Personality lecture 2 Flashcards
The trait approach
What are types and traits in terms of personality?
- Types are discrete categories
- Traits are placed along a continuum (how much of the trait they possess)
What does the trait theory assume? (2)
- Personality characteristics are relatively stable over time
- Traits are stable across situations
What did Gordon Allport find when examining the words used to describe people?
Identified 18000 words and 4500 described traits (clustered words describe the same area of personality)
What did Gordon Allport argue was the best approach for understanding personality?
Idiographic - considering individuals, not broadly applying things to everyone
What are 3 categories of traits according to Allport?
- CARDINAL: single , dominant traits (heavily influences behaviour)
- CENTRAL: 5-10 traits which describe a personality
- SECONDARY: preferences, not core to personality (these can therefore be changed based on time and situation)
What was Raymond Cattel one of the first to do?
Use factor analysis to identify attributes which cluster together
What was Raymond Cattel interested in? (3)
- How personality can predict behaviour
- The role of genetics (constitutional traits) and experience (environmental-mold traits)
- Investigating common traits
What are source and surface traits?
- A source trait is an underlying trait that influences behaviour
- A surface trait is the behaviours based on these traits that we can observe
What 3 types of data did Cattel collect from people when creating his traits?
- L-data (life-record data)
- Q-data (questionnaires)
- T-data (standardised tests)
How many factors did Cattel identify that can define personality? How does the quality of prediction differ down the list of words?
16 - to create the 16PF
The ones at the top of the list are better at predicting behaviour (e.g. outgoing-reserved, intelligence…)
What were arts students higher in than science students using the 16PF, according to Furnham et al (2013)? (6)
- Warmth
- Sensitivity
- Trusting
- Abstractive
- Imagination
- Openness to change
What were science students higher in than arts students using the 16PF, according to Furnham et al (2013)? (2)
- conscientiousness
- perfectionism
What are 2 strengths of the 16PF?
- used a lot in research
- shows good predictability
What are 3 limitations of the 16PF?
- internal consistencies of some factors were low
- not many have been able to replicate the 16 factors with the same methodology
- some evidence suggests that 16 factors can be reduced to 5
What are the 3 levels of Eysenck’s hierarchical model of personality?
- Trait level
- Habitual response
- Specific response
What does Eysenck’s theory of personality suggest? (2)
- Fundamental traits are biologically based BUT environment can impact on how traits are expressed
- Personality is based on character, temperament, intelligence, physique and nervous system
What are the 3 personality types of ‘super traits’ suggested by Eysenck after observations?
- Extraversion
- Neuroticism
- Psychoticism
What does Eysenck’s personality questionnaire (EPQ) measure?
neuroticism, extraversion and psychoticism
What are 3 things that have been found in studies using the EPQ?
- ‘Criminals’ score high in E, N & P (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985)
- Creative people score high on psychoticism (Eysenck, 1993, 1994) - this link is debated in research
- Extroverts more willing to have sexual contact without commitment & report more sexual experience (Wright & Reise, 1997)
What did Eysenck suggest that neuroticism was related to? (2)
- Autonomic nervous system reactivity
- This link also causes a link with anxiety
What did Eysenck suggest about the tendency to respond very emotionally to stimuli?
It is seen as a predisposing condition to the development of a psychological disorder
What are 4 strengths of Eysenck’s theory?
- the 3 factors have been shown to be stable across time
- cross-cultural validity of the EPQ
- child version of the EPQ was developed
- the theory has a significant application in mental health
What are 2 limitations of Eysenck’s theory?
- the psychoticism scale has low internal reliability
- reducing personality down to 3 traits may be too simplistic
What are the 5 features of personality that triat descriptors relate to in Goldberg et al’s five factor model of personality?
- love
- work
- affect
- power
- intellect
How were emic and etic approaches taken in Goldberg’s research into the five factor model?
Emic approach – personality terms found in native language
Etic approach – translated personality questionnaires
What traits are in the big 5 (Costa and McCrae, 1985)?
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
What test measures the big 5?
NEO-PI-R
What did Hayes & Joseph (2003) find when comparing the big 5 to happiness levels and life satisfaction?
- High Extraversion and low Neuroticism associated with higher happiness levels
- Low Neuroticism and high Conscientiousness associated with higher life satisfaction
What did Stoughton et al (2013) find when looking into the big 5 and its impact on badmouthing on social media and postings of substance abuse?
- Lower levels of Agreeableness associated with ‘badmouthing’ on social media
- High levels of Extraversion associated with social media postings of substance abuse (e.g. photos drinking alcohol)
Why do we find geographical differences in the big 5 traits? (3)
- social influence (norms)
- ecological influence (physical characteristics of the place)
- selective migration (certain types of people migrate more)
What are the 3 traits in the dark triad?
- narcissism
- Machiavellianism
- psychopathy
What did Paulhus and Williams (2002) find when comparing the dark triad to the big 5?
- low conscientiousness as dark triad people take shortcuts to get ahead
- Low agreeableness as they are very anti-social
- Psychopathy makes people less organised - neuroticism negative
- Anxiety = neuroticism = low psychopathy
What did Vedel and Thomsen (2017) find when they compared law + econ/business students to psych/political students on the dark triad trait of machiavellianism?
- Econ/Bus students scored sig higher than all other students
- Law students and Political Science students scored sig higher than Psychology students
What did Vedel and Thomsen (2017) find when they compared law + econ/business students to psych/political students on the dark triad trait of narcissism?
- Econ/Bus students scored sig higher than Political Science and Psychology students
- No sig differences between law students and any other students
What did Vedel and Thomsen (2017) find when they compared law + econ/business students to psych/political students on the dark triad trait of psychopathy?
no significant differences
Where are the biggest effects seen overall Vedel and Thomsen (2017) found when they compared law + econ/business students to psych/political students on the dark triad traits?
- Comparing Psychology students with Econ/Bus students on all three traits (Econ/Bus students higher)
- Comparing Psychology students with Political Science students on Psychopathy (Political Science students higher)
What is emotional manipulation and how does it relate to the dark triad?
- Influencing others’ feelings and behaviours for the purpose of one’s own benefit
- Correlational evidence that people high in DT rate themselves as more able to emotionally manipulate others (Austin et al, 2014)
What did Hyde et al (2020) find when looking into emotional manipulation in the workplace - disingenuous manipulation and malicious?
- Males and older people tend to do more malicious emotional manipulation
- Males and more emotionally intelligent people do more disingenuous (need to be able to understand emotions to convince people effectively)
What is disingenuous emotional manipulation?
Do something in a way that seems nice but with a darker reason behind it, e.g. complimenting someone so that you look like a nice person
What is malicious emotional manipulation?
Using harsher punishments - e.g. leaving someone out or purposefully ignoring them
What measures did Hyde et al (2020) use in their study into emotional manipulation in the workplace?
- Trait Emotional Manipulation Willingness in General and at Work Scale (Hyde & Grieve, 2018)
- Emotional Intelligence (awareness of own/others’ emotions)
- Dirty Dozen Scale (Jonason & Webster, 2010) (measures the dark triad
What is the extra element added to the dark triad to make the dark tetrad?
Sadism
What is everyday sadism defined as?
“dispositional tendency to take pleasure in others’ suffering – as an additional dark personality operating in the subclinical domain” (Buckels, 2012, p. ii).
What did Chabrol et al (2015) find when looking into the existence of a 4th trait in the dark triad/tetrad? (5)
- all 4 traits correlated with each other
- Low on all four (28%)
- High on Machiavellianism and Sadism (29%)
- High on Narcissism and Psychopathy (28%)
- High on all four (15%)
What are 4 issues with the trait approach?
- it is data driven, no focus on theory
- number of factors
- labelling of factors - judgement and language
- identified factors depend on the methods of data analysis (may be better developed in the future)
