12.1 Contemporary Approaches to Personality Flashcards
Personality
characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that is unique to each individual, and reamins relatively consistent over time and situations
Idiographic approach
creating detailed descriptions of a person’s unique personality characteristics
Nomothetic approach
examine personality in large groups of people, with the aim of making generalizations about personality structure
Personality trait
a specific psychological characteristic that makes up part of a person’s personality
Factor analysis
- statistical technique that examines correlations between variables to find clusters of related variables or “factors”
- used to group items that people respond to similarly
Five factor model
a trait-based theory of personality based on the finding that personality can be described using five major dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism
HEXACO model of personality
a six-factor theory that generally replicates the five factors of the FFM and adds one additional factor: Honesty-Humility
Dark triad
describes a person who is socially destructive, aggressive, dishonest, and likely to commit harm in general :
1. Machiavellianism
2. Psychopathy
3. Narcissism
Right-wing authoritarian
a problematic set of personality characteristics that also predisposes people to certain types of violent or anti-social tendencies
State
a temporary physical or psychological engagement that influences behaviour
Behaviourist account of personality
environment influences behaviour which results in consequences which affect behaviour
Reciprocal determinism
interactions between behaviour, internal/personal factors, and external/situational factors, all of which mutually influence each other
