Full transcript
0:12so I want to tell you
0:14I want to make a little announcement first.
0:17I'm going to do a series of lectures, I think, starting in May.
0:20Maybe at the Isabel Bader Theatre?
0:23We're trying to look into booking that. On a, I'm
0:26going to do a psychological interpretation of the bible from beginning
0:29to end. That's the plan anyway. So I'm going to do that once a week.
0:32So if you are interested in that,
0:35I would recommend that you... (and maybe your not an that's fine obviously)
0:38but, if you go onto my Twitter account
0:40you can just, there's a place you can sign up
0:43It doesn't mean that you'll attend. I'm just
0:46trying to see if there are people who are interested. I've been
0:48interested in doing that for a long time and so I think I'm going to try it and so.
0:51Anyways!
0:52That's the announcement. Then, is that about it?
0:55I guess so. OK! So look we are going to switch gears today.
0:58Um. The first half of this course, as you've
1:01no doubt already err gathered, is...
1:05because it's grounded essentially in clinical theories
1:07of personality it tends more
1:09towards the philosophical. And I told you that the reason for that was that
1:12I regard clinical psychology as a branch of engineering
1:15rather than a branch of science.
1:17It's Human Engineering obviously; and because of that
1:21it's an applied science and so that means it straddles the
1:23ground between a science and a practice and
1:26and it, because it's, it
1:29involves human beings,
1:31it necessarily involves value because
1:34we live inside value structures;
1:36and so the logical consequence of that is that
1:39investigation into the philosophy of value
1:42is necessary in order to understand clinical
1:45Psychological theories.
1:46Because really what you are trying to do as a clinician,
1:48you could say that you are trying to do two things; one is to help people
1:52have less terrible lives. But you are also trying to help them
1:55have better lives. and there is obviously a value structure
1:58that is inherent in that attempt
2:00because you are moving from something of less value to something of more value
2:03and so.. and it's best to just
2:06to face that and all the complexities
2:09that come along with that, head on. Now!
2:12I think that what you do as a clinician,
2:14to overcome what ever tendency you might have to
2:17impose your value structure on someone is you do an awful lot of listening
2:20And so my basic practise with people
2:22is to say to them. "Well; obviously you are here
2:25because you would like things to be better. But that's OK.
2:28We can use your definition of what constitutes better.
2:31We can use your definition of what constitutes worse.
2:35Or we can establish that through dialogue, and negotiation.
2:38What are you aiming at? How would you like things to be better
2:40a year from now say? If you could have what you wanted,
2:43if your life was put together what would that look like?
2:47And you can have a very straight forward
2:49discussion with people about that if you are not cram
2:52the way that they are orienting the world into your particular perspective.
2:55Now. That's one of the dangers of being the adherent of
2:58a given psychological school. Now having said that.
3:02It's also...
3:03There was research done many years ago, showing that
3:06if you were an eclectic psychotherapist
3:09which means that you sort of pick and chose from different therapeutic schools.
3:12You tended to not be as effective as you were if you were the
3:15dedicated adherent of a given school
3:18and I think that the reason for that is
3:21that there are so many schools of psychological thought
3:24that if you say that you pick an choose from all of them, what that
3:27really means is that you don't know anything about any of them.
3:28And then there's also the additional
3:30factor
3:32(maybe, you might call it) that
3:35if someone comes to you and they're very chaotic and confused.
3:39Helping them impose ANY STRUCTURE
3:41onto their life is likely to be an improvement over no structure at all.
3:44And you can think about that in a Piagetian sense, is that
3:47you know you’re going to be happier playing a game, rather than no game.
3:50And there's many games that you can play
3:53that are better than no game. And so if you go to
3:56a therapist that has a particular view point
3:59and they help you structure your understanding of the world
4:02within the confines of a given clinical model;
4:04and you came in there very chaotic and uncertain,
4:07then maybe that's going to be a lot better for you than just floundering.
4:10And I think that there's some real truth in that.
4:13And I think that that's part and parcel of the same, er;
4:16of another, what, you might call it
4:18"reasonable observation about maturation" is that
4:21it's very necessary for people at some point in there life
4:24to dedicate themselves to a single game, of some sort.
4:27Which is kind of what you are doing at University.
4:28You Know, you have to become 'one thing' at some point in your life;
4:32and the sacrifice of course is that you give up all the other things that you could become.
4:36But you don't really have a choice because
4:39if you don't decide voluntarily to become one thing. You know
4:42to become a disciplined adherent of some specific
4:46er
4:48practise or profession or view point
4:51then you risk just ageing Chaotically
4:54And you don't get away with not ageing.
4:56So you might as well age into something
4:59that's actually something
5:01rather than just becoming an old child
5:04Which is really... Which is not a good thing.
5:06It's not a good thing to see. Especialy when people
5:08hit about 40. It's not, it's not pretty,
5:11For them or anyone else.
5:14And even at 30, it's getting pretty old at that point.
5:1740; it's like almost irreparable at 40.
5:19And the reason for that is, you start running out of opportunities
5:22when you're young and stupid people don't care
5:25because they think, you know, whatever. You've got decades of
5:28of possibilities still ready to unfold in you,
5:33but if you are in the same unspecified position at 40
5:37people are much less forgiving
5:39especially if they are going
5:41to hire someone who doesn't know
5:43what's going on. Or employ them or sorry engage them is some sort of
5:46productive activity.
5:48They might as well take a chance on someone young and full of
5:49potential rather than someone
5:52who has really lived more than half of their life already
5:55because of course you have, by the time you are 40. OK.
5:58So, anyway, so that is with regards to putting the first
6:01half of the course to bed so to speak.
6:03The second half
6:04is more scientific.
6:06and there is a bit of a gap and
6:09it's a bit of a gap I am trying to resolve conceptually
6:12because now we move into more biological models
6:15and into models that are psychometric and Psychometrics
6:18is the psychological study of the study
6:21of psychological measurement. And now if you are a scientist
6:25there's a couple of things that you are
6:27obliged to do if you are a scientist
6:29one is to utilise the scientific method that's usually the
6:32experimental method where you take 2 groups
6:36randomly selected, apply a
6:38manipulation to one of them and not
6:41equivalent manipulation of a different sort to another;
6:44hypothesize about what the outcome is likely to be and then test it
6:46ah, that's the technical experimental model anyways
6:50you're also obliged as a scientist
6:53to come up with
6:56a measurement of your, of your
6:59to come up with a measurement, let's just put it that way
7:02that's reliable and valid. Okay, and what a
7:05reliable measure is one that measures the same way
7:08across multiple measurements. So, for example,
7:11you wouldn't want to take a ruler that's made out of flexible
7:14rubber to measure things with because it
7:17wouldn't give you the same measurement if you put it in different situations
7:20That's reliability, and it's a term you need to know. It means that the
7:24measurement tool produces stable results across
7:26different instances of the measurement. Without that,
7:30you don't have a measurement. And the other
7:33critical
7:35factor with regards to
7:38a measurement is that it has to be valid, which means that
7:40it actually has to measure what it preports to measure and it
7:43actually has to be usable for an array of
7:46different purposes as a consequence, so,
7:49you might think well the purpose of scientific endeavor is to predict and to
7:52control, you could say understand, predict, and control but
7:56understanding, prediction, and control are all
8:00manifestations of the same underlying
8:03throughly designed comprehension. Now,
8:07here's what's happened with the measurement of personality
8:11It's a funny
8:13story in some sense, a peculiar story, because
8:17in many ways, what we've come to understand about personality
8:20from a scientific perspective, developed
8:23in a very atheoretical manner. It's not very common
8:26in scientific endeavor that that occurs, is that
8:30what we know about personality emerged
8:32from, I would say, statistically rigorous observation,
8:36without it being the consequence of any real model.
8:39So, often, what happens,
8:42in scientific endeavor is that someone generates a model first, a theoretical understanding,
8:47and then they generate measurement tools based on that theoretical understanding
8:50and then they test the measurement tools to see if
8:53well if the measurement tools perform properly, and if they
8:56fail at least to invalidate the underlying theory
8:59That isn't what happened with psychometrics.
9:01Except in a loose way, so here's the loose
9:05theory, and you've got to get this exactly right
9:08to understand this properly. You've got to get it exactly right, and it's
9:11really important, because, insofar as you guys
9:13are interested in psychology, especially in the
9:15experimental end of psychology, measurement is everything
9:18and so much of what psychologists publish and
9:21write about is incorrect, and the reason it's incorrect
9:24is cause they do not have their measurements properly
9:27instantiated. It's a massive
9:29problem especially in social psychology. In fact it's
9:31probably a fatal problem, in that most of the things that
9:34social psychologists measure don't exist.
9:37And social psychology has been rife with scandals for the last
9:404 or 5 years, and there's good reason for it
9:43but a big part of the problem is is that, the measurement
9:46that people are not stringent and careful enough about their measurements
9:49so we're going to walk through this very very carefully, so I'm going to
9:52set forward a set of propositions and you have to
9:55think about it, cause each of them are...they're axiomatic, so you
9:58sort of have to accept them before you go on to the next step.
10:01And there's certainly room to question them.
10:04But here's the bare bones of the psychometric model of personality
10:07so we'll call it roughly the big 5 model
10:10and the reason it's called the big 5 model is because
10:13the psychometric investigations have indicated that
10:15you can specify human personality along 5
10:18basic dimensions. You might ask well what
10:21exactly is personality, and well
10:23that's partly what we have been trying to wrestle with in the entire course so far
10:26and I would say
10:29umm what exactly is a trait. Think of an trait as an element of
10:32personality; and I think the best way to think about a trait is
10:35as a sub-personality.
10:38So you are made up of sub-personalities
10:40that are integrated into something
10:43vaguely resembling a unity. But the unity is diverse.
10:46There are describable stable elements that characterize you.
10:52That are elements of your being.
10:54So for example, here are some common ones.
10:57I would say, are you so sure ,or would you rather be alone?
11:00So here is a good question for you to define
11:03decide whether you are an extrovert or an introvert.
11:05It's pretty straightforward. It is the first major dimension.
11:08Basically if you take any set of questions,
11:11about, any set of questions that
11:14could be applied descriptively to a human being,
11:17and you subject them to a statistical process
11:20called factor analysis.
11:22You can determine how they group together. So, what I would be interested in,
11:25Let's say I ask you a hundred questions.