet.



7. Sympathetic, warm.



8. Disorganized, careless.



9. Calm, emotionally stable.

10. Conventional, uncreative.

Source: Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 525 (Appendix A).

830 Personality

HANDOUT 8 The Big Five Inventory (BFI)

Here are a number of characteristics that may or may not apply to you. For example, do you agree that you are someone who likes to spend time with others? Please write a number next to each statement to indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with that statement.

Disagree strongly 1

Disagree a little 2

Neither agree nor disagree 3

Agree a little 4

Agree strongly 5

I see myself as someone who . . .

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Is talkative Tends to find fault with others Does a thorough job Is depressed, blue Is original, comes up with new ideas Is reserved Is helpful and unselfish with others Can be somewhat careless Is relaxed, handles stress well Is curious about many different things Is full of energy Starts quarrels with others Is a reliable worker Can be tense Is ingenious, a deep thinker Generates a lot of enthusiasm Has a forgiving nature Tends to be disorganized Worries a lot Has an active imagination Tends to be quiet Is generally trusting



23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

Tends to be lazy Is emotionally stable, not easily upset Is inventive Has an assertive personality Can be cold and aloof Perseveres until the task is finished Can be moody Values artistic, aesthetic experiences Is sometimes shy, inhibited Is considerate and kind to almost everyone Does things efficiently Remains calm in tense situations Prefers work that is routine Is outgoing, sociable Is sometimes rude to others Makes plans and follows through with them Gets nervous easily Likes to reflect, play with ideas Has few artistic interests Likes to cooperate with others Is easily distracted Is sophisticated in art, music, or literature

Source: Pervin, L. A., & John, O. P. (eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research, 2/e. New York: Guilford. Copyright © 1991 by Oliver P. John. Reprinted with permission.

Personality 831

HANDOUT 9 Indicate the extent to which each of the following terms describes you. Use a 9-point scale to indicate your response with 1 = extremely inaccurate to 9 = extremely accurate. Careful Careless* Conscientious Disorganized* Efficient Haphazard* Negligent* Organized Practical Prompt Sloppy* Steady Inconsistent* Inefficient* Impractical* Neat Systematic Thorough Undependable* Unsystematic*

Source: Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4, 26–42. Copyright © 1992 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted by permission.

832 Personality

HANDOUT 10 Your Personality Profile

Your Developmental History You are the kind of person who was biologically conceived by two, opposite-sexed parents. However, no one, including your mother or father, ever asked you if you wanted to be born. For a period of time, you were totally dependent on others for food, shelter, and safety. On more than one occasion your cries went unheeded. Things are different now. You are not as young as you were. You’ve had numerous experiences in your life. You’ve had some problems and suffered some disappointments. When things haven’t worked out the way you intended them to, you wished that they had. Your Physiological Processes . . . You’re the kind of person who derives pleasure from scratching an itch. Pain hurts you. In fact, you typically attempt to avoid pain. When you are too cold, you have a strong tendency to seek heat . . . . When you feel sick, you desire to feel better. When having sex, you’re the type of person who would prefer to have an orgasm, rather than not having one. You experience a sense of satisfaction, even pleasure, after relieving your bladder or bowels . . . . Personality Characteristics You have many sides to your personality. There are some parts of your personality that you like more than others. Deep down, you have some pretty deep feelings . . . . When your feelings are hurt, you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like it. Given the choice, you’d rather feel good than bad. Sometimes you are happy; sometimes you aren’t. . . . Interpersonal Functioning You are similar to other people in some ways, but not in other ways. There are many people whom you just do not know. You enjoy having the respect of others. You like some people more than others. When you lose someone dear, you’re likely to feel sad. In your relationships with others, you’re trying to strike a balance between autonomy and closeness. Deep down, you crave love and approval. You want to be understood. You are the kind of person who prefers not being ridiculed, mocked, or tortured by others. Goals and Expectations You wish that you could be more like the person who you really want to be. You wish that you had more control over your life. You want to accomplish more. You would prefer to be successful rather than unsuccessful. Diagnostic Impressions You have intrapsychic conflict. You have control issues. You have boundary issues. You have trust issues. You have inner-child issues. You have ambivalent feelings toward your parents. You have unfinished business. You have repressed introjects. You are searching for meaning in life. You are your own worst enemy. You come from a dysfunctional family. You have a biochemical imbalance. Source: Levy, D. A. (1993). Psychometric infallibility realized: The one-size-fits-all psychological profile. Copyright © 1993 by Wry-Bred Press, Inc. Journal of Polymorphous Perversity. Reprinted by permission of Dr. Glenn Blenbogen.

Personality 833

HANDOUT 11 Astrology Rate the 12 personality types below in terms of their applicability to your own personality. For each type place a vertical mark (“|”) anywhere on the scale, ranging from completely inapplicable to completely applicable. Although not every adjective in a type will necessarily apply equally, respond to each set of three as one description. Inapplicable

Applicable

1. _____________________________________________________________________________ pioneering, enthusiastic, courageous Inapplicable Applicable 2. _____________________________________________________________________________ stable, stubborn, well-organized Inapplicable Applicable 3. _____________________________________________________________________________ intellectual, adaptable, clever Inapplicable Applicable 4. _____________________________________________________________________________ sensitive, nurturing, sympathetic Inapplicable Applicable 5. _____________________________________________________________________________ extraverted, generous, authoritative Inapplicable Applicable 6. _____________________________________________________________________________ critical, exacting, intelligent Inapplicable Applicable 7. _____________________________________________________________________________ harmonizing, just, sociable Inapplicable Applicable 8. _____________________________________________________________________________ secretive, strong, passionate Inapplicable Applicable 9. _____________________________________________________________________________ honest, impulsive, optimistic Inapplicable Applicable 10. _____________________________________________________________________________ ambitious, hard-working, cautious Inapplicable Applicable 11. _____________________________________________________________________________ original, open-minded, independent Inapplicable Applicable 12. _____________________________________________________________________________ kind, sensitive, creative Source: TEACHING OF PSYCHOLOGY by Balch. Copyright 1980 by Taylor & Francis Informa UK ltd. - Journals. Reproeduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Informa UK Ltd. Journals in the format Other Book via Copyright Clearance Center.

834 Personality

HANDOUT 12 Personal Constructs

The following is an abbreviated version of Kelly’s Rep Test (the Minimum Context Form). By taking a few minutes to complete the test, you can obtain a quick idea of the constructs you use to organize information about the people you know and meet. After you complete the test, you may want to compare your responses with those of other people. No doubt you will find a few overlapping constructs, but also many that you hadn’t thought of. Of course, these differences in personal constructs represent differences in personality that should translate into individual differences in your behavior. To begin, write down the names of the following 12 people. Although a person may fit into more than one category, you need to compile a list of 12 different people. If there is no one who fits in a category, name someone who is similar to the category description. For example, if you have no brother, then select someone who is like a brother to you.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

A teacher you liked A teacher you disliked Your wife (husband) or boyfriend (girlfriend) An employer, supervisor, or officer you found hard to get along with An employer, supervisor, or officer you liked Your mother Your father Brother nearest your age Sister nearest your age A person with whom you have worked who was easy to get along with A person with whom you have worked who was hard to understand A neighbor with whom you get along well

Next, take three of these people at a time, as indicated below, and describe in what important way two of them are alike but different from the third. Put your description of the two alike people in the Construct list and your description of the third person in the Contrast list. Names

Construct

Contrast

3, 6, 7



1, 4, 10



4, 7, 8



1, 6, 9



4, 5, 8



2, 11, 12



8, 9, 10



2, 3, 5



5, 7, 11



1, 10, 12



Source: Burger, J. (2000). Personality (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, pp. 476–477.

Personality 835

HANDOUT 13 Self-Monitoring Scale

The statements below concern your personal reactions to a number of different situations. No two statements are exactly alike, so consider each statement carefully before answering. If a statement is TRUE or MOSTLY TRUE as applied to you, circle the “T.” If a statement is FALSE or NOT USUALLY TRUE as applied to you, circle the “F.” T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F T F

1. I find it hard to imitate the behavior of other people. 2. My behavior is usually an expression of my true inner feelings, attitudes, and beliefs. 3. At parties and social gatherings, I do not attempt to do or say things that others will like. 4. I can only argue for ideas that I already believe. 5. I can make impromptu speeches even on topics about which I have almost no information. 6. I guess I put on a show to impress or entertain people. 7. When I am uncertain how to act in a social situation, I look to the behavior of others for cues. 8. I would probably make a good actor. 9. I rarely need the advice of my friends to choose movies, books, or music. 10. I sometimes appear to others to be experiencing deeper emotions than I actually am. 11. I laugh more when I watch a comedy with others than when alone. 12. In a group of people I am rarely the center of attention. 13. In different situations and with different people, I often act like very different persons. 14. I am not particularly good at making other people like me. 15. Even if I am not enjoying myself, I often pretend to be having a good time. 16. I’m not always the person I appear to be. 17. I would not change my opinions (or the way I do things) in order to please someone else or win their favor. 18. I have considered being an entertainer. 19. In order to get along and be liked, I tend to be what people expect me to be rather than anything else. 20. I have never been good at games like charades or improvisational acting. 21. I have trouble changing my behavior to suit different people and different situations. 22. At a party I let others keep the jokes and stories going. 23. I feel a bit awkward in company and do not show up quite so well as I should. 24. I can look anyone in the eye and tell a lie with a straight face (if for a right end). 25. I may deceive people by being friendly when I really dislike them.

Source: Snyder, M. (1974). The self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 526–537. Copyright © 1974 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission.

836 Personality

HANDOUT 14 Dating Survey

1. Are you currently dating someone exclusively (that is, one person and no one else)? (Check one.)

Yes

No



2. If yes, how many months have you dated this person?



3. If you are not dating one person exclusively at the present time, have you dated at least two different people in the past year? (Check one.)

Yes

No



4. If yes, how many different persons have you dated in the past year?



5. If you are currently dating someone (whether exclusively or not), please write your current (or most steady) dating partner’s initials on the first line below. Then write the initials of 3 opposite-sex friends on the lines that follow.

Current partner Friend No. 1 Friend No. 2 Friend No. 3



6. If you could ideally form a close, intimate dating relationship with either your current dating partner or Friend No. 1, whom would you choose?



7. If you could ideally form a close, intimate dating relationship with either your current dating partner or Friend No. 2, whom would you choose?



8. If you could ideally form a close, intimate dating relationship with either your current dating partner or Friend No. 3, whom would you choose?



Source: TEACHING OF PSYCHOLOGY by Simpson. Copyright 1988 by Taylor & Francis Informa UK ltd. - Journals. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Informa UK Ltd. Journals in the format Other Book via Copyright Clearance Center.

Personality 837

HANDOUT 15 Locus of Control

Indicate the extent to which each of the following statements applies to you. Use the following scale:

1 = disagree strongly 2 = disagree 3 = disagree slightly 4 = neither agree nor disagree 5 = agree slightly 6 = agree 7 = agree strongly 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

When I get what I want, it’s usually because I worked hard for it. When I make plans, I am almost certain to make them work. I prefer games involving some luck over games requiring pure skill. I can learn almost anything if I set my mind to it. My major accomplishments are entirely due to my hard work and ability. I usually don’t set goals because I have a hard time following through on them. Competition discourages excellence. Often people get ahead just by being lucky. On any sort of exam or competition, I like to know how well I do relative to everyone else. It’s pointless to keep working on something that’s too difficult for me.

Source: Paulhus, D. (1983). Sphere-specific measures of perceived control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 1253–1265. Copyright © 1983 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted by permission.

838 Personality

HANDOUT 16 Scheier & Carver’s Life Orientation Test Indicate the extent to which you agree with each of the following statements using the following response scale:

0 = strongly disagree 1 = disagree 2 = neutral 3 = agree 4 = strongly agree

Place the appropriate number in the blank before each item.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

In uncertain times, I usually expect the best. It’s easy for me to relax. If something can go wrong for me, it will. I always look on the bright side of things. I’m always optimistic about my future. I enjoy my friends a lot. It’s important for me to keep busy. I hardly ever expect things to go my way. Things never work out the way I want them to. I don’t get upset too easily. I’m a believer in the idea that “every cloud has a silver lining.” I rarely count on good things happening to me.

Source: HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY by Scheier and Carver. Copyright 1985 by Informa Clinical Medicine - Journals. Reproduced with permission of Informa Clinical Medicine - Journals in the format Other book via Copyright Clearance Center.

Personality 839

HANDOUT 17 When you answer the following questions, please think about how you prepare for and think about academic situations. Each of the statements below describes how people sometimes think or feel about these kinds of situations. In the blank space beside each statement, please indicate how true it is of you, in academic situations. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Not at all Very true true of me of me

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.



14. 15. 16. 17.

I go into these situations expecting the worst, even though I know I will probably do OK. I generally go into these situations with positive expectations about how I will do. I’ve generally done pretty well in these situations in the past. I carefully consider all possible outcomes before these situations. When I do well in these situations, I often feel really happy. I often worry, in these situations, that I won’t be able to carry through my intentions. I often think about how I will feel if I do very poorly in these situations. I often think about how I will feel if I do very well in these situations. When I do well in these situations, it is usually because I didn’t get too worried about it beforehand. I often try to figure out how likely it is that I will do very poorly in these situations. I’m careful not to become overconfident in these situations. I spend a lot of time planning when one of these situations is coming up. When working with others in these situations, I often worry that they will control things or interfere with my plans. I often try to figure out how likely it is that I will do very well in these situations. In these situations, sometimes I worry more about looking like a fool than doing really well. Prior to these situations, I avoid thinking about possible bad outcomes. Considering what can go wrong in academic situations helps me to prepare.

Source: Norem, J. K. (2001). Defensive pessimism, optimism, and pessimism. In E. C. Chang (Ed.), Optimism and pessimism: Implications for theory, research, and practice, pp. 77–100. Copyright © 2001 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission.

840 Personality

HANDOUT 18 Each person’s personality is in some ways stable over time; in other ways it changes over time. In this exercise, you can evaluate yourself in terms of what describes you now and how you think you will be in the future. Following is a list of items. For each one, simply rate it on a 1 to 7 scale, with 1 meaning “does not describe me at all” to 7 meaning “is a highly accurate description of me.” Give a rating for each of two questions: (1) Does this describe me now? And (2) Will this describe me in the future? Items

Describes me now

Describes me in the future

Is happy Is confident Is depressed Is lazy Travels widely Has lots of friends Is destitute (poor) Is sexy Is in good shape Speaks well in public Makes own decisions Manipulates people Is powerful Is trusted Is unimportant Is offensive Source: Randy Larsen and David Buss. PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY; DOMAINS OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT HUMAN NATURE, 3/E. Copyright 2008. Reprinted by permission of the McGraw-Hill Companies.

Personality 841

HANDOUT 19 For each of the following statements, use the scale below to indicate your agreement or disagreement.

1 = strongly disagree 2 = disagree 3 = agree 4 = strongly agree



1. I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal basis with others.



2. I feel that I have a number of good qualities.



3. All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure.



4. I am able to do things as well as most people.



5. I feel I do not have much to be proud of.



6. I take a positive attitude toward myself.



7. On the whole, I am satisfied with myself.



8. I wish I could have more respect for myself.



9. I certainly feel useless at times.

10. At times, I think I am no good at all.

Source: pp. 325–327 in Morris Rosenberg, Society and the Adolescent Self-Image. © 1989 by Morris Rosenberg and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

842 Personality

HANDOUT 20 Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale

Instructions: The sample items below assess domains that may or may not be relevant to your sense of self-worth. Please respond to each of the following statements by using the following scale.

1 = completely disagree 2 = disagree 3 = disagree somewhat 4 = neither disagree nor agree 5 = agree somewhat 6 = agree 7 = completely agree

1.

When my family members are proud of me, my sense of self-worth increases.



2.

My self-worth is affected by how well I do when I am competing with others.



3.

When I think I look attractive, I feel good about myself.



4.

My self-worth is based on God’s love.



5.

Doing well in school gives me a sense of self-respect.



6.

Whenever I follow my moral principles, my sense of self-respect gets a boost.



7.

My self-esteem depends on the opinions others hold of me.

Source: Crocker, J., et al. (2003). Contingencies of self-worth in college students: Theory and measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 894–908. Copyright 2003. Reprinted by permission of Jennifer Crocker.

Personality 843

HANDOUT 21 Self-Concept Clarity Scale

Indicate your degree of agreement with each of the following items using a scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

My beliefs about myself often conflict with one another. On one day, I might have one opinion of myself and on another day, I might have a different opinion. I spend a lot of time wondering about what kind of person I am. Sometimes I feel that I am not really the person I appear to be. When I think about the kind of person I have been in the past, I’m not sure what I was really like. I seldom experience conflict between the different aspects of my personality. Sometimes, I think I know other people better than I know myself. My beliefs about myself seem to change very frequently. If I were asked to describe my personality, my description might end up being different from one day to another. 10. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could tell someone what I’m really like. 11. In general, I have a clear sense of who I am and what I am. 12. It is often hard for me to make up my mind about things because I don’t really know what I want.

Source: Campbell, J. D., et al. (1996). Self-concept clarity: Measurement, personality correlates, and cultural boundaries. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 145 (Table 1). Copyright © 1996 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission.

844 Personality

HANDOUT 22 Indicate how much you like each letter by circling a number ranging from 1 = do not like to 5 = like a lot. Letters Do not like

Like a lot

R

1 2 3 4 5

H

1 2 3 4 5

D

1 2 3 4 5

Y

1 2 3 4 5

K

1 2 3 4 5

I

1 2 3 4 5

L

1 2 3 4 5

P

1 2 3 4 5

G

1 2 3 4 5

J

1 2 3 4 5

M

1 2 3 4 5

Z

1 2 3 4 5

S

1 2 3 4 5

F

1 2 3 4 5

X

1 2 3 4 5

N

1 2 3 4 5

A

1 2 3 4 5

W

1 2 3 4 5

T

1 2 3 4 5

Q

1 2 3 4 5

E

1 2 3 4 5

V

1 2 3 4 5

O

1 2 3 4 5

B

1 2 3 4 5

U

1 2 3 4 5

C

1 2 3 4 5

IYFN

NIYFN

IYLN

NIYLN

Personality 845

HANDOUT 23 Self-Ratings

Compared with other college students of the same class level and sex as yourself, how would you rate yourself on the following characteristics? Use the following scale in marking your responses.

1 = considerably well below average 2 = well below average 3 = below average 4 = slightly below average 5 = average 6 = slightly above average 7 = above average 8 = well above average 9 = considerably well above average 1. leadership ability 2. athletic ability 3. ability to get along with others 4. tolerance 5. energy level 6. helpfulness 7. responsibility 8. creativeness 9. patience 10. trustworthiness 11. sincerity 12. thoughtfulness 13. cooperativeness 14. reasonableness 15. intelligence

Source: Martin Bolt Instructor’s Manual to accompany Social Psychology, 6/e. Copyright 1999. Reprinted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies.

846 Personality

HANDOUT 24 Academic Survey: Introductory Psychology

1.

Please indicate your current enrollment status. (Check one.) Freshman Sophomore Junior Senior Other

2.

What was your overall grade point average (GPA) for the college courses you completed last term or, if this is your first semester in college, your overall high-school GPA? (Use numbers—for example, 2.87.)

3.

Try to predict your GPA for the upcoming term. (Use numbers.)

4.

Why did you enroll in this course? (Check as many as apply.) To satisfy a general college requirement To satisfy a requirement related to my college major The course description sounded interesting My academic advisor recommended it A family member or friend recommended it

5.

Last year over 150 students took introductory psychology from your professor. The average grade these students received in this course was a B–. What do you think your final grade in this course will be? (Check only one grade as your single best estimate.) A A– B+ B B– C+ C C– D+ D D– F





Personality 847

HANDOUT 25 Please try to respond to the following questions as honestly as you can. Circle the number that best corresponds to your feelings. Your answers will remain completely confidential.

1. How athletic are you? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very much

2. How much do you care about whether or not you are athletic? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very much

3. How intelligent are you? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very much

4. How much do you care about whether or not you are intelligent? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very much

5. How physically attractive are you? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very much

6. How much do you care about whether or not you are physically attractive? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very much

7. How creative are you? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very much

8. How much do you care about whether or not you are creative? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very much

9. How mechanically skilled are you? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very much

10. How much do you care about whether or not you are mechanically skilled? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very much

848 Personality

HANDOUT 26 Self-Description Inventory Please indicate (by writing a number in the blank before each item) the degree to which you agree with each of the following statements as a description of the kind of person you think you are most of the time. Use the following scale.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.



7. 8. 9.



10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.



23. 24. 25.

0 = disagree very much 1 = disagree pretty much 2 = disagree a little 3 = agree a little 4 = agree pretty much 5 = agree very much When I do something wrong, my first impulse is to blame circumstances. I tend to put things off until the last moment. I tend to overprepare when I have an exam or any kind of “performance.” I suppose I feel “under the weather” more often than most people. I always try to do my best, no matter what. Before I sign up for a course or engage in any important activity, I make sure I have the proper preparation or background. I tend to get very anxious before an exam or “performance.” I am easily distracted by noises or my own creative thoughts when I try to read. I try not to get too intensely involved in competitive activities so it won’t hurt too much if I lose or do poorly. I would rather be respected for doing my best than admired for my potential. I would do a lot better if I tried harder. I prefer small pleasures in the present to larger pleasures in the dim future. I generally hate to be in any condition but “at my best.” Someday I might “get it all together.” I sometimes enjoy being mildly ill for a day or two because it takes off the pressure. I would do much better if I did not let my emotions get in the way. When I do poorly at one kind of thing, I often console myself by remembering I am good at other things. I admit that I am tempted to rationalize when I don’t live up to others’ expectations. I often think I have more than my share of bad luck in sports, card games, and other measures of talent. I would rather not take any drug that interfered with my ability to think clearly and do the right thing. I overindulge in food and drink more often than I should. When something important is coming up, like an exam or a job interview, I try to get as much sleep as possible the night before. I never let emotional problems in one part of my life interfere with other things in my life. Usually, when I get anxious about doing well, I end up doing better. Sometimes I get so depressed that even easy tasks become difficult.

Please fill out the following information about yourself. 1. Sex: Male ( ) Female ( ) 2. Where would you put yourself on the following scale? / / Distinct Normal Distinct Underachiever Achiever Overachiever Source: Reprinted by permission of Frederick Rhodewalt from Self-Description Inventory by Edward E. Jones and Frederick Rhodewalt. Rhodewalt, F. (1990). Self-handicappers: Individual differences in the preference for anticipatory self-protective acts. In R. L. Higgins, C. R. Snyder, & S. Berglas (Eds.), Self-handicapping: The paradox that isn’t (p. 77). Copyright 1990. Reprinted by permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Personality 849

HANDOUT 27 To get some meaningful feedback on student reactions to course testing procedures, I would appreciate your candid responses to the following questions. In each case, circle the number that best corresponds to your opinion.



To what extent do you think your score on this test was due to:



Not at all



2.

To a great extent

My academic ability or lack of ability: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 To a great extent

3. Study—how much or little I studied:

Not at all



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Not at all



1. This particular test—how easy or difficult it was:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 To a great extent

4. Luck—good or bad:

Not at all

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 To a great extent

5. Was this test: A poor measure An excellent measure of what I knew 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 of what I knew

6. What score did you receive on the test?



Number correct =

.

Source: Martin Bolt Instructor’s Manual to accompany Social Psychology, 6/e. Copyright 1999. Reprinted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies.