Are All Kids Alike

In this essay I aim to discuss the different views of each side of this argument and then later conclude as to whether personality is stable or changing across the lifespan.

Dispositional personality theories are quite different from biological personality theories. The two will be compared and dissected in this article. The Big Five Personality Test will also be analyzed and how it is used to study personality will be examined.

When reporting data, it is important to analyze both measures of central tendency and measures of variability because each are equally important to accurately make conclusions. Central tendency provides the researcher with three scores that alone can be misleading, especially in the case of extreme values. Therefore, variability is calculated to explain how fluctuated the scores and inform the researcher of the major differences within the data set. The five traits of Psychology were analyzed with both types of descriptive statistics to inform the researcher of the most accurate depiction of the data.

Undergraduate students enrolled in introductory personality psychology courses at The Pennsylvania State University from the Altoona and University Park campuses will be recruited for participation. All students enrolled in the courses will be required to complete the procedure for this study to earn a grade in the course, however, they will be required to give their consent to use their data in the present study in exchange for extra credit in the course. Those who do not consent to use their data will be omitted from the study and will be offered an alternative course assignment to earn the same amount of extra credit as those who opted to participate. Each participant’s age, race, and gender will be collected for use for comparison

Crespi, T., & Politikos, N. (2008). Personality assessment with adolescents: challenges and guidelines. Adolescence, 43(171), 593-606

In the articles, “What’s it like being a kid in the White House? Kid’s have lots of ideas.” by Caitlin Gibson and “Is it tough to be a kid? Try being a president’s kid.” by Darlene Superville, the authors give their readers insight on what a president’s kid’s life is like. Though both give good details, I believe that Gibson’s “What’s it like being a kid in the White House? Kids have lots of ideas.” article most accurately describes the life of a president’s kid because it gives information from Edward Lengel, who is the chief historian of the White House Historical Association. Gibson’s article covers everything the kid goes through: from moving in and choosing what your bedroom could look like to the disadvantages such as the strict “code

Does the phrase, “Kids will be kids.” take away the deviousness of the deeds done by kids? Or does the phrase simply protect the kids, if an adult did the same thing, from the consequences that it would have? One could use this phrase to describe Alex from “A Clockwork Orange”. Kids will go around and do something that may not be completely ethical because they are curios. “Curiosity killed the cat” is another phrase that can be easily applied to kids. A majority of the time a kid does not do something because they want to inflict as much damage as possible. Kids want to go around and discover the world. At a young age there is not much that a kid has learned or discovered. Young kids usually shadow their parents everywhere that they go. With

a child because they are absent in her adult life. The author continuously uses the comparison of her happy childhood and adolescent years to her unhappy adulthood, but recent studies do not support her statement. According to studies examining the relationship between happiness in adulthood and self -appraised happiness has a surprisingly small relationship to age (Inglehart, 1990; Latten, 1989; Stock, Okun, Haring & Witter, 1983).

51 participants - some of which were undergraduate students attending Concordia College, currently enrolled in an introductory psychology course - completed an online questionnaire that measured both extraversion and conscientiousness. They rated these two traits in both themselves and their oldest or youngest sibling, depending on which they identify as. Youngest children rated the firstborns in their family, and firstborns rated the last borns. Our participants needed to either be the firstborn or the last born in order for us to eliminate as much error as possible. Our participants were either students from ages 18-22 or adults no older than 50, and we surveyed both males and females.

In order to have psychological maturity, an individual has to have a well-developed proprium and a copious set of adjustable dispositions, (Boeree, 2006). According to Freud’s psychodynamic theory development of personality depends on the interaction of instincts and the environment during early years of childhood of an individual (first five years). Behavior of parents is a key element to determine normal and abnormal development. Personality problems and mental health in adulthood can usually be tracked back from the first five years of life, (Piotrowski, 2005).

The experiment I am going to analyse is the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment was conducted by Walter Mischel and his colleagues. The experiment which started in the late 1960's had results which became important when Walter Mischel turned it into a longitudinal study. The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is a test of gratification, and the effects of being patient and not giving in to your desires. When Mischel started this experiment he planned on only seeing the results of the original study but then when he realised that patience as a child could have a effect on the personality as an adult he conducted further research.

The study will consist of approximately 150 students: 75 subjects in Group A , 75 subjects in Group B (comprised from 4 different classroom groups). They will be asked to take part in a study measuring impression formation on personality and those who volunteer to take part with be divided into groups A and B. All participants will then be required to sign a consent form which will include information about the study to ensure they are willing to take part. The hypothesis i.e. that the central traits of warmth and coldness have a profound affect on impression formation - will not be disclosed until the end of the study as it would invalidate the experiment. Participants will then be asked to read a list of traits that could describe a person on a PowerPoint slide shown on a laptop. Both groups will read a list of character-qualities, group A reading: intelligent—skillful—industrious—warm—determined—practical—cautious and group B reading: intelligent—skillful—industrious—cold—determined—practical—cautious. Each participant will then write a brief sketch on how they visualize a person that embodies these traits. These sketches provide a concrete vision of the impressions formed by the characteristics shown to the participants. Each participant then will complete a personality trait checklist of bipolar adjectives in which they will be asked to choose the word that is most

Analyses shows that personality changes throughout life as different personality traits are used and forgotten. The results are generalized and don’t always apply to people but typically the results are correct.

From the beginning of one’s life, people interact with one another, immediately creating new relationships. The type of relationships humans develop is determined by an individual’s personality. Based upon the Big Five Factor Model, there are five broad personality traits to describe humans (Costa, 1992). The Big Five traits are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (Matthews, Deary, & Whiteman, 2003). This five-factor model has been the basis of many studies within the field of psychology. Previous research has examined gender differences in the Big Five personality traits in fifty-five nations (Schmidt, Realo, Voracek, & Allik, 2008). Schmidt, Realo, Voracek, and Allik (2008) found that across the fifty-five nations there was no significance in average. They found that women reported higher in average conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism than

The first variable to be examined is extroversion. Satorra and Bentler (1988) looked at structural equation modeling to determine data from five thousand individuals. The two researchers studied extroversion at ages sixteen and twenty-six years old, and compared