Personality Psychology 3906 Introduction Personality is about our

Personality Psychology 3906

Introduction • Personality is about our consistency across situations • The situation of course DOES play a big role • So does the individual, to argue with this is to be a moron

Our focus • We’ll focus mostly on what makes us the same • What is the same about each individual, not what divides us • That said, the differences beg interesting evolutionary questions as well

Variability • Why the heck is there variability in personality? • Could be normal variation around an optimum • Could be that the optimum value changes over time • Frequency dependent selection will play a role • Many psychological traits are facultative

Intelligence • Some say this is not a personality trait, but to me it fits the bill nicely • Is it one ability or many? • g? • Probably something hierarchical • But there is a g at the top

intelligence • So basically combining Thurstone and Spearman’s ideas • Perhaps there are other intelligences

Are there other intelligences? • • • Creativity? Domain specific abilities Non school stuff? Emotional intelligence? Perhaps Basically remember that hunter gatherer IQ would be different that the SAT test….

Variation in intelligence • Why does it happen? • Brain size (somewhat sure, but the effect is teensy) • Polygenetic trait • Many challenges during development • Brains are expensive

Implications of the evolutionary approach to intelligence • We have to learn things in school that are evolutionarily novel • Variation in novel stuff like reading and math • Not language learning and counting though

Other personality traits • • How many are there? Big five does a nice job Openness Conscientiousness Extroversion Agreeableness neurotocism

These seem to vary a lot more • Intelligence is, it seems, much less variable than the ‘Big 5’ • Why? • Well other personality traits are probably much more facultative • What is optimal changes a great deal depending on the situation

Conclusions • Many factors influence personality and intelligence • It makes some sense to discuss intelligence separately • Evolutionary approaches to intelligence are becoming much more generally accepted