Stable patterns, and how well they actually predict anything.
10 topics · 13 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
The Fallacy of Personal Validation: A Classroom Demonstration of Gullibility
Bertram R. Forer · 1949
Students rated a personality sketch as an accurate personal description even though every student had received the identical, generically-worded…
+1 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Self-Schemata and Processing Information About the Self
Hazel Markus · 1977
People who hold a clear self-schema on a given trait dimension process information about that trait faster, recall more behavioural evidence for it,…
+8 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
General Intelligence, Objectively Determined and Measured
Charles Spearman · 1904
Performance on unrelated mental tests correlates positively with all the others, which Spearman takes as evidence for a single general intelligence…
+1 more at this level
12 of 13 works
Bertram R. Forer
Students rated a personality sketch as an accurate personal description even though every student had received the identical, generically-worded sketch, showing how easily vague positive statements are read as uniquely true of oneself - the effect later named after Forer and behind the appeal of horoscopes and many personality-typing systems.
Randy Stein & Alexander B. Swan
Uses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator's popularity despite its poor scientific standing as a teaching case, showing its categorical types, weak test-retest reliability and lack of predictive validity are exactly what trait research since Jung's original theory has argued against.
Hazel Markus
People who hold a clear self-schema on a given trait dimension process information about that trait faster, recall more behavioural evidence for it, and resist information contrary to it, treating the self-concept as a cognitive structure that actively organises self-relevant information rather than a passive self-image.
Mary K. Rothbart
Introduces a parent-report instrument for infant temperament and shows the resulting dimensions - activity level, distress, soothability and smiling - are stable enough across months to count as an early, biologically grounded individual difference rather than noise.
link checked 17 Sept 2026E. Tory Higgins
Different emotions follow from different mismatches between how people see themselves and their own standards: falling short of an ideal self produces dejection, falling short of an ought self produces agitation.
link checked 17 Sept 2026James R. Flynn
IQ test scores rose by roughly three points per decade across fourteen industrialised nations over the twentieth century, a rise too fast to reflect real gains in general intelligence, which argues that IQ tests measure a narrower abstract problem-solving skill rather than intelligence as ordinarily understood.
Douglas T. Kenrick & David C. Funder
Reviews the decades-long argument over whether traits or situations better predict behaviour and concludes both sides overstated their case, since later research established that traits predict behaviour reliably once it is aggregated across many occasions rather than judged from a single encounter.
Lewis R. Goldberg
Personality descriptors drawn from natural language converge on the same five broad factors found in prior questionnaires, evidence that the Big Five are not an artefact of any one measurement instrument.
14 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026Thomas J. Bouchard Jr., David T. Lykken, Matthew McGue, Nancy L. Segal & Auke Tellegen
Twins separated in infancy and raised apart end up about as similar in personality, IQ and interests as twins raised together, evidence that genetic influence on individual differences is far larger than shared family environment.
Oliver P. John & Sanjay Srivastava
Traces how independent lexical and questionnaire traditions converged on five broad trait dimensions, and lays out the instruments used to measure them and the disputes - over their number, causal status and universality - that followed.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Brent W. Roberts, Kate E. Walton & Wolfgang Viechtbauer
A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies shows personality traits keep changing well into old age - people become more conscientious, agreeable and emotionally stable as they get older - contradicting the older view that personality is fixed by 30.
Charles Spearman
Performance on unrelated mental tests correlates positively with all the others, which Spearman takes as evidence for a single general intelligence factor, g, underlying performance on any cognitively demanding task.
link checked 17 Sept 2026