2: Trait approach: History and intro Flashcards
Are traits/dispositions stable over time?
Yes - they are reasonable stable over time/ consistent across situations
What are the 3 fundamental questions that should guide those why study personality psychology?
- How should weconceptualizetraits?’
- How can we identify which traits are themost importanttraits from among the thousands of ways in which individuals differ?
- How can we formulate acomprehensive taxonomyof traits – a system that includes within itallof the major traits of personality?’
What are internal traits?
something inside each person that causes him/her to act a certain way and he/she carries these desires from one situation to the next (EX: he has a DESIRE for xxxx. She NEEDS xxx)
How do psychologists who view traits as internal link those traits to behavior?
A psychologist who view traits as internal dispositions doesn’t think that behavior and traits are always in synch - you might have a desire to do something but you don’t do it because it is inappropriate
Psychologists who don’t see traits as internal see them as………?
Descriptive summaries
Traits as descriptive summaries are?
Traits are defined simply as descriptive summaries of a person’s attributes
Personality coherence means that……?
Changes in personality vary over time even though the underlying characteristic remain the same. The trait is the same over time but how it is expressed changes over time
What is the difference between traits and stages?
Traits represent the typical behavior of a person over time (somewhat the same over time).
Stages change and vary across time and situations
What does Funder (2009) say personality psychologists should do?
He argues that personality psychologists should not only try to understand between-person differences but also changes and differences within a person. And what situations can cause a person to act in a different way
What was the first publication on the topic: To what extent situational circumstances influence our behavior?
Personality and assessment by Walter Mischel (1968)
He argues that situational demands partly determine our behavior
The act frequency approach starts with what notion?
Traits are categories of acts.
A trait is just a trait category that has hundreds of other acts as members
The act frequency approach say a trait is what?
A trait is a summary of general trends in a person’s behavior
What are the 3 key elements of the act frequency approach (research program)?
Act nomination (which actions belongs to which traits) Prototypically judgment (which acts are the most prototypical for each trait) Recording of act performance
Act nomination (act frequency approach)
Asking a large number of people to name (‘nominate’) all kinds of behaviours (‘acts’) they feel pertain to a certain category and then determine the most frequently named behaviours of that category. These will then most likely make it to the shortlist of acts that may belong to that trait category.
Prototypically judgment (act frequency approach)
Panels of raters judge how prototypical each act is as an example of a particular concept. You try to identify the prototypical acts of a certain trait
Recording of act performance (act frequency approach)
Securing information on the actual performance of individuals in their daily lives.
This is often done by self-reports or reports from close friends or spouses
Criticism of the act frequency approach
- Most of the criticisms have been aimed at the technical implementation of the approach.For example, the act frequency approach does not specify how much context should be included in the description of a trait-relevant act - the act frequency formulation doesn’t specify how much context is needed to identify an act as an expression of a trait
- Another criticism of the approach is that it seems applicable to overt actions, but what aboutfailuresto act and covert acts that are not directly observable
What are the 3 fundamental approaches to identifying important traits?
- The lexical approach
- Statistical approach
- Theoretical approach
What is the lexical approach to identifying important traits?
The approach to determining the fundamental personality traits by analyzing language.
2 clear criteria for identifying traits:
SYNONYM FREQUENCY: if an attribute has not merely one or two trait adjectives to describe it but, rather, six, eight or nine words, then it is a more important dimension of individual difference
CROSS-CULTURAL UNIVERSITY:
the more important is an individual difference in human transactions, the more languages will have a term for it
what is the lexical hypothesis?
All important individual differences have become encoded within the natural language
How often is the lexical approach used?
Not very often - One problem with the lexical strategy concerns the fact that personality is conveyed through different parts of speech, including adjectives, nouns and adverbs
The statistical approach to identifying important traits
The goal is to identify the major dimensions of the personality map - this is done by having a large number of people rate themselves on certain items and then using a statistic procedure to identify groups or clusters.
What method is most commonly used within the statistical approach?
Factor analysis = identify groups or items that go together (covary)
What is the advantage of the statistical approach?
A major advantage of identifying clusters of personality items that covary, is that it provides a means for determining which personality variables have some common property
Factor loading indicates what? (statistical approach)
Factor loadings indicate the degree to which the item correlates with the underlying factor.
Factor loading are indexes of how much of the variation in an item is ‘explained’ by the factor.
Theoretical approach
Theories determine which traits/variables are important
What is the strength of the theoretical approach?
It helps us to know which variables are important so we don’t waste time on trying to figure this out
What is the limitation of the theoretical approach?
A theory contains gaps and imprecision
What approach do psychologists most often use?
a mix of all the approaches (lexical, statistical and theoretical)
How many main traits does Eysenck’s hierarchical model of personality have?
3 main traits
- psychotisism (P)
- extraversion-introversion (E)
- Neurotisism-emotional stability (N)
What are the 3 main traits in Eysenck’s hierarchical model?
- Extraversion–Introversion(E): sociable, active, lively, venturesome, dominant = extroversion
- Neuroticism–Emotional Stability(N): anxious, irritable, guilty, lacking self-esteem, tense, shy and moody. (neuroticism)
- Psychoticism(P): aggressive, egocentric, creative, impulsive, lacking empathy and antisocial. Often descripted as a loner
Eysenck based his model on traits he thought was highly XXXXXX?
heritable
What is the abbreviation for Eysenck’s 3 main traits?
PEN (Psychoticism, Extraversion, Neuroticism)
How many levels does Eysenck’s model have?
4 levels:
- Type level
- Trait level
- Habitual response level
- Specific response level
Describe the relationship between the different levels in Eysenck’s model
Each trait (PEN)(level 1) is sitting on top of a hierarchy of narrower traits (level 2). EX: extroversion (top) sociable, active, lively, venturesome, dominant (narrow traits)
Lowest level (4) = if enough specific acts are repeated frequently they become habitual act (level 3)
Eysenck empathizes 2 aspects of biological underpinnings that are central - which?
Heritability: A key criteria for Eysenck is that a basic dimension must have high heritability
Identifiable physiological substrate: basic personality traits should have an identifiable physiological substrate
that is, that one can identify properties in the brain and central nervous system that correspond to the traits and are presumed to be part of the causal chain that produces those traits
What are the limitations to Eysenck’s model?
- Many other personality traits also show moderate heritability, not just extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism
- A second limitation is that Eysenck may have missed some important traits in his taxonomy
How many basic traits does Catell’s taxonomy have?
16 basic traits
Catell believed that true factors of personality should be found across different types of data (self-report (S-data, laboratory test (T-data) - TRUE OR FALSE?
TRUE
Limitation of Catell’s taxonomy
No one has been able to replicate the 16 factors that he found
Wiggin (1979) circumplex taxonomies of personality started with a lexical assumption that says what?
Terms specify different ways in which people differ
Interpersonal traits: what people do to and with eachother (include temperament traits, character traits, material traits, attitude traits, mental traits)
According to Wiggin (1979) what 2 resources define social exchange?
Love and status
What form the axes in Wiggin’s circumplex?
Love and status
What are the 3 advantages to Wiggin’s circumplex?
- It provides an explicit definition of interpersonal behavior ( These include not just giving love (e.g. giving a friend a hug) or granting status (e.g. showing respect or honor to a parent) but also denying love (e.g. yelling at a boyfriend) and denying status (e.g. dismissing someone as too inconsequential to talk to). Thus the Wiggins model has the advantage of providing an explicit and precise definition of interpersonal transactions.)
- Specifies the relationship between each trait and every other trait within the model
- Alerts investigators to gapsin investigations of interpersonal behavior. (The circumplex model, by providing a map of the interpersonal terrain, directs researchers to these neglected areas of psychological functioning.)
Wiggin’s circumplex has 3 basic types of relationship, what are those?
- Adjacency (how close traits are)
- Bipolarity (Trait located on opposite sides)
- Orthogonality (Traits are at 90° of separation, or at right angles to each other)
What kind of relationship does adjacency describe (in Wiggins circumplex)?
How close are traits to each other in the circumplex.
The traits that are close to each other are positively correlated
What kind of relationship does bipolarity describe (in Wiggins circumplex)?
Traits that are bipolar are located at opposite sides of each other and are negatively correlated
What kind of relationship does Orthogonality describe (in Wiggins circumplex)?
Traits are at 90° of separation, or at right angles to each other.
There is zero correlation between such 2 traits.
What are the 5 broad traits of the five factor model/big five?
- Surgency/Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Coinscientiousness
- Emotional stability
- Openness-intellect
What are some of the adjectives that describe surgency/extraversion? (big five)
talkative, extraverted, assertive, forward, outspokenand NOT beingshy, quiet, introverted, bashful, inhibited
What are some of the adjectives that describe Agreeableness? (big five)
sympathetic, kind, warm, understanding, sincereand NOT beingunsympathetic, unkind, harsh, crue
What are some of the adjectives that describe Conscientiousness? (big five)
Organized, neat, orderly, practical, prompt, meticulousand NOT beingdisorganized, disorderly, careless, sloppy, impractical.
What are some of the adjectives that describe emotional stability? (big five)
calm, relaxed, stableand NOT beingmoody, anxious, insecure.
What are some of the adjectives that describe Openness-intellect?
creative, imaginative, intellectualand NOT beinguncreative, unimaginative, unintellectual.
What is the most widely used method when it comes to big five/ 5 factor model?
The NEO-PI-R
The neuroticism-extraversion-openness (NEO) Personality Inventory (PI) Revised by Paul T. Costa and Robert R. McCrae
The fifth factor in the big five model is called openness by some and intellect by others, why is that?
A major cause of these differences is that different researchers start with different item pools to factor analyse. Those who start with the lexical strategy and use adjectives as items typically endorseintellectas the meaning and label of the fifth factor. In contrast, those who use questionnaire items tend to preferopennessoropenness to experiencebecause this label better reflects the content of those items.
Critique of the big 5 model
Critics of the five-factor model argue that it leaves out important aspects of personality and some have suggested adding 2 more factors ( positive evaluation(e.g.outstandingversusordinary) andnegative evaluation(e.g.awfulversusdecent).
The HEXACO model has which approach?
Lexical approach and are validated in many different languages
How many factors does the HEXACO model have and what are the factors?
6 factors
- Extroversion
- Coinscientiousness
- Intellect/ imagination/ unconventionality
- Emotionality
- Agreeableness (not the same as the big five)
- Honesty- Humility
Is HEXACO model the big five plus an extra factor?
NO
What is factor analysis?
It is a statistical method that looks at how lots of different observations correlate and determines how many theoretical constructs could most simply explain what you see
What is a factor?
A latent dimension which is measured by combining several different measures. It is not something that you can observe directly
What is the big five aspect scale?
It is another way of describing and investigating personality. It tries to go narrower than the big five. Each of the big five is thought to have 2 aspects. (EX: Extroversion is divided into 2 - enthusiasm and assertiveness. It makes sense to talk about these 2 aspects of extroversion seperatly)
Model with metatraits try to do what?
to go more general than the big 5
- stability (A, C, ES)
- plasticity (E, O)
