Personality Traits Flashcards
What is a Theory and hypotheses
- a theory is a developed idea that explains something regarding human behaviour
- a hypotheses is a prediction about a aspect of human behaviour which can be tested in a study
Whats a personality trait
- People differ along a continuum
- There will be a degree of variability
Whats a personality type
- A category that is distinct and discontinuous, there is no variability
What is the Jingle fallacy
- Assuming two different things are the same as they have the same name
What is the Jangle fallacy
- Assuming that two things which refer to the same phenomenon are different because they have different names
Lexical Hypothesis
- Single words for most meaningful personality descriptors
- Most frequent words are most important (i.e. honest is used more than upstanding)
- Importance of trait was reflected by number of terms i.e. there are lots of terms describing honest.
- Allport (1936) furthered this by taking all the words in the dictionary and narrowing this down to 16 trait names
Idiographic vs Nomothetic
(Allport)
- Idiographic focuses on uniqueness of individuals
- Nomothetic focuses on similarities between individuals
Why is trait approach Nomothetic
- Individuals are only unique in the way their traits combine
- Quantitative methods used to explore the structure of personality and explore the relationship between variables across groups
Factor Analysis
- This is how data is reduced from many variables to their underlying dimensions
- i.e. length of finger, arm, leg: all come under the factor of height
Catell (1965)
- Personality traits are stable and don’t vary much in adulthood
- Took subset of Allport and Odbert’s ‘personality trait’ terms.
- Factor analysis revealed 12 factors
- Modified this to 16 personality factors
- Replication problems
Tupes & Christal (1962)
- They proposed five factor solution
- peer nomination approach
5 factors:
Extroversion
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Emotional Stability
Culture - They said that it is likely that there other fundamental factors not just these 5
Eysenck, 1947; 1952
- Observed responses in specific situations
- This lead to Habitual response
- Which leads to formation of a trait
He cam up with 3 Supertraits
- Sociability
- Neuroticism
- Psychoticism - later added to account for people with extreme response
- Too reductionist, not enough factors
Costa and McCrae (1992)
- Broke the lexical tradition
- Self report statements with agree and disagree to understand personality
- Data driven hypothesis - not based on 5 factor theory
They ended up with:
- Openness
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
(Ocean)
- Although, this was mainly studied in US so not representative of other cultures
Looked at factor which loaded on a 6th factor:
Positively loaded on factor (fair, just)
Negatively loaded on factor (sly, greedy)
HEXACO Model
Ashton & Lee (2007)
- 3 traits, honesty/humility, agreeableness, and emotionality contribute to altruism
- 3 traits, extroversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience relate to biological separate areas of behaviour
Tipi
- Ten item personality inventory
- Loads of very similar ways to measure personality traits
A general factor of personality
Musek 2007
Stability links with: Conforming and being stable
Plasticity links with: Open and having the capacity to change
- Measures factors that are cross culturally highly valued
- Links biological, genetic and neurological accounts of differences in personality
- May reflect social desirability
Self report
Advantages:
- quick and best insight as doing yourself
Disadvantages:
- bias, dishonesty
- Not biological basis
Other report
Advantages:
- Peer has good knowledge of friend
Disadvantages:
- Peer doesn’t have access to inner thoughts
- Hard to judge certain traits
Mischel (1968/2009)
Criticisms
- Traits didn’t necessarily predict behaviour
- Discrepancy between what he had observed and the assumptions of trait theory
Mischel’s argument 1968
Summarised by Funder (2007)
- Situations are more important than personality traits when determining behaviour
- Implies that personality assessment is a waste of time and intuitions we gave about peoples traits are flawed
Mischel Examples
- 51 boys observed over a 5 week period at summer camp
- It was hard to observe introversion and extroversion.
Michel’s alternative
- He devised the cognitive affective process
- It has a large emphasis on the situational variables of personality
- For example, the features of the stimulus influences on cognitive personality system
Trait Theorists Response (1)
- Inconsistency is a result of measurement error
Trait Theorists Response (2)
- Basing a decision on a correlation of 0.3 means that you will be right about 65% of cases = good
