Chapter 13. Personality
Introduction
13.1 Slide 2
Welcome to your Try This! research experience for Chapter 13. In this activity, you will be asked to provide some descriptions of yourself. There are no “right” or “wrong” answers; the research method introduced here is designed to provide information about people’s own perceptions of their personal qualities.
When you are ready, click “Next”.
13.2 Slide 3
You will see a list of about 30 terms that can be used to describe one’s personality. Your task is to indicate whether or not each term is descriptive of you using a nine-point scale from “least characteristic” to “most characteristic.” If a term is highly characteristic of you, you would place the term in the category on the far right, “Most characteristic.” If a term describes a quality that is not at all like you – for example, if it is the opposite of you – you would place it in the category on the far left, “Least characteristic.” (For example, if you are extremely tall and word were “short,” you would place it in the “least characteristic” category.) Terms that are not particularly like you, or somewhat like you, would be placed somewhere in the middle of the scale. If a term seems irrelevant to your personality, you would place it in the middle of the scale. You will have to place most of the items in the middle area of the scale, and few items at the far left or right.
We will ask you to do this task twice. This first time, categorize items according to how you see yourself currently, at this point in your life. Later we will ask you to describe your “ideal” self, or who you hope to become.
13.3 Slide 4
Actual Self
To categorize items, just click on them and slide them into a slot in the grid above. You can move an item from one category to another at any time; in other words, you can rearrange items to ensure that the final result does the best job of identifying personality characteristics that are most and least descriptive of you as you are right now.
All items must be sorted. When you’re finished, click Next.
13.4 Slide 5
Thanks! The final step is to do the task a second time. This time, imagine an “ideal version” of yourself, or an ideal self.
The psychological term ideal self reflects an important fact about people: Individuals often think about personal qualities that they ideally would like to possess. At present, they may possess some of these ideal qualities, but not others. For example, a person might see himself or herself as presently being both “hardworking” and “impatient” – but, ideally, the individual would like to be “hardworking” and “patient”. “Hardworking” and “patient” would be characteristic of the individual‘s ideal self.
When you do the task this second time, please categorize items according to whether they are characteristic of your ideal self — how you ideally would like yourself to be.
13.5 Slide 6
Ideal Self
To categorize items, just click on them and slide them into a slot in the grid above. You can move an item from one category to another at any time; in other words, you can rearrange items to ensure that the final result does the best job of identifying personality characteristics that are most and least descriptive of you as you would like to be.
All items must be sorted. When you’re finished, click Next.
13.6 Slide 7
You have just completed measures of two qualities:
(1) The actual self: Personality qualities that you believe you posses at the present time, and
(2) The ideal self: Personal qualities that you ideally would like to possess .
In the study of personality, psychologists are interested in the relation between these two aspects of self-concept. For some people, the characteristics that make up the actual and ideal self may be quite similar. For others, however, they may differ considerably; people may experience a discrepancy between the actual and ideal self.
How can researchers measure the degree of similarity between the actual and ideal self for an individual person? Research methods you learned in Chapter 2 of Psychology: The Science of Person, Mind, and Brain provided the needed tools. You will see them at work on the next screen of information, where:
— the ratings you provided are represented on 9-point scales, where 1 = “least” characteristic and 9 = “most” characteristic.
— your actual and ideal self ratings are presented together in a scatterplot
— a correlation coefficient is computed; the correlation summarizes the degree to which your actual and idea self responses were related to each other.
In the scatterplot, if you place your cursor over any given data point, you will be able to see the personality characteristic represented by that point. You thereby can identify, for example, personality characteristics in which your ideal-self response differed from your actual-self response.
Note that, in the scatterplot, if two data points overlap in the graph we will draw them in different colors, to make the data points more easily visible to you.
13.7 Slide 8
Your Results
This graph shows your results. You can see your ratings for each personality characteristic (hover over the data points), as well as the overall relation between your actual and ideal self ratings (the correlation coefficient r).
The method used to collect these ratings is called the Q-sort method. The name comes from the fact that you categorize or “sort” items when taking the test.
When psychologists administer the Q-sort, the correlation between actual and ideal self ratings varies considerably from person to person. On average, the correlation is positive, but very far from a perfect correlation of 1.0. Most people think about ideal personality qualities that, at present, they do not possess.
13.8 Slide 9
You will learn more about Q-sort methods when you return to your reading of Chapter 13.
This activity inspired by and based on work described by Carl Rogers in his book:
Rogers, C. R. (1951). Client-centered therapy: Its current practice, implications, and theory. London: Constable.
For additional information on the Q-sort method, see:
Serfass, D. G., and Sherman, R. A. (2013). A methodological note on ordered Q-sort ratings. Journal of Research in Personality, 47, 853-858. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2013.08.013