chap. 8

Question 1

What is the fundamental lexical hypothesis?

Answer 1

• states that people encode in their everyday languages all those differences between individuals that they perceive to be salient and that they consider to be socially relevant in their everyday lives
• “The most important individual differences in human transactions will come to be encoded as single terms in some or all of the world’s languages” (Goldberg, 1990, p. 1216)
  → people use terms to describe other people in their lives because they’re helpful
  → help us differentiate people

Question 2

What is the basic research procedure for the analysis of trait terms in natural language and in questionnaires?

Answer 2

• Individuals rate themselves or others on a variety of traits sampled from the dictionary
  → Ratings are then factor-analyzed to find out how many factors are needed to understand the patterns of correlations
  → the goal: how many factors and what are these factors?

Question 3

True or false: Early works indicated that five factors are necessary to explain personnality.

Answer 3

True: Five-factor solutions were found repeatedly in a wide range of data sources, samples, and instruments

Question 4

Each trait (of the Big Five) is a universal psychological ___ that everyone has in varying amounts that causally influence people’s psychological development.

Answer 4

Structures; this idea of structures was unique to Costa and Mccrae

Question 5

According to Costa & Mccrae, factors have a ___ basis.

Answer 5

Biological; combination of genes which determines where we find ourselves on the continuum of a certain trait

Question 6

Name the Big five traits and the characteristics of having them at a low and a high score.

Answer 6

1) Openness: Breadth depth and complexity of an individual’s mental and experiential life; both mental in how philosophical you are and experimental in how open you are to trying new things
- High: Curious, creative, broad interests
- Low: Conventional, unartistic, narrow interests
2) Conscientiousness: Describes task-oriented and goal-directed behaviour and socially required impulse control; tend to be persevering, good impulse control, trying to achieve their goals, hardworking, good performance
- High: Organized, reliable, punctual
- Low: Aimless, lazy, careless
3) Extraversion: How sociable you are
- High: Sociable, active, talkative
- Low: Reserved, aloof, quiet
4) Agreeableness: Your likeability, how friendly and understanding you are
- High: Kind, cooperative, trusting
- Low: Cynical, rude, manipulative
5) Neuroticism: Broad range of negative feelings; contrasts emotional stability
- High: Worrying, nervous, emotional
- Low: Calm, relaxed, secure

Question 7

Identify the associations between Big Five scores and variations in brain volume found by DeYoung et al.

Answer 7

1) Openness to experience was not significantly related to any of the examined brain regions
2) Conscientiousness correlated with volume in a region of the frontal cortex known to be active when people plan events and follow rules
3) Extraversion correlated with brain volume in a region of the frontal cortex that contributes to the processing of information about environmental rewards
4) Agreeableness correlated with brain volume in regions of the brain that contribute to people’s ability to understand others’ mental states (empathy, understanding)
5) Neuroticism correlated with great volume in brain regions known to be associated with the processing of environmental threats (associated with a fear response)

Question 8

In relation to DeYoung’s research on the association between brain volume and the big 5, is it safe to conclude that they have identified the neural origins of the big 5 traits?

Answer 8

• No for 3 reasons
  1) The study yielded a number of null results and unexpected results
  2) Cause-effect relationships were impossible to determine with theses data
  3) The brains’ various regions are enormously interconnected’ focusing on volume in one region of the brain may yield an incomplete portrait

Question 9

Costa and Mccrae created the revised personality inventory (NEO-PI-R) which included 6 facets for each factor. Name one facet for each trait.

Answer 9

O: Fantasy, aesthetics, feelings
C: Self-discipline, dutifulness, competence
E: Gregariousness (enjoying other people’s company), activity level, assertiveness
A: Straightforwardness, trust, altruism
N: Anxiety, self-consciousness, depression

Question 10

True or false: Depending on the researcher, warmth can linked to either extraversion or agreeableness.

Answer 10

True

Question 11

True or false: Scores on the NEO-PI-R correlate with Eysenck’s inventories and Cattell’s 16 factors.

Answer 11

True: These correlations allow one to integrate the older models within the Big Five

Question 12

True or false: NEO-PI-R is only available as self-report.

Answer 12

False: It is also available as ratings by others

Question 13

True or false: People tend to be worse at predicting their own conscientiousness than other people

Answer 13

True: people who are high on conscientiousness are not going to report it being that high because they have high standards (they’re hard on themselves and underestimate themselves)

Question 14

Despite stability in the personality, there are some changes that are found between younger adults and older adults in the Big 5; what are these high-low differences?

Answer 14

1) Openness
- higher in younger adults
- lower in older adults
2) Conscientiousness
- lower in younger adults
- higher in older adults
3) Extraversion
- Higher in younger adults
- Lower in older adults
4) Agreeableness
- lower in younger adults
- higher in older adults
5) Neuroticism
- higher in younger adults
- lower in older adults

Question 15

Ravenna Helson and colleagues conducted a longitunidal study on a group of women in northern California, explain this research and its results.

Answer 15

• Researchers asked participants “how is the women’s movement important” when they were seniors in college
• They then studied them again when they were 61 years old
• Changes in personality across adulthood were found due to a major sociological factor (women’s movement):
  → those who said it was important to them increased in self-acceptance, assertiveness, dominance, empathy
  → those who said it wasn’t important to them did not have this increase
  → the women who were paying attention to this movement had a significant change due to their environment

Question 16

True or false: Data suggests that personality is more stable over long periods of time rather than over short periods.

Answer 16

False: It is the other way around

Question 17

How is the Big 5 applied in the workplace?

Answer 17

• Conscientiousness is related to performance across a variety of jobs and tasks
• in what workplace would it not be beneficial to have high C?
  → jobs requiring creativity and being interested in thinking outside the box; jobs with more chaos; EMT or firefighter where it’s a different situation every day (no daily plan, or by the book); musician
• Others find weak results and do say that you need to look at more specific traits to determine how people will perform in the workplace

Question 18

How is the Big 5 applied in health?

Answer 18

• More conscientious people may live longer
• Adults who were conscientious as children lived longer and were about 30% less likely to die in any given year, even when ruling out environmental variables
• What explains the relationship?
  → good health behaviours, you’re taking care of yourself, taking less risks

Question 19

How is the Big 5 applied in physical activity?

Answer 19

• Lower Neuroticism and higher Conscientiousness associated with more physical activity and less sedentary behaviour
• Extraversion and Openness are associated with more physical activity, but these traits are mostly unrelated to specific sedentary behaviours (e.g., TV watching)

Question 20

How is the Big 5 applied in music choice?

Answer 20

• People high in openness to experience increased the choice for browsing music by mood (they feel deeply and think deeply)
• Conscientiousness increased the choice for browsing music by activity
  → compartmentalizing different types of music by activity
• Neuroticism the choice of music by activity or genre
  → tend to listen to the same thing

Question 21

True or false: People high on neuroticism are least likely to listen to music to cope.

Answer 21

True: Even though using music to cope helps decrease neuroticism

Question 22

How is the Big 5 applied in a clinical context and in choosing psychological treatment?

Answer 22

Diagnosis:
- Compulsive personality might be seen as someone extremely high on C and N
- Antisocial personality might be seen as someone low on A and C
- Maybe the five-factor framework can be a useful tool for clinical diagnosis
Treatment:
- There is no “trait” therapy
- Individuals with different personalities may benefit more or less from different forms of psychological treatment
- Individuals high in O may benefit more from therapies that encourage exploration and fantasy than those low on the factor
- Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness are often associated with positive outcomes; typically more likely to seek therapy
- Neuroticism is often associated with negative outcomes; not as likely to seek therapy

Question 23

Individuals high in ___ may benefit more from therapies that encourage exploration and fantasy than those low on the factor

Answer 23

Openness to experience

Question 24

What did Nikčević et al. (2021)’s study on the Big Five and anxiety and depressive symptoms during the Covid-19 pandemic find?

Answer 24

• Found that extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness were negatively correlated with generalized anxiety and depressive symptoms during the Covid-19 pandemic
• Neuroticism, health anxiety, and Covid-19 psychological distress were positively associated with generalized anxiety and depressive symptom
• people high on positive traits likely handled the pandemic better rather than those high on neuroticism
• people high on O experienced more health anxiety during COVID
  → they can imagine the more bad things that could be happening

Question 25

What are the 3 problematic issues in the 5-factor model?

Answer 25

• Claims that traits are not affected by social factors
• Claims that everyone has all five factors
• Factors are analogous to bodily organs which might vary in size

Question 26

What is the six-factor model?

Answer 26

• Recent data sets suggests that trait psychologists missed a sixth factor: honest/humility
• Findings across seven languages indicate that individual differences in the tendency to be truthful and sincere vs. cunning and disloyal are a reliable sixth factor
  → people who are high on this trait will avoid manipulating people for their own interest, interested in accumulating things for themselves, it is the opposite for those who are low on it, the people who are low on it are interested in materialistic gain

Question 27

What are the methodological issues with cross-cultural research of the big 5?

Answer 27

• Languages may lack one-to-one translations; words that translate the same do not necessarily mean the same
• Could lead researchers to question whether they have found the same factor in two languages

Question 28

What are the cross-cultural replicability issues with the Big 5? How is this shown in Di Blas’ research in Italy?

Answer 28

• The translation process may impose factors where they do not arise spontaneously
  → rather than finding them in the population
• Italy research:
  → Found that a three-factor solution fit the data better for this population – extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness
  → Neuroticism not identified as a factor in Italian

Question 29

Deraad and Peabody examined trait terms across 11 languages; what did they conclude about cross-cultural replicability of the Big 5?

Answer 29

• Concluded that “the Big Three – Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness – are cross-lingually recurrent” whereas “the full Big Five Model is questionable”
  → A recent review concluded that these three factors could be found in most language groups, whereas Neuroticism and Openness to Experience are less cross-culturally reliable

Question 30

What is the person-situation controversy? What are the 2 aspects which need to be distinguished?

Answer 30

• Asks the question: Is there enough consistency in behaviour to support trait concept since behaviour varies from situation to situation
• Two aspects of consistency need to be distinguished
  1) Longitudinal stability : whether people high on a trait at one point in time are also high on that trait at another point in time
  2) Cross-situational consistency: whether people high on that trait in some situations are high on that trait in other situations
  → p.ex: at work vs. with friends vs. with family
• Trait theorists suggest both are true, but critics of trait theory question this
• How does one decide that a person has acted, across situations, in a manner that we should call “consistent”?

Question 31

What did Mischel and Peake’s study about the person-situation controversy reveal?

Answer 31

• They asked students to nominate behaviours that represent conscientiousness in a college environment
  → They measured behaviours on many occasions and aggregated them
• People who were relatively high on the trait at one point in the semester continued to act conscientiously later in the semester (longitudinal stability)
  → However, levels of cross-situational consistency were relatively low
  → Cross-situational consistency higher across behaviours that related specifically to classroom-related consistency
  → we tend to be consistent WITHIN domains of our life but not ACROSS domains
  → p.ex: if you’re diligent in note-taking, you will be in all classes, but that doesn’t necessarily translate in your workplace
  → People may vary their behaviour from one situation to another

Question 32

We tend to be consistent ___ domains of our life, but not ___ domains.

Answer 32

Within; across
→ p.ex: if you’re diligent in note-taking, you will be in all classes, but that doesn’t necessarily translate in your workplace

Question 33

What were the results of Fleeson and colleagues’ research on variability of trait behaviour (which traits had least and most variability)?

Answer 33

• They asked participants to record their current thoughts and feelings a few times a day over a number of days
• Rather than reporting overall level of a trait, they report on the degree to which they have exhibited a given type of trait-related behaviour during the past hour
• Can determine not only average levels of behaviour but the degree to which it varies around the average
• Results showed that extraversion and conscientiousness tend to have the most variability, while agreeableness is the most consistent