Personality: Trait theories + biological influences Flashcards
What are traits?
Higher level descriptions of peoples’ thoughts, attitudes, and behaviours that remain relatively stable across the lifespan
What are facets?
Components of traits that tend to be more specific than traits that tend to become more or less relevant depending on the situation
What are characteristics?
Temporal moments of facets that tend to be more associated with the physical acts of facets
What is the idiographic approach?
The study of one individual without comparing them to others
- focus on recognition of uniqueness
- uses subjective experiences
- based on study of uniqueness of individual
- Qualitative methods
Who are some researchers who took an idiographic approach?
Allport, Freud, Jung and Rogers
What is the nomothetic approach?
Describes personality in terms of sets of dimensions (traits) that can be applied to other people
- attempts to generalise people
- uses objective knowledge
- based on numerical data or data that can be categorised
- quantitative methods
Who are some researchers who took a nomothetic approach?
Eysenck, Catell, Allport, Big 5 theorists
What are attributes of personality?
Psychological construct which involves individual thoughts, feelings and actions
- made up of smaller units or characteristics
- functional or dysfunctional
How did Hippocrates and Galen begin the classification of human temperaments?
Linked to elements and bodily fluids
Choleric (yellow bile) - determined, quick to act, fiery, energetic, passionate
Sanguine (blood) - warm-hearted, outgoing, volatile, optimistic, cheerful
Phlegmatic (phlegm) - slow, patient, calm, quiet, shy, rational, consistent
Melancholic (black bile) - serious, anxious, quiet, fearful, depressed, poetic, artistic, sad
How did Persian polymath Avicenna (980-1037AD) extend the theory of temperaments?
To include:
emotional aspects
mental capacity
moral attitudes
self-awareness, movements and dreams
What did Emmanuel Kant theorise about?
multiple personality types, based on individuals’ feelings and activity levels
What was William Sheldon’s contribution to the study of personality?
Somatotypes (types of physique) and associated them with temperament - categorised each type on scales from 1-7 and attributed personality relatedly
What is the endomorph somatotype?
Large body
Temperament:
- sociable
- peaceful
- tolerant
What is the mesomorph somatotype?
Muscular
Temperament:
- assertive
- proactive
- vigorous
What is the ectomorph somatotype?
Weak muscles
Temperament:
- insecure
- sensitive
- delicate
What are 3 criticisms of Sheldon’s somatotypes?
- based on stereotypical assumptions
- most modern researchers prefer to measure degrees to which an individual has particular personality trait
- Sheldon classifies people according to categories or types
Who was Gordon Allport (1897-1967)?
Regarded as founder of trait approach
- identified over 18000 English words used to describe individual differences and then eliminated temporary states and evaluations - 4500 used to describe personality traits - many were synonyms
- Used idiographic research methods - mostly case studies, analysing interviews and personal documents, using phenomenological approach
What did Allport suggest about people who were raised within similar cultures?
They would likely have the same or similar common traits
- Cardinal traits (traits that dominate/shape behaviour)
- Central traits (basic building blocks of personality)
- Secondary traits (variable traits like the likes and dislikes)
Who did Allport’s work influence?
- Raymond Cattell
- Hans Eysenck
- Paul Costa
- Robert McCrae
(all used factor analysis to derive their theories)
What is the dispositional approach?
Arrised from factor analytic method (statistical technique used to reduce number of factors into smaller groups of similar factors)
- concerns aspects of personality that are stable over time, relatively consistent over situations and make people different from each other
What are personality traits?
A dimension of personality/enduring personal characteristic
internal dispositions that are relatively stable over time and across situations
What did Raymond Cattell contribute to the study of personality?
16 personality factor (16PF) questionnaire - listed in order of importance
- psychometric test to predict peoples’ behaviour socially and at work
Collected large amounts of data: L-data (life records), Q-data (questionnaires) and T-data (lab obs and testing)
- employed factor analysis to identify clusters of traits
What are Cattell’s 16 personality factors?
- interpersonal warmth
- intelligence
- emotional stability
- dominance
- impulsivity
- conformity
- boldness
- sensitivity
- suspiciousness
- imagination
- shrewdness
- insecurity
- radicalism
- self-sufficiency
- self-discipline
- tension
What are surface traits?
Collections of trait descriptors that cluster together
What are source traits?
Identified via factor analysis
- refers to underlying trait that is responsible for variance in observable surface traits
What are the 2 competing schools within psych?
- personality theorists whose main focus on development theories with little emphasis on empirical evaluation
- experimental psychologists who had little interest in individual differences
Who was Hans Eysenck?
Proposed integration of the 2 competing schools in psych
- identify personality dimensions
- devise means of measurement
- test using experimental procedures
Concluded that there are 3 basic personality dimensions - referred to as types
Which 2 dimensions did Eysenck first propose to be associated with a person’s normal functioning?
Extroversion-introversion
Neuroticism-stability
(both have biological underpinnings)
- intersection of these scales led to 4 temperaments being proposed
What personality dimension did Eysenck add in 1976?
Psychoticism
What is Eysenck’s extroversion-introversion dimension?
- interactivity with others
- extraverts seen as sociable and impulsive who love excitement
- introverts seen as quiet, introspective individuals who prefer well-ordered life
