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PSYC 305 > Trait Theories > Flashcards

Trait Theories Flashcards

1
Q

LECTURE

A
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2
Q

What are traits?

…in terms of trait theories

A
  • Traits are viewed as descriptive summaries of behaviour
  • Trait theories maintain that personality is best described as a constellation of traits (e.g., anxious, conscientious, kind, outgoing)
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3
Q

What is a taxonomy?

A

Taxonomy: classification system

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4
Q

What do the taxononmies (that trait theorists propose) reflect? (their standpoint)

A

a nomothetic view of personality rather than an idiographic view of personality

  • Nomothetic view: that traits are universal; all individuals may be scored on all traits
  • Idiographic view: traits are individualized; a given trait may be unique to one individual
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5
Q

3 mentioned personality taxonomies:

A
  1. Eysenck’s taxonomy
  2. Wiggins taxonomy
  3. 5-factor taxonomy
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6
Q

Eysenck’s taxonomy - based on what type of pre-existing theory?

A

Body humors theory: interested in fluids within the body, using them to determine our personality type

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7
Q

Eysenck’s taxonomy - proposes 3 trait dimensions; what’s their acronym?

A

PEN:
* psychoticism (lesser known)
* extraversion (outgoing, sociable, oppo. introversion)
* and neuroticism (emotional stability)

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8
Q

Low extraversion (high introversion) + low neuroticism (high emotional stability; less negative emotions) =

Eysenck’s taxonomy

A

A: Phlegmatic

Traits:
* Passive
* Careful
* Thoughtful
* Peacefull
* Controlled
* Reliable

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9
Q

Low extraversion + high neuroticism:

Eysenck’s taxonomy

A

B: Melancholic

Traits:
* quiet
* pessimistic
* unsociable
* moody
* sober
* rigid

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10
Q

High extraversion + low neuroticism =

Eysenck’s taxonomy

A

C: Sanguine

  • Sociable
  • Outgoing
  • Talkative
  • Responsive
  • Easygoing
  • Lively
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11
Q

High extraversion + high neuroticism =

Eysenck’s taxonomy

A

D: choleric

  • Active
  • Optimistic
  • Impulsive
  • Changeable
  • Excitable
  • Aggressive
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12
Q

Wiggins taxonomy - based on what pre-existing theory?

A

that interpersonal traits are most important in the description of personality (traits shine through person-to-person interactions (majority emphasis on this))

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13
Q

Wiggins taxonomy - 2 dimensions:

A

dominance and love (the interpersonal circle)
* X-axis: cold-hearted => warm-agreeable
* Y-axis: assured-dominant => unassured-submissive

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14
Q

Cold-hearted + assured-dominant =

Wiggins taxonomy

A

Arrogant-calculating

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15
Q

Cold-hearted + unassured-submissive =

Wiggins taxonomy

A

Aloof-introverted

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16
Q

Warm-agreeable + assured-dominant =

Wiggins taxonomy

A

Gregarious-extraverted

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17
Q

Warm-agreeable + unassured-submissive =

Wiggins taxonomy

A

Unassuming-ingenuous

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18
Q

5-factor taxonomy - based on what pre-existing theory?

A

Based on lexical hypothesis: all important differences in personality are encoded in natural language

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19
Q

5-factor taxonomy - How was it made?

A

Developed through the use of** factor analysis: a statistical method that identifies groups of highly intercorrelated traits
* Basically taking a bunch of traits, and placing them into groups

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20
Q

5-factor taxonomy - what are the 5 groups? How were they made?

A

Factor analysis (of English language) suggests that there are five groups of highly intercorrelated traits or “superordinate dimensions” of personality:

  1. Openness to experience
  2. Conscientiousness
  3. Extraversion
  4. Agreeableness
  5. Neuroticism
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21
Q

Which of the 5 factors (OCEAN) is most contested? Why?

A
  • Openness to experience
  • Due to great deviation across cross-cultural research
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22
Q

Openness to experience

FFM - Dimensions and Facets

A

Actions, aesthetics, fantasy, feelings, ideas, values

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23
Q

Conscientiousness

FFM - Dimensions and Facets

A

Achievement striving, competence, deliberation, dutifulness, order, self-discipline

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24
Q

Extraversion

FFM - Dimensions and Facets

A

activity, assteriveness, excitement seeking, gregariousness, positive emotions, warmth

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25
Q

Agreeableness

FFM - Dimensions and Facets

A

altruism, compliance, modesty, straight-forwardness, tender-mindedness, trust

26
Q

Neuroticism

FFM - Dimensions and Facets

A

Angry hostility, anxiety, depression, impulsiveness, self-consciousness, vulnerability

27
Q

Dimensions can also describe…

A

nuances - describing traits at the highest scores versus the lowest
* EX: openness to experience: curious, imaginative, artistic vs. conventional, uncreative, unimaginative

28
Q

In general, what outcomes are O.C.E.A correlated with? What is N. correlated with?

A
  • O.C.E.A: positive outcomes
  • N: negative outcomes
  • O, E: more positive life events
  • C: greater physical health and longer lifespan
  • A: lower depression
  • N: poorer physical health and shorter lifespan
29
Q

3 criticisms of the FFM:

A
  1. The FFM excludes important personality dimensions; examples include positive evaluation, negative evaluation, honesty-humility, spirituality, and interpersonal relatedness
  2. The FMM includes more personality dimensions than are needed (there are too many). Digman (1997): factor a: socialization = A,C,N. Factor b: personal growth = E,O
    3.** The FFM does not provide insight into the underlying dynamics of personality**
30
Q

READINGS

A
31
Q

Why do researchers approve of the FFM?

A
  • The five factors provide a structure in which most personality traits can be classified
  • Researchers find that many different scales and instruments have been used to assess personality - if each is assigned to one of the five factors, their results can be meaningfully combined.
32
Q

Why were people skeptical of the FFM at first? How was this solved?

A

Skepticism stemmed from debates over theoretical validity and reliance on lay vocabulary.
* It was not immediately clear how one could specify the full list of traits in order to determine what structure was needed to organize them.
* The solution came with the adoption of the lexical hypothesis, which argues that traits are so important in human affairs that common words will have been invented to name them all; an unabridged dictionary ought to provide an exhaustive listing of traits, which could be sorted out into a basic structure.

33
Q

Oppositions to the lexical hypothesis: Mischel

A

Mischel published a critique of trait psychology that led most psychologists to conclude that traits were cognitive fictions with no predictive value; the FFM was merely an adequate taxonomy of illusions. Slowly, defenders of traits made the case that traits were both real and consequential

34
Q

Most personality assessment takes the form of self- report inventories - what are some issues that can arise?

A
  1. People may not understand the questions, or they may not understand themselves.
  2. They may be prone to agreeing with almost any assertion, or may choose to endorse only positive statements about themselves.
  3. They may be bored by the task and careless in their responses. Skeptics came to believe that self- reports were nothing but a collection of errors and biases.
35
Q

What is the most popular form of the FFM? Name 3

A

Questionnaires:
* The NEO Inventories: 240 items assess thirty specific traits (or facets) that define the five factors
* A brief version, the NEO Five-Factor Inventory-3 (NEO-FFI-3): assesses only the five factors.
* The Big Five Inventory (BFI) is another widely-used measure of the five factors

36
Q

Armed with a model and variety of assessment tools, personality psychologists began to address basic questions about how traits operated: 4

A
  1. Age-related
  2. Gender-related
  3. Cross-cultural
  4. Psychometric
37
Q

Age-related FFM discoveries

A

Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies suggest that between adolescence and old age, individuals generally decline in N and E and increase in A and C. O until some time in the 20s, after **which it slowly declines **

38
Q

Gender-related FFM discoveries

A
  • Research on the FFM has shown consistent (generally small) patterns in gender differences, with substantial overlap between the distribution of traits in men and in women.
  • But in most samples,** women score higher in N and A than men. **
  • At the level of specific facets, there are sometimes differences within domain. Thus, both Warmth and Assertiveness are facets of E, but women are typically warmer and men more assertive (can score high on specific aspects of a trait)
39
Q

Cross-Cultural FFM discoveries

A
  • Personality is pretty much the same everywhere - highlighting shared human traits despite linguistic and cultural differences.
  • Traits are stable over time and heritable, supporting a biological basis - which is why the FFM has created a “revolution” in thinking on this issue
40
Q

Psychometric FFM discoveries

A

Cross-cultural studies have also shown that many basic psychometric properties are preserved across nations and languages.

If one ranks the thirty facet scales of the NEO Inventories from most to least internally consistent, very similar orders are found around the world, and the same is true for retest reliability and longitudinal stability

41
Q

General consensus of the FFM:

A
  1. N is associated with most personality disorders
  2. E predisposes people to be happy
  3. O predicts social and political liberalism
  4. Low A is a risk factor for substance abuse
  5. C is associated with good job performance
  6. The utility of the FFM has been securely demonstrated.
42
Q

2 forms of objections to the FFM:

A
  1. A critique of trait theories themselves from other perspectives in personality psychology
  2. From researchers who are committed to trait models and factor analytic methods, but who propose some variation on or refinement of the FFM.
43
Q

Network and functionalist theorists

Critiques from outside voices

A

argued that traits are not underlying causes of behavior, but mere epiphenomena that emerge from evolving patterns of behaviors

44
Q

Person-centered approaches

Critiques from outside voices

A

claim that types more faithfully represent the operation of psychological processes than do variable-centered traits

45
Q

Social cognitive theorists

Critiques from outside voices

A

argued that traits merely describe, without explaining, behavior

46
Q

Other personality theorists

Critiques from outside voices

A

pointed out that, even if it is a fully adequate model of personality traits, the FFM itself does not constitute a full theory of personality, which would also explain human development, day-to-day functioning and social interactions in cultural context.

47
Q

Challenges to the five-factor sufficiency: arguments for FEWER factors

Crtitiques from familiar voices

A
  • Arguments for 3 factor, 6 factor - the issue being language: a factor that is richly represented in the vocabulary of one culture might be missing from the vocabulary of the second.
  • Other researchers have argued that entirely new factors are needed.
  • Spirituality has also been proposed as a sixth factor
  • Addition of Psychoticism - seeing that it doesn’t relate to openness (as tested by the APA)
  • Other writers have argued that the five factors are artifacts of evaluative bias
48
Q

A higher order structure - Digman (1997) proposed that…

Crtitiques from familiar voices

A

…the five factors are not the highest level of personality structure.
* He showed that the factors were themselves intercorrelated, and that a factor analysis of these correlations revealed two higher-order factors, alpha (defined by A and C versus N) and beta (defined by E and O).
* What remains in doubt is their interpretation. Some researchers believe that they are real, if highly abstract, features of the structure of personality, perhaps even with a genetic basis

49
Q

What are facet scales? What is the issue related to the FFM?

A
  • Facet scales are composed of items, but the conceptual status of individual items has been unclear.
  • Are they inter- changeable indicators of the facet? If so, why not just ask respondents the same question over and over to get a reliable answer?
50
Q

McCrae (2015) called traits-beneath-facets…

A

nuances

51
Q

The most influential biological theories of personality were offered by…

A

Eysenck (1967) and Gray (1970)

52
Q

Gray’s Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory

Influential biological theories of personality

A
  • argued that personality traits arise because people differ in their sensitivity to punishments and rewards.
  • He hypothesized that the brain includes two distinct systems: for behavioral inhibition (BIS) and behavioral activation (BAS)
  • Scales to assess BIS and BAS have been developed and they do show predictable associations with trait measures: BIS is correlated with N, and especially its Anxiety facet; BAS is correlated with E and its Excitement Seeking facet
  • From the perspective of the FFM, these theories are also incomplete, because they do not address the biological bases of O, A or C.
53
Q

Early studies suggest that there are at least three ways the FFM frame- work might be meaningfully applied to groups of people, even whole nations or cultures:

A
  • Characterizing ethos
  • National character
  • Aggregate personality
54
Q

Ethos

FFM’s application to different cultures/people

A

Ethos refers to the pervasive spirit of a culture (if such a thing really exists), reflected in its laws, customs and institutions

55
Q

National character

FFM’s application to different cultures/people

A
  • National character refers to shared beliefs about the “typical” member of a nation: Americans are thought to be brash, the British to be reserved.
56
Q

National character + stereotypes

FFM’s application to different cultures/people

A
  • Sometimes stereotypes are based on contrast effects - Americans and Canadians, although highly similar in language, religion, government and ethnic composition, are perceived as polar opposites in personality
  • There is also some evidence that consensual national stereotypes are based to some extent on ethos.
57
Q

Aggregate Personality Traits

FFM’s application to different cultures/people

A
  • Are consensual national stereotypes accurate, or at least mostly true; “Does the judged personality profile of the ‘typical’ citizen correspond to the assessed national mean profile?”
  • Thus, we need only compare, across a wide range of cultures, national stereotypes with aggregate (or averaged) personality traits.
58
Q

“Thus, we need only compare, across a wide range of cultures, national stereotypes with aggregate (or averaged) personality traits”

Such a comparison assumes several conditions:

A
  1. First, the trait constructs must be the same.
  2. Next, there must be reason to think that scores are numerically comparable – a property called scalar equivalence: each score must represent the same level of the trait in each culture.
59
Q

Why is it difficult to achieve scalar equivalence?

A

when different translations of an instrument are used, or when members of one culture have different approaches to test-taking than those of another. Without scalar equivalence, a scale may be perfectly good when used to compare two members of the same culture, but useless for comparing people across cultures.

60
Q

How does one establish scalar equivalence?

A
  • One approach is to consider the internal evidence – the way in which items con- tribute to a scale, or facets to a factor. Such analyses suggest caution in comparing FFM measures across samples
  • The most direct evidence on the validity of aggregate personality scores – and thus of the scalar near- equivalence of the instruments – comes from correlations across a range of cultures of aggregate scores themselves.
61
Q

The (In)Accuracy of National Character Stereotypes

A
  • There is essentially no relation between the two indicators of a nation’s personality.
  • In this case, stereotypes appear to be almost completely misleading
  • The fact that national character stereotypes are not accurate reflections of aggregate personality does not mean that they are unimportant.
  • Such stereotypes influence people’s perceptions of strangers, the treatment of ethnic groups, and even international relations.

PSYC 305 (3 decks)

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