Lecture 2 - The trait approach to personality Flashcards
What is a trait?
Specific factors of personality, which are meant to be important because they allow us to reliably predict, describe, explain and explore behaviour, cognition and affect
What is the Person-Situation debate?
Which is more important for determining how people behave, the person or the situation?
What did Mischel (1968) determine over the person-situation debate?
“Behaviour is too inconsistent across situations for individual differences to be characterised by traits.”
What are the three arguments of situationists?
Predictability:
Limit to predicting how someone will behave based on measuring their personality
Situationism:
Situations more important than personality traits in determining behaviour.
Person Perceptions Erroneous:
Personality assessment a waste of time; everyday intuitions about people are flawed
What is a situationist’s argument over predictability?
Personality is not a good predictor of behaviour.
Most behaviours laboratory assessed and correlations rarely exceeded .30 (Nisbett found -.40)
Assessed in a laboratory, not real life so doesn’t take everything into account.
What was the response to the argument of predictability?
Correlation of .40 is not small and is equivalent to 70% accuracy
Could be due to poor methodology, started using real world observations. Focus on behavioural trends and more consistencies between traits and behaviours found.
What is the situationist’s second argument (situationism)?
Behaviour is determined by situations, not personality.
The assumption is that whatever traits cannot explain is attributed to personality. e.g. if 20% is attributed to personality then the rest is situation.
What was the response to argument of situationism?
Not legitimate because the variance not explained by one personality trait could be explained by another. e.g. if joyfulness cannot predict your behaviour at a party, sociability could.
behaviours can vary in the SAME situation. How can this be true if personality isn’t behind this?
What is the person perceptions are erroneous argument?
We might as well not try to explain personality because we are frequently wrong in our attempts.
Ability of personality to meaningfully explain behaviours, emotions and thoughts is fruitless.
e.g. You’re an extravert so you must like socialising, what do you mean no?!
What was the response to argument of person perceptions are erroneous?
True that one size does not fit all but some estimates are accurate enough.
What was the conclusion to the personality vs situation debate?
People maintain their personalities even as they adapt their behaviour to situations
Personality AND situations are both important determinants of behaviour
What does interactionism imply?
Persons and situations interact together to PRODUCE behaviour.
The effect of a personality variable may depend on situation (and vice versa)
Certain types of people seek out or find themselves in different types of situations
People change the situations they are in
How does personality develop in childhood?
When we are are children our personalities are more likely to change as a result of many changing and static:
Genetic factors Early experiences Learnings Biology Society etc.
How does personality change in adulthood?
Very likely to change in young adulthood and much less likely to change later (by the time we reach 50-70).
What is the trait approach based on?
Empirical data.
