Chapter 7 pt 1 Flashcards
What is the general idea of the trait approach?
Identifies personality characteristics that can be represented along a continuum
What is a trait?
Categorizes people according to degree to which they manifest a particular characteristic
What is the Assumption of the trait approach?
Personality characteristics are relatively stable over time and across situations
Who is Gordon Allport to the trait approach?
*Acknowledged the limitations of the trait concept
*Behaviour is influenced by a variety of environmental factors.
*Brought personality into the mainstream
*Shed light on the significance of traits through a theory of personality development
What are Gordon Allport’s Research Strategies?
Nomothetic approach
Idiographic approach
Nomothetic approach:
People can be described along a single dimension according to their level of, assertiveness or anxiety
Common traits - Applies to everyone
Idiographic approach:
Identifies the combination of traits that best accounts for the personality of a individual
Central traits - Describe an individual’s personality
Cardinal trait - Single dominating trait in personality
Advantage - Person determines what traits to examine
What is Allport’s Definition of Personality? And what did it oppose?
*Dynamic organization within individual of those psychosphysical systems determines characteristic behavior and thought
*Opposed to viewpoints of psychoanalysis and behaviorism
*Influenced by gestalt psychology
*Wholeness
*Interelatedness
*Conscious experience
What is Dynamic Organization (in Allport’s definition of personality)?
*Personality is constantly changing
*Never something that is
*Rather it is always becoming
*Experience changes people
What is the principle behind Psychophysical systems?
*Nothing is exclusively mental nor biological
*Body and mind are fused
What constitutes an adequate theory of personality (5 things)?
- There are internal mechanisms (not just external like behaviorism
- Ppl have many variables that determine actions
- Looks for present behavior motives (not ones in the past)
- Uses measurements that can measure ppl (ppl are humans - not test scores)
- Must account for self awareness
What does heredity provide to personality (AllPort)?
- Provides raw materials
- Shaped, expanded, or limited by environmental conditions
- Emphasis on uniqueness through genetic combinations
What does environment provide to personality (Allport)
- No continuum of personality between childhood and adulthood
- Discrete or discontinuous nature of personality
- Adult personality is not constrained by early experiences
Does Allport think heredity or environment gives us personality?
Thinks its a mix of both
What are Personality Traits?
*Distinguishing characteristics that guide behavior
*Measured on a continuum
*Subject to social, environmental, and cultural influences
What is the Definition of trait?
*“A neuropsychic structure having the capacity to render many stimuli functionally equivalent and to initiate and guide equivalent forms of adaptive and expressive behavior”
*i.e. responding to similar situations in similar way
How do traits develop?
*Child develops the trait of “gregariousness”
*Child is eager for social intercourse (sociability trait)
*When isolated she misses people and becomes restless
(Therefore she will seek social interaction, and keep the trait up)
