Chapter 10 (Personality) Pt. 2 Flashcards
What do trait theorists believe?
That we can describe people’s personalities by specifying their main characteristics or traits
What do are the characteristics of traits?
1) Stable
2) Motivate behavior in keeping with the trait (if someone is friendly, they ACT friendly)
What is the nomothetic approach?
The same set of traits can be used to describe all people’s personalities
What did Paul Costa and Robert McCrae come up with?
The Big Five personality traits
What are the Big Five traits?
1) Extraversion
2) Agreeableness
3) Conscientiousness
4) Openness
5) Neuroticism (Emotional stability)
What is extraversion?
How outgoing someone is
What is agreeableness?
How easy to get along with someone is
What is conscientiousness?
How hardworking, responsible, and organized someone is
What is openness?
How creative, curious, and willing to new experiences someone is
What is neuroticism (emotional stability)?
How stable one’s mood is
How can we reduce all the words and traits into just 16 or 5?
By factor analysis
What is factor analysis allow researchers to do?
Use correlations between traits to see which traits cluster together as factors
What is the ideographic approach?
It is impossible to use the same set of traits to classify all the people (honesty may be important to one person, but to another it doesn’t mean anything)
Which researcher was an ideographic theorist?
Gordon Allport
What is the main criticism of trait theories?
They underestimate the importance of the situation. (We need to consider context -ex. not everyone is ALWAYS open)
