Discuss the characteristics of self-report tests and projective measures of personality.
What will be an ideal response?
The most commonly used method of measuring personality characteristics is the self-report test, which directly asks people whether specific items describe their personality traits. Respondents choose from a limited number of answers (yes or no, true or false, agree or disagree). One problem with self-report tests is a factor called social desirability. A projective test presents individuals with an ambiguous stimulus and asks them to describe it or to tell a story about it-to project their own meaning onto the stimulus. This method assumes that the ambiguity of the stimulus allows individuals to interpret it based on their feelings, desires, needs, and attitudes. The test is especially designed to elicit the individual's unconscious feelings and conflicts, providing an assessment that goes deeper than the surface of personality.
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The so-called panic button effect refers to the tendency for people ____
a. to experience automatic, intrusive thoughts about a goal when pursuit of that goal has been interrupted b. to perceive negative things that happen to them as more stressful or painful than negative things that happen to other people c. to feel relatively less stress or suffering when they think that they have the option of escaping from a situation d. to give greater weight to potential losses than to potential gains, panicking when the losses become unacceptable
From age 2 until puberty, children typically gain _____ inches and _____ pounds per year
a. 1 to 2; 3 to 5 b. 2 to 3; 5 to 6 c. 3 to 5; 7 to 9 d. 6 to 8; 10 to 12
A wide variety of potential expressions of a genetic trait, depending on environmental opportunities and constraints, is called ______.
A. canalization B. behavioral genetics C. range of reaction D. gene-environment correlation
The germinal period is:
a. the first two weeks of the pregnancy b. the second through the eighth weeks of pregnancy c. from the eighth week of pregnancy until birth d. the part of the pregnancy prior to conception