The Trait Approach Flashcards
What is a trait?
personality characteristic describing/determining behaviour across many situations
What 2 types of psychology are at play when it comes to the person-situation debate?
social vs. personality psychology
What is situationism?
situation drives behaviour and personality is unimportant
What are the 3 core arguments for situationism?
- predictability
- situationism
- erroneous perceptions
Predictability:
How did Mischel, a psychologist, view correlations between personality and behaviour?
rarely exceeds 0.30
Predictability:
Another psychologist, after Mischel, revised the correlation between personality and behaviour to what value?
0.4
Predictability:
What does Funder propose to be crucial counterpoints to the arguments that Mischel made?
- unfair lit review
- can do better
- 0.4 is not small at all
Predictability:
In the study conducted by Funder and Ozar, when they reviewed classical social psychology what conclusions did they come across?
- same effects as Nisbett’s assessment of personality
- wide review = r = 0.21 (small correlation)
What is key idea within the erroneous perceptions theory?
- people act differently in same situation
- there are 1000 words to describe personality
Erroneous perceptions:
What is absolute versus. relative consistency?
relative: people act same in same situation
absolute: how similar is everyone’s behaviour across different situations?
What is the main idea of interactionism?
personality + situation = behaviour
What are the 3 ways that people and the situation can interact with each other?
- effect of personality depends on situation (vice versa)
- situations are not randomly populated (people go to a place for a reason)
- people change situations (ex. life of the party)
What is the trait perspective?
individual differences in personality and behaviour
What are the 3 core aspects of the trait perspective?
- describe + predict
- empirical research = correlational designs mainly
- focus is on individual differences
What are 3 strengths of the trait perspective?
- basic (parsimonious)
- long history
- predictive
What are 2 limitations of the trait perspective?
- we don’t know why or how a person behaves, just that they do
- tautological reasoning may happen
What are the 4 different approaches that researchers use to connect traits to behaviours?
- single-trait
- many-trait
- essential trait
- typological
What type of question would one ask if they were to take on the single-trait approach?
What do people like that do?
What type of question would one ask if they were to take on the many-trait approach?
Who does that?
What type of question would one ask if they were to take on the essential -trait approach?
Which traits are most important?
What type of question would one ask if they were to take on the typological approach?
Which type are you?
If a researcher were to ask, “what are the things that lead into narcissism?” what type of approach within the trait perspective would they be implementing?
the single-trait approach
What is the single-trait approach?
focus is on 1 trait of interest and learning all about the related behaviour, life consequences, and developmental antecedents
What type of approach do self-monitoring and narcissism use?
single-trait approach
Which term describes the following? => personality trait that revolves around sensitivity to social context and the ability of a person to adapt to it
self-monitoring
Which type of self-monitors are easier to predict?
low
What is the many-trait approach?
many different traits are looked at in order to explain the basis of 1 behaviour
When looking at political orientation, what type of approach would that be implementing?
many-trait approach
Political Orientation:
There are several social and interpersonal behaviours that can predict our political orientation and some argue that this trait is rooted in?
an attempt to lessen fear
T/F => children’s personality can predict adulthood political beliefs
T
What are some traits that influence our political behaviour?
- authoritarianism
- threat sensitivity
- disgust sensitivity
- intelligence
- morality
What is the essential trait approach?
research strategy that takes 1000s of traits and tries to narrow them down into whats actually important
What are the names of the theoretical and empirical approaches that were used for the essential trait approach?
theoretical - eysenck’s 3 dimensions
empirical - cattell’s 16 factors
“The Big Five” is an example of what type of trait approach?
the essential trait approach
What are the 5 factors of the five-factor model?
- openness to experience
- conscientiousness
- extraversion
- agreeableness
- neuroticism
The 5 factors in the five-factor model are known to be categorized under stability and plasticity, and are also…
orthogonal (independent of one another)
What is the five-factor model rooted in?
language
What is extraversion?
being sociable and outgoing
What trait in the 5 factor model is also known as “emotional instability?”
neuroticism
What is neuroticism?
not being able to deal with problems in life effectively and having stronger negative reactions to stressful events
Which trait in the five-factor model is known for capturing a general tendency towards psychopathology?
neuroticism
If a person obeys, conforms, is dutiful, rule-abiding and ambitious, what trait would they score high in? (5 trait model)
conscientiousness
What is agreeableness?
being cooperative
Which trait in the 5 trait model is able to predict many socially relevant outcomes?
agreeableness
What is “openness to experience?”
being creative, imaginative, open-minded
What is major drawback to the trait “openness to experience?”
can overclaim
What is the biggest critique of the “Big Five?”
that personality can be defined with more than 5 traits
What type of hypothesis and analysis developed the HEXACO approach?
lexical hypothesis and factor analysis
What is the name of the hypothesis that argues that a groups main personality characteristics are encoded in language?
lexical hypothesis
What are the 6 dimensions of personality in the HEXACO approach?
H- honesty-humility
E - emotionality
X - extraversion
A - agreeableness
C - conscientiousness
O - openness to experience
What is the key difference between HEXACO and the Big Five?
- H added
- neuroticism = emotionality
- H is different from A and react differently to Dictator and Ultimatum games
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is rooted in Jungian theory and is based on 4 personality dichotomies:
- Extroversion vs. Introversion
- Sensing vs. Intuition
- Thinking vs. Feeling
- Judgment vs. Perception
Is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator a valid measure?
not really
However, not all typologies are invalid. What research that has been done in the past indicates this?
Caspi (3 types in cross-cultural studies)
- well-adjusted
- maladjusted overcontrolling
- maladjusted undercontrolling
What does The Dark Triad consist of?
- narcissism
- machiavellianism
- psychopathy
What is narcissism in the dark triad?
- high self-regard
- extraverted and confident behaviour
What is machiavellianism in the dark triad?
- bad attitude towards human relationships
- ends justify means, ruthless
What is psychopathy in the dark triad?
- untruthfulness
- manipulativeness
- callousness
- no remorse or shame
- impulsive and antisocial tendencies
The Dark Triad has aspects that all lead negatively to agreeableness. What is the level of neuroticism that psychopathy predicts?
low
The Dark Triad has aspects that all lead negatively to agreeableness. What is the level of conscientiousness that machivellianism and psychopathy predict?
low
What is the association between psychopathy and physical aggression?
positive
What is the association between narcissism and hostility?
negative
What is the association between machivellianism and hostility?
postive
What term describes the following: maintaining individual differences in behaviour/personality over time or across situations
rank-order consistency
What is the numerical value that personality traits have ben found to correlate across 10 years?
0.60-0.90
What is temperament?
“personality” of young, pre-verbal children
What type of person-environment interaction is taking place when an aggressive person goes to a bar or when an introvert avoids social gatherings?
active person-environment transaction
What type of person-environment interaction is taking place when extraverts find parties enjoyable and introverts find that same party unbearable?
reactive person-environment interaction
What type of person-environment interaction is taking place when a conscientious person tells a group that its time to get back to work?
evocative person-environment behaviour
What is the cumulative continuity principle?
personality is more stable as we grow older
Cross-sectional studies show levels of personality traits changing throughout one’s life. What happens to the levels of extraversion?
decrease then level off
Cross-sectional studies show levels of personality traits changing throughout one’s life. What concept does neuroticism interact with?
gender
Cross-sectional studies show levels of personality traits changing throughout one’s life. What happens to the levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness?
increase
What is the name of the principle that shows that traits associated with effective functioning increase with age?
the maturity principle
What is a social clock?
expectation that we need to have certain goals done at a specific time
Which term describes the story that one tellls oneself about who one is?
narrative identity
