Chapter 13: Eysenck, McCrae, and Costa's Trait and Factor Theories Flashcards
Whereas many contemporary theorists believe that five is the magic number, earlier theorists such as Raymond B. Cattell found many more personality traits, and Hans J. Eysenck insisted that only _____ major factors can be discerned by a factor analytic approach
three
In addition, we have seen that Gordon Allport’s commonsense approach yielded _____ traits that are central to each person’s life.
5 to 10
_____ factor analytic technique yielded three general bipolar factors or types—extraversion/introversion, neuroticism/stability, and psychoticism/superego.
Eysenck’s
According to _____, environmental experiences such as these two have little to do with personality development. To him, genetic factors have a greater impact on subsequent behavior than do childhood experiences.
Eysenck
_____ was perhaps the most prolific writer in the history of psychology, having published some 800 journal articles or book chapters and more than 75 books.
Eysenck
First, _____ used an inductive method of gathering data; that is, he began with no preconceived bias concerning the number or name of traits or types.
In contrast, Eysenck used a deductive method to identify three personality factors. That is, he had some preconceived hypothesis in mind before he began gathering data.
Cattell
Second, _____ used three different media of observation to examine people. The three sources of data included:
A person’s life record (L data) derived from observations made by other people;
Self-reports (Q data) obtained from questionnaires and other techniques designed to allow people to make subjective descriptions of themselves; and
Objective tests (T data), which measure performance such as intelligence, speed of responding, and other such activities designed to challenge people’s maximum performance.
Cattell
Eysenck’s three bipolar factors is limited to responses on _____. These self-reports confine Eysenck’s procedures to personality factors.
questionnaires
Third, _____ divided traits into common traits (shared by many) and unique traits (peculiar to one individual).
He also distinguished source traits from trait indicators, or surface traits.
_____ further classified traits into temperament, motivation, and ability. Traits of temperament are concerned with how a person behaves, motivation deals with why one behaves, and ability refers to how far or how fast one can perform.
Cattell
The largest and most frequently studied of the normal traits are the _____ found on Cattell’s Sixteen Personality Factors Questionnaire.
By comparison, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire yields scores on only three personality factors.
16 personality factors
A comprehensive knowledge of the mathematical operations involved in _____ is not essential to an understanding of trait and factor theories of personality, but a general description of this technique should be helpful.
factor analysis
These more basic dimensions can be called _____, that is, factors that represent a cluster of closely related variables.
traits
Traits generated through factor analysis may be either _____.
unipolar or bipolar
_____ are scaled from zero to some large amount. Height, weight, and intellectual ability are examples of _____ traits.
unipolar
_____ extend from one pole to an opposite pole, with zero representing a midpoint. Introversion versus extraversion, liberalism versus conservatism, and social ascendancy versus timidity are examples of _____ traits.
bipolar
Correlations of scores with factors are called _____.
factor loadings
This rotation can be either _____ or oblique, but Eysenck and advocates of the Five-Factor Theory favor the _____ rotation
orthogonal
The personality theory of Hans Eysenck has strong psychometric and biological components.
Eysenck’s Factor Theory
a_____ defined traits as “important semi-permanent personality dispositions”
Eysenck
Eysenck, however, extracted only three general superfactors. His three personality dimensions are _____.
extraversion (E), neuroticism (N), and psychoticism (P)
Has a strong hereditary component. As anxiety, hysteria, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Overreact emotionally.
Neuroticism
Eysenck accepted the _____ model of psychiatric illness, which suggests that some people are vulnerable to illness because they have either a genetic or an acquired weakness that predisposes them to an illness. This predisposition (diathesis) may interact with stress to produce a neurotic disorder.
diathesis-stress
P is a bipolar factor, with psychoticism on one pole and _____ on the other.
superego
Measuring Personality: _____ scorers are often egocentric, cold, nonconforming, impulsive, hostile, aggressive, suspicious, psychopathic, and antisocial.
High P
Measuring Personality: The _____ contains a lie (L) scale to detect faking, but more importantly, it measures extraversion and neuroticism independently, with a near zero correlation between E and N.
The _____ was extended to children 7 to 16 years of age by Sybil B. G. Eysenck, who developed the Junior EPI.
Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI)
Measuring Personality: The EPI was still a two-factor inventory, so consequently Hans Eysenck and Sybil Eysenck published a third personality test, namely the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), which included a _____ scale.
Psychoticism (P)
Personality as a Predictor: Recall that Eysenck’s theory assumes that extraversion is a product of low cortical arousability. Therefore, introverts, compared with extraverts, should be more sensitive to a variety of stimuli and learning conditions.
Personality and Behavior
Personality as a Predictor: Eyesenck and David Kissen found that people who scored low on neuroticism (N) on the Maudsley Personality Inventory tended to suppress their emotion and were much more likely than high N scorers to receive a later diagnosis of lung cancer.
Personality and Disease
The Big Five: Taxonomy or Theory? Who are the two.
Robert R. McCrae and Paul T. Costa, Jr.
Costa and McCrae focused initially on the two main dimensions of _____.
neuroticism and extraversion
Almost immediately after they discovered N and E, Costa and McCrae found a third factor, which they called _____.
openness to experience
Although _____ had first used the term “Big Five” in 1981 to describe the consistent findings of factor analyses of personality traits, Costa and McCrae continued their work on the three factors
Lewis Goldberg
O-penness vs. Closed C-onscientiousness vs. Spontaneous E-xtroversion vs. Introversion A-ggreableness vs. Hostile N-eurotic vs. Stable
Big Five Personality Test
In the personality theory of McCrae and Costa, behavior is predicted by an understanding of three central or core components and three peripheral ones.
The three central components include (1) basic tendencies, (2) characteristic adaptations, and (3) self-concept.
Units of the Five-Factor Theory
Biological Bases
Objective Biography
External Influences
Peripheral Component
Peripheral Component: The principal biological mechanisms that influence basic tendencies are genes, hormones, and brain structures.
Biological Bases
The second peripheral component is _____, defined as “everything the person does, thinks, or feels across the whole lifespan”. _____ emphasizes what has happened in people’s lives (objective) rather than their view or perceptions of their experiences (subjective).
Objective Biography
People constantly find themselves in a particular physical or social situation that has some influence on the personality system. The question of how we respond to the opportunities and demands of the context is what external influences is all about
External Influences
Individuality
Origin
Development
Structure
Basic Postulates
The _____ postulate stipulates that adults have a unique set of traits and that each person exhibits a unique combination of trait patterns.
individuality
Second, the _____ postulate takes a clear if somewhat controversial stance: All personality traits are the result solely of endogenous (internal) forces, such as genetics, hormones, and brain structures.
origin
Third, the _____ postulate assumes that traits develop and change through childhood, but in adolescence their development slows, and by early to mid-adulthood (roughly age 30), change in personality nearly stops altogether
development
Finally, the _____ postulate states that traits are organized hierarchically from narrow and specific to broad and general, just as Eysenck had suggested. This postulate grows out of McCrae and Costa’s long-held position that the number of personality dimensions is five and only five.
structure
The Biology of Personality Traits
Traits and Academics
Traits and Emotion
Related Research
The Biology of Personality Traits: In general, Eysenck’s assumption that introverts are more _____ (have lower thresholds) than extraverts has been supported, with the qualification that it is reactivity rather than baseline activity levels that distinguishes introverts from extraverts.
reactive
The most important trait for predicting both high school and college GPA was _____. Those who are high on the trait of conscientiousness tend to have higher GPAs in both high school and college.
conscientiousness
