L6: Personality Flashcards
all personality theories?
- trait approach
- biological and physiological approach
- cognitive approach
- psychoanalytic approach
- learning theory
- humanistic approach
concept of personality?
‘a dynamic organization, inside the person, of psychophysical systems that create the
person’s characteristic patterns of behavior, thoughts and feelings’
(Gordon Allport, 1961)
Dynamic organisation: change slightly. Occurs in our mind and body that creates our behaviour, thoughts and feelings. Personality something quite stable.
why study personality?
Why study personality?
* Understand how people differ (structure of personality) - what makes us unique?
* Develop measures of personality
* Predict how people behave
* Understand how personality develops
* Assist development of interventions for behaviour change
* Assess effects of hereditary and environmental influences
* Assess biological basis
lexical hypothesis?
Lexical hypothesis: a data-driven approach
* Sir Francis Galton (1822 – 1911)
* The most meaningful personality descriptors will tend to
be encoded in language
* Frequency of words
* Number of synonyms
Must be in the dictionary? Quantified the frequency of words that described peoples personality. Number of synonyms would also reflect how much we think this description is important for our society. Found 31 types of words that describe honest, 13 that describe warm, 9 that describe pedantic characteristics. Found 18000—> 4500
Gordon Allport (1897 – 1967)
* 18,000 words → 4500 personality traits
* Raymond Cattell (1905 - 1998)
* Factor analytic approach
* Surface and source traits
* 4500 → 171 traits → 36 + 10 surface traits
* 16 factors representing the basic structures of personality
* Hans Eysenck (1916 – 1997)
* Structure: 3 dimensions
* Robust and widely used measure
* Role of genetics and biological basis
* Cross-cultural support
From the 18000 words narrowed down to 4500 personality traits. Trait: A relativley stable disposition to behave in a particular way.
Raymond cattell applied a statistical test. Tested if the traits had some kind of relationship. Factor analutic approach- how related are these traits? He narrowed 4500 to 171 traits and his final work was 46 surface traits. After years of research finally 16 factors that represent the basic structure of personality. Later researchers started thinking if they could organise these factors. Structured personality dimensions. Initially 3 dimensions: extroversion, neroticism, psychoticism. Neuroiticsm how stable are you emotionally? higher= less stable. Psychoticism- antisocial behaviours, prone to take risks etc.
trait approach?
Trait = “a dimension of personality used to categorize people according to the
degree to which they manifest a particular characteristic” (Burger, 1997, p.166)
* There is a basic structure of personality
* Finite number of variables
* Uniqueness lies in particular combination of variables
* Stability across time
* Stability across situations
* Personality traits influence behaviour
More stable across situations?
Trait approach:
- The Five Factor Model / Big Five model
- Originally developed by several scientists
- Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion,
Agreeableness and Neuroticism (OCEAN) - Hierarchical: supertraits have each 6 subordinate traits
- Measured by NEO-PI-R (Costa and McCrae, 1985
- openess to new experience: feelings, ideas, values, actions, fantasy, aesthetics
extraversion: gregariousness, activity level, assertiveness, excitement seeking, positive emotions, warmth
neuroticism: anxiety, self concsciousness, depression, vulnerability, impulsiveness, angry, hostility
conscientiousnes: competence, achievement-striving, self-discipline, orderliness, dutifulness, deliberation
agreeableness: trust, altruism, straightforwardness, complicance, modesty, tender-mindeness
Its a spectrum. Each traut has some subordinate traits which are linked to the source traits. Can have quantitative data. Person scoring high on openness- curious, wide range of interests, independence. cosciousness low score- impulsive careless, disorganised high- hardowrking, dependable, organised
extroversion- quiet, reserved, withdrawn high- outgoing, warm, seek adventure
agreeableness- low- critical, uncooperative, suspicious
high- helpful, trusting, empathetic
neuroticism- low- calm, even-tempered, secure high- anxious, unhappy, prone to negative emotions
big 5 factor markers?
Big Five Factor Markers
* Which personality dimension does each item measure?
* Does a high score on the item mean that the person would score high or low on that dimension?
I am the life of the party- extroversion
Feel little concern for others- conscientiousness (low score?_
I am always prepared- openness
I get stressed out easily- nneurocitism - high
I have a rich volcaubulary- openness
Im interested in people- agreeableness
I have difficulties understanding abstract ideas- openness
So each trait has a hierarchy and its also a spectrum
They reassure you are being stable in your answers? Asking questions that should be very complementary so you are following a pattern
NEO-PR-R?
There is a way to have a more detailed look in these parameters. Looking within the dimensions e.g: for neuroticism looking at anxiety, angry/hostility, depression, self consciousness, impulsiveness, vulnerability etc.
Extroversion: warmth, assertiveness, activity etc
Etc.
NEO-PI-R: comparing populations
This can only be compared within a population.
But a study looking at sadinia- island in italy
There is a Hypothesis that people from islands have less genetic variants as their ancestors are from the island and so less mixture of people- island effect
This paper wanted to see if there was a founder effect in sarinia compared to other regions in italy
Applied personality test
They found that the t scores were quite similar
The big facets have very similar trend but variability was smaller in sardinia. Trends are similar but variance is smaller.
The big 5 etic or emic?
Measuring the big five: an emic or etic approach?
Etic approach:
* assumes universal, cross-culturally valid dispositions
* test to what extent a theoretical personality model is successfully replicated in a new cultural context
Emic approach:
* emphasizes relevance of culturally specific characteristics
* aims to identify individual differences in personality that are characteristic of a cultural context
Support for five factor model (Big 5; OCEAN)
Emic (lexical) approach
* Re-analysis of date obtained with instruments created to measure other models, provide a five factor
solution
* Using words found in each language: strong support for 5 factors (Saucier & Goldberg, 2001)
* German language (500 personality words) → 5 factors (Saucier and Ostendorf, 1999)
Etic approach
* Translated into several languages, producing same structure (McCrae et al., 1997)
* Stability over time (McCrae et al., 1997)
6 factors?
6 factors? More factors? One factor?
* 6th factor?
* HEXACO model: OCEAN plus Honesty-humility (Ashton and Lee, 2007)
Research showing honesty-humlity id important for some cultures like in the German language
the general factor of personality (Musek, 2007)
general factor of personality splits into stability which goes to low neuroticism (emotional stability), high conscientiousness, high agreeableness
and plasticity which goes to high extraversion, high openness
developed through the selection of desirable traits OR tendency to endorse items describing more desirable aspects of personality (social desirability)
Some fighting for there to be 1 factor
Idea that we are evolving in terms of population. Hypothesis: evolved to have low neuroticism, high contenciousness, high agreeableness, high extroversion and high openess.
This would be ideal in society. These traits would give advantage in life. But we idealise alot. Even when doing the test we idealise our own personality so we have a tendency to endorse items describing desirable parts of personality but this could be concious or unconscious.
Idealisation is something to take into account when interpreting these personality tests.
Pause for thought
* Old private hospital closes down, patients need to be transferred to
smaller private hospital – only some nurses can be retained
* Selection based on personality test
* Test identified on internet that measures: positive emotion, assertiveness,
warmth, activity level, gregariousness
* Nurses evaluated at start of morning shift, end of night shift, or by post
* Based on results, decisions are made on which nurses to keep
Bad- self reported, depends on their energy etc.
behavioural genetics?
Genotype
* Internal genetic code or blueprint for constructing and maintaining a living individual
* Made up of genes, instructions for building proteins in the body
Phenotype
* Observable trait (e.g physical attributes; extraversion score)
* Phenotype = Genotype + environmental factors
measuring heritability: adoption studies
Loehlin, willerman and horn (1985)
personality dimensions: indices of extraversion
- social presence: biological parent was 0.34 and adoptive parent was 0.12
vigorous: 0.33 vs 0.06
sociable: 0.18 vs 0.02
sociability: 0.17 vs 0.04
active: 0.16 vs 0.02
Heeretibality measurement assumes if something is 100% heritable would have an index of 1. Lookied at if personality is hertiable then can apply the test to different families and see if they have similar results. The biological parents had higher scores than the adoptive parents.
Heritability
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What is ‘heritability’?
* estimate of the extent that genetic
variation accounts for individual
differences in traits within a population
* estimates how much variability in
phenotypic variance is attributable to
genotypic variance
* Statistical concept (h²) (if h is 100% it will be 1 and lowest is 0)
* Estimates from 0 to 1 (0% to 100%)
* the higher the estimate the more
‘heritable’ a trait is
What is not ‘heritability’?
* It does not mean a trait is x% due to
genetic factors within one individual
* it does not mean the proportion of a trait
determined by genes
* Does not tell us about the potential
gene/environmental interactions
