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The questions on this page represent an early attempt to make the Great Ideas in Personality website into an interactive database called an ASK system. They are questions that personality students have asked or might ask. Most of the answers are addressed in students' Web Projects, although some may be found in the Personality Glossary.
 

Give Me an Example!

• How might a secure infant behave when reunited with his or her parent?

Give Me Alternatives!

• Does temperament explain infant attachment?
• Are there behaviorist explanations of infant attachment?

What Is Next?

• Are attachment styles consistent across the lifespan?

What Led to This?

• What is imprinting?

What Should Be Avoided?

• Why do most evolutionists not speak of survival of the species?
• Why do temperament theorists not rule out environment?
• Why does heritability not imply immutability?
• Why are attachment styles dimensions, not categories?

Give Me Details!

• What is the strange situation?

Give Me Background!

• Who was John Bowlby?
• Who is Mary Ainsworth?

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Give Me Alternatives!

• How might emotions be biologically basic?
• How might emotions be psychologically basic?
• What are basic-level emotion concepts?

What Led to This?

• What is William James' theory of emotion?

What Should Be Avoided?

• How do emotion concepts differ from emotions?

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Give Me an Example!

• What is an example of positive reinforcement?
• What is an example of negative reinforcement?
• What is an example of positive punishment?
• What is an example of negative punishment?

Give Me Alternatives!

• How do Hull and Skinner differ on theorizing?

What Is Next?

• Why will the law of effect not go away?

What Should Be Avoided?

• Why does no major behaviorist believe in reflexes?

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Give Me an Example!

• Why was Darwin happily married?

Give Me Alternatives!

• How are the big five evolutionarily adaptive?
• How do sociobiology and evolutionary psychology differ?

What Led to This?

• How did Darwin develop his theory?

What Should Be Avoided?

• What is the sociobiological fallacy?
• What is Wilson's ladder?
• How is sociobiology an adaptationist program?
• Why do most evolutionists not speak of "survival of the species"?
• Why is the slogan "survival of the fittest" untrue?

What Can Be Done?

• Why does evolutionary theory not imply any particular ethic?

Give Me Details!

• What is descent with modification (Darwin)?
• What is inclusive fitness (Hamilton)?
• What is game theory (Maynard Smith)?
• What is optimization theory (Trivers)?
• What is a panglossian interpretation of the effects of natural selection?

Give Me Background!

• Who was Charles Darwin?

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Give Me an Example!

• How might one use the big five dimensions to size up a new acquaintance?

Give Me Alternatives!

• How does Goldberg's "big five" differ from Costa and McCrae's "OCEAN model" (a civil war)?
• How does the five-factor model compare to the PEN model (a colonial war)?
• How does the trait approach differ from the psychology of the individual (a total war)?
• How do adult attachment styles relate to the five-factor model (a border dispute)?
• How does the interpersonal circumplex relate to the five-factor model (an annexation)?

What Is Next?

• How can the five-factor model be applied to personality disorders?
• What is the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP)?

What Led to This?

• What is the lexical hypothesis?

What Should Be Avoided?

• Why does McAdams say the five-factor model is a "psychology of the stranger"?
• What criticisms does Block level at the five-factor approach?

What Can Be Done?

• Why do researchers normalize big five data before analyzing them?

Give Me Details!

• What is factor analysis?

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Give Me an Example!

• How did a garbage collector save his city money using practical intelligence?

Give Me Alternatives!

• What is Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence?
• What is Gardner's theory of "multiple intelligences"?

What Is Next?

• Why is IQ on the rise (the Flynn effect)?

What Led to This?

• Why are genetic differences in intelligence stronger in adults than in children?
• What is the "mind is a muscle" hypothesis?

What Should Be Avoided?

• Why does heritability not imply immutability?

What Can Be Done?

• How is intelligence related to one's overall life chances?
• Can IQ be changed through head start programs?
• How do abilities affect the environment in which one ends up?

Give Me Details!

• What are two structural models of g?
• What is a "positive manifold"?
• Why is reaction time correlated with psychometric g?

Give Me Background!

• How did intelligence testing start?
• What is Herrnstein and Murray's controversial (1994) book, The Bell Curve?

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Give Me an Example!

• How might a handsome man and a beautiful woman interact?

Give Me Alternatives!

• What is the mood circumplex?
• What is simple structure?

What Is Next?

• What is the Abridged Big Five Dimensional Circumplex (AB5C)?
• What is the non-evaluative circumplex of personality adjectives?
• What is the Inventory of Interpersonal Goals (IIG)?

What Led to This?

• What was the Kaiser Foundation Research Group?

What Should Be Avoided?

• How do person vectors differ from variable vectors?
• Why is "variables" the neutral term, instead of "adjectives," "items," or "scales"?
• Why does it not matter which circumplex axis is depicted as vertical?

What Can Be Done?

• How does structural equations modeling relate to circumplex structure?
• What is Browne's circumplex criterion?

Give Me Details!

• What is factor analysis?
• What is a circumplex?
• What is the interpersonal circumplex?
• What is interpersonal complementarity?
• How does vector length relate to psychopathology?

Give Me Background!

• Who was Harry Stack Sullivan?
• Who was Timothy Leary?
• What was the 1994 APA symposium in honor of Timothy Leary?

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Last modified September 1998
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