Lecture 2

Question 1

Define personality traits

Answer 1

The set of relatively enduring psychological mechanisms within the individual that influence his or her interactions with and adaptations to the intra-psychic, physical and social environments.

Question 2

How does the dispositional approach view personality traits?

Answer 2

Sees personality as consistent and unchanging dispositions to act, think and feel regardless of context.

Question 3

What is the difference between personality types and personality traits?

Answer 3

Personality types have categorical/qualitative differences, whereas differences in personality traits are continuous/qualitative.

Question 4

What are zero acquaintance descriptions?

Answer 4

Ability to judge or predict someone’s personality characteristics without actually meeting them.

Question 5

What are the two ways we can conceptualise personality traits?

Answer 5

• General descriptions

- Internal psychological dispositions

Question 6

What are the assumptions of idiographic approaches to personality?

Answer 6

• Every human being is like no other
• Traits are individualised –> saying that one person has a specific trait may not mean the same thing as saying another person has that specific trait.

Question 7

What are the assumptions of nomothetic approaches to personality?

Answer 7

• People are like others
• Everyone stands somewhere on each trait that exists

(Same terms can be used to describe all individuals)

Question 8

Are idiographic approaches trait-based or type-based?

Answer 8

Type-based

Question 9

Are nomothetic approaches trait-based or type-based?

Answer 9

Trait-based

Question 10

What is the lexical approach to personality?

Answer 10

The assumption that those traits that are important in a specific society will be emphasised and talked about more, leading to more words/synonyms for more important traits.

Question 11

What is the support of the Big 5 personality traits being a useful and empirical categorisation of personality?

Answer 11

• Large consensus between many different studies
• Cross-decade and cross-measure replication (Fiske(1949)
• Cross-cultural and cross-language replication
• Some evidence of cross-species commonality (Gosling, 2008)

Question 12

What does Perkins (2016) suggest about the interaction between personality and the environment?

Answer 12

State welfare can increase the number of children born into disadvantaged families, and can lead to the development of more employment-resistant personality profiles. Lower conscientiousness, etc coupled with state welfare will mean an increase in this employment resistant profile.