Personality: Trait Approach

Question 1

Defining personality- some common themes

Answer 1

Individuality and distinctiveness
Structure and organisation
Life history- how personality develops
Consistent patterns of behaviour

Question 2

Theories of personality

Answer 2

Several different and often conflicting theoretical perspectives

Question 3

What are traits?

Answer 3

Relatively stable patterns of thought, feeling, or behaviour that characterise an individual

Question 4

What are states?

Answer 4

Are temporary patterns of thought, feeling or behaviour

Question 5

Early trait taxonomies: Allport & Odbert (1936) listed 18,000 English words that could be used to describe people

Answer 5

Anxious, emotional, secure, fun-loving, cautious, withdrawn, courteous, good-natured, irritable, etc.
If you throw out synonyms, slang, and uncommon words, 171 are left

Question 6

More early trait taxonomies are

Answer 6

Cattell’s 16 personality factors

And method-factor analysis- objective, scientifically derived taxonomy

Question 7

What is the big five?

Answer 7

Neuroticism 
Extraversion
Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
Openness to experience

Question 8

Do traits exist? The consistency controversy. Assumption-

Answer 8

Traits are stable and enduring

Question 9

Mischel (1968) argued instead for situationalism

Answer 9

Traits are not consistent across situations therefore traits are not predictive of behaviour

Question 10

After a long debate, scientists agree that traits do exist, but with two caveats

Answer 10

• traits predict average behaviour, not every relevant behaviour in every situation
• traits are just one of multiple causes for any single behaviour

Question 11

The consistency controversy resolved: interactionism (person-by-situation)

Answer 11

Trait relevant behaviour may emerge in some situations, but not others

Question 12

Traits and biology,

Answer 12

Given that people do differ in their personalities, how do these differences arise?

Question 13

Genetics and personality: twin method- compares the degree of similarity between twins

Answer 13

Monozygotic twins (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins

Question 14

Results of twin studies: Loehlin and Nichols (1976) heredity environment and personality: a study of 850 sets of twins

Answer 14

Resemblance of identical and fraternal twin pairs: typical correlations within pairs

Question 15

Personality scales

Answer 15

.50 in identical twins

.28 in fraternal twins

Question 16

What is temperament?

Answer 16

Biological, inborn dimension of personality; appears early, remains stable

Question 17

Research on temperament 1:

Answer 17

Inhibited and uninhibited children (kagan 1994, 2003)
20% high reactive (over aroused, inhibited
40% low reactive (under aroused, uninhibited)
Temperamental patterns-first 4 months and persist

Question 18

Research on temperament 2

Answer 18

Which regions of the brain contribute to inhibited tendencies?

Question 19

Research on temperament 3

Answer 19

Schwartz et al. (2003)- examined a group of young adults (inhibited vs uninhibited)
Reactions to familiar faces vs novel faces
Measurement techniques- brain imaging (fMRI)
Which brain areas activate familiar and novel faces?

Question 20

Traits and environment: what impact does family have on personality?

Answer 20

Studies with adopted children: personality measures taken from adopted children and adoptive siblings
Average correlation .04 (plomin and Daniels, 1987)

Question 21

Traits and environment: studies with twins reared apart

Answer 21

Personality measures taken from: 
Twins reared in same family:
- identical twins .51
- fraternal twins .23
Twins reared apart:
- identical twins .50
- fraternal twins .21
Being reared apart did not alter scores 
Family plays little role in shaping personality? (E.g. Harris, 1998)

Question 22

Impact of family on personality?
Shared environments (between-family effects)
Non shared environments (within family effects)

Answer 22

Q. Why are all children from the same family so different? (Plomin and Daniels, 1987)
A. Non shared environments

Question 23

Contributions of the trait approach

Answer 23

Systematic description of personality
Reduces large number of individual differences to manageable size
Understanding of how person and situation shape behaviour
Agreement on big five model-allows researchers to share data