Personality pt 2 traits

Question 1

How does Burger (1997) define a personality trait?

Answer 1

‘…a dimension of personality used to
categorise people according to the
degree to which they manifest a
particular characteristic.’

Question 2

How does Mischel (1999) define a personality trait?

Answer 2

‘…conditional probability of a category of
behaviours in a category of contexts’.

Question 3

What is Sheldon’s Somatypes theory?

Answer 3

the theory that the physique/ aspects of the body relate to certain temperaments

Question 4

What is the lexical hypothesis?

Answer 4

Important individual differences between people
become encoded as single terms
– Frequency of descriptor denotes importance
(Also, number of synonyms)

Question 5

How did Cattell define personality?

Answer 5

“…the characteristics of the individual that allow prediction of how they will
behave in a given situation’. (cited in Maltby et al., 2013, p. 158)

Question 6

What does Eysenck’s EPI measure? What does the EPQ add?

Answer 6

EPI - Neuroticism-Stability
* Extraversion- Introversion
EPQ: Psychoticism-Socialization added
* Psychometrics & research base
* Lie scale included

Question 7

What are the big five personality traits?

Answer 7

openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism