Personality Traits

Question 1

What does diagnosing people as personality “types” encourage?

Answer 1

Dichotomous and polarized thinking, where individuals are categorized as either being or not being a type.

Question 2

What was Carl Jung’s concept of personality types?

Answer 2

Introverted types focus on internal knowledge (the self), while extraverted types focus on external knowledge (the world).

Question 3

What are Jung’s four functions of personality?

Answer 3

Sensing (perception), Thinking (logic), Intuiting (unconscious insights), and Feeling (evaluation/judgment).

Question 4

How did Myers and Briggs expand on Jung’s ideas?

Answer 4

They added Judging vs. Perceiving and mixed in Introversion vs. Extraversion to create the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

Question 5

What are some criticisms of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)?

Answer 5

It lacks reliability, validity, comprehensiveness, and independence among traits.

Question 6

What is a major reliability issue with the MBTI?

Answer 6

Test-retest reliability is poor, meaning individuals often get different results over time.

Question 7

How do traits differ from types in personality theory?

Answer 7

Traits are dimensions of personality on which individuals vary, rather than fixed categories.

Question 8

What does the Lexical Hypothesis propose?

Answer 8

Important aspects of personality are reflected in language.

Question 9

What are Allport’s three types of traits?

Answer 9

Cardinal traits (defining traits, rare), Central traits (key traits in most individuals), and Secondary traits (situation-specific traits).

Question 10

What defines trait stability?

Answer 10

Traits are personal, stable over time, consistent across similar situations, and potentially universal.

Question 11

What is factor analysis (FA) used for in personality psychology?

Answer 11

To identify patterns among personality descriptors and reduce data into key indicators of traits.

Question 12

What is a potential issue with factor analysis findings?

Answer 12

Results may be unsurprising or biased if input data is constrained to favor specific outcomes.

Question 13

What are Raymond Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors (16PF)?

Answer 13

A trait model based on factor analysis of representative items, identifying 16 distinct dimensions of personality.

Question 14

What are Hans Eysenck’s “Big Two” traits?

Answer 14

Introversion-Extraversion and Emotional Stability (later expanded to include Psychoticism in the PEN model).

Question 15

What are the five traits in Costa and McCrae’s Five-Factor Model (FFM)?

Answer 15

Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

Question 16

What is HEXACO, and how does it expand on the Big Five?

Answer 16

A model adding a sixth trait, Honesty-Humility, to the Big Five traits.

Question 17

What is the comprehensiveness claim of the FFM?

Answer 17

It relates most personality traits to one or more of the five factors but doesn’t claim to measure every individual difference exhaustively.

Question 18

What is meant by “rank-order stability”?

Answer 18

The relative standing of an individual’s trait scores compared to peers remains stable over time.

Question 19

What factors can influence individual personality change?

Answer 19

Context effects, life-changing events, trauma, and conditions like dissociative identity disorder.

Question 20

How do life stages typically affect personality traits on average?

Answer 20

People tend to increase in traits like conscientiousness and decrease in neuroticism with age.

Question 21

How does the DSM-V approach personality disorders?

Answer 21

With a hybrid dimensional-categorical model, diagnosing disorders based on specific traits and broad dimensions.

Question 22

What are some traits included in DSM-V personality psychopathology?

Answer 22

Negative affectivity, detachment, antagonism, disinhibition vs. compulsivity, and psychoticism.