Five dimensions, and four ways a reward can arrive

The five-factor, or Big Five, model is a standard account of personality along five core dimensions. Openness is a readiness for new experience, ideas, and feeling. A person high in it often has an artistic sense, imagination, and creativity, and a strong curiosity about new food, travel, and culture. A person low in it prefers a familiar and stable day, and more readily accepts traditional values and religious belief. Conscientiousness is self-regulation, responsibility, and a turn toward a goal. A person high in it is planned and careful, can hold back an impulse, and tends to avoid risky acts.

Extraversion is a preference for social exchange and a level of energy. A person high in it is lively and sociable, often wants to have an effect on other people, talks more, shows positive feeling, and is noticeable in a gathering. A person low in it is quiet and inward, and tries to spend less energy. Agreeableness is a wish to live in harmony with other people. A person high in it is kind and cooperative, with a gift for empathy and for forming trust, and leans toward keeping a relation and offering emotional support. A person low in it may care less about another’s welfare and, in a conflict, become competitive and lean on power. Neuroticism is emotional instability and a sensitivity to negative feeling. A person high in it is easily touched by low mood, anxiety, and worry, often has a lower self-regard, fears failure, and may feel stress even in a small matter, which can also have a negative effect on marital satisfaction and on academic work.

Behaviourism offers four schedules of reinforcement. A fixed-ratio plan pays after a set number of acts. A variable-ratio plan is close to that, except the reward is not fixed in time and arrives at random; it is often used in gambling and in games, and holds a person more deeply, because they do not know when they will hit. A fixed-interval plan pays the first response after a set time has passed. An app that issues an automatic reward once an hour is the example given; because one can simply wait, the rate of acting often rises and falls in a cycle. A variable-interval plan also uses time, but the interval itself is random. A person keeps acting because they do not know when the reward will come; checking email is the case named on the page.

A restaurant order that never comes

Social anxiety, in everyday language, is a worry, large enough to change a day, about how one will look when one stands in front of other people or speaks with someone. A dictionary definition given on the page is a state of severe anxiety and tension in a social situation, from a fear of being judged or embarrassed, and a tendency to avoid that situation.

Take a table with friends, where an order has to be made. A person with social anxiety may be caught by the thought, “If I stumble over the order I will be embarrassed,” or “The server will think I am odd,” and may ask someone else to order, or avoid the restaurant altogether. If that pattern repeats, it is no longer a matter of skipping a meal. Time spent with other people is avoided, ties grow thin, and a self-reproach — “Why can’t I even do this?” — can accumulate and lead on toward the disorder.

A photograph of a lift, and a counsellor who does not only treat

Measurement, in this set, is the process of expressing a psychological quality as a number: a tool that lets an unseen idea, such as an act or a feeling, be studied in quantity. Psychology deals with a subjective human experience, and so needs a measurement that can turn that experience into an objective record. An experiment tests a causal relation between a cause and a result, by manipulating a variable in a controlled setting and comparing outcomes, so that the effect of outside factors is kept small. The experimental group is the group of participants who actually receive the treatment of the independent variable, and is the group against which one checks whether an experimental effect appears. The independent variable is the variable the researcher deliberately manipulates or changes; it is the cause that is meant to affect the result, and setting that condition is the point of the experiment.

One of the ideas that most struck the writer in the course was the Boulder model. It does not treat the clinical psychologist only as a provider of treatment. It defines the role as a practitioner who also holds the stance of a scientist: the scientist-practitioner model, as the lecture notes named it, in which a balance of research skill and clinical practice is important. A document quoted on the Korean page says that the model calls for a scientific attitude in exploring problems that arise in the clinical setting. In the field one gathers and analyses material, and tests and develops the theory. Even while counselling, the psychologist is to draw out meaningful patterns and information, and that process itself becomes part of scholarly work — a specialised and composite role.

Kitchener’s ethical principles, the lecture said, go beyond a simple right and wrong, and speak to the attitude and the philosophy a counsellor should have. The five, as named in the class, are autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, and honesty, and they are a standard for a balanced ethical judgement in the relation with a client. Autonomy is helping the client to choose their own life. Nonmaleficence is the principle that, in no case, should the counsellor do the client harm. A document quoted on the Korean page says clearly that the counsellor should respect the client’s autonomy and rights as far as possible, and should refrain from any intervention that would do harm. The five, the writer says, work as a compass when an unexpected ethical dilemma appears in the room.

Of the counselling skills, reflection is the counsellor’s way of hearing a client’s words and handing the feeling or the thought back in similar language — a mirror, in a sense. The writer has, in ordinary talk with a friend or a family member, repeated or summarised what the other person said, and has heard, “Yes, that is exactly it,” and then a freer telling. Summary and restatement is a tighter arranging of what the client has said. If a client says, “I have to prepare for an exam, and the part-time job is so busy that I feel I am not doing anything properly,” a counsellor might answer, “So many things are overlapping that it is hard to concentrate, and you have become listless.” Empathy, the writer was taught, is the most basic and the most central of the skills: a sincere attempt to feel, from the client’s place, what they feel. The writer once said to a friend who had opened a worry, “Why make a fuss over something that small?” and the talk stopped completely. After that, saying “That must have really hurt when you heard it,” or “In that situation I think I would have felt let down too,” let the conversation go on much more easily.

Systematic desensitisation is a behavioural method that helps a person become, step by step, more used to a situation that raises anxiety or fear. The lecture treated it as a process of repeatedly learning a state in which bodily tension is lowered. It does not simply suppress the anxiety; it pairs the feared cue with a relaxed response at the same time, and in that way rebuilds the fear itself. The writer had seen a student with a fear of lifts, who felt short of breath and broke into a cold sweat even in a narrow space. The work began with looking at a photograph of a lift, then walking as far as a building lobby, standing at the doors, opening them only, and at last taking a short ride and stepping out again, very slowly, stage by stage. What the writer found important was that, at each step, a practice for governing the anxiety is done as well: slowing the breath, or closing the eyes and loosening the tension, so that the person can calm themselves before the fear fully rises.

Why a midterm set is kept in one place

A table, a photograph, and a set of five names are enough, in this course, to hold a person and a method at once. The same Korean midterm, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Midterm answers in personality and clinical psychology: the Big Five, four schedules of reinforcement, social anxiety, measurement and experiment, the Boulder model, Kitchener’s ethical principles, counselling skills, and systematic desensitisation (Korean source page).
2. The five-factor model of personality; fixed-ratio, variable-ratio, fixed-interval, and variable-interval schedules; a restaurant-order illustration of social anxiety; a lift-phobia illustration of systematic desensitisation.
3. The Boulder scientist-practitioner model, as named in the lecture notes; Kitchener’s five principles as named in the class: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, and honesty.

Last updated: 14 November 2026