Psychology 371: Personality Research
Fall, 2009

last updated November 15, 2009

371 Fall, 2009 Outline: Week Date Substantive Content
lecture notes
Reading
(for readings on the personality server, use
id="psych", pw="psych"
for readings at NU library, log in with your net id
for some journals, you need to be logged in at NU
Requirements
Part I: Current Theories of Personality
Week 1 Sepember 23 Introduction to the course (very large pdf)
3 approaches to personality psychology
Revelle, Annual Review 1995
Mischel, Annual Review, 2004
Revelle and Oehlberg (2008)
Take the
Big 5 inventory

your scores are anonymous
Week 2 September 28 Descriptive Taxonomies
Behavioral Taxonomies
the "Personality Coefficient"
Pervin: Personality taxonomies
John: The Big 5
Critique of Big 5 inventory
September 30 The ABCD's of Personality
Causal Theories of approach and avoidance
Revelle, 2007 Experimental Techniques in Personality Research
Week 3 October 5 Approach: Introversion/extraversion and Impulsivity
theories based upon Eysenck and Gray
Wilt and Revelle Extraversion (2009)
Smillie, Pickering and Jackson (2006) The new Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory: Implications for personality measurement. (must be using a NU account)
Revelle, Amaral and Turiff (1976)
Revelle, Humphreys, Simon and Gilliland (1980)
(optional: see Eysenck web page)
October 7 No ClassBut read the following Question on these articles
Alternative approaches to I/E (revised)
I/E, arousal and performance
I/E and positive affect
I/E and within and between variability
Revelle, 1997 (impulsivity)
Revelle, 1993 (Broadbent festschrift)
Rogers and Revelle, 1998
Fleeson, 2001,
Fleeson, Malanos, Achille, 2002
Canli, et al., (2002)
Week 4 October 12Approach: Achievement Motivation
classical theory of risk preference (html)
(class notes pdf)
hierarchical models
Elliot and Thrash (2002)
October 14 Achievement motivation and efficient performance
Dynamic models of motivation
Revelle, 1986 Atkinson festschrift
Revelle, 2009 The Cues Tendency Action (CTA) model
Elliot and McGregor (1999)
Week 5October 19 Avoidance: Anxiety
Anxiety and performance (pdf)
Elliot and McGregor (1999)Informal preliminary proposal
help in literature searches (select the articles tab)
A guide to literature searches and writing an APA style paper
Avoid common writing errors
October 21 Approach and Avoidance:
Personality, Motivation, and Performance
a theoretical proposal (pdf)
Atheory of personality, motivation, and cognition: (Revelle (1992)
Personality and changes in affect over time Gilboa & Revelle
Personality and affective processing (Rogers and Revelle, 1998)
Proposal requirements and
a guide to searching the literature Using Endnote or BibDesk to search the literature
Using Latex for writing APA style papers.
Week 6 October 26 Midterm Study questions
Part 2: The Measurement of Personality
October 28 Basic issues in measurement
problems of measurement
review of variance/covariance) Review old statistics notes
Week 7 November 2 Fundamentals of reliabilty reliability notes (pdf) Research Proposal due
November 4 Types of reliability and validity Item construction
Week 8 November 9 Scale Construction choose projects (in class)
November 11 Factor analysis
scale construction
Design project
Week 9November16 Validity and decision making
Pitfalls in Research
Pitfalls (class notes)prq analysis
Part 3: Experimental Studies of Personality
November 18 validity
Week 10 November 23 Evolutionary perspectives
Personality and behavior genetics
Behavior genetics, intelligence, life span studies
McGue and Bouchard, Annual Review of Neuroscience, 1998
Bouchard, 2004
discussion of projects
Week 10 November 25Research Reports?
Week 11: Nov 30 Reading Week Using R to analyze personality data Data analysis (by appointment)
Dec 1- Papers due, (optional) Final Exam (Dec 9)
Course and Teacher Evaluation (CTEC)

William Revelle
Revised September 21 2009