Revision and Examination advice Human Development and Personality and individual Differences

1
Revision and Examination advice Human
Development and Personality and individual
Differences

• Christine Simmonds-Moore

2
Areas covered for personality in semester 2

• History of personality
• Intelligence
• Psychodynamic paradigm
• Socio-cultural
• Learning
• Social-cognitive
• Humanistic
• Trait approaches
• Situationism interactionism
• Biological
• Personality disorders
• Personality-mental health continuua

3
This years Exam

• 4 questions on Developmental (semester 1)
• 4 questions on Personality (semester 2)
• We cannot ask about EVERY aspect of the
  personality course
• However, questions will (often) draw on more than
  one lecture/paradigm (i.e., you cannot just
  revise one topic!)

4
Some hints

• Revise areas that you think are likely to come up
• What sort of questions might you set based on the
  course content?
• What has come up in previous years?!
• Particularly useful for Christine and Cathals
  areas of the course (as we taught last year)

5
Past papers available on the H drive

• Personality and Individual Differences an
  example from May 2006
• Please answer one question from each section.
• Section A
• 1. Discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses
  of Eysencks nomothetic approach and Carl
  Rogers idiographic approach for the
  understanding of personality
• 2. Someone who scores high on a scale measuring
  schizotypy exhibits signs of future mental
  breakdown. Critically evaluate and discuss this
  perspective.
• 3. Are situations more important than internal
  traits in determining behaviour?
• Section B
• 1. Human personality is entirely determined by
  the environment. Critically evaluate and discuss
  this perspective.
• 2. Critically evaluate the extent to which
  emotional intelligence relates to the traditional
  concept of intelligence.
• 3. Discuss and critically evaluate the idea that
  personality dimensions exist due to adaptive
  evolutionary mechanisms.
• Section C
• 1. Outline Freud's psychoanalytic theory of
  personality and critically evaluate it with
  regard to the criticism that it focuses too much
  on sex.
• 2. Outline and critically evaluate Adler's socio
  cultural theory of personality and it's attempt
  to introduce a social dimension to the
  psychoanalytic theory of personality.
• 3. Outline Jung's theory of personality and
  critically evaluate it's usefulness as a model
  for guiding therapy.

6
The personality exam will ask questions which
will often address more than one area of
personality

• Demonstrating that you understand the main
  approaches to personality
• Showing awareness of the strengths and weaknesses
  of different approaches
• Comparing and contrasting different approaches to
  understanding personality

7
Some examples of possible question areas.

• Ideographic versus nomothetic
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of the
  ideographic approach (e.g., humanistic theories
  of Maslow and Rogers)
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of the
  nomothetic approach? (e.g., Eysenck, Cattell,
  etc.)
• Different theorists understanding of the same
  elements of personality (e.g., Jungian versus
  biological versus trait approaches to
  extraversion Rogers versus Freud on anxiety,
  Maslow versus Rogers on self actualisation,
  etc..)
• Freudian theory and therapy as compared to other
  theorists (Think about Cathals lectures!)

8
General tips

• Practice answering past exam questions
• Answers should be informed by the literature
  and certainly demonstrate that you have gone
  beyond lecture materials
• Use evidence to support your points (as in
  coursework essays)
• Stick to answering the question dont go off at
  a tangent and tell the marker everything you know
  about a particular area of personality psychology
• As with coursework evidence of originality,
  critical thinking and original ideas will attain
  higher grades

9

• Good Luck in your exam!!!